MI5 spy funding under scrutiny


Liam Clarke
28 January 2007
The Sunday Times
Liam Clarke

THE SDLP has asked the government what role MI5, the security service, played in the payment and deployment of rogue police agents such as Mark Haddock.

MI5 is understood to have funded payments made by the police to Haddock, who was at the centre of last week's critical report by Nuala O'Loan, the police ombudsman. The service continues to provide funds for agents working for the Police Service of Northern Ireland's intelligence branch, the successor to the RUC Special Branch. It also sets guidelines and provides training for their deployment.

O'Loan found a systemic failure of intelligence and a "culture of subservience" that allowed Haddock to get away with murder. Much of this culture was established by MI5, which will be headquartered at Palace Barracks in Holywood. It continues to run agents within republican groups and is not open to scrutiny by the ombudsman.

In his first interview since publication of O'Loan's report, Raymond White, a former head of Special Branch in Belfast, strongly denied accusations that he had refused to co-operate with the ombudsman's inquiry.

He said: "There was no budget in the old Police Authority for payments to Special Branch informants. There was an amount for your average CID drugs tout, but that was audited by the Northern Ireland Office."

"The security service funds all the security and intelligence budgets."

Senior security sources have confirmed that the same system applies today and the new Policing Board has no oversight or control of payments to PSNI intelligence branch informants.

"They (MI5) would fund Special Branch each year through the head (of the department)," White said. "Actual payments for the intelligence-source database were funded by a vote for the security services (in the House of Commons) .

"As regional head of Special Branch in Belfast, I made applications setting out the intelligence used, the operations conducted on it, the outcome or result, and then I asked for a reward and incentive for the agent. It would be matched against the degree of risk he took.

"We weren't gathering intelligence at our own behest. We were working to an intelligence requirement that was set at the highest levels in Whitehall. Special Branch NI was asked to give its support to the overall intelligence picture.

"There was always a pressing requirement for strategic intelligence on what the internal relationships were within the paramilitary organisations and what their political objectives were.Each piece of intelligence had to be looked at both in its capacity to advance a criminal investigation and its potential future intelligence use.

"There was always a balance to be struck between preserving the life of people who are still alive on the one hand and solving crime on the other."

These procedures, criticised by O'Loan, were set out in a memo by Patrick Walker, in 1981. Walker was deputy head of MI5's Belfast station at the time. He went on to become director-general or overall head of MI5 between 1988 and 1991 when he was succeeded by Dame Stella Rimington.

His report specified that records should be destroyed after operations, that Special Branch should not disseminate all information to CID and CID should require permission from Special Branch before making arrests or carrying out house searches, in case agents were endangered.

These were all key areas that came in for criticism from O'Loan.

Alex Attwood, SDLP policing spokesman, and party leader Mark Durkan asked secretary of state Peter Hain about MI5 funding of police functions last Thursday, but say they did not receive a satisfactory response.

"MI5 should have had working knowledge of what was going on around Haddock," Attwood said. "The culture and structure of Special Branch were informed by MI5.

That is the key point. Whatever individuals got up to within the old RUC it was as a consequence of what MI5 required of them."


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