Ex-intelligence officer claims IRA squad which shot top RUC officers was riddled with British agents
Henry McDonald
Guardian
11 September 2011
A written statement that claims up to a quarter of the IRA gang involved in the killing of two top Ulster policemen were British agents has been handed to a tribunal investigating collusion between terrorists and the security forces during the Northern Ireland Troubles.
The document, handed to the Smithwick tribunal by a former British military intelligence officer, shines new light on Ulster's covert war – and raises concerns that the murder of Superintendent Bob Buchanan and Chief Superintendent Harry Breen in March 1989 could have been prevented.
The material, given to the tribunal by Ian Hurst, a former member of the force research unit (FRU), claims that one of Britain's most important agents in the IRA, codenamed Stakeknife, was aware of the murder plot, prompting accusations that in turn his spy bosses failed to inform either the Royal Ulster Constabulary or the Garda Síochána about it.
In his 24-page statement, passed to the tribunal headed by Judge Peter Smithwick in June, Hurst claims that Stakeknife – FRU informer Freddie Scappaticci – played a key role in intelligence-gathering that led to the double murder. Yet Scappaticci, the then head of the IRA's spy-catching unit, was in fact a top British agent in the Provisionals.
The Smithwick tribunal is investigating allegations of gardai collusion with the IRA in the murder of Buchanan and Breen on 20 March 1989.
The two RUC officers were killed in an IRA ambush shortly after they left Dundalk gardai station, where they had been attending a high-level cross-border security conference aimed at targeting the smuggling empire of IRA commander Thomas "Slab" Murphy.
Up to 25 IRA operatives were directly or indirectly involved in the shooting near Jonesborough, South Armagh. Hurst has estimated that by the late 1980s one in four IRA activists were working for one or more branches of the security forces.
One of Breen and Buchanan's former RUC colleagues now claims, as a result of this latest information, that the pair could have been saved.
Colin Breen, a former RUC officer who was himself an IRA murder target during the Troubles, also backed Hurst's demand to travel to Dublin and give evidence at the Smithwick tribunal this autumn.
On Hurst's allegations about the extent of security force penetration of paramilitary organisations, Colin Breen said: "I have always known that the degree of penetration of the Provisional IRA by the security forces was high and at all levels.
"Mr Hurst's analysis, based on his considerable experience in the intelligence gathering world, that one in four provisional IRA volunteers were informants and one in two 'officer class' members were also informers can only lead to a fairly damning conclusion in relation to this inquiry."
Breen, the Ulster Unionist party's spokesman on the legacy of the Troubles, said: "If these figures are accurate – and I have no reason to suspect otherwise – it is logical to assume that the authorities must have had prior knowledge of this operation.
"Given that there were over two dozen terrorists involved there must at the very least have been indications that something major was being planned by the Provos in the area.
"Given the number of potential intelligence streams it would appear inconceivable that these murders could not have been prevented.
"While I would concede that the specifics of the operation may not have been known in time, there must have been enough information to cause the instigation of a spoiler operation by the security forces at the very least.
"Based on this testimony it is with a heavy heart that I conclude that Breen and Buchanan might have been saved."
Hurst also names Martin McGuinness as the man Scappaticci answered to directly within the Provisional IRA.
"The security unit came under the operational command of Northern Command PIRA … and the person in charge of that unit throughout the entire Troubles was PIRA member Mr James Martin McGuinness MP.
"Mr McGuinness was the operational commander of Mr Scappaticci and directly involved in matters of life and death for persons rightly or indeed wrongly suspected of informing upon PIRA members.
"Mr McGuinness was also a key player in the long-term strategic strategies used by PIRA and thus was involved in almost all major strategic decisions, political kidnaps, human bombs etc."
Hurst says that former Metropolitan police chief Sir John Stevens, who headed the collusion inquiry into the murder of the Catholic Belfast lawyer Pat Finucane, was aware of Scappaticci's role as a British agent.
The former military intelligence officer claims that as far back as 2000 Stevens's team of detectives knew about Stakeknife and his relationship with alleged rogue gardai in the border region.
At that time Stevens was investigating the collusion scandal, mainly into the role of state agents inside loyalist terror groups.
Referring to a meeting with one of Stevens's unit at Heathrow, Hurst says: "He then engaged me on a number of subjects relating to Scappaticci, one of which related to rogue gardaí. Another related to Tom Oliver [murdered by the IRA] and [Francisco] Notarantonio [murdered by the UDA].
"I told him I knew [Stakeknife] had meetings with rogue gardaí. I told him that I knew this from [a senior FRU officer].
"I can say with absolute clarity that he raised Mr Scappaticci with me in the context of him being an agent, I believe he was trying to ascertain the extent of any damage and it was my firm belief that he knew that Scappaticci was the agent known as Stakeknife."
Towards the end of the document Hurst raises the possibility that the IRA had originally planned to capture and interrogate Breen and Buchanan rather than murder them.
Another FRU agent and one-time IRA member known as Kevin Fulton has claimed state agents involved in the ambush killed the two police officers to prevent them being handed over to a Provisional interrogation unit, with the danger of them leaking the names of informants under torture.
The Guardian has learned that the Smithwick tribunal has asked Hurst to give his evidence in private. But Hurst is understood to insist that he will only speak in public about the Breen-Buchanan double murder and the role of state agents in the IRA.
It is understood Hurst may be considering legal action to challenge the tribunal's decision. He has an Irish passport, holds Irish citizenship due to marriage and could argue that the ruling to force him to give evidence in camera is a breach of the Republic's constitution and his right to give evidence openly to a legally constituted inquiry.
The ex-undercover soldier has declined to comment on the information contained in the statement sent to the tribunal, citing legal action by the Ministry of Defence against him over his role in exposing Stakeknife as one of the key reasons why he cannot make any statements relating to the information he has provided.
His written evidence also contains the names of senior FRU military intelligence handlers who ran agents such as Stakeknife and senior MI5 officers operating in Northern Ireland at the end of the 80s.
In the document Hurst also claims that a female IRA mole working inside a government agency in Northern Ireland who was under surveillance by the security forces in the late 1980s is still in post.
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