Police secretly copied files stolen by the IRA from the government's main offices in Northern Ireland as part of a major anti-terrorist intelligence gathering operation, it has been claimed.
Special Branch and MI5 traced the documents which went missing from Castle Buildings, Belfast, copied them at police headquarters and then returned them to where they had been hidden by the Provisionals, according to a new book.
Security chiefs had been keeping senior republicans under surveillance as they prepared to try and trap a top IRA man in the city. But the plan had to be abandoned because of fears the Provisionals were about to move the files to another location. Names and addresses of hundreds of prison officers were included on them. Operation Torison, according to the book by BBC's Northern Ireland security editor Brian Rowan, also involved the former Secretary of State Dr John Reid signing bugging warrants.
It ended in October last year with the arrests of a number of republicans, but for months the British government had been aware the IRA was spying inside Castle Buildings where the Good Friday agreement was signed in April 1998. A senior IRA man from west Belfast who headed the Provisionals' intelligence unit, was the main target.
Three men and a woman are awaiting trial on charges in connection with the theft. The IRA also stole hundreds of files when they broke into Special Branch offices in Belfast in March 2002 They are still missing. Rowan claimed the decision to photo-copy the stolen Castle Buildings files and then leave them back to where they had been hidden was to help protect the identity of a Special Branch informer.
He said: "Spooks, spies and the Branch were all at play. They knew everything they needed to know. They had bugs in place, and unknown to its owner, they had his house under surveillance.
"This had been a long-term monitoring operation. The branch wanted the IRA's director of intelligence to fall into their net, but he stayed well clear."
The Armed Peace: Life and Death after the Ceasefires (Mainstream Publishing), £15.99, is published on Wednesday. - (PA)