by Mark Urban
Big Boys’ Rules
The Secret Struggle against the IRA
MARK URBAN
For
Dana, Leah and David
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
List of Illustrations
Chronology
Preface
PART ONE: 1976–1979
1 First Blood
2 The Security Establishment
3 PIRA
4 Watchers
5 A Question of Allegiances
6 Lethal Confusion
7 Undercover Soldiers and the Law
PART TWO: 1979–1982
8 A Change of Mood
9 Warrenpoint
10 Special Branch in the Ascendant
11 Human Sources
12 ‘Jarking’ and the Technology of Terror
13 Beyond Ireland
14 Hunger Strikers and Supergrasses
15 Reasonable Force
PART THREE: 1982–1984
16 Stalker
17 ‘Ambush’: A Matter of Interpretation
18 The Group in Action
PART FOUR: 1984–1987
19 Soft Targets
20 The Strabane Shootings
21 Disaster at Newry
22 Acceptable Levels
23 Tyrone Brigade
24 Loughgall, 8 May 1987: Prayers and Tapdancing
Conclusion
Appendix I
Appendix II
Select Bibliography
Index
Map
Plates
About the Author
Copyright
List of Illustrations
1 IRA Derry Brigade members (Pacemaker)
2 Royal Marine Close Observation Platoon members in south Armagh (Photopress)
3 A member of D Squadron 22 SAS in 1976 (Photopress)
4 A member of the Parachute Regiment Close Observation Platoon
5 Army patrol emerging from a Lynx helicopter (John Voos, Independent)
6 Member of an RUC special firearms unit (Pacemaker)
7 An RUC patrol with accompanying soldiers (John Voos, Independent)
8 Republican suspects being searched by troops (Photopress)
9 A vehicle checkpoint in Fermanagh (John Voos, Independent)
10 Inside an overt observation post (John Voos, Independent)
11 A patrol vehicle designed to jam radio command bombs
12 The aftermath of an SAS ambush at the Gransha hospital in 1984 (Pacemaker)
13 An aerial view of Loughgall police station (Pacemaker)
14 The scene at Loughgall before the press were allowed to see it
Chronology
1969
August British Army is sent to Northern Ireland by Harold Wilson’s government after RUC lose control of nationalist rioting and loyalist backlash.
1970
October Hunt Report criticizes RUC handling of previous year’s riots.
1971
August Disastrous policy of ‘internment’ of terrorist suspects starts.
1972
January Thirteen civil rights demonstrators are shot dead by members of Parachute Regiment in ‘Bloody Sunday’.
June Partly to atone for internment, special category status is granted to paramilitary prisoners.
1974
14 April First member of 14 Intelligence Company, Captain Anthony Pollen, is killed on active service.
1975
February Labour Secretary of State Merlyn Rees engineers short-lived ceasefire with IRA.
August Three members of Miami Showband are killed by UVF loyalist terrorists.
1976 Under Chief Constable Kenneth Newman, and the new policy of ‘Police Primacy’, the RUC begins to take overall responsibility for security in Northern Ireland.
January First SAS troop of twelve men is deployed in Ulster.
March Special category status for paramilitary prisoners ends. IRA member Sean McKenna is arrested after alleged abduction by SAS from Republic of Ireland.
April Peter Cleary is killed by SAS near Forkill.
May First republican protest in the H-Blocks of the Maze prison begins.
Eight armed SAS men are arrested by Gardai after ‘accidentally’ entering the Republic.
1977 Major General Dick Trant is appointed CLF.
May Captain Robert Nairac is captured and killed by IRA.
July IRA man Seamus Harvey is shot dead by SAS in Culderry.
December INLA member Colm McNutt is killed by 14 Company lance-corporal in Londonderry.
Corporal Paul Harman of 14 Company is killed by IRA in Belfast.
1978
January Bessbrook SAS Squadron’s area of deployment is extended from south Armagh to the whole of Northern Ireland.
February Two IRA men are ambushed by SAS near Ardboe; one, Paul Duffy, is shot dead.
April Republican ‘dirty protest’ begins at the Maze prison.
20 June Three IRA men and one Protestant bystander are killed by SAS and RUC special forces in Ballysillan postal depot incident.
September Protestant James Taylor is mistakenly shot by SAS soldiers.
24 November IRA member Patrick Duffy is shot dead by SAS at arms cache in Londonderry.
1979
February Major General James Glover is appointed as Commander Land Forces.
March IRA starts terrorist campaign on the Continent with the killing of the British ambassador to the Netherlands.
30 March Airey Neave is killed in Westminster by an INLA car bomb.
27 August Eighteen soldiers are killed by IRA bombs at Warrenpoint. On the same day Lord Mountbatten and three others are blown up by a bomb on board their boat near Mullaghmore.
October Maurice Oldfield, former chief of SIS (MI6), is appointed Security Co-ordinator in Northern Ireland.
1980
Summer Maurice Oldfield is removed from post (dies in March 1981).
September SAS apprehend two IRA members from Dungannon at an arms cache in Tyrone.
27 October H-Block republican prisoners begin their hunger strike (suspended on 18 December).
Autumn James Glover is succeeded as CLF by Major General Charles Huxtable.
1981
January Jim Lynagh’s IRA gang murder Sir Norman Stronge and his son at Tynan Abbey.
14 March Seamus McElwaine and three other IRA members are captured by SAS near Rosslea.
5 May Bobby Sands, MP for Fermanagh and S. Tyrone, dies of starvation in the Maze.
28 May 14 Company officer shoots two armed IRA men dead and wounds another in Londonderry.
3 October Hunger strike is called off, after eight IRA and three INLA members have died.
November Christopher Black, to become most celebrated of the ‘supergrasses’, is arrested.
1982
August IRA member Raymond Gilmour turns supergrass, severely compromising IRA organization in Londonderry.
27 October Three IRA men are killed by police firearms squad near Lurgan, in the first of three incidents leading to the Stalker inquiry.
24 November Michael Tighe shot dead by police undercover unit near Lurgan.
12 December Unarmed INLA members Roddy Carroll and Seamus Robinson are shot dead by HMSU member Constable Robinson.
1983
February One INLA member Liam McMonagle is shot dead, and another (Liam Duffy) wounded, by plain-clothes soldier in Londonderry.
August Thirty-five of thirty-nine charged are found guilty on Black’s evidence.
25 September H-Block prisoners stage an escape from the Maze; sixteen are recaptured, but twenty-two remain at large.
October Republican ‘informer’ Robert Lean holds press conference causing severe embarras
sment to RUC about their handling of supergrasses.
4 December SAS shoot dead two IRA members in ambush near Coalisland, the first such fatalities for five years.
1984
14 March Assassination attempt in Belfast by UFF gunmen seriously injures Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams.
24 May John Stalker, Deputy Chief Constable of Manchester, is appointed to the ‘shoot-to-kill’ inquiry.
September Douglas Hurd succeeds as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
19 October SAS ambush IRA team at Tamnamore as they prepare to kill a UDR officer: IRA gang escape, and bystander Frederick Jackson is accidentally killed by SAS.
1 December SAS soldiers are involved in gunbattle with IRA at Drumrush Lodge, near Kesh, resulting in the deaths of an SAS soldier and IRA man.
6 December Two IRA men are killed by SAS in ambush at Gransha hospital, Londonderry.
1985
23 February Three IRA members are shot dead by SAS soldiers at Strabane.
28 February IRA mortar attack on Newry police station kills nine RUC officers.
November Anglo-Irish Agreement between Westminster and Dublin is signed.
December IRA’s Tyrone Brigade continues its campaign against isolated police stations at Ballygawley, Castlederg and Carrickmore.
1986
18 February Francis Bradley is shot dead by SAS while recovering weapon from arms cache in Toomebridge.
May Stalker is removed from ‘shoot-to-kill’ inquiry, pending investigations into his contact with Manchester businessman Kevin Taylor.
2 July Three RUC officers are shot dead by Provisionals in central Newry.
1987
March John Stalker resigns from the police force. Second IRA campaign on the Continent begins.
8 May Eight IRA members, including Jim Lynagh, are shot dead in SAS and RUC special forces ambush at Loughgall.
1988
February Pat Finucane, a Belfast solicitor known for representing republicans, is murdered by loyalist terrorists.
March Three IRA members, unarmed but on a bombing mission, are shot dead by SAS soldiers in Gibraltar.
June Northern Ireland Police Authority narrowly rejects further investigation of the behaviour of RUC Chief Constable John Hermon and his deputies during the Stalker and Sampson inquiries.
1989
21 May Collette O’Neill, suspected IRA ‘Loughgall informer’, is picked up by police in car with two alleged IRA men.
Preface
On the morning of Sunday 9 May 1987 I awoke to hear the news that British soldiers had killed eight members of the Irish Republican Army in the village of Loughgall in Armagh the day before. I assumed at first that the IRA men had simply been unlucky. I regretted their deaths but, like many other people who had become tired of the long saga of IRA killings, I assumed that the Army operation was necessary. It was only when I learnt more about the incident – in particular, that a motorist passing through Loughgall had also been shot dead by soldiers – that I became curious about this kind of action against the IRA. I realized that my own background and the contacts I had built up over many years could direct me towards avenues of investigation not open to other journalists. The story which I pieced together is one of a hidden contest between a covert élite within the security forces and the republican movement, its mortal enemy. Loughgall was the most spectacular manifestation of this contest.
For most of us the conflict in Northern Ireland is represented by a few strong visual images – running soldiers, marching bands, sectarian graffiti, hooded figures at gravesides – but these are the symbolic, outward signs of the conflict. The real struggle, which accounts for so much loss of life, takes place in an unseen arena. In recent years most of the IRA members who have been shot were not killed by uniformed soldiers or policemen, but either by one of the special units of the security forces which act on intelligence (most famously the SAS), or by the IRA itself, in an attempt to flush out informers from within its own ranks. Many of the arrests of active terrorists are also the result of undercover work.
This is the first published account of the Northern Ireland conflict in which SAS men, intelligence officers and senior decision-makers frankly describe their attitudes – to the risks of their work in Ulster; to the death of IRA members; to the use of deception to protect intelligence sources; and to the moral dilemmas surrounding the exploitation of that information. The readiness of the security establishment to deceive journalists, and more importantly the courts, is one reason why I feel this story should be investigated. What justifies the deception of the institutions which these forces aim to defend? How far can the end be said to justify the means? Perhaps the attitude of soldiers and police officers does no more than reflect society generally, for many people seem to applaud the elimination of republican terrorists and are less than curious about the moral tightrope that must be walked to make such actions possible. Yet I came to believe that it is the very inability of security chiefs, politicians and the media to acknowledge and question the less savoury aspects of such operations that makes Ulster’s undercover conflict a vital area for journalistic inquiry.
There is a view that such a book should not be written, for security reasons, until peace comes to Ireland. I reject this. The British government has been fighting the IRA for many years – between twenty-three and eighty, depending on your definition of events – and the end of the Troubles is nowhere in sight. Meanwhile, many Catholics’ perception of the British state as unjust and murderous is an important factor in the IRA’s continued support. If a democracy is to be able to check terrorism, the forces engaged in that struggle must parade their adherence to the law at all times. In the eyes of organizations such as Amnesty International and of the courts in other countries which have refused to extradite to the UK suspected Northern Ireland terrorists, the British authorities have clearly not succeeded in this aim. That failure results almost entirely from the desire to protect intelligence sources and to retain the ability to exploit information in covert operations. Yet such activities prevent the government from gaining greater support in the Catholic estates of Northern Ireland and tarnish Britain’s reputation abroad. In this context, the potential trade-off between the long-term benefits of openness and the short-term, operational advantages of secrecy justifies investigations like mine and warrants wider public debate.
This book covers the period 1976–87, but I am not suggesting that covert operations were unknown before 1976 or that they have ceased since 1987. I chose this period because in 1976 whole units of SAS men were committed to Northern Ireland. The substantial transfer of resources to undercover operations which followed has received little attention until now (no doubt because undercover units are excluded from the published order of battle of the Army and RUC, and because in some cases their parent organizations do not admit to their existence).
There were also significant changes in the way security chiefs used the intelligence at their disposal during this period. In 1976 the RUC was being transformed into a more militarized force and was about to take over the direction of all security operations from the Army. During the transition individual personalities came to dominate strategy and tactics, and the use of intelligence and covert action was not subject to systematic control. However, by 1987 the role of particular units and organizations had become more clearly established, often as a result of incidents involving the deaths of terrorists or members of the security forces. Both in terms of shifts in overall security forces policy and changes in the structurè and strategy of the undercover units themselves, the period from 1976 to 1987 was a critical phase in the development of covert operations.
Much of the information was obtained in some sixty interviews conducted specifically for this book. I guaranteed anonymity to all those I interviewed and therefore cannot thank them by name. About eight were ex-members of special forces (the SAS and Army surveillance unit 14 Intelligence Company); twelve had been in senior positions in the secur
ity forces and at Stormont; and a further ten or so had been involved in specialist intelligence work in Ulster. Where I attribute information to ‘an intelligence officer’ that is a person who has worked on the collection, collation, analysis or dissemination of intelligence. It could be a member of the Army, RUC Special Branch or the Security Service (MI5). I also conducted interviews with a wide range of people including solicitors, republican activists, constables and soldiers on the streets, and members of the public who had witnessed gunbattles.
Almost all of the interviewees who agreed to meet me unofficially were approached on an informal basis. Some people approached in this way did not agree to take part. As defence correspondent of the Independent, between 1986 and 1990, I was entitled to seek non-attributable briefings from the Ministry of Defence – official information given on the basis that it is not sourced to any individual or section within the Ministry of Defence. I did make two visits to the Army in Northern Ireland while in that post, and these provided important background knowledge, but I decided not to request such a briefing for this book. I have also received briefing and guidance from the Army and the RUC in my subsequent work for BBC TV’s Newsnight. In some places I have made use of such information, although I have tried to make it clear in the text where information was gleaned during briefings arranged as part of those visits.
The decision not to seek the co-operation of the Ministry of Defence was a difficult one. In my dealings with members of the department, they have never volunteered a potentially damaging story, but they have very rarely avoided confirming something I have discovered. None the less, my research for this book has uncovered many instances of the Army and police deliberately giving the press false information about covert operations in Ulster. In 1990, Tom King, the Secretary of State for Defence, told the House of Commons that the authorities used disinformation to protect lives and for ‘absolutely honorable security reasons’. In several of the incidents related in this book journalists have been used to relay these untruths. In view of this, I decided to seek the opinions of senior Army and police officers in private, without the presence of Whitehall or Stormont officials and their tape recorders. This did not provide absolute insurance against deception, but I am convinced that it did lead to greater candour and often resulted in interviewees giving accounts of incidents which differed significantly from the official version.