The Intelligence War against the IRA Read online

  [i]n the seventies we were picking up people every day … you could pull in five people and one of the individuals could be the one you were going to pitch to. So it was a means for … making an approach to a contact.41

  Screening provided a cover to recruiting agents or informers because so many people were brought in for interviews and then released. Danny Morrison remembers that with:

  dozens of people [screened] at a time … it became hard for the IRA to work out who … were informers or who had become informers. These would mainly be not great informers, just low-level … But … they would be providing some background information to the British Army.42

  The IRA questioning individuals after screening did not prevent informing. Bradley says: ‘[m]ost people did talk … and afterwards told the IRA they didn’t’. Bradley recalls screening being ‘very effective’ because:

  [i]f [the Army] were satisfied you were who you said you were they … asked about some other guy – who he knocked about with, where he drank, where he worked … People didn’t see any harm in answering those questions because they weren’t about … the IRA.43

  By avoiding direct questions about the IRA, the British Army was gradually receiving information about where suspects lived and with whom they associated.

  The end of the no-go zones following Operation Motorman also helped intelligence operations in Belfast after July 1972. Charters describes how British Army foot patrols were told to ‘have a go’ at recruiting sources on the streets. Since troops could patrol republican streets after July 1972, there were greater opportunities to recruit agents and informers.44 Having access to nationalist areas of Belfast again was crucial in this task. As Kalyvas argues ‘collaboration is largely endogenous to control’.45 Any person wanting to or who felt forced to pass information on would feel secure in doing so after August 1972 once the IRA lost control of the streets and could not easily monitor the movements of each individual. The British Army also praises Operation Motorman for helping to increase arrests and targeting of IRA members.46 Cursey refers to the killing of IRA volunteer James Bryson in mid-1973. Cursey alleges that an informer confirmed that Bryson had returned to Belfast. The MRF lured Bryson and his IRA unit to a house in the Ballymurphy area by feeding a false story ‘through various channels’ that an undercover surveillance team was present. Bryson and other IRA volunteers came to the premises and an undercover British Army unit opened fire when they arrived.47 The end of the no-go areas enabled British forces to use intelligence to proactively seek out IRA members in Belfast.

  The vehicle and personality check systems benefitted from Operation Motorman. The end of no-go areas meant that the IRA could no longer hide vehicles and members behind barricades. Surveillance operations could move into republican heartlands in Belfast. In the Unity Flats area of north Belfast, Bradley recalls IRA movement and attacks becoming restricted because of the Army checkpoints and sangars (temporary fortified positions) moving in. Bradley said: ‘[t]he army hoisted in dragon’s teeth [pyramidal concrete tank traps] to block all the exits and entrances to Unity, except one. So if you were driving in or out you had only one route. Made it very difficult to get stuff in or out.’ He added: ‘You also had to pass the army sangar on foot, so people were stopped regularly.’48 By September 1972, the security forces were reporting that they had amassed 60,000 personality cards containing details such as surname, date of birth, car registration and ‘terrorist order of battle’.49

  According to the journalist Robert Fisk, whilst he was with an Army vehicle patrol in December 1974 in Belfast, a sergeant asked him to pick a house number on the street at random. The Army then used its electronic database system to find out the colour of the sofa in the living room of that house. Fisk recalls: ‘Within 30 seconds the sergeant brought me the information that the sofa was brown.’ When the Army vehicle patrol with Fisk passed the house, he found that the sofa was indeed brown from peering through the street window. Fisk concluded: ‘IRA men have been caught because their cover stories were disproved by military files on the homes and background of the men they were impersonating.’ He further explains that the Army was now collating its battalion-level intelligence into a centralised computer system, increasing the speed at which information could be retrieved.50

  Nevertheless, factors outside of the intelligence war also contributed to the decline in the intensity of the Belfast IRA’s campaign by 1975. The end of no-go areas made it difficult for the IRA to operate. Bradley explains how ‘[s]hootings were seriously restricted after Motorman’ because the British Army moved into permanent checkpoints. These checkpoints reduced the IRA’s ability to transport bombs into Belfast City, and prevented weapons from easily entering the area.51 Security-force sources also suggest that the IRA’s decision to engage British troops in conventional gun battles was ill-advised. Operation Banner argues:

  [i]n the early 1970s … terrorists wounded a soldier on a foot patrol in an average of one in six attacks … Terrorists rapidly learned that to stand and shoot it out with the Army did not work. The Army was better trained, equipped, organised, and could produce greater numbers.52

  A former British soldier believes: ‘[i]n a stand-up fight in the cities, PIRA were beaten’ by 1975, and were forced into smaller cells and more selective operations later.53 In addition, Tommy McKearney reminds us that ‘IRA losses mounted as British Army commanders began to understand better the geography of Belfast.’ He added that: ‘constant house searches coupled with non-stop checkpoints, meant that eventually the enemy became familiar with the areas they occupied’.54

  The current secondary literature, however, overlooks how the Belfast IRA adopted counter-intelligence measures before the security forces learned that the Belfast Brigade had adopted a cell structure in 1977.55 One counter-intelligence tactic in Belfast was to move IRA commanders to middle-class nationalist areas, where the British Army presence was low. Bradley remembers ‘stay[ing] with teachers and businessmen … hospital consultants, dentists’, outside the Unity Flats area after 1972.56 William Matchett suggests that RUC Special Branch ‘had relationships with … middle class professionals with no connections whatsoever with terrorism’, which led to arrests when IRA members tried to use these individuals to cover their activities.57 Nevertheless, Bradley was not captured in middle-class areas, demonstrating that the relocation strategy had some success.

  The Belfast IRA’s main security development emerged in late 1973. Bradley recalls that the leadership was going ‘to restructure the whole army’ into ‘squads’ or ‘active service units’ (ASUs), also known as cells. These ASUs would typically consist of four to ten volunteers. Once selected for a cell, Bradley says that volunteers lied to company commanders and said that ‘they’d jacked it in’ to increase the new ASU’s security. These ‘squads’ were to operate across battalion areas. In Bradley’s view: ‘[s]quads were the right idea. You could have maybe ten in a squad, all from different areas of Belfast. It was hard for the Brits to tie the men together. They didn’t socialize together.’58 Other sources confirm that the Belfast IRA had begun restructuring by 1974. Cursey states that ‘the developing “Cell” structure in 1973’ meant ‘each volunteer only knew about their own unit’s activities’. He says that this made capturing grass-roots republicans of limited use in intelligence terms.59 Frank Steele, a former MI6 officer, also records that Brendan Duddy told him in November 1973:

  there had been a complete screening of the Provisionals ‘army’ and those who were inefficient … had been weeded out. There was now a small but taut organization with adequate supplies of arms and explosives which could efficiently mount attacks against us indefinitely.

  Steele pondered whether Duddy and republicans were attempting to make the IRA appear a greater threat to get the British to negotiate.60 But when considering Duddy’s statement alongside the evidence above, it seems that the Belfast IRA was creating a ‘small but taut’ organisation. It is conceivable that the IRA was already preparing for an
indefinite campaign if required. The cell structure permitted this type of conflict, with fewer volunteers in each unit. In theory, this structure would limit the damage that one agent or informer could cause. It also potentially made finding agents and informers easier for the IRA.

  The restructuring in Belfast partly explains the reduction in IRA activities. Fewer volunteers and an increased Army presence after Operation Motorman meant that IRA attacks were going to decline by 1975. The IRA killed twelve ‘intended targets’ in Belfast in 1974, half the number of 1973. Yet when Belfast formally disbanded battalions and companies after 1975, the IRA never killed more than eighteen ‘intended targets’ per year. In fact, the ability to inflict twelve casualties in a single year was a relatively high figure for the Belfast IRA after 1975.61 The decline in killings was partly a sign that the IRA was changing tactics. It began focusing on a lower, but more sustainable campaign in Belfast by 1974. Whilst it faced difficulties with infiltration, the Belfast Brigade reacted before the ceasefire and was not in total disarray by 1975. However, British security and intelligence efforts did encourage the IRA into restructuring and shifting towards a long-term campaign in Belfast.62

  There remained problems with the personality- and vehicle-check systems. On 27 September 1973, one security official warned the Northern Ireland Office: ‘The number of vehicles being searched is steadily rising … in the last 3 months this has risen to 14,600 a day … about 10 cars per minute now [are] being checked’. ‘It is therefore clear’, the report concluded, ‘that a manual system would not be able to cope with such large numbers’. The purpose of his warning was to emphasise the need for computerised personality and vehicle-check systems to emerge.63 Yet the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland had concerns about the British Army wishing to control this information. He feared that their control could anger the RUC and prevent the Army from being an aid to the civil power. In the meantime, the inefficient system of vehicle-card checks in Coleraine continued, and undoubtedly hindered the security forces’ ability to search more vehicles in Belfast.64 Another security report noted: ‘it is obviously not feasible to carry out a 100% check of vehicles in Belfast during the rush hour. Vehicles are selected at random.’65 There was a window of opportunity for Belfast IRA volunteers to move around undetected, explaining why a low level of attacks continued. The labour-intensive nature of surveillance operations such as the vehicle and personality-card systems also partly explains why agents and informers were employed as the principle intelligence option. The latter were cheaper to employ. Unlike the vehicle-check system, it was difficult to avoid agents and informers because it was unclear initially whether a person was informing.66 Agents and informers could discover more information on IRA arms and personnel than a card system or eavesdropping in one location via electronic intelligence devices.67

  In Belfast and elsewhere, electronic and signals intelligence was being deployed to try to disrupt IRA bombing devices and to intercept IRA suspects’ phone calls. GCHQ, MI5 and RUC Special Branch cooperated with these operations, particularly as Special Branch relied on MI5 for bugging and phone-tapping devices.68 Once more, however, the IRA demonstrated an ability to adapt. Aldrich suggests a ‘scientific war’ developed between IRA bomb-makers and the intelligence services, including GCHQ. The IRA continued after the 1970s to find frequencies and signals that British intelligence had not discovered, so that its bombs did not explode prematurely.69 In addition, when the security forces arrested Brendan Hughes for a second time at a house in Belfast in 1974, Matchett records that the IRA ‘were intercepting telephone calls by the Army’.70

  Various factors kept many republicans in the Belfast Brigade motivated to continue fighting after 1975. These factors included: a desire to remedy working-class nationalist grievances against the unionist and British state; the belief that a united Ireland would solve the discrimination experienced in Belfast;71 the political education of volunteers in the jails that took place before internees were released, which focused on a long-term conflict;72 anger following what some within the IRA saw as British duplicity during the 1975 ceasefire;73 and politicisation following the hunger strikes and rise of Sinn Féin in the early 1980s.74 These factors explain why hunts for agents and informers did not provoke widespread disunity and internal divisions within the Belfast republican movement before and after 1975.

  Derry City

  In 1972, the Derry City IRA killed eighteen ‘intended targets’ compared to nine in 1973, and seven in 1974.75 On 17 January 1975, Sir Frank Cooper speculated that ‘PIRA sought a truce’ because ‘[t]hey were battered in Belfast and at a standstill in Londonderry’.76 Some leading republicans in the city, including Sean Keenan and Martin McGuinness, were arrested in late 1972. The British Army arrested Keenan, whilst the Garda captured McGuinness and another republican in County Donegal. With the arrests of senior Provisionals in Belfast occurring in the same period as well, Taylor believes the ‘decimation of the Provisional IRA’s leadership was nothing if not a crisis’.77

  Derry City units killed some alleged agents and informers between 1972 and 1975. Patrick Duffy from the Creggan estate disappeared whilst holidaying with his wife in Donegal in early August 1973. Eventually, on 17 August the IRA told a Derry newspaper that they had ‘executed’ Duffy ‘for giving information to … Special Branch’. RUC Special Branch denied this allegation. The IRA shot another civilian, James Joseph Brown, on the Foyle Road on 21 September 1973. The IRA claimed that the twenty-six-year-old ‘was responsible for the arrests of at least three IRA volunteers, as well as the loss of arms and explosives’. They added that Brown ‘had attempted to infiltrate the IRA’ for the British Army and had been continuing to make such attempts since August 1971. The IRA also killed Patrick Lynch in February 1974. His body was found on the Creggan estate. Lynch was different because the IRA claimed that he was a volunteer. The IRA say that Lynch told the British Army where specific weapons were hidden. Lynch’s family reject these accusations. Shortly before the IRA cessation, the Derry IRA shot Hugh Slater and Leonard Cross, leaving their bodies on a remote hillside near the Creggan estate. Slater was working for the Department of Environment, and Cross was an Army cadet. The IRA claimed that they ‘were agents for military intelligence and belonged to the UDR’. The families denied these ‘ridiculous’ accusations. In each of these cases there is not enough evidence available to ascertain whether these individuals were working for intelligence agencies.78

  A potential problem for the Derry City IRA was the similar set-up to its counterpart in Belfast. Alan Barker, a former RUC Special Branch officer who operated in Derry City from 1974, explains that there were four IRA battalions in Derry City. The first covered the Bogside and Brandywell areas; the second the Creggan and Rosemount; the third covered the Shantallow; and the fourth operated in the Waterside area.79 There were numerous volunteers in each battalion, matching the set-up of the Belfast Brigade – even if numbers were smaller in Derry City because of the smaller population there.80 In theory, one agent or informer could inflict mass arrests on their own battalion, because they knew and operated with many other volunteers.

  O’Doherty, a former Derry City volunteer, remembers that by August 1972 ‘[t]he British Army was … in effective control of the ghettos’ in Derry City. He recalls the ‘sense of occupation’ there following Operation Motorman. In fact, according to O’Doherty and Kieran Conway, who operated there whilst on the run in the early 1970s, many Derry City volunteers fled thereafter to Donegal. Even when O’Doherty returned to participate in operations in 1973, he says it was difficult to operate as the British Army could quickly swamp areas after attacks.81 Conway concurs: ‘Operation Motorman … robbed us of the advantages we previously held’, with the end of the no-go areas.82 Furthermore, as the Derry City IRA volunteers often lived on the run in Donegal, Alan Barker recalls operating snap vehicle checkpoints ‘on different roads in and around the Shantallow area and out on the narrow border roads’.83 The end of Free Derry assist
ed the security forces in increasing their opportunities to collect intelligence on the Derry City IRA.

  A further dilemma for the Derry City IRA was a crackdown on their activities in the Republic by the Garda. The Garda’s more proactive stance was partly the result of what the Irish state felt was an increased IRA threat by 1975. For example, the organisation killed Fine Gael senator Billy Fox in March 1974, and the IRA leadership sanctioned post office robberies in the south to gain further funding. Increased IRA activity in southern Ireland angered some citizens there who did not want violence creeping down south.84 This prospect seemed possible following loyalist attacks, including in Dublin and Monaghan in 1974. Garda activity caused problems for the Derry City IRA, as the IRA based some of their volunteers in Donegal after Operation Motorman.

  Nonetheless, Frank Cooper’s view that the Derry City IRA was at a ‘standstill’ by 1975 appears inaccurate. Taylor records that by the early 1970s, only 20 out of the 150 shops in the city centre were still trading.85 Barker explains that bombings continued even after Operation Motorman because the IRA used small incendiary devices. These were frequently concealed by women, who were less likely to be searched at checkpoints in that period. The IRA’s sniper campaign proved a constant threat too. In September and October 1974, Barker describes how the Shantallow units became ‘particularly active’. ‘Such was this escalation’, he explained, ‘that the month of October saw our [RUC patrols] ambushed by snipers every day for a full week’. Snipers killed a British soldier that month and injured another colleague in the city centre. Earlier, in the summer of 1974, Barker mentions that a police officer, ‘Andy’, was seriously injured by an IRA sniper in the Shantallow area whilst on patrol.86 Barker’s frontline policing experiences do not depict the Derry City IRA as reaching a ‘standstill’ by 1975. O’Doherty echoes this judgement. He was operating against the British security forces in 1973 and 1974. In his view, the period prior to the ceasefire saw ‘the most efficient and lethal IRA campaign I had ever experienced in Derry [City] … we were running rings around the Army and police’.87 IRA killings of intended targets may have declined, but commercial bombings and the sniper campaign continued. The death statistics fail to provide an accurate assessment of the IRA’s strength in Derry City by 1975.