Intelligence on IRA
Richard Bourke
The quality of the intelligence assembled by the British on the Provisional IRA by November 1972 can now be assessed from the evidence of a secret dossier conveyed to the Irish authorities in April 1973.
The dossier was passed on to the Taoiseach of the day, Mr Liam Cosgrave, in person, in an effort to encourage the Republic to co-operate with British security demands.
What the sheer volume of information makes clear is the extent to which the Provisionals had been either penetrated by their enemies or betrayed by multiple informers within their ranks.
The dossier provides an elaborate account of IRA units stationed along the Border, North and South. Some of the members named currently hold positions in Sinn Féin.
After Operation Motorman, the IRA had been virtually routed in its urban strongholds, according to the British, and forced to withdraw to the Border to launch attacks in Britain and Northern Ireland.
This dossier, compiled by British army headquarters at Lisburn in conjunction with the RUC, provides a list of major IRA personalities involved in Border operations (including their addresses, occupations and dates of birth).
It also provides statistics giving figures for all incidents attributable to Provisional active service units. Finally, it supplies a map setting out each unit's sphere of operation, and a list of bases used by IRA personnel operating out of Monaghan.
In listing major IRA personalities, the dossier also provides an assessment of key figures in the movement. The former vice-president of Sinn Féin, Dáithí Ó Conaill [he was referred to as David O'Connell in the dossier] is one example: "Holds a senior position on the Provisional Army Council. . . considered to be one of the leading political 'brains' of the Provisional IRA."
A separate file detailing unauthorised contacts between Ó Conaill and a retired British army general, Sir John Hackett, corroborates the British appreciation of Ó Conaill as a dove inside the movement.
But whatever Ó Conaill's predilections, he was in a position, during a previous conversation with Hackett, to ask the general for an assessment of the likely strategic impact on the British government of a bomb attack on Whitehall.
That conversation took place on March 7th. The next day, the Provisional IRA detonated car bombs at the Old Bailey and the Ministry of Agriculture building in London. When news of Hackett's dealings with Ó Conaill reached the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, William Whitelaw, the British minister was dismayed by the likely public reaction to this freelance interaction with the IRA. According to Whitelaw, Hackett would be seen as "helping the Queen's enemies. Not a good position for a general". In any case, such contact was a waste of time in Whitelaw's judgement: "O'Connell will probably let him down as he did me."
The wavering dovishness of Ó Conaill is contrasted with the assessment of the former IRA chief of staff, Seán Mac Stiofáin, given in a number of files available under the current release.
A telegram sent in May from the British ambassador in Dublin to the Foreign Office in London reports a conversation with the secretary of the Irish Labour party, Mr Brendan Halligan, betraying uncertainty inside the Irish government about how to handle MacStiofáin on his release from custody in the South, due the following week.
Mr Des O'Malley, minister for justice under Taoiseach Jack Lynch, is presented as having originally planned to deport MacStiofáin to the UK upon his release. But now that the time for a decision had arrived, the Cosgrave government was torn between re-arresting MacStiofáin under the Offences Against the State Act and allowing him to walk free. Some ministers were pushing for the latter option "in the hope. . . that this would bring about major splits. . . in the Provisional leadership".
On no account, however, was Ó Conaill to be arrested "on any charge", minister for justice, Mr Patrick Cooney is alleged to have decreed, since he represented the best chance for moderation prevailing among the Provisionals. "Irish ministers are well aware of the deep rift which exists between MacStiofáin on the one hand. . . and O'Connell on the other."
The presentation of Mac Stiofáin as incorrigibly militant (in speech if not in deed) is echoed throughout the British army dossier on the Provisional IRA. It is claimed that the activity of IRA Border units increased noticeably after visits from MacStiofáin. He is alleged to have been "particularly pleased" by the actions of the Donegal IRA active service unit based at Lifford in burning Strabane Town Hall.
Sinn Féin chief negotiator and Northern Ireland MLA, Mr Martin McGuinness, also appears in the dossier. He is identified as the officer commanding on the Derry command staff, based at Buncrana, Co Donegal, since the Provisionals were ousted from the cities by the British army.
The Buncrana unit is identified as "a centre for the supply of explosives". Domiciled in caravans and holiday cottages near the Donegal border, the Derry IRA is alleged to have launched explosive attacks on its home town with members transporting ready-made bombs into the city centre from their Southern Irish exile. Recent attacks by the Buncrana unit were alleged to have included a car bomb at a Derry bakery on October 12th, 1972, and two bombs at a Border Customs post on October 2nd and 10th 1972.
Much of the information contained in the dossier was collected during the interrogation of IRA suspects. Confirmation of the organisation of a key Dundalk unit of the IRA, for instance, "was provided by the recent conviction and imprisonment by the Special Criminal Court in Dublin" of Patrick Hamill, Hugh Mullen, Brendan Murray and Martin McElligott. Other alleged members of the Provisional IRA with a starring role in the British dossier include one supposed to have been operating out of Dundalk; another from Cork, "an ingenious and ruthless bomb-maker"; the director of operations for the Armagh Brigade; a member "known to have been involved in recent. . . explosions" and the alleged quartermaster of the Bundoran unit.