Irish Times
As the British army withdraws from the North's streets, an intelligence expert tells Ben Quinn that the role of the 'spooks' behind the soldiers is becoming ever clearer.
Over the course of 38 years, the sight of British troops cautiously navigating Northern Ireland's streets became an abiding image of the Troubles. However, amid the formal ending of military operations this week it might have been easy to forget that behind the soldiers' very visible presence lay another, hidden, arm of the British state: the intelligence services.
Today, the role played by these "spooks" during the peace process has been acknowledged, even if many questions remain about their activities in the North and also in the Republic. Nevertheless, the subject is now coming under renewed scrutiny, thanks to a drip-feed of records from archives in Dublin, London and Belfast, allowing researchers, such as intelligence expert Stephen Dorril, to glean new insights into the machinations of British spies on both sides of the Border. For his forthcoming book, The Dogs Say: British Intelligence and Ireland 1966-2005, he also interviewed former operatives who once oversaw Irish operations.
Looking back to the cradle of the Troubles, and to the events which culminated in the Arms Trial, he concludes that accounts of the episode have largely missed an important ingredient: the hand of British intelligence.
The 1970 crisis led to two cabinet ministers in the government of Jack Lynch - Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney - being sacked for allegedly attempting to import arms illegally for use by Northern republicans. Haughey and Blaney were prosecuted, along with Army intelligence officer Capt James Kelly, Belfast republican John Kelly and Belgian arms dealer Albert Luykx. All were acquitted.
According to Dorril, "they [British intelligence] were heavily involved. It does seem that Lynch knew right from the beginning what was happening, and that the power battle within Fianna Fáil involved support for Lynch from MI6".
He characterises the Irish Government at the time as one in which there were two factions. On one side were Charles Haughey, Neil Blaney and Captain Kelly of Irish military intelligence. On the other were taoiseach Jack Lynch and other Government officials, who, according to Dorril, were receiving information from British intelligence and knew at a very early stage about the alleged arms plot.
"There was a pretty extensive phone-tap operation going on, and bugging of offices. I think that Lynch was expected to move earlier against them [those involved in the arms scheme], and didn't, and he got pushed into it. The British forced the issue."
The role of Charles Haughey's brother, Paraic "Jock" Haughey, who died in 2003, also deserves more attention, according to Dorril, who has spoken to former British operatives who monitored "Jock" in London. In the wake of the Arms Trial, the head of the Garda Special Branch, in evidence to the Dáil Public Accounts Committee, named "Jock" Haughey as being "deeply involved" in dealings with IRA leader Cathal Goulding in 1969.
"Jock seems to be the key figure," says Dorril. "He is central to the arms buying, he is central to control of money, he is the link with his brother and the other ministers and links into other groups. But you read the books and there are barely a few lines [about him]."
Another theme of British covert operations in Ireland during the 1970s was the infiltration of institutions, including the recruitment of informants in An Garda Síochána. Indeed, a Garda sergeant, Patrick Crinnion, was convicted for passing intelligence documents to an employee of Britain's ministry of defence.
"Into the mix has to go the fact that MI6 was recruiting within G2 [Irish military intelligence] and Special Branch fairly early on," says Dorril, a University of Huddersfield lecturer who has written extensively on MI6. "By 1974, there was a fairly constant stream of British military intelligence officers, run by MI6, crossing the Border and meeting, officially and unofficially, with their counterparts."
DORRIL FINDS THE depth of the relations surprising, given Anglo-Irish differences over the North and controversial issues in the South, such as the possibility that MI6 was running bank robberies using two English criminals, Kenneth and Keith Littlejohn.
Convicted in 1973 of the armed robbery of Grafton Street's AIB branch, the Littlejohns claimed to have been operating with the British government's approval. For Dorril, their links to MI6 were more than just allegations. "If you look at the period, it fits into what was happening at that time," he says.
The contention is that British intelligence was seeking to have the lawlessness blamed on republicans, against the important backdrop of the Cold War.
"It does have an effect, because British intelligence made a miscalculation. They thought that the real threat was the Official IRA, and saw the Officials in very Cold War terms, that they were communists," Dorril adds. "It was a lot of nonsense really, but that was the view to begin with, so they concentrated on the Officials, which is why things like the Littlejohns happened.
"MI6 was very much an anti-Bolshevik, anti-Russian, Cold War outfit. They felt: 'You do the same kind of things as you have done in other places.' You try to neutralise them and create a centre ground, using both 'black' propaganda and physical force. This was to discredit the Officials and obviously to move the Lynch government to be more hardline."
Even today, events surrounding the Littlejohns remain shrouded in mystery, while the key MI6 intelligence officers involved have disappeared.
While others have blamed British intelligence for bombing Dublin and Monaghan, Dorril is reluctant to do so. He views the attacks as the work of loyalists, accepting that those involved were British agents "of one kind or another" but adding that any collusion was of a "subtle" form.
Much of the rest of the forthcoming book focuses on the activities in Northern Ireland of British special forces, whose role, he suggests, has been deliberately confused by the British generating a particular "line" concerning the role of one particular army unit, the 14th Intelligence Company, known as 14 Int.
"It's much more complicated than that, because there were lots of little secret units . . . and there were operations that went far beyond surveillance."
In recent years, he views the role of Britain's intelligence services as being more about conflict resolution. "Ireland in a way has changed them. There was a faction which, based on its experience in the British empire and its break-up, was developing ideas of conflict resolution. They are also heavily involved in the Middle East now."
Such ideas came to fruition through secretive dialogues with IRA leaders in advance of the public phase of the peace process, though republicans later accused "securocrats" in Britain's security apparatus of seeking to undermine the project.
TODAY, SUSPICIONS ABOUT the continuing role of British spies in the North remain, not least about the takeover by MI5 of the lead role in intelligence-gathering there, with the agency establishing a new £20 million (€29.7 million) headquarters on the outskirts of Belfast. All the while, skeletons continue to rattle in closets.
"There is much, much more to come out and there are, obviously somewhere, transcripts of these telephone conversations and buggings during the Arms Trial - what really went on," concludes Dorril. "And there is all the collusion. Gradually, some of the people involved are starting to talk and come out with things. This is a really big jigsaw and it's going to take a long, long time to fit all the bits together."
• The Dogs Say: British Intelligence and Ireland 1966-2005 will be published in autumn 2008 by Fourth Estate
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