Brian Nelson’s intelligence personnel had made a mistake, a basic error which resulted in the cold-blooded murder of an innocent man, the husband of a loving wife and the father of two young daughters. They had mistaken Terry McDaid for his brother Declan and their enquiries had led them to the wrong house. The UDA had failed to check whether they had targeted the right man and, as a result, Terence would die in the place of his brother. But not without a fight.
When the two gunmen had smashed down the door they ran into the living-room. Terry and his wife jumped to their feet in a bid to thwart the gunmen. Neither had any idea who was invading their home but they knew that their unwelcome visitors could only mean trouble. Throughout the Catholic areas of Belfast in the spring of 1988 there were grave fears that Loyalist gunmen were on the loose, targeting every Catholic no matter who he was or what he did. It didn’t seem to matter whether these people were members of the Provisionals or just ordinary people going about their daily lives who had never for one moment even considered joining a terrorist organisation. Although the targeting and killing of Catholics, orchestrated and masterminded by Military Intelligence, would continue for a further two years, the intention of creating fear and suspicion throughout the community had already been highly successful.
Maura McDaid would say later: ‘As soon as I heard the commotion I knew instinctively that whoever had smashed their way into our home would be after Terry. He was the only man in the house and with so many sectarian killings going on, I just knew those breaking in would be after him. I tried to put my leg to the door of the living-room in an effort to stop them but they just pushed it open and two men barged in.
‘“Get the fuck out of the way,” one shouted.
‘“Where the fuck is he?” shouted another.
‘They started shooting at the ceiling and at the walls and I picked up the Hoover and tried to hit the one nearest to me across the head but he pushed me aside and continued shooting around the room. He was like some madman and I was convinced we were all going to die. Instinctively I screamed and ducked down, fearful that he would kill us all.
‘In that split second I thought of the girls upstairs and prayed they wouldn’t come down to see what was going on. I was convinced that if they had come into the room those bastards would have shot them too. My mother, who was also in the room at the time, threw herself over Terry to protect him because she too was convinced that the gunmen were after him. One gunman shot my mother in the foot and pushed her out of the way so that he could get a clear shot at Terry. Then they blasted him. He didn’t stand a chance. Seconds later they ran out of the room and down the hall and away.
‘Terry slumped to the floor and I knew the bastards had killed him. I was in tears, desperate that he would survive for me and the girls but I knew in my heart there was little hope. And there was no reason, no reason whatsoever, why they should have killed him. He was a good husband and a wonderful father and he did his best for his family. He wasn’t a member of any organisation at all and yet they murdered him, killed him for no reason except that he was Roman Catholic. I hope they rot in hell.’
The cold-blooded murder of Terence McDaid angered the FRU officers and they immediately called in Nelson, asking him to explain exactly what he and his band of gunmen thought they were playing at murdering a totally innocent man.
Nelson was unrepentant. ‘We fucked up,’ he said, in his cocky manner. ‘Got the wrong man, that’s all. It was his brother we were after. Anyway, it’s one less Mick to worry about; that’s the way we look at it.’
One of the senior FRU handlers, fed up with Nelson’s cavalier attitude, challenged him: ‘You told us that the UDA were a professional outfit and then you go and fuck up something like this. What the hell do you think you’re playing at?’
‘Don’t have a go at me,’ Nelson pleaded in a pathetic way. ‘That side of it is nothing to do with me. That’s operational. I just supply the intelligence, the facts, and they do the rest.’
‘But that’s precisely the point,’ the FRU handler retorted. ‘You are the intelligence officer and the information you gave your men was obviously inaccurate. As a result, some poor innocent bastard died and you sit there and tell us that it doesn’t matter. Well, it does matter and the sooner you learn that fact, the better for you and for us.’
‘It’s no good having a go at me,’ replied Nelson, ‘I’m doing my best. There’s hardly ever a fuck-up. It was just a one-off, bad luck on the poor fucker.’
‘That’s exactly the attitude that you must not have,’ replied the FRU man. ‘You treat everyone you target as of no importance. Well, innocent people are important. They have a right to live out their lives without you guys storming into their homes and killing them.’
‘It was a mistake,’ Nelson pleaded. ‘These things happen.’
‘But don’t your men ask questions? Don’t they check who’s in the house first of all before charging in and spraying the place with bullets? You’d better tell your UDA bosses that they had better check in future operations before targeting and killing people. We can’t permit this sort of thing to happen. If ordinary, decent Catholics are taken out for no good reason, you will have been responsible for turning every Catholic in the Province against the Protestants. Do you want that? Where do you think that would lead?’
‘Fuck knows,’ replied Nelson, showing by his tone of voice that he was bored with the conversation.
‘I’ll tell you where it will lead. It will bring the Catholics solidly behind the Provos, which is exactly what the IRA want. We don’t want that. We want to isolate the Provos from the majority of Catholics, to show that they are not courageous men defending the Catholic minority but just out to kill for killing’s safe. By your stupid actions you are helping the Provos – don’t you understand that?’
‘Maybe, maybe not,’ Nelson replied.
‘Well, just listen, just listen once more. Always check with us before anything goes down. Do you understand that? You do nothing, nothing whatsoever until you have checked with us, okay?’
‘Yeah, all right,’ replied Nelson in a defeated tone. ‘But I do nearly always check with you anyway, so nothing will change.’
‘Well, let’s make sure there are no more fuck-ups; no more mistakes, okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘Right, that’s agreed,’ said the FRU man, ‘now fuck off.’
As well as the ‘mistaken-identity’ killings, which soon became a regular feature of the UDA under its intelligence officer, there were times when the Loyalist gunmen correctly picked out their target but still had difficulty in achieving their brutal aims.
One of the men at the top of the UDA hit-list was a leading member of Sinn Fein and one of the Provisional IRA’s senior officers, Brendan Davidson. He was the Officer Commanding the markets area of Belfast, a small Catholic enclave which apparently contained two or more IRA active service units. A single man, Davidson gave his life to the Republican cause of which he was a passionate and dedicated supporter. He was a well-known figure around the markets area and his authority was undisputed by the people living there. In effect. Brendan Davidson’s word was law and no one took any liberties when dealing with him.
In December 1983 Davidson had been arrested on the word of IRA supergrass John Morgan but acquitted when Mr Justice Murray refused to accept the informer’s evidence. As a result, Davidson walked free and returned to his role as an active IRA officer. But from the moment of his acquittal, Davidson believed he was a Loyalist target and, sensibly, took great precautions to ensure his safety. It didn’t take long, however, before information was gathered which showed that Davidson liked a bet on the horses most days and frequented a bookmaker in Cromac Street where he was well known by many of those who hung around the shop on race days.
Well known to both the RUC Special Branch and Military Intelligence, Davidson’s was also one of the first names the Force Research Unit decided to target shortly after Nelson started working for them. The
agent was informed that intelligence reports showed that Davidson spent two or three afternoons a week visiting the betting shop; sometimes he would just a place a bet and leave but, on other occasions, would stand around chatting for an hour or so, listening to the races on the shop’s commentary link-up.
All this was fed to Nelson together with a dossier of photographs of Davidson, including police mugshots taken when he was arrested and others taken surreptitiously by undercover officers of the RUC’s crack surveillance unit, E4A.
One bright June afternoon, two hooded gunmen walked into the bookmaker’s, singled out Davidson and shot him four times. He managed to twist away from the gunmen; his arm took the full force of the shots but he was otherwise uninjured. He was rushed to hospital and, after surgery, was patched up, though he never regained the full use of his arm.
After that attempt on Davidson’s life, Nelson reported back to the FRU that his UDA gunmen had panicked rather than taken their time. They recognised Davidson as he turned away from them, he said, but they were confronted by a number of other people in the shop and all they wanted to do was fire off a few rounds and fuck off as quickly as possible in case the other men in the shop turned on them.
A year later, in July 1988, Brendan Davidson was again targeted. The FRU suggested once more that the UDA should check him out to see if it was possible to hit him – more successfully this time. They had learned that one of Davidson’s active service units had been heavily involved in a number of shootings and bombings and they believed the only way to stop that unit operating for a while was to take out Davidson and hopefully scare off the members of the ASU. Military Intelligence knew from past experience that by taking out IRA commanders, the whole organisation would take weeks if not months to get back into action because the members feared there might be a tout in their midst who was responsible for betraying the leader. In such circumstances evidence showed that IRA cells would then lie low for a month or two at least, not daring to organise any terrorist operations for fear that they too might be betrayed.
‘How are we going to get to him?’ enquired Nelson when Davidson’s name came up again in the summer of 1988. ‘We’ve checked out the betting shop and he still goes there. Now, though, whenever he visits, he has lookouts standing around outside to make sure he’s not surprised again. In fact, Davidson is fucking scared because he sometimes has bodyguards wherever he goes in the markets and we don’t know whether they’re armed or not.’
‘Do you know if Special Branch still watch him?’ he was asked.
‘The word is the Branch is too fucking scared to watch him since the court case because he would have them for harassment.’
‘We’ll look into that,’ replied the FRU officer. ‘We expect he’s being kept under surveillance but he wouldn’t know about that.’
‘Have you got any ideas how we could get access to Davidson?’ Nelson asked.
‘We’ll think about it and let you know,’ he was told.
At the next safe-house meeting Nelson returned to the subject of Brendan Davidson and repeated that the UDA were very keen to ‘get’ him because they were convinced that he was the officer responsible for a lot of the IRA’s dirty work, targeting Loyalists and sending out ASUs on killing missions.
‘We have an idea,’ said one FRU handler. ‘If you don’t think it’s possible to target him at the bookie’s or in the streets, he’ll have to be attacked at his home.’
‘Fucking impossible,’ replied Nelson. ‘We’ve checked that out by driving past on lots of occasions and it’s well guarded. We believe it has one of those safe doors with three-pronged bolts, making it all but impossible to break down. He’s well protected and no fool.’
‘So we have to entice him out somehow, right?’
‘I fucking know that,’ Nelson replied tetchily, ‘but how the hell do we do it? He’s not just going to open the door when we knock, is he?’
‘That’s true,’ replied the senior FRU officer. ‘But he might do so if he thought you were the peelers.’
‘And how do we manage that?’ Nelson asked, somewhat incredulously.
‘By wearing the correct uniforms,’ he was told. ‘I’m sure that your UDA men with their contacts in the RUC would be able to come up with a couple of uniforms.’
‘Fucking right,’ said Nelson, a note of glee in his voice, ‘yeah, fucking right.’
It was arranged through the FRU that the TCG would be informed that on the morning of Monday, 25 July 1988, an operation would be going ahead some time between 7 a.m. and 11 a.m., and to ensure that no security forces or RUC patrols were in the markets area.
Four men, dressed in the green uniforms of RUC police officers and wearing regulation caps, drove up in a bright orange car which attracted some attention. The driver and the ‘peeler’ in the front passenger seat stayed in the vehicle after parking a little way from the house in Friendly Way in which Davidson rented the ground-floor flat.
With Davidson that morning was a friend who later told the RUC what happened. The man, who asked not to be named, said, ‘We had just finished having some breakfast when there was a knock at the door. Brendan looked at me and I shrugged my shoulders, so presumably he was not expecting any visitors at that time in the morning. He went to the door and looked through the spy hole.
‘“Who’s there?” he called through the closed door.
‘“Peelers,” came the reply. “We need to talk to you.”
‘“Wait a minute,” said Davidson and as he opened the front door he told me, “Fucking peelers! I wonder what they want.”’
He had only opened the door a little way, his friend continued, when he realised the policemen standing outside were holding sub-machine-guns and pointing them straight at him. At the same time as he tried to slam the door shut the UDA gunmen opened fire, hitting him several times in the head and body. At least nine shots were fired that morning. But the door had in fact taken the majority of the shots and Davidson was still alive when he crumpled to the floor.
The two gunmen turned and ran to the car that was waiting a few yards away, the doors open, the engine revving. But one of the ‘peelers’ dropped his gun and his police cap as he was running to the car and had to stop to pick them up while his accomplice was shouting at him to get a move on. As the two clambered in, pursued by two men who had heard the gunfire, the car took off. As they watched it disappear down the street, the two men in pursuit reported seeing the men in the back of the car struggling out of their RUC uniforms. One of them, a blond-haired youngster, looked back at his pursuers and roared with laughter. Davidson was taken to Belfast City Hospital but died a short time after being admitted.
Brian Nelson, the UDA hierarchy and the FRU personnel who had helped organise the operation were jubilant that one of their prime targets, whom they believed to be a danger to society in Northern Ireland, had been killed, and could therefore cause no further strife. The FRU also hoped, of course, that his death would halt the activities of the markets ASUs for a while.
Throughout 1988, dozens of other people were targeted by Nelson and the FRU. In most cases, though, Nelson would report back that his intelligence touts had been unable to trace or identify these targets or, if positive identification was proved, that it was impossible to mount a plan of attack that would not only achieve the right result but also allow the UDA gunman to escape. Sometimes, when weeks passed without a hit taking place, Nelson would become agitated, almost as though selecting and taking out a target had become a ‘high’ for him.
Chapter Nine
Shoot to Kill
At about the same time as the Force Research Unit was established, 14th Intelligence Company (often called ‘Det’ because its volunteers were Detached from their regiments for a two-year tour of duty in the Province) was also being set up to carry out dangerous undercover surveillance operations. Originally, the recruits brought in to staff the Det were all SAS personnel but their work became so vital and efficient, as well as highly successf
ul, that the SAS were unable to provide enough personnel so volunteers were recruited from other army units. To this day, however, the Det is still under the control and command of the SAS.
Throughout the thirty years of the troubles, drastic action, euphemistically called ‘Executive Action’ in official security circles, had resulted in a number of IRA and Sinn Fein personnel being killed by members of the security forces. Secret but officially sanctioned killings of Provisional IRA members, in which the security forces were directly or indirectly involved, had been suspected throughout the on-going war with the Provos. Firstly, there were the MRF ‘cowboys’ who took the law into their own hands in the 1970s but who were disbanded after protestations from senior RUC officers that MRF personnel risked facing murder charges. Then, in the early 1980s, a series of questionable killings, which became known as the RUC’s ‘shoot-to-kill’ policy, caused serious political repercussions in Northern Ireland and the House of Commons. Allegations were made against members of the RUC’s shady Headquarters Mobile Support Unit (HMSU) that young IRA gunmen had been shot dead on occasions when they could just as easily have been arrested.
The series of killings – which Republicans described as ‘cold-blooded murders’ – began in early October 1982. Officers from E4A – the plain-clothes, surveillance wing of the RUC – had been tipped off that a large consignment of home-made explosives was to be shipped into the North. The lorry, which E4A knew contained the explosives, was tracked from south of the border to a hayshed off the Ballynery road, outside Lurgan. The shed, known as Kitty’s Barn, was a ramshackle building made of breeze-blocks and corrugated iron and was owned by Kitty Kearns, a woman in her seventies, who looked after retired greyhounds. The farmhouse and barn lay close to a staunchly Republican housing estate on the outskirts of Lurgan. Kitty Kearns was a local character, the widow of an old-time Republican who had died a few years years earlier.
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