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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
July-August 2024 17
Where is Wyman?
He ran the notorious Littlejohn brothers
who attempted to infiltrate the Official
IRA, conducted bank robberies and
petrol-bombed Garda stations
M
y book ‘The Puppet Masters,
How MI6 Masterminded
Ireland’s Deepest State
Crisis’, will be published at
the end of June. The book is
about the crimes and dirty tricks perpetrated
by the British Secret Service, MI6, in the
Republic of Ireland in the early 1970s.
Unlike most studies of British intrigue in
Ireland, it does not play out in Belfast, Derry
or South Armagh. Instead, it starts in Bray, Co
Wicklow and moves to other parts of the
Republic. The main focus falls on Patrick
Crinnion, who grew up in a cottage in Bray
which the Viscount of Powerscourt owned. He
joined the Gardaí in 1955. A member of Mensa,
he was soon assigned to the Special Detective
Unit (SDU) and, a few years later, transferred
to work at C3, at Garda headquarters in the
Phoenix Park. C3 was the nerve centre of
Garda intelligence. Only 11 ocers were
working at C3 at the time. This group had
access to every single report generated by the
SDU. Crinnion learned everything the SDU
knew about the IRA as he monitored the
divisions in its ranks during the 1960s, before
the movement reached a fracture point in
1969. That split produced the Ocial and
Provisional wings of the IRA.
Crinnion went on to play a considerable
role in the Arms Crisis, an event that plunged
the State into a deep crisis in 1970. It split
John Wyman was Head of MI6’s
Republic of Ireland spy network
between 1961-1972, where he
probably picked out paedophiles to
be blackmailed, and rent boys
By David Burke
Fianna Fáil for the next twenty (or more)
years and boosted the fortunes of the
Provisional IRA. Crinnion also played a
crucial part in the surveillance of Seán
MacStíofáin and others in the IRA such as
Rita O’Hare.
Early in his career at C3, Crinnion was
recruited by another Garda to become a
British agent. Crinnion’s spy handler was a
man called John Wyman, who ran MI6’s
network in the Republic of Ireland during
the 1960s and early 1970s. The Garda knew
about the older Garda agent who recruited
Crinnion but he was never arrested and is
now dead.
John Wyman of MI6 may still be alive. He
was a ruthless amoral character. He
committed multiple crimes in the Republic
during his career as a spy. He ran the
notorious Littlejohn brothers who attempted
to infiltrate the Ocial IRA, conducted bank
robberies and petrol-bombed Garda
stations to push the Irish government into
enacting anti-IRA legislation. Wyman was
in Dublin on the night of the 1 December
1972 bombings that ensured the
John Wymn seen here on
the left.
Kenneth Littlejohn, n MI6 gent who ws
sent to Irelnd to infiltrte the Officil IRA.
NEWS
18 July-August 2024
amendment to the Oences Against the
State Act was passed by Dáil Éireann. There
is a body of evidence which points to British
sponsorship of that atrocity. I cover it in the
book. Two men were murdered that night.
While I found out what happened to
Patrick Crinnion after his disappearance in
1973, there was less information to be
fished out about Wyman’s plight. This is
not particularly surprising as what Wyman
did in Ireland was so reprehensible – even
by MI6 standards – that I imagine his
colleagues were thoroughly embarrassed
by his activities and rarely spoke about
him.
Nonetheless, I managed to cobble
together some details about his later
career. I placed these titbits in one of the
last chapters of ‘The Puppet Masters’,
along with some speculation as to what
Wyman might have done in the Republic
while not directly involved in the handling
of Crinnion and the Littlejohn brothers.
This chapter, which was omitted form the
book, is published below. It may be of
assistance to point out that Sir Maurice
Oldfield was the Chief of MI6. Anthony
Cavendish, another MI6 ocer, was his
best friend.
Maurice Oldfield’s close friend, Anthony
Cavendish, described how MI6 used
children in entrapment operations in his
book on MI6:
“Then there is the [foreign] agent who is
set up for blackmail from the beginning. The
groundwork having been laid and the agent
having been photographed in bed with a
small boy or his boss’s wife, is then forced
to provide information”.
Unless he bucked the revolting MI6 trend,
Wyman would have engaged in sexual
blackmail in the Republic before he was
arrested by the SDU.
Bernie Silver was an infamous Soho pimp
and gangster. He set up a number of
brothels in Belfast for the MRF, including
‘the Gemini’. When Silver was put on trial for
murder in London, Chief Superintendent
Kenneth Etheridge, the deputy head of
Scotland Yard’s Fraud Squad, spoke up in
his favour, stating that he had been of
assistance in finding evidence about the
death of three Scottish soldiers in Belfast.
What Etheridge did not spell out was that
the information surfaced because of the
blackmail of a patron at the Gemini.
Silver’s partner in criminality, Frank
Mifsud, moved to Dublin. Since the
publication of ‘An Enemy of the Crown’, in
2022, featuring an account of Mifsud’s
career, evidence has emerged of his attempt
to ingratiate himself with the IRA, a further
indication that he was an asset of MI6. It is
unlikely that Oldfield did not ask him for
help in sexual blackmail operations in the
Republic.
The most repulsive MI5 and MI6 operation
of the Troubles involved the abuse of
children at Kincora Boys Home in Belfast.
Kincora was only one part of a far wider
paedophile network that stretched across
the border. At least one boy who was
ensnared by the paedophile gang that
swirled around Kincora had been taken to
the Republic. The incident took place in
1973, i.e., after Wyman had left the country.
However, the Kincora operation had been
up and running since at least 1971. The
child was referred to as Resident 18 (R18) in
the Hughes Report of 1984 into Kincora.
R18, an orphan, was born in May 1962. He
was adopted but his placement was
unsuccessful and he was taken back into
care. At some stage in either 1973 or 1974,
when he was still eleven, he was taken to
Dublin to be abused. The Hughes Report did
not identify who took him to the city, or who
abused him there. All that it reveals is that
he was required to perform oral sex on a
man in a cinema toilet.
Wyman ran MI6’s network in Ireland
If boys from Belfast were trafficked to
the Republic during that time, to ensnare
paedophile targets in the Republic, Wyman,
as head of MI6 field operations in Ireland,
not only knew about it, but probably picked
out the paedophiles who were to be the
subject of the blackmail operation here
Sir Murice Oldfield, Deputy Chief of MI6,
1964 -1973; Chief, 1973-1978; Co-ordinor
of Securiy nd Inelligence of Norhern
Irelnd, 1979-80.
Mrgret Thtcher nd Anthony Cvendish
July-August 2024 19
during the period 1961 to December 1972.
If boys from Belfast were tracked to the
Republic during that time, to ensnare
paedophile targets in the Republic, Wyman
not only knew about it, but probably picked
out the paedophiles who were to be the
subject of the blackmail operation here.
Wyman probably also recruited the ‘rent
boys’ who provided their services from
public toilets in the centre of Dublin, at the
Phoenix Park, and elsewhere, for MI6
blackmail operations.
At least two TDs of this era have been
associated with the abuse of children.
Question marks hang over others. IRA
paramilitaries have also been implicated in
this sort of abuse.
Some Kincora boys were brought to the
late Lord Rosse of Birr Castle, Co. Oaly in
the 1970s. In addition, Joe Mains, who ran
Kincora, drove boys to Lord Louis
Mountbatten at his summer holiday home,
Classiebawn, Co. Sligo.
The vice ring also preyed on children at
the Freemason School in County Dublin
which was located on lands now owned by
University College Dublin. One British
ambassador, Sir Gilbert Laithwaite, abused
boys from the school.
An ocial from HQNI who knew about
William McGrath, another of the abusive
sta at Kincora, has stated that he had “a
special association with Dublin. There were
also strong rumours that he had been
involved in some paedophile activity in the
Irish Republic”. McGrath probably abused
boys at the Freemason school too.
By the time John Wyman returned to
London in February 1973, Maurice Oldfield
was in charge of MI6. One can assume he
was given a hero’s welcome when he was
brought back to Century House, the HQ of
MI6 in London. With his considerable
knowledge of Ireland, Wyman is believed to
have remained in the employment of MI6.
Oldfield retired as MI6 chief in 1978. The
following year he was appointed as
Co-ordinator of Security and Intelligence of
Northern Ireland by Margaret Thatcher.
There were rumours in Republican circles
that Oldfield brought John Wyman, now
forty-two, back to Northern Ireland with
him. If true, this was an astonishing decision
by Oldfield. The move placed Wyman’s life
in grave danger.
The threat to Wyman was a longstanding
one. Kenneth Littlejohn [an MI6 agent] had
provided Wyman with a warning, in 1972,
that the IRA was aware that a man answering
to Wyman’s description had been visiting
Belfast pubs and that it was their intention
to kill him.
The photographs of Wyman which had
been taken outside the Special Criminal
Court were approximately seven years old
at that time. So he was probably still
recognisable from them.
Assuming that Oldfield brought Wyman
back to Ireland – as IRA sources have
suggested – Oldfield must have had a
compelling reason to do so. What might it
have been?
The biggest headache facing Oldfield was
that the sordid Kincora Boys Home child sex
abuse scandal which he had exploited in the
early 1970s, was about to erupt. Too many
people knew about it. A boy called Stephen
Waring had committed suicide in 1977 after
being abused by VIPs including Lord Louis
Mountbatten; social workers were aware of
ongoing abuse; the RUC had been told
about the scandal by a variety of sources.
In 2022, the Police Ombudsman of NI
(PONI) released the latest report about the
Kincora scandal. It was made in response to
criticisms by seven former Kincora residents
about complaints of abuse at the home
which had been ignored by the force.
The PONI report confirmed that former
RUC “ocers failed in their duty to the
victims of Kincora because they did not act
on the information provided to them during
the 1973–1976 period”.
Returning to 1979, if the Kincora operation
was to be exposed, it would reveal a raft of
crimes including child abuse, blackmail and
collusion with Loyalist killing gangs. Wyman
was the ideal man for Oldfield to have at his
side to keep the lid on the scandal as he had
probably played a part in the wretched
operation.
The Kincora scandal erupted while
Oldfield was still in Northern Ireland. The
Irish Independent exposed it on the front
page in January 1980. Three of the sta at
the home were arrested and received short
prison sentences at the end of 1981.
A number of suicides and murders took
place during the early stages of the Kincora
cover-up. One of the victims was John
McKeague, a Loyalist paramilitary who had
become a British agent. Shortly before his
assassination by British agents in the INLA,
McKeague had threatened to expose what
he knew about the Kincora operation.
In 1980, MI5 (which is attached to the
Home Oce) carried out an inquiry into
Oldfield, after the spymaster was caught
lying about his homosexuality and was
deemed a security risk. Oldfield was also
exposed as an abuser of ‘rent boys’, i.e.,
under-age male prostitutes. This brought
about the eective end of his career. He
died the following year.
Many of these events became public
knowledge in 1987 after Margaret Thatcher
outlined details about Oldfield’s sexuality
in the House of Commons.
MI6 reviewed their files relating to
Oldfield in 2011. According to the Hart
Report of 2017, ‘Ocer G’ of MI6 “examined
four ring binders with material relating to Sir
Maurice Oldfield, including the 1980 MI5
investigation”. Officer G proceeded to
describe a “relationship” Oldfield had “had
with Kincora boys’ home (KBH) in Belfast”.
Oldfield was linked to Kincora “through his
friendship with the KBH Head”.
British intelligence sources revealed to
the late Paddy Hayes, author of a book on
Dame Daphne Park of MI6, that Wyman was
alive at least during the first decade of the
new millennium.
Some Kincora boys were brought to the
late Lord Rosse of Birr Castle, County
Offaly in the 1970s. In addition, Joe Mains,
who ran Kincora, drove boys to Lord Louis
Mountbatten at Classiebawn. The vice ring
also preyed on children at the Freemason
School in Dublin.
