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

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    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

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    An appalling vista: disturbing indications of Kitson's foreknowledge of a third massacre of innocent civilians. Tragedy took fifteen lives including two children. By David Burke.

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    New evidence has emerged about the UVF’s bombing of McGurk’s Bar in Belfast in December 1971. The explosion caused the entire structure of the premises to collapse, killing fifteen Catholic civilians – including two children – and wounding seventeen more. It was the deadliest attack in Belfast during the Troubles. Brigadier (later General Sir) Frank Kitson commanded the British Army in Belfast 1970-72. He was a counter-insurgency guru who created havoc on the island before he was drummed out of it by William Whitelaw, the first British secretary of state for Northern Ireland. One of the conscious choices Kitson made while still in Ireland was to take on the IRA but not Loyalist terrorist gangs such as the UVF. This coincided neatly with the policy of the British government of Edward Heath which decided to intern  members of the IRA but not Loyalist paramilitaries. On these grounds alone, the British state became indirectly responsible –  through inaction – for the crimes of the UVF, including the McGurk tragedy. Worse still, there are indications that Kitson may have exploited elements of the UVF as a proxy assassination apparatus for the British state in Belfast. 1. Redaction of Evidence The sliver of new information about the massacre was recorded in a log by the 2nd Battalion Royal Regiment of Fusiliers (2RRF)  approximately forty-two minutes after the bombing. It relates to the proprietor of the bar, Patrick McGurk, and the nearby Gem Bar. Britain’s Information Commissioner’s Office has upheld a decision by Britain’s National Archives to withhold a section of the log from the families of the victims of the massacre. The Archive acted in consultation with the British Ministry of Defence (MoD). The 2RRF log reveals: Owner of pub a moderate RC [Roman Catholic] unlikely to have allowed people to use it as a mtg [meeting] place. Bar close to Gem Bar which is a [REDACTED]. 2. The Gem Bar The information relating to the Gem Bar remains withheld even though the venue no longer exists. When they were making their case for a full declassification of the log, the families of the victims of the attack presented archival evidence to the Information Commissioner’s Office that the Gem Bar was: The original target of the bombers; Known as an Official IRA bar; Recorded in British Army files as the local HQ of the Official IRA; Under British Army surveillance; And that the premises had been targeted by 2 RRF two nights before the bombing during which 2 RRF arrested and questioned six customers from the Gem Bar raid. Put simply, the perceived connections between the Gem and the Official IRA was a known fact and therefore any information pointing in that direction was not going to endanger anyone, especially as the pub has long since closed. Moreover, former known members of both wings of the IRA walk about Belfast without any concern for their safety. Some of them have published books about their paramilitary careers, others have been interviewed on the record by the press, radio and TV Despite this reality, the log remains redacted. 3. Reaction of the families Ciarán MacAirt is a grandson of two of the victims of the McGurk’s Bar Massacre and has been fighting for sight of the information – all of it – for five years. He said: After 50 long years fighting the British state’s lies, our families are outraged but unsurprised that it is withholding evidence relating to the mass murder of our loved ones in McGurk’s Bar. The British state has lied to us from the moment the bomb exploded up to this very day.  Police Service Northern Ireland and the Office of the Police Ombudsman either failed to find this evidence or found it and buried it again as it has been left to the families to expose the truth about the McGurk’s Bar Massacre and its cover-up by the British state. Nevertheless, even when we discover new evidence, the British authorities withhold it from us and deny us access to the truth. In the meantime, many of our older family members are infirm or have gone to their graves without any justice. A video about the attack can be accessed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQRLFnBxoWQ 4. The shape of an extremely disturbing state of affairs. The redaction is deeply disturbing. There is no good explanation for it. Why do the MoD censors want the redacted words withheld from public scrutiny, even after more than fifty years? The shape of an extremely disturbing state of affairs involving dirty tricks, collusive murder and black propaganda is swimming into focus. The following scenario is one that offers an explanation for what happened in 1971, and why the British State still feels it necessary to redact the document. 5. Kitson and the IRD Brigadier Frank Kitson was involved in a black propaganda operation that swung into action shortly after the bombing. He was almost certainly aided and abetted by Hugh Mooney who worked for the Information Research Department (IRD) of the Foreign Office. Mooney had been sent to Belfast to destabilise the IRA through the deployment of psychological operations (PsyOps). Kitson, who commanded the British Army in Belfast and its environs, was a meticulous planner who became deeply engaged in propaganda operations during his two years in Belfast. He was also the British army’s foremost counterinsurgency expert having honed and developed his skills in Kenya, Malaya, Oman and Cyprus. His infamous treatise about counterinsurgency, ‘Low Intensity Operations’ was published in 1971. One of the hallmarks of Kitson and Hugh Mooney was the meticulous manner in which they planned their operations in Ireland, invariably well in advance of their deployment. The black propaganda operation that swung into action after the bombing of McGurk’s Bar was up and running a little over four hours after the attack. The operation was a sophisticated affair, one that involved the coordination of senior British Army officers (including Kitson and his superior Lt. General Sir Harold Tuzo, General Officer Commanding Northern Ireland), the

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    A loathsome dirty trick. 4 December was the 50th anniversary of the infamous bombing of McGurk's Bar. The families have made a complaint to Parliamentary Ombudsman Against the Cabinet Office. By David Burke.

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    Saturday the 4th of December was the 50th anniversary of the infamous bombing of McGurk’s bar in Belfast by the UVF.  15 people were killed in the massacre. The bomb reduced the building to rubble. The attack was the most devastating atrocity suffered by Belfast since the bombing of the city during the Second World War. Brigadier Frank Kitson, the counterinsurgency specialist in charge of Belfast, knew that the bar had been attacked by Loyalist paramilitaries, yet participated in a black propaganda operation to blame the atrocity on the occupants of the premises. He and others  portrayed the explosion as an IRA own goal, i.e. that McGurk’s was an IRA pub and the bomb had been left there for collection by Republican terrorists, but had gone off prematurely. This was a lie. Kitson is alive. He has never been asked why he covered up for the actions of the Loyalist murder gang. Kitson is alive. He has never been asked why he covered up for the actions of the Loyalist murder gang. Kitson’s lies were used by Tory politicians to mislead the House of Commons. The record has never been corrected. The British government is refusing to investigate what really happened. The most likely explanation for the deception is that it was designed to avoid calls for the internment of Loyalist terror groups. At the time Ted Heath and NI PM Brian Faulkner had decided not to intern the UDA, UVF and Red Hand Commando. Furthermore, Brigadier Kitson had entered into a conspiracy with Tommy Herron of the UDA’s Inner Council. It amounted to nothing less than an agreement for mass murder. Herron ran the UDA’s assassination squads in Belfast. They killed Catholics whether they were connected to the IRA or not. Herron was aided by Kitson’s allies in the RUC. Some of these RUC men were stationed at Mountpottinger RUC station in Belfast. They supplied murder weapons to Herron’s killers. This was how British State collusion with Loyalist murder gangs began in Northern Ireland. Herron maintained contact with Kitson through a Captain Bundy. Bundy later ran the notorious UDA killer and sadist, Albert ‘Ginger’ Baker’. His codename was ‘Broccoli’. Herron, Baker and others participated in the ghastly ‘Romper Room’ kidnap, torture and murder programme of Catholics they abducted on the streets of Belfast. If the truth about the UVF’s responsibility for the McGurk bombing had surfaced, Kitson’s strategy of collusion with the UDA would have been severely jeopardised while still in its infancy. Members of both organisations might have been rendered subject to internment. Instead, Kitson chose to vilify the innocent victims of the bombing as patrons of an IRA meeting place. Ciarán MacAirt is the grandson of two of the McGurk’s Bar victims. His grandmother, Kathleen Irvine was one of the fifteen civilians killed; his grandfather, John Irvine, was badly injured but survived. He has written a book which exposes the scandal in forensic detail. He has also produced an addendum which can be read here: The McGurk’s Bar Bombing Post-Script: https://mcgurksbar.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/McGurks-Bar-Post-Script-Final-Redux.pdf See also, the McGurk’s Bar Bombing and the Plot to Deceive Two Parliaments https://mcgurksbar.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/The-McGurks-Bar-Bombing-and-the-Plot-to-Deceive-Two-Parliaments-Report-Redux.pdf The scandal ranks among the most repellent dirty tricks of the Troubles and is part of a pattern of criminal wrongdoing perpetrated by Kitson that can be discerned in the Ballymurphy and Bloody Sunday massacre outrages. The scandal ranks among the most repellent dirty tricks of the Troubles and is part of a pattern of criminal wrongdoing perpetrated by Kitson that can be discerned in the Ballymurphy and Bloody Sunday massacre outrages. Yesterday, the Chief Constable of the PSNI refused to talk to a delegation representing the relatives of the families who mounted a dignified protest outside his office. The families of those killed and injured are still trying to find out the full truth about what happened to their relatives. Last month they made a complaint to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) in London against the British Cabinet Office. As far as the families are aware, this is the first complaint of its kind to the PHSO regarding a conflict legacy case and the Cabinet Office. The complaint concerns: The Cabinet Office’s decision not to investigate a serious complaint regarding a high-level, coordinated and sustained plot by senior members of the Civil Service, British Army and RUC to deceive both Stormont and Westminster governments about the true circumstances of the McGurk’s Bar Massacre; The Cabinet Office’s handling of the original complaint which was first raised in December 2020. The original complaint to the Cabinet Office on 11th December 2020 also included a request to the Cabinet Secretary, Simon Case, for an investigation following the publication of a report by Ciarán MacAirt. See pages 24-25 of The McGurk’s Bar Bombing and the Plot to Deceive Two Parliaments. The report also includes new evidence from secret British military and governmental archives proving that there was a high-level, coordinated and sustained plot to deceive both Parliaments at Stormont and Westminster. The plot and disinformation involved both Prime Ministers, Brian Faulkner and Edward Heath; the General Officer Commanding Lt. General Sir Harry Tuzo; Brigadier Frank Kitson; RUC Chief Constable Graham Shillington and his head of Special Branch; and leading Civil Servants across a number of government departments. The disinformation included blaming the victims of the McGurk’s Bar Massacre for the bombing following a secret agreement between the British Army and RUC hours after the explosion, and before all victims had even been identified; and burying evidence which proved that the British Army and RUC knew that the victims were innocent, and the bar had been attacked. Colum Eastwood MP, leader of the SDLP, counter-signed and submitted the complaint to the PHSO on behalf of the families on Wednesday 4 November 2021. Ciarán MacAirt has said: After undue delay, the Cabinet Office denied us access to an investigation despite new evidence of a high-level, coordinated and sustained plot by public servants and Government Departments to mislead Stormont and Westminster about the McGurk’s Bar Massacre,

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    MI5 FLIES A FALSE FLAG.

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    MI5 faked a Loyalist arms importation to manipulate Dublin in the run-up to an IRA ceasefire. A few months later the cream of NI Intelligence were dead in the Chinook helicopter crash. Shortly afterward, the ceasefire was called. The Chinook crash files are embargoed until 2094. By Deirdre Younge. Introduction 1994 was the year of living dangerously for Northern Ireland’s spymasters. The prospect of an imminent IRA ceasefire had the intelligence community in a spin. M15 was gaining the upper hand in the battle with the RUC Special Branch for the control and flow of intelligence. Some believed the watchers were being watched. It was the year M15 attempted to pull a foolhardy false flag operation. Initially lauded as a massive coup it was quickly buried under D notices when sceptical journalists blew a hole in the story. Fronted by an Ulster Resistance leader with links to the UVF, but by now suspected by other ‘Resistance’ members of being an agent, M15 arranged a massive arms importation from Poland, aided by some members of Polish intelligence.  The shipment, seized by customs at Teesport docks in a prearranged operation, was hailed as a massive success for the security services.  The aim of the phony operation was to put pressure on the Irish Government and to ‘even up’ the threat levels in negotiations.  June 2, 1994 – The crash of a Chinook helicopter carrying 24 of  the elite of the intelligence community in Northern Ireland: senior RUC officers like Brian Fitzsimons Assistant Chief Constable and Head of Special Branch; Army Intelligence Head and founder of FRU,Lt Colonel Victor Williams; Director and Coordinator of Intelligence, M15’s John Deverall; Michael Maltby, an M15 specialist in money laundering who had spent a career investigating IRA finances; Anne James, M15, among those who died on the side of a mountain on the Mull of Kintyre when the RAF Chinook helicopter, piloted by  special forces pilots crashed in fog. The other passengers, RUC officers Detective Superintendent Ian Phoenix, Detective Chief Superintendent Des Conroy were regarded as having a mastery of the intelligence files, a vital asset in a largely non computerised system. The helicopter was heading, not towards the stated destination of Fort George, Inverness but, according to high level security sources, to Machrihanish airbase minutes away from the crash site, on the other side of the Mull of Kintyre. The purpose of the carefully arranged flight was a meeting with American Intelligence counterparts in the CIA and FBI  for an annual ‘summit’.   Machrihanish, then a top secret base which hosted high level meetings, was also used by the American Navy as a base, a training centre for Navy Seals, and for top secret flights. Just before the crash the American intelligence contingent had landed at Machrihanish in a private jet with American markings which was literally flying under the radar. After the crash  documents were strewn around the impact area which was protected by a seven mile cordon. Files relating to the Chinook are embargoed until 2094 apart from a small number of  files containing a few pages released in 2019. Immediately after the disaster on the Mull the spinning began about the destination and the purpose of the meeting. The truth got lost in the fog of disinformation. Newspapers were briefed by the RUC that the intelligence specialists were meeting to discuss a threatened bombing campaign against Dublin, the evidence of which was the importation of weapons and explosives from Poland which had been seized by customs at Teesport seven months earlier in a seeming ‘coup’ for M15. The false flag operation was being linked to the dead officers. The Sunday World covered the Chinook helicopter crash extensively three days later and detailed the RUC brief about Teesport However, the importation had been arranged by MI5 to influence the Dublin government. [Author’s note: for the avoidance of confusion: MI5 (which is attached to the Home Office) often works in co-operation with MI6 (which is attached to the Foreign Office). Both organisations appear in this story, although the primary moving party here was MI5.) Stella Rimmington, the Director-General of MI5 at the time of MI5’s false flag operation involving commercial bomb materials imported from Poland. TEESPORT RENDEZVOUS In early November 1993 a senior RUC officer was surveying the docking area of a container ship in Teesport, Cleveland, north-east England. ‘The Inowroclaw’ was sailing from Gdynia in Poland to Teesport and from there to its declared final destination of Belfast Port and into the hands of the UVF. It was jammed with armaments. Later that month the RUC officer returned with a battalion of UK Customs officers to Teesport docks to ‘intercept’ the shipment before it reached its declared destination. The RUC officer was working with MI5. He had been in Teesport  weeks in advance  to ensure that nothing could go wrong. This time the weapons would not be distributed as had happened six years previously. If the arms were added to the UVF arsenal it would match anything imported from Libya by the IRA. The Inowroclaw This is not the plot of a Northern Ireland  ‘noir’ novel, but a ‘false flag’ operation at the tail end of the undercover war in Northern Ireland. By the time it sailed from the Baltic Port, the container-load of weapons included 300 assault rifles, grenades, pistols and detonators as well as two tonnes of plastic explosives. The importation, Loyalist sources in mid-Ulster told Village, was instigated by a man linked to Ulster Resistance, an Ulster loyalist paramilitary movement established in opposition to the Anglo-Irish Agreement,  in Armagh. He was also closely aligned to some members of the  UVF  –  and the Security Services. He had apparently convinced a Loyalist faction that he could source weapons from contacts in the Polish arms industry which, perennially economically challenged, was anxious to make deals to keep factories in business. Ironically, suspicions about this man among local Ulster Resistance activists – the ‘small men’ in Armagh – had  led to the RUC’s disastrous loss of control

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    Drew Harris Drawn in.

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    As allegations continue to be made about the involvement of Robert Nairac in the Miami Showband massacre, how compromised is Garda Commissioner Harris who was PSNI liaison with Britain’s intelligence services? By Deirdre Younge. In the High Court in Belfast the British Government’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) and British Army are applying to have cases relating to the Dublin and Monaghan bombing atrocity of 1974 dismissed, alleging they are out of time. The bombings were carried out by the Glennane gang also known as the Portadown UVF who were also at the heart of an organisation that came into existence in the 1980s called Ulster Resistance. A recent BBC ‘Spotlight’ programme dealing with Ulster Resistance confirmed extensive collusion across the loyalist spectrum from DUP to UVF, UDA, UFF to MI5. Members of Ulster Resistance (UR) became aware that some of its members were MI5 agents. The key MI5 agent inside UR was carved out of the distribution of the weapons it had procured in late 1987 by those who were not under the control of the intelligence services. At the same time, information was leaked from RUC and the UDR which provided them with details of ‘suspected republicans’. The BBC NI Spotlight programme showed images of RUC intelligence that ended up in the  hands of the UFF/UDA. It  was used to target suspected republicans, including Loughlin Maginn, shot in Rathfriland in August 1989. His death, following that of solicitor Pat Finucane in February 1989, sparked the decades-long investigations by Sir John Stevens into collusion by the Security forces. Stevens was not shown evidence of RUC collusion. (BBC Spotlight on the Troubles, October 2019.) The fact that the UDA were receiving large volumes of  intelligence material from RUC sources was known to the agent Brian Nelson,  his Army Intelligence handlers and M15. That intelligence also, no doubt, informs the de Silva Report into Pat Finucane’s murder. De Silva was given access to British Army and MI5 intelligence that RUC officers at every level were leaking information to Loyalists. That intelligence is also integrated into the Ombudsman’s report on the Loughinisland murders as it relates to RUC ‘tip-offs’ about surveillance operations carried out in an attempt to seize UR weapons in Armagh in 1987 and 1988.  Awareness among members of UR that some of its members were M15 agents led to a disastrous loss of control by the Security Services and Special Branch  – and multiple murders Part 1: Commissioner Harris Drew Harris, the Garda Commissioner, didn’t leave the ‘Troubles’ of Northern Ireland behind him on entering Garda HQ. Drew Harris As former Assistant and Deputy Chief Constable of the PSNI and its former interface with the Security Services (UK), Harris has been accused of  fighting attempts to get information about the perpetrators of atrocities like the Miami Showband murders and of blocking access to  files about the many murders carried out by the Mid-Ulster, UVF ‘Brigadier’ Robin  Jackson. In 2011 the Historical Inquiries Team found Jackson had been connected to a weapon used in the Miami Showband murders by fingerprint evidence. In the High Court in Belfast in 2017 Judge Seamus Treacy ruled that there should be an overarching investigation into State collusion with the ‘Glenanne Gang’ and asked the PSNI to respond. In the Court of Appeal in Belfast the Lord Chief Justice ruled in July 9 [2019] against an appeal and said there must be an independent investigation carried out by the PSNI. Chief Superintendent Jon Boutcher has started an investigation into the Glennane series of killings as part of Operation Kenova. In an extraordinary development, Eugene Reavey whose three brothers were murdered in Whitecross in Co Armagh in 1976, has been told by the Police Ombudsman of Northern Ireland that a file has been sent to the Public Prosecution Service in the case. It is believed to recommend prosecution of a former RUC man, who was a member as ‘The Glennane Gang’. With the signing into law in Ireland of the Criminal Justice (International Cooperation)  Act  2019, the Garda can now give evidence and share intelligence with Coroners’ Courts in Northern Ireland. In an interesting twist of circumstances, Commissioner Harris  now has charge of the legacy files of secret Garda intelligence. Clearly how ambitious he’d want to be in sharing this information with authorities in the North is uncertain. As Assistant Chief Constable of the PSNI Drew Harris was the liaison between the Security Services (UK) , the PSNI and the Smithwick Tribunal from 2006 to 2014. (See also https://villagemagazine.ie/how-smithwick-got-diverted/ )The Tribunal was inquiring into alleged Garda collusion in the murders of Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan. (See also https://villagemagazine.ie/investigation-killusion/http://Killusion ) He confirmed that he had spoken to the Security Service before he gave evidence to the Tribunal in October 2012. Drew confirms his consultation with the ‘British Security Service’ In 1989 MI5 reported the overall picture seems to be one of RUC collusion and links with the Loyalists which is similar in scale to that of the UDR, but the latter is much more likely to become involved in very serious crimes Dealing with the past is also causing problems for some retired RUC men – members of the Northern Ireland Retired Police Officers’ Association (NIRPOA). They now apparently  believe a policy of  non-co-operation with bodies like the Police Ombudsman of Northern Ireland  has been counterproductive. The Miami Showband Part 2: Ombudsman confirms collusion NIPROA took a Judicial Review against the Police Ombudsman of Northern Ireland and his 2016 report on the 1994 Heights Bar murders in Loughinisland. Former Head of Special Branch and Assistant Chief Constable Ray White often acts as its spokesman. In 1989 MI5 reported the overall picture seems to be one of RUC collusion and links with the Loyalists which is similar in scale to that of the UDR, but the latter is much more likely to become involved in very serious crimes Their affidavit was submitted in the names of Ray White and retired Chief Superintendent Thomas Hawthorne, the former Sub Divisional Commander in Co Down and chief investigator of the Loughinisland

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    Nailing Harry Breen

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    RUC Chief Superintendent whose death was the Smithwick Tribunal’s focus, was not as innocent as the tribunal extraordinarily contrived to believe. Smithwick failed to ascertain how and why he was murdered and credible sources are now telling Village why Harry Breen may have been of particular interest to the IRA.

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    An Offence Against The State

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    On 1 December 1972 a car bomb exploded beside Liberty Hall in Dublin. Fortunately no one died but George Bradshaw, a CIE bus driver, and Thomas Duffy, a bus conductor, perished in a second explosion at Sackville Place. No one has ever been charged with these crimes. The UVF belatedly claimed sole responsibility for them but there are legitimate doubts about the veracity of this claim. These bombings were part of four bombings in Dublin’s north city centre at the end of 1972 and beginning of 1973 and are to be distinguished from the even more horrific bombings in the same general area in 1974.   A State In Denial Margaret Urwin has just published ‘A State in Denial’ which unravels a web of intrigue connecting the British Secret State (BSS) to loyalist paramilitaries at a variety of levels. No objective reader of this impressive work could doubt that London focused the might of its counter-insurgency arsenal against Republicans while turning a knowing blind eye at loyalist wrongdoing and also arming and colluding with them. Irwin’s book is fascinating for its dissection of official papers to discern what was going on behind closed doors.   The Man with the English-Belfast Accent The publication of ‘A State in Denial’ is timely as yet another anniversary of the 1972 Dublin bombings comes around. On that fateful evening a man with a mixed English-Belfast accent parked a car bomb beside Liberty Hall. After he alighted, he asked someone who had just left the building when it was likely to empty out for the night. One of the cars used by the bombers to get to Dublin was a Ford Zephyr which had been stolen in Antrim from an Englishman called Joseph Fleming the previous August, along with Fleming’s driver’s licence. Fleming’s licence was put to use on two occasions in November 1972 by an imposter posing as Fleming, to hire cars in Belfast. The imposter was either extraordinarily reckless or had good reason to believe Fleming’s licence was not detailed on the lists circulated by the RUC to carrental companies. He obtained a number of cars over the space of a week, a timespan which underlines his confidence about the use of a stolen licence; and all this at a time when an epidemic of car bombings was bringing Belfast to a standstill. In addition, he left his fingerprints and handwriting on the forms he completed. Another significant fact was that he spoke with a mixture of a Belfast and English accent.   Kitson’s Military Reaction Force The UVF would have us believe that its volunteers: • Stole Fleming’s car in August 1972 and hid it for three months, and; • Drove it across the Border with its original registration plates on display, and; • Proceeded to Dublin at the same time – and possibly as part of a convoy of cars, parked it with explosives, and • Faced an extremely high risk of detection because the rental cars had been acquired using a stolen licence which the gang must have believed was on an RUC watchlist; • Yet all the while possessed the confidence to proceed without any high-level protection from the BSS. It is unlikely this is what happened. On the other hand, the highly secretive Military Reconnaissance Force (MRF) of the British Army had the nerve, skill and high-level protection in place to undertake just such an operation. The MRF was literally above the law. It was a sprawling organisation established by Brigadier Frank Kitson in 1971 to engage in agent-recruitment; surveillance; drive-by shootings (deploying the type of weapons the IRA were known to carry); laundry collection, to detect the residue of explosives on clothing; and even brothel management, to collect gossip and obtain blackmail material. It had access to loyalist agents recruited by the British Army and M15. Stealing vehicles and hiding them at its Palace Barracks HQ for use later was one of its known practices. The MRF could easily have arranged for the details about Fleming’s vehicle and licence to have been erased from the RUC watch lists. With this backing, the loyalist gang that bombed Dublin (or at least some of them) would have enjoyed the confidence to hire the cars and drive them to Dublin.   Albert Ginger Baker Albert Ginger Baker, an alleged British Army deserter, who joined the UDA in the early 1970, ticked all the boxes as an MRF agent. His family have claimed that he was involved in the 1972 bombings. In 1976 the Sunday World published an article exposing his links to a ‘Captain Bunty’, a mysterious figure who can only have been his handler. The pair met regularly in a Belfast coffee bar. Baker was involved in a string of gruesome sectarian murders in Belfast. During one of them, James Patrick McCartan, a 22-year-old forklifttruck driver, was stripped naked, hung up by his ankles and punched, kicked and beaten with a pickshaft, while a dagger was used to stab him in the hands and thigh over 200 times. He was threatened with castration and dropped head first from the ceiling. Eventually one of Baker’s UDA superiors gave him a pistol and told him to kill McCartan. Baker put a hood over his head, and blasted into his skull three times. A grenade Baker’s gang used in another attack was standard British Army issue, which raises questions about how they acquired it. It is doubtful the prospect of bombing Dublin could have troubled the conscience of those in the BSS who ultimately controlled men like Baker. Baker suffered some sort of a crisis in 1973, and fled to England where he confessed to a string of sectarian murders to the police in Warminster, in Wiltshire. As far as the BSS was concerned, some rather nasty cats were now peeping out of the bag. Damage limitation became the order of the day. Hence, while Baker was convicted and sent to prison in 1973, his secret link to the MRF was

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