Ian Cameron

Random entry RSS

  • Posted in:

    Scappaticci, MI5 and the murder of a Westminster MP. The stench of death associated with the Kincora scandal is heady. By David Burke

    by 0 Comments

    The stench of death associated with the Kincora child sex abuse scandal is heady. It includes the murder of a Westminster MP by an MI5 agent inside the IRA. The murderous agent was Alfredo ‘Freddie’ Scappaticci. The victim was Robert Bradford, a member of the Ulster Unionist Party and the Vanguard Progressive Unionist Party. He represented Belfast South. The death of Scappaticci earlier this year shut the door on the last realistic opportunity to solve Bradford’s murder.  Operation Kenova, which has been probing the Scappaticci scandal for seven years, and has cost approximately €40,000,000, is unlikely now to establish what took place. The killing was linked to the cover-up of the Kincora Boys’ Home scandal. There are other murders which are associated with Kincora. One of the most significant Loyalist terrorists of the period 1968-82, was John McKeague, a paedophile. He knew all about Kincora. McKeague was murdered by British agents when he threatened to spill the beans on the scandal. William McGrath, who was the ‘housefather’ at Kincora, was a British agent. He was involved in the clandestine importation of arms for Loyalist terrorists, including his own paramilitary organisation, Tara. Many people were shot dead due to the arms smuggling efforts of British agents inside Loyalist paramilitary circles such as McGrath. The cascade of death connected to Kincora did not end with murder. Sex-abuse victims committed suicide. One Kincora boy took his life after being violated by Lord Louis Mountbatten. Rishi Sunak’s proposed legacy legislation, if passed, will help conceal the full extent of State-Loyalist collusion, some of which was linked to McGrath. 1. Honey Trap MI5 and MI6 ran a ‘honey trap’ operation at Kincora Boys Home, a residence in Belfast for boys, aged 14 years and upwards, in the 1970s. Residents were trafficked to Loyalist politicians and paramilitaries, as well as VIPs, for sexual abuse. Some were molested at the home, others at hotels such as the Europa, Girton Lodge and Park Avenue in Belfast, as well as the Queen’s Court in Bangor. ‘Kompromat’ or dirt was collected about politicians and paramilitaries. Some were blackmailed into working for the intelligence services. The British Establishment applied a double coat of whitewash over Kincora in an attempt to cover up the full extent of this scandal decades ago. A lot – but not all of it – has been peeled away by survivors, whistleblowers and obstinate truth-seekers. 2. Driven to suicide Eric Witchell is a paedophile. He now lives in London. In the 1970s he ran Williamson House in Belfast where he preyed on pre-pubescent boys and young teenagers. He and his accomplices drove at least three of them to commit suicide; another two to attempt it. A select few were transferred to Kincora when they reached 14. Witchell was not interviewed by any of the various inquiries into Kincora. Stephen Waring, one of the residents of Kincora, ran away from the home in November 1977, a few months after being abused by Lord Mountbatten at Classsiebawn, County Sligo. Waring made it as far as Liverpool where he was captured and put on the Ulster Monarch car ferry destined for Belfast. He never made it home. Apparently, he jumped overboard to his death. His body was never found. The Garda have retained the security logs which record the visitors to Classsiebawn in 1977  but have declined to disclose them to me and Andrew Lownie, Mountbatten’s biographer. They undoubtedly record the arrival of Joe Mains, the Warden of Kincora, in a vehicle with boys, including Waring, who was seated in the rear. I am frankly aghast that the Irish government – which could intervene – has no interest in helping the survivors of sex abuse committed in Sligo by ordering Garda Commissioner Drew Harris to release the security logs. 3. A dismembered child’s body in the Lagan Brian McDermott, aged 10, disappeared from Ormeau Park on 3 September 1973. Part of his dismembered and charred body was found in a sack in the River Lagan a week later. The RUC discovered evidence that he was abducted and murdered by Alan Campbell, a founding member of the DUP. Campbell was also in Tara, a Loyalist paramilitary organisation, and was a friend of the paedophiles who ran Kincora. Colin Wallace, who worked at the British Army’s HQ at Lisburn, has told Village that the British Army, which had an interest in Tara, was alerted by the RUC that they were about to arrest Campbell. Then, suddenly, the police were ordered to stand down. Only the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) possessed that sort of authority. The security apparatus of the NIO was run by MI5 and Ministry of Defence officials. The manoeuvre ensured that the Kincora ‘honey trap’ operation did not unravel at that time. Significantly, Campbell was a British agent. Authors Jack Holland and Henry McDonald, referred to him as the ‘Demon Preacher’ in their books, describing him as an obvious British agent. Campbell and his cabal are suspects in the abduction of four other Belfast boys whose bodies were never recovered: Jonathan Aven, age 14, who disappeared on 20 September 1969; David Leckey, aged 12, who went missing on 25 September 1969; Thomas Spence, age 11, and John Rogers, aged 13, who both vanished on 26 November 1974. Had the RUC been permitted to arrest Campbell, it is probable that young Spence and Rogers would still be alive today. The BBC commissioned a documentary about the disappearance of these boys. It was completed in 2021 and entitled, ‘The Lost Boys of Belfast’. It was intended to be broadcast in May 2021 but was pulled by management. It is not certain if it will ever be aired. It uncovered evidence of MI5 involvement in the protection of Campbell and the Kincora cabal. RUC officers went on record in front of the cameras. Campbell was not interviewed by any of the various inquiries into Kincora. 4. The gunrunning operations of the ‘housefather’ of Kincora, William McGrath Colin ‘Jay’ Wyatt, joined Tara following the

    Loading

    Read more

  • Posted in:

    Updated: The very best (and worst) of British. Simon Danczuk is one of a number of courageous British individuals who has tried to tell the truth about British government crimes in Ireland. He joins the ranks of Colin Wallace, Fred Holroyd, John Stalker, Byron Lewis and John Stevens

    by 0 Comments

    Dolphin Square VIP sex abuse. Dolphin Square was opened in London’s Pimlico in 1936. It soon became a magnet for all sorts of scandal and intrigue:  espionage, political, sexual, not to mention mysterious deaths. ‘Scandal at Dolphin Square’ provides a riveting account of the lives of a rolling maul of fascinating and complex characters. As publicity for the publication accurately proclaims, it was ‘a place where the private lives of those from the highest of high society and the lowest depths of the underworld have collided and played out over the best part of a century’. It was also a cesspit where Prince Andrew’s friend Lord Greville Janner abused children. The two most important chapters in the book, both of which describe the activities of members of a VIP child abuse network, have been ignored by the British press. Cut from the same cloth: the Russian and British press Consumers of the media in the UK, have no appreciation of the extent to which they are kept in the dark about British Establishment scandals. They are completely unaware of the role Buckingham Palace played in suppressing the Jeffrey Epstein scandal for years before it broke in the US media. See: Palace of Discord and Deception. [Updated] Prince William’s officials covered-up his uncle’s involvement in the Epstein-Maxwell sex trafficking scandal. By Joseph de Burca. At the moment, many in Britain are exasperated at the ignorance of the ordinary Russian citizen who is misled by a corrupt Putlin-led media spouting nonsense about Nazism in the Ukraine. If the average Brit knew about what has been going on in Ireland, he and she might not laugh with such disdain at the typically ignorant Russian newspaper reader. The Dolphin Square book will help open a few eyes in Britain about the wretchedness of their ruling classes. However, before I return to Dolphin Square, it may be helpful to look at a few examples from recent history to understand the wider picture which explains how the ordinary British newspaper reader has been left to wallow in ignorance about British establishment crimes in Ireland. The tactic is: injure, insult and ignore. There is a deep well of hurt in Ireland felt by many as a result of the lethal misbehaviour of the British army and intelligence services on this island, a history now more than fifty years in being. Fresh evidence of transgressions continue to emerge with depressing regularity. In recent times, they include reports from the Northern Ireland Ombudsman about collusion between Loyalist paramilitaries and the State involving the murder of Catholics, many of them non-combatants who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. The murder of Irish citizens by British State actors is no more news in Britain than Putin’s war crimes in the Ukraine are for ordinary Russians. Astonishingly, there was little or no coverage of the fact that the State paid out £1.4 million to the families and survivors of the Miami Showband massacre. There has been – and continues to be – a pattern of State sponsored injury followed by insult. The insult takes the form of the cover-up after the event. If the cover-up falls apart, then the British press and TV go into ‘ignore’ mode. John Stalker who refused to back down when he discovered RUC-MI5 murder of a teenager. It cost him his career. The late John Stalker, the former Deputy Chief Constable of Manchester, investigated the RUC’s shoot to kill programme in Ireland in the 1980s. He discovered, for example, that the RUC and MI5 had murdered a teenage boy who had stumbled across an IRA arms dump in a hay shed. Stalker refused to back off and was stabbed in the back by his own side. The deepest wounds were those inflicted by his boss, James Anderton,  a man who believed that God spoke ‘to him and through him’. In reality Anderton became an accessory after the fact to the murder of the boy at the hay shed. Stalker was smeared by a corrupt press in Britain, linked to criminality and taken off his inquiry. The killers got away Scot free as did all of those involved in shafting Stalker. Few in Britain could have cared less. Although he cleared his name, Stalker retired from the police early a demoralised man. Byron Lewis, intimidated and vilified for telling the truth about Bloody Sunday David Cleary (better known as Soldier F) was responsible for a large number of the killings which took place on Bloody Sunday in Derry in 1972. Byron Lewis was beside him on the day of the massacre. Lewis killed no one – he was a radio operator. The journalist and broadcaster Tom McGurk conducted an investigation into Bloody Sunday and uncovered a written account by Lewis. He published it in The Sunday Business Post in Dublin. Privately, he supplied additional information to the Irish Government. This, finally, provided the ‘new evidence’ the British government required to establish a fresh inquiry. And what happened to Lewis? Although McGurk was careful not to name him, his identity was leaked – probably by the Ministry of Defence in London to a gang of soldiers who tried to persuade him not to talk to the Savile Inquiry. The soldiers found where he was living. In a case of mistaken identity, his housemate was beaten so badly he was taken to hospital. That same night Lewis’ life was threatened and he had to go into hiding. When he appeared at the Saville Inquiry, attempts were made to tear his character apart. Lewis has never emerged from hiding. And what of Cleary? The British government of Boris Johnson is presently trying to enact legislation so that he and others like him will not have to face murder charges. Fred Holroyd: smeared and vilified for exposing Robert Nairac and the Dublin  and Monaghan bombers of 1974 When Fred Holroyd, a former undercover British soldier, refused to go along with MI5’s murderous collusion with Loyalist paramilitaries in

    Loading

    Read more

  • Posted in:

    The boot is on the other foot. Former British 'PSYOPS' officer Colin Wallace sues the MoD. His case demonstrates that lying to Parliament did not start with Boris Johnson.

    by 0 Comments

      By Joseph de Burca.     Introduction to Village’s online pamphlet on the Colin Wallace Affair. The Tory Government of Boris Johnson is routinely accused of deceiving the House of Commons. Many British commentators behave as if this is a new low in their democratic history.  Yet, there is nothing unusual about the situation. The UK’s Parliament has been misled by ministers at the behest of Britain’s intelligence services, especially MI5 for decades. MI5 is attached to the Home Office and is responsible for internal security. The deception of Parliament has been nowhere more evident than in the case of Colin Wallace, the man who tried to expose the notorious Kincora Boys’ Home child sex abuse scandal.  Village readers will be familiar with the case of Wallace. In the 1970s he worked at the British Army HQNI at Thiepval Barracks, Lisburn. He had a public job but also a clandestine one. On the surface, he performed public relations duties for the army. Towards this end, he briefed journalists about an array of routine military activities. His ‘open’ superior was Peter Broderick, a very senior official of the Ministry of Defence (MoD). Broderick served as the head of the Army Press Desk. Secretly, Wallace was also reporting to Col Maurice Tugwell and later Col Geoffrey Hutton who were in charge of the Information Policy Unit (IPU) which conducted psychological operations known as ‘PsyOps’.  Hutton took over from Col Tugwell in March 1973 and was in post for two years.  He was in charge when Wallace left NI in February 1975. Wallace has just issued proceedings in the High Court in Belfast with the intention of prising out further documents which are in the possession of the British government which will confirm his PsyOps role in detail.  In 1974-75 Ian Cameron of MI5 plotted against Wallace who wanted to expose the Kincora Boys’ Home scandal and was refusing to engage in smear campaigns directed against British politicians. During the course of his work, Wallace was ordered to leak certain documents to the journalist Robert Fisk. He was then disciplined for what he had done. At his disciplinary hearing, MI5 and others conspired to deceive the tribunal hearing his case. They alleged that he had only one role – his ordinary PR duties – and therefore should not have leaked anything sensitive to Fisk. Secretly, Cameron contacted the chair of the tribunal and told him that Wallace was in the UVF. Wallace, of course, had nothing to do with the UVF. Wallace lost his job. Worse still, in the 1980s he was framed for manslaughter on the basis of fabricated evidence by a corrupt Home Office pathologist who lied to the Court. The conviction was later overturned but not before Wallace spent six years in prison. The MoD has alleged that all of the files belonging to the IPU were destroyed in 1980.  The Ministry has admitted that those responsible for the destruction of the files have never been interviewed. It is highly unlikely that the documents were actually destroyed. In the main, this article – which is intended as an online version of the old fashioned pamphlet –  has been drawn together from reports which have already appeared in Village. This account has been prepared in response to the launch of Wallace’s legal action in Belfast. The materials included in the ‘pamphlet’ merely represent a portion of the evidence which shows that Wallace has been telling the truth for decades and the MoD, NIO, Home Office, Conservative Party and Whitehall have been lying. Readers should also watch the documentary ‘The Man Who Knew Too Much’ which is available on Youtube. More information about Colin Wallace can be found at:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Wallace WALLACE AND THE PERILOUS  PANTIES Wearing his IPU hat, Wallace and the members of his team were responsible for waging psychological warfare against Loyalist and Republican paramilitaries.  It is important to bear in mind that psychological warfare is not solely about spreading false information, it is about the use of intelligence and factual information in such a way as to influence the behaviour of others.  For example, one of Colin Wallace’s more amusing and notable successes was to deter female members and collaborators of the IRA from transporting explosives for the organisation. Wallace put a story into circulation that the static from the typical female pair of nylon knickers generated sufficient  electricity to explode the bomb materials being carried. As a result, there was a great reluctance to transport explosives. There was a scientific basis at the root of the story, as can be seen from a document entitled: ‘Ammunition and Explosives Safety Standards’. At pages 85-99 it stated: Explosives. The explosives or explosive mixtures that are sensitive to static discharge (electro-static sensitivity of 0.1 joule or less) when exposed are generally primer, initiator, detonator, igniter, tracer, incendiary, and pyrotechnic mixtures. In reality, the chances of explosions being caused by static electricity were very small. Similarly, the PsyOps unit pointed out that the use of nitro benzene in home-made explosives was potentially carcinogenic.  This claim is supported by the United States Environmental Protection Agency who considered nitro benzene a likely human carcinogen. See “Nitrobenzene CASRN 98-95-3 – IRIS – US EPA, ORD”.  An excellent account of Wallace’s exploitation of fears about devil worship stories can be watched on the Man Who Knew Too Much documentary. THE INFORMATION RESEARCH DEPARTMENT (IRD) The Army’s IPU was not the only organisation engaged in PsyOps. The notorious Information Research Department (IRD) was too. The IRD was part of the Foreign Office and worked closely with the British Secret Service, MI6, which is also attached to the Foreign Office. The IRD operated from a building in London called Riverbank House. The IRD was a Cold War Intelligence organisation designed to counter Soviet expansion globally. Inevitably, its staff became involved in the propaganda war in Ireland. The department’s representative in NI was Hugh Mooney, a graduate from Trinity College with Irish roots who had once worked for The Irish

    Loading

    Read more

  • Posted in:

    Traduced (updated version): John Hume was the victim of a campaign of character assassination perpetrated by the British Secret Service, MI6, and was placed under MI5 surveillance in Dublin with the assistance of the Gardaí.

    by 0 Comments

    By David Burke. UPDATE: See also Just declassified UK memo on John Hume reveals interest of PM John Major’s top civil servants in “possible press stories regarding John Hume’s private life”. John Hume was the victim of a campaign of character assassination in the early 1970s perpetrated by British spies. It was spearheaded by an individual called Hugh Mooney, a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, who once worked as a sub-editor for the Irish Times. Mooney belonged to the ‘Special Editorial Unit’ (SEU) of the Information Research Department (IRD). It was responsible for the production of black propaganda. Mooney’s boss was the IRD’s Special Operations Adviser, Hans Welser, a veteran of the WW2 Political Warfare Executive. The IRD was part of the Foreign Office and worked closely with the British Secret Service, MI6, which is also attached to the Foreign Office. The IRD operated from a building in London called Riverbank House. Although Mooney worked at Army HQ Northern Ireland under the cover title of ‘Information Adviser to the GOC’, official documents show that in 1972 he was reporting to the Director and Co-ordinator of Intelligence (DCI) at Stormont – not to the GOC. This means that his activities were known about at a very high level. Prior to his attack on Hume, Mooney had worked in Bermuda where his colonial and racist side had come to the fore, a story for another day. Mooney and his associates sought to depict John Hume: as part of a communist conspiracy to turn Ireland into Europe’s Cuba; as a supporter of the IRA; as a fundraiser for the IRA; as a thief who stole charitable donations; as a man for whom a warrant had been issued for his arrest in 1972. There may have been other smears which have not yet been detected. Unintentionally, Her Majesty’s spies and their colleagues in the British Army also made his task of achieving peace extraordinarily difficult at key moments in his career, such as those of Bloody Sunday in January 1972 in his native Derry. Rogue elements inside MI5 also plotted with the Ulster Workers’ Council (UWC) to tear down the 1974 Power-Sharing Executive of which Hume was minister for commerce. This left Hume without a reliable source of income for a number of years and could have forced him to abandon politics for a job outside of it. Throughout his career he was placed under surveillance, something that was tantamount to treating him as a subversive. In the 1980s the Gardai in the Republic of Ireland helped MI5 bug some of his conversations. A house where his deputy leader, Seamus Mallon, stayed in 1983 was also bugged by the Gardai. In the 1990s MI5 opposed his discussions with Gerry Adams. Hume was a towering political figure of immense courage, foresight and integrity. Boris Johnson has paid him a lavish tribute, praising his “strong sense of social justice” and saying that without him “there would have been no Belfast or Good Friday Agreement”. Despite Johnson’s fine words, the Tories did their best to stand in Hume’s way during the 1970s, 80s and 90s. In fact it is not an exaggeration to say that they made his life hell. HEATH IN THE 1970s: Ted Heath served as Tory prime minister, 1970-1974. He sent his black propaganda operatives to Ireland to conduct dirty trick campaigns in the early 1970s. It was they who ran the smear campaign against Hume. Ironically, it is Heath’s legacy which is in now in tatters while Hume’s has never soared higher. Heath’s reputation was destroyed by a report published by the Wiltshire Police in 2017 about his abuse of boys, one as young as 14. THATCHER IN THE 1980s: Margaret Thatcher, Tory PM, 1979-90, let MI5 (attached to the Home Office) spy on Hume in gross violation of his human rights. Some of this surveillance was carried out in the Burlington Hotel in the Republic of Ireland with the assistance of the Republic’s special branch. The first steps of the peace process were taken in the middle of Thatcher’s premiership in 1986 when a back channel was opened between Gerry Adams and Charles Haughey via Fr. Alex Reid. Haughey ‘s Northern Ireland adviser Martin Mansergh was a pivotal figure in the process. Thatcher’s battery of spies do not appear to have had any inkling of what was afoot. Had Thatcher discovered this development, it is – to put it mildly – likely she would have denounced it. The Haughey-Adams process was so secret that even John Hume did not know about it when he entered the process later and expressed disbelief when he finally discovered this fact. MAJOR IN THE 1990s: Thatcher’s successor at 10 Downing Street, John Major, PM 1990-97, was not supportive of the next phase of the process which became known as ‘Hume-Adams’. In 1993 and 1994 key elements of the press in the Republic denounced Hume’s dialogue with Adams, in particular Conor Cruise O’Brien who wrote for Ireland’s Sunday Independent. O’Brien was close to a number of dubious intelligence figures such as Dame Daphne Park, a self-confessed MI6 dirty tricks expert and David Astor, one of MI6’s most important assets in the media. O’Brien knew them through the British-Irish Association (BIA) which Astor had helped set up in the 1970s, and which Park co-chaired in the 1980s. It was Astor who appointed O’Brien as editor of The Observer. Haughey considered the BIA a British Intelligence front and forbade Fianna Fail figures (such as Brian Lenihan) from attending it. How much O’Brien was influenced by his friends in the British Establishment is an imponderable. Major, who had an exceptionally close relationship with his spymasters, was not supportive of what Hume, Adams and Dublin were trying to achieve either. Eventually, Bill Clinton had to intervene to twist Major’s arm and move the process forward. Still, MI5 tried to derail it. Haughey’s successor as taoiseach, Albert Reynolds, 1992-94, became so concerned about the hostility of MI5 that he told Major

    Loading

    Read more

  • Posted in:

    Was Thomas Passmore, paedophile, politician and County Grand Master of the Belfast Loyal Orange Lodge, an MI5 agent?

    by 0 Comments

    On 16 September last Paul Graham told RTE’s ‘Liveline’ that he had been sexually abused by a senior figure in the Orange Order. Although not named, the abuser was Thomas Passmore, the County Grand Master of Belfast Loyal Orange Lodge.  That Passmore was a paedophile will not come as news to the Northern Ireland Office, MI5 and MI6. In 1973 he was named in a press briefing prepared by the British Army at Lisburn, Northern Ireland. The briefing concerned Tara, a Loyalist paramilitary organisation led by William McGrath, the notorious child rapist and Housefather at Kincora Boys’ Home. McGrath, who acted as an agent for MI5 and MI6, was convicted for child rape in 1981. To its credit, a number of senior military figures in the British Army tried to put an end to the abuse of children at Kincora. Foremost among them was Captain Colin Wallace. He and his military colleagues were thwarted by the NIO, MI5 and MI6, especially by a senior MI5 officer called Ian Cameron. Cameron was once a runner for the post of Director General of MI5. Those organisations and the PSNI persist to this day in covering up the full extent of the abuse at Kincora and elsewhere. The 1973 Tara Press Briefing (’73 TPB) described how ‘other people closely associated with McGrath and aware of his activities are, Thomas PASSMORE, Rev PAISLEY, Rev Martin SMYTH, James MOLYNEAUX and Sir Knox CUNNINGHAM QC MP’. In July 2018 Village published an article entitled ‘Kincora’s Smoking Guns: The Documents With Hugh Mooney’s Handwriting On Them’ which included a description of ’73 TPB. The ‘Kincora’s Smoking Guns’ article also described a number of other documents which demonstrated that the British Government knew about the sexual abuse of children at Kincora Boys’ Home long before the scandal was exposed by The Irish Independent in 1980. In addition, it demonstrated how a number of journalists Wallace had briefed remembered the Tara briefing. If that wasn’t enough, a number of Wallace’s colleagues at British Army HQ, Lisburn, also confirmed they knew about McGrath. Regrettably, Judge Hart who conducted a lighweight inquiry into Kincora was unable to comprehend the significance of any of this before he published his lamentable mistake-riddled report in 2017. Paul Graham’s RTE interview can be heard at https://www.rte.ie/radio/radioplayer/html5/#/radio1/21620062 Passmore was not named during the RTE interview but is the Orange Order figure mentioned briefly (at 13 minutes 30 seconds). The fact that Passmore abused Paul Graham would explain why he did nothing to halt the rape of children perpetrated by his friend and brother Orangeman William McGrath when he was informed about it. It is extremely unlikely that Paul Graham was Passmore’s only victim. Richard Kerr, who was a resident at Kincora, has long since described how he too was abused by Orangemen. The reference to Passmore in ’73 TPB was not highlighted in the ‘Kincora Smoking Guns’ article as its focus was on other aspects of the Kincora scandal. However, a copy of the 1973 document was reproduced in full in the printed edition of Village. WAS THOMAS PASSMORE AN MI5 AGENT? Thomas Passmore JP, was a senior Loyalist politician and Orangeman who operated at the highest levels of Unionist politics in the 1970s and 1980s. He became County Grand Master of Belfast Loyal Orange Lodge in 1973. He was unmarried and lived in Townsend Street, Belfast. He was not only an associate of McGrath but purchased the printing press which McGrath’s paramilitary group Tara used for its publicity. Passmore published an evangelical magazine with it. Like McGrath, Passmore believed that the Protestants of Ireland were descendants of one of the lost tribes of Israel. He was briefly a member of the Woodvale Defence Association in 1970s. It was set up by Alan Moon who was soon replaced by Charles Harding Smith who later became Chairman of the UDA. Passmore later became Chairman of the Woodvale Unionist Association. It supported the Ulster Workers Council (UWC) strike that brought down the 1974 power-sharing Government of 1974. Roy Garland was a member of Tara but walked out of it in 1971 when he discovered that McGrath was abusing boys. He immediately began trying to put a stop to it by telling the Orange Order of which McGrath was a senior member. Passmore was one of those who blocked the taking of any action against McGrath. He may have done this for any one of three reasons: first, because he wanted to protect a fellow child abuser; second, because he was being blackmailed by MI5 and MI6 for whom McGrath was an agent; third, because by 1973 he had become an MI5/6 agent. Perhaps it was a combination of all of the foregoing. Roy Garland persisted in his efforts to put an end to McGrath’s abuses but  met brick walls everywhere he turned. In 1976, the IRA killed Passmore’s father in an attack which he claimed was aimed at him. When Merlyn Rees was NI Secretary, MI5 smeared him and other Labour politicians as part of what they called Operation Clockwork Orange. One of the smears was that he was easy on Republican paramilitaries, especially his release of internees. Passmore reflected these views perfectly. On 3 December 1975 The Belfast Telegraph reported that ‘Mr. Thomas Passmore, said the fact that an ex-detainee had been killed while working with a bomb exposed the foolishness of Mr. Rees’ security policies…’ Passmore opposed the short-lived and unsuccessful 1977  United Unionist Action Council (UUAC) strike. It was led by Ian Paisley of the DUP and Ernie Baird, then leader of the United Ulster Unionist Movement (UUUM). The strike was disrupted by the release of an anonymous document which bears all the hallmarks of an MI5 dirty trick. It portrayed some of the UUAC leaders as homosexuals, something that was deemed reprehensible in Loyalist circles at that time. On 23 April, 1977,  Passmore launched a verbal attack on the strike which was due to commence in early May. One of his allegations was that a member of the UUAC had been

    Loading

    Read more

  • Posted in:

    John Imrie, MI5’s Flasher-General

    by 0 Comments

    Village has learnt that John L.L. Imrie, formerly of MI5 and the Northern Ireland Office (NIO), died last summer without a whisper of his passing reaching the ears of the press. Imrie had the unique distinction of being the only British official ever linked to the Kincora Boys’ Home sex abuse scandal by name in the press during his lifetime. Imrie had served as an Assistant Secretary at the NIO in the early 1970s while the sexual abuse of boys at a number of homes in Northern Ireland including Kincora was rampant. Imrie did not provide evidence to the Hart Inquiry in 2016. Judge Hart, whose 2017 report is littered with factual inaccuracies, determined that MI5 had known nothing about the Kincora scandal until it was exposed by the media in January 1980. Imrie was one of many who – had he told the truth – could have put Hart straight. Privates on parade at victoria station Imrie was a convicted sex pest. In 1979 he went ‘cottaging’ in London, that is to say, looking for sex with random strangers in gentlemen’s lavatories. He was arrested at the gents at Victoria Station when, after an attempt to attract a sexual partner by displaying his genitals, he was charged with indecent exposure. The last thing MI5 needed in 1979 was a sordid scandal involving an MI5 officer who had served in Belfast. At this time the Kincora scandal was bubbling under the surface ready to erupt across National headlines. Howard Smith was D-G of MI5. He appreciated the full potential of the scandal because he had served as intelligence supremo in NI in the early 1970s when Imrie had been stationed in Belfast and the Kincora ‘honey trap’ operation was up and running. Two social workers had already provided details of the scandal to Peter McKenna of the Irish Independent. They had learnt about it from Richard Kerr, a resident at Kincora for whom they were responsible. Hence, Establishment pressure was exerted to drop the charges against Imrie for his performance at Victoria Station. The endeavour failed, proving yet again that MI5 is not always top dog when confronted by honest police officers and lawyers. Indeed, only last year we witnessed another example of this when the incorruptible Chief Constable of Wiltshire, Michael Veale, his Assistant Chief Constable Paul Mills, and their Operation Confier team reported that former British PM Edward Heath was a paedophile. (See Village October 2017.) The fact that Imrie was a figure whom Whitehall wanted to protect became public knowledge thanks to Private Eye magazine. On 17 August 1979 it reported that: “Up until the trial strong pressure was brought to bear by a variety of authorities to drop the charges in the national interest”. Ken Livingstone noticed a discrepancy in the way Imrie had been treated compared to the mauling Sir Maurice Oldfield had received after the exposure of his sexual predilections in 1980 Imrie was brought before the Magistrates’ Court at 70 Horseferry road, London, (now the City of Westminster Magistrates Court) where he pleaded not guilty to the charges preferred against him and submitted a preposterous defence maintaining that he had been caught short with a weak bladder and, fearing disastrous consequences on the train he intended to take at 11.10 to Sydneyham – which had no toilet – he had been compelled to display him- self to the gentlemen in the vicinity of the urinals. The presiding magistrate – another honourable individual who was prepared to do his job without fear or favour – concluded Imrie was lying since he had been arrested at 11.25, i.e. 15 minutes after the bladder-bursting train had departed. Imrie was convicted, conditionally discharged and ordered to pay £50 costs. Imrie was not the only senior intelligence officer arrested for misbehaviour in a public lavatory in London during this era. In 1984 Sir Peter Hayman, the reputed Deputy Chief of MI6, was also arrested for gross indecency, and convicted. Hayman was an abuser of Richard Kerr, details of which will be revealed in a later edition of Village. Sir Anthony Blunt and Guy Burgess, another pair of paedophiles from the ranks of both MI5 and the Anglo-Irish Vice Ring, were also members in good standing of MI5’s cottaging circuit. Imrie’s conviction did not deflect the upward trajectory of his career. After Kincora was exposed in January 1980, the RUC set out to track down the child molesters involved, or at least some honest officers in the RUC tried to do so before they were stifled. At least they managed to question Imrie before the vice grip of the cover-up took a hold. Against this background, it is hardly unfair to ask if Imrie was a pederast (i.e. an abuser of teenage males), if not an outright paedophile himself. Why else would the RUC have made inquiries about him? The answers to these questions may be found lurking in the pages of Imrie’s personnel file which gathers dust somewhere in the vaults of MI5. During the 1970s the RUC Special Branch officers who helped Joseph Mains, the Warden of Kincora, run the operation on the ground, are rumoured to have maintained a secret library of files as insurance in case anyone ever tried to prosecute them for trafficking the children involved to their abusers. The RUC Special Branch library may still be in existence and, if so, undoubtedly has bulging files on Imrie and others such as Peter England, also formerly of the NIO. The Independent Inquiry Into Child Sexual Abuse in London still has an opportunity to demand sight of Imrie’s personnel file and that of england but time is running out fast. a career shrouded in mystery Inevitably, a cloud of mystery hangs over Imrie’s career. A little speculation must be forgiven. Despite claims to the contrary, he probably never worked for the Ministry of Defence (MoD). References to him in the Civil Service Yearbooks during the 1980s as an MoD employee were probably nothing more than a cover

    Loading

    Read more