The Intelligence War against the IRA Read online

  Prior to the 1990s, special forces killed a few IRA members in south Armagh. In April 1976, the SAS killed Peter Cleary, an IRA volunteer, near Forkhill. Intelligence from an unnamed source suggested that Cleary was an active IRA volunteer. Although living in the Republic of Ireland, Cleary is said to have frequently crossed the border to visit his girlfriend in Forkhill. The SAS at first arrested Cleary at a house belonging to his fiancée’s family. Cleary was then shot in disputed circumstances. The SAS said that Cleary had attempted to escape whilst waiting for an Army helicopter to transfer him into custody. The IRA claim that Cleary was summarily executed by the SAS whilst unarmed.9 In April 1977, the SAS shot another south Armagh volunteer, Seamus Harvey, following a tip-off that a parked car under surveillance in Culderry was to be used in an attack. The SAS claimed that they had provided a warning but then a gun battle had ensued, and Harvey was shot. The IRA argued that the SAS had killed Harvey without issuing warnings.10

  A variety of surveillance measures were being used against the South Armagh IRA by the 1990s. In 1977, the British Army began operating a permanent observation post in Crossmaglen Square, called the Borucki Sangar. The British named the sangar after Private Borucki, whom the IRA had killed there in August 1976. The sangar remained for the duration of the conflict. It was continually manned by British troops, positioned right in the middle of the market square in an IRA heartland.11 Of greater significance for the IRA were the watchtowers that the British Army constructed on the hilltops of south Armagh in the mid-1980s. Operation Banner recalls the benefits of these towers:

  Firstly, they provided 24-hour weather- and largely bullet-proof cover for surveillance operations. Secondly, they allowed the use of more sophisticated surveillance equipment, such as ‘Super-Nikon’ binoculars and … radar. Thirdly, they supported the development of an advanced communications network, not least because their hilltop sites typically provided very good antenna locations. Fourthly, they allowed for a continuity of observation across wide areas. Sightings of terrorist suspects could be passed from tower to tower over wide areas … Sightings were also passed to helicopters operating in the area. Lastly, the towers provided a degree of overwatch for foot patrols.12

  The watchtowers were designed to restrict the IRA’s ability to carry out attacks undetected and to pre-empt IRA movements on the ground. In addition, one of GCHQ’s surveillance towers intercepting telephone material between Northern Ireland and the Republic was positioned in Croslieve Mountain in south Armagh. The unease that these surveillance and telephone-intercept towers caused local republicans was evident during the peace process, when they and local people demanded that they be removed.13 With vehicle checkpoints and undercover operations aiming to counter their activities as well, the South Armagh IRA was facing considerable military pressure going into the 1990s. Harnden suggests that by 1997 ‘South Armagh [had] become one of the most heavily monitored parts of the world.’14

  Nevertheless, in relation to human intelligence none of the above suspected agents and informers represent significant infiltration of the South Armagh IRA. If the allegations are true, those individuals involved did not have detailed information on IRA attacks, partly as many suspected spies were not IRA volunteers. The British state’s area review of the campaign in south Armagh admitted in 1980 that gathering intelligence had been ‘extremely difficult’. They had only been able to gather low-level intelligence, which provided ‘poor’ insight into the IRA, but was ‘better than nothing’.15 This assessment differed little in the 1990s. Ian Phoenix noted how south Armagh ‘had proved particularly resistant to penetration of any kind’.16

  The killings of security-force members and other IRA targets in south Armagh did fluctuate: ten were killed in 1978 compared to twenty-eight in 1979 (which includes the Warrenpoint attack). The number was typically between one and six per year from 1980 to 1992, before IRA snipers killed eight in 1993.17 But south Armagh’s killing statistics further highlight the problem with basing an assessment of IRA strength only on the number of killings they inflicted. The figures of twenty-eight intended-target deaths in 1979 (which includes eighteen British soldiers killed at Warrenpoint) and fourteen intended-target deaths in 1985 (which includes nine police officers killed in the Newry barracks attack) are distortions because they resulted from the South Armagh IRA’s involvement in high-profile attacks elsewhere, at Warrenpoint and Newry.18 The statistics also ignore the fact that South Armagh IRA attacks did not always result in deaths. On 12 November 1992, for example, they set fire to a British Army watchtower in Crossmaglen, using a flamethrower towed by a tractor.19 Sir Michael Dewar also recalls how: ‘South Armagh remained consistently dangerous into the nineties … [i]ncidents occurred on a regular basis.’ ‘Mortar attacks on the Crossmaglen base continued unabated’, Dewar says, citing ‘attacks in 1993 on 4 February, 7 April and 11 July’. He remembers one incident in February 1994 when the IRA fired a mortar into Crossmaglen barracks, causing damage but no casualties. This attack also highlights that the Borucki Sangar was not a deterrent for the IRA conducting operations in Crossmaglen. Based on such evidence, Dewar concluded: ‘[r]ight up to the cease-fire in August 1994 South Armagh remained a hotbed of terrorism’.20

  They were only a few successful SAS operations against the South Armagh IRA prior to 1994. The persistence of the IRA’s campaign in south Armagh into the 1990s, including high-profile bombings in England, suggests that SAS killings and the arrest of individual IRA suspects did not contain the organisation in this area. Operation Banner makes a crucial point on this theme: ‘attrition of individual terrorists of itself had little effect on the outcome of the campaign’.21 In contrast to Matchett, Operation Banner does not mention the arrest of one particular republican as starting the gradual demise of the South Armagh Brigade from 1994. Whilst surveillance, electronic intelligence or limited human intelligence did occasionally lead to success against individual IRA members in south Armagh, this pattern was not repeated with the same frequency as occurred in Tyrone. The result was that the South Armagh IRA regrouped and replenished its ranks following an arrest or death.

  The significant degree of tacit and active support for the IRA in south Armagh meant that SAS success against republicans was limited before 1994. Shooting incidents against republicans did not deter the local community in south Armagh from backing them. Even Archbishop Cahal Daly described Fergal Caraher’s killing as ‘deeply disturbing’, adding that the Caraher family were ‘popular and respected’. Few local people accepted the British Army’s version of events in relation to Caraher’s killing. Local Cullyhanna residents came forward to dispute the Army’s version of events. A senior RUC Special Branch member found the situation somewhat ironic: ‘No one in South Armagh sees or hears anything if a policemen or soldier is killed but as soon as Caraher was shot there were witnesses coming out of the woodwork everywhere.’22 Controversial intelligence or security operations that led to killings of suspected IRA members in south Armagh may have given the armed forces and intelligence services a short-term advantage. In the long term, however, at the very least they failed to encourage the local population to reject the IRA. In fact, they arguably radicalised the local population still further. The security and intelligence services could argue that they had evidence to show a person had previously been involved in paramilitary activity. However, local republicans and other nationalists saw the shooting of an unarmed individual as security-force repression. Even if the security forces did not aim to win local support away from the South Armagh IRA, British forces hindered the attainment of their objective of achieving an ‘acceptable level of violence’ by carrying out operations that radicalised the local nationalist population and encouraged revenge attacks. The IRA sniper attacks in the 1990s show that the killing of republicans such as Fergal Caraher did not ‘contain’ IRA activity in south Armagh.

  According to Harnden, by the end of the 1970s the South Armagh IRA had killed sixty-eight British soldiers. This total represents m
ore soldiers in ten years than were targeted by republicans in other rural areas across the entire conflict.23 The persistent IRA killings of security-force members there led to the end of vehicle patrols in fear of further roadside bomb and ambush attacks. Matchett even argues that the fact that the British forces had to resort to being helicoptered in and out of the security bases made the South Armagh IRA ‘the terrorist organisation’s most effective brigade’. Matchett explains how IRA roadside bombs in south Armagh had:

  restricted patrolling to foot and air [for the RUC and British Army], which the IRA was also targeting … The police could not operate without the close support of the Army. This is what success looked like for the IRA – forcing the police to focus more on security duties than normal policing duties thereby limiting normal interaction with the public.24

  By the mid-1970s, the South Armagh IRA ruled the roads, which made community policing difficult. This is one explanation for the lack of information passed to the police. Having said that, the short- and long-term factors described in Chapter 2 and in this chapter suggest that the South Armagh IRA had considerable support as well. Even if police patrols had been conducted, they were unlikely to pick up high-level intelligence.25

  The South Armagh Brigade’s formidable capabilities allegedly saw it selected to carry out high-profile attacks elsewhere, including the killing of eighteen British soldiers at Warrenpoint on 27 August 1979, the killing of nine RUC officers at a barracks in Newry on 28 February 1985 and major bombings on the English mainland in the 1990s. On 10 April 1992, for example, a substantial bomb supposedly prepared in south Armagh exploded in St Mary Axe in London, killing three people and costing £350 million in damages. South Armagh are alleged to have also been behind the IRA’s mortar attack on Downing Street on 7 February 1991.26 The various English attacks suggest that there was no trajectory of decline for the South Armagh IRA, despite them killing fewer security-force members in certain years.

  Almost every year up to the ceasefire in 1994 the South Armagh Brigade killed security-force members.27 Operation Banner admits that the increased number of sniper killings by the South Armagh IRA in the 1990s ‘had an impact on morale among some troops and police officers’.28 These sniper attacks show that the organisation was able to persist in its activities despite the presence of watchtowers and helicopters surveying the area. Operation Banner concedes that these sniper attacks showed that republicans had found an ‘effective response’ to the watchtowers:

  attacks … were carefully mounted to use dead ground away from … observation posts … Many of the shots were from the back of a specially converted car which was immediately driven away to avoid leaving any forensic traces.29

  On another occasion, the inability of the watchtowers to cover dead ground in April 1993 led to a local IRA unit openly operating a checkpoint for a few hours in Cullaville.30 Harnden points out that the watchtowers were also useless during poor visibility caused by the weather, providing the IRA with ample opportunity for attacks. In April 1987, for instance, Harnden claims that the South Armagh IRA killed Lord Justice Gibson and his wife near the Cloghogue checkpoint and watchtower in south Armagh because ‘visibility [from that watchtower] was limited because of a heat haze’.31 The vast array of attacks by the South Armagh IRA suggests that surveillance and electronic intelligence measures against them had proved somewhat ineffective by 1994.

  In addition, the watchtowers contributed to tacit or active IRA support in the area. Operation Banner reflects: ‘[t]he towers were … unpopular with the local population. The republican press repeatedly called them a visible sign of the “occupation” of Ulster by the Army.’32 This unpopularity led to republican protests in the area in 2000 and 2001, demanding the towers’ removal.33 Following the Good Friday Agreement, protests in south Armagh against the watchtowers led Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness to pressurise their British counterparts to remove them in order to ensure the rank-and-file republicans in south Armagh continued to support the peace process. Some members of the security forces even told Harnden that they questioned the logic of building the watchtowers, since they supported the IRA’s description of the British Army as an occupying force. Moreover, the observations posts became static targets for the IRA.34 Between November 1991 and November 1992, for instance, the Borucki Sangar was attacked by them on five separate occasions.35

  The South Armagh IRA’s ability to carry out attacks in England, whilst still targeting security-force members at home during the 1990s, suggests that it was the motor behind the IRA’s campaign in these years. Danny Morrison commented:

  South Armagh would always deliver and would bring the movement out of the doldrums, which happened occasionally as the result of arrests, or a large number of deaths [elsewhere] … South Armagh always had the capability … from an IRA point of view [it] always produced the goods.36

  A former British soldier certainly feels that the security forces had ‘few and far successes in South Armagh’ before the 1994 ceasefire. The low rate of arrests in south Armagh is cited by a former soldier and a veteran Troubles commentator as highlighting the South Armagh IRA’s tight security.37 Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s former aide and senior negotiator, also commented on how south Armagh ‘was home to the most proficient IRA brigade’. For this reason, Powell was keen to support Sinn Féin’s request to demilitarise the area quickly after the Good Friday Agreement in order to prevent south Armagh republicans turning against the peace agreement.38

  Certain factors made the South Armagh IRA resistant to significant infiltration. Julian Thompson, a former Royal Marines Commander posted to south Armagh in the 1970s, claims:

  [The South Armagh IRA were] [q]uite a small number, probably no more than about 30 … But they were supported by a big infrastructure of willing helpers … there was unlikely to be anybody in the local population who was likely to be of any assistance whatsoever … [The local population] would report if you had been around. It was not worth their while to know that you were there and not [to] have told the IRA.39

  Thompson’s view is supported by that of another former British soldier, who found that the South Armagh IRA received ‘huge support from the local population’.40 Thompson suggests the support was partly due to the fact that nobody dared to disobey the IRA. In contrast, Darach MacDonald argues that there was ‘tacit and active support of the local population’ for the IRA.41 The British state’s area review for south Armagh reached a similar verdict in 1980. ‘It would be wrong … to suggest that the people of the area all support the [IRA]’, the report recognised, but ‘this is not … equally [matched] by support for the Security Forces, particularly the Army who are regarded by many as an occupational force’. The review added that the IRA maintained support there because it represented ‘the most active and best publicised representatives of the ideals commonly accepted by the population’. The report conceded that the ‘higher terrorist effectiveness’ in south Armagh was partly attributable to the fact that ‘the local population are prepared to act as “eyes and ears” for PIRA whilst, at the same time, refusing to assist the Security Forces’. The result was that ‘the gathering of intelligence about terrorist activity [was] extremely difficult’.42 Former RUC Special Branch operators in the area agree that many local people ‘hated us’.43

  The Catholic and nationalist composition of the population of south Armagh meant that ‘[f]or all practical purposes, the border does not exist in the eyes of the local population and they look to the Republic for employment, politics, cultural heritage and the nearest towns’.44 This factor explains why south Armagh nationalists found it difficult to accept that their area had been placed in a unionist-dominated state.45 But it was not simply long-term hatred that provoked hostility towards British forces. The behaviour of the British Army at times made the situation more volatile in south Armagh. Christine Toner, the wife of a former SDLP councillor who was no supporter of the IRA, recounts constant ‘harassment’ of ordinary people by soldiers, who ‘tr
eat[ed] everyone as terrorists’. In her mind: ‘[t]he security forces … were responsible for a lot of unrest’. In addition, helicopters constantly flew in and out of British Army bases day and night to transport troops. These flights disturbed sleep, children and animals, causing further friction with the locals.46 The helicopters also became targets for the IRA, once again enhancing their reputation as a serious force against the police and Army in the area. In May 1985, for instance, the IRA hit an RAF Wessex helicopter with a heavy-machine gun fired from a vehicle in Crossmaglen, although the helicopter did not crash. Another helicopter ambush occurred in Crossmaglen in June 1988, when the IRA struck an Army Lynx helicopter. The aircraft had to land, injuring a crewman.47

  A former British soldier believes that support existed for the South Armagh IRA partly because they permitted smuggling activity to continue.48 Locals informed MacDonald that smuggling took place because the border interrupted trade with tariffs, so it was necessary to smuggle to survive financially.49 Laurence McKeown believes that smuggling experience helped the local IRA members to lead ‘a clandestine life’. At the same time, McKeown feels it is disingenuous to attribute the effectiveness of the South Armagh IRA solely to smuggling:

  There is more than that … South Armagh had discipline. I remember somebody saying sometime after they had got out on an escape and ended up in south Armagh about an intelligence brief to monitor the sentry post and how long it took a chopper [helicopter] to land. This person told them it was between 9 to 11 seconds. Someone says back ‘well is it 9? Is it 9.5? Is it 10? Is it 10.5? Is it 11? Go back out and find out’ … there was that sort of attention to detail … they were very tight security wise.50