Call
me a party pooper if you like but watching the back
and forth between the Brits and the Provos recently
I was struck by an intriguing thought. In return
for its July 28th statement promising to be peaceful
democrats from now on and then decommissioning its
guns, the IRA and Sinn Fein leadership got all sorts
of goodies in return from Tony Blair. But there
was one big item missing. Why, I wondered?
The scrapping of the Royal Irish Regiment, a free
hand to defraud the electoral register, the dismantling
of British Army observation posts in South Armagh
and West Belfast were all there in the list. So
too, by the absence of any message to the contrary,
was perhaps the sweetest sweetener of all - the
IRA could keep the twenty-six million quid it stole
from the Northern Bank.
But where was the Pat Finucane inquiry? Whatever
happened to the Republican demand that this seamy
example of British collusion with Loyalist killer
gangs be exposed to the healthy light of proper
public scrutiny?
Now Luby may be jumping the gun here and there is
a part of the deal between P O'Neill and Downing
Street yet to be announced and that a British promise
not to gag the Finucane inquiry will be in it. But
if it is then it is being kept as tightly guarded
a secret as the methods used by General de Chastelain
to put the IRA's Semtex beyond use.
Now if I was Gerry Adams and I had managed to screw
a proper inquiry into the Finucane killing out of
Tony Blair and had, in the process, delivered a
sharp kick between the legs to all those nasty securocrats
in MI5 and British Military Intelligence, I wouldn't
be slow in making sure that my people knew all about
it. Especially if I was about to decommission all
those piles of AK-47's and heavy machine-guns that
I'd told them I would never, ever, ever, ever let
go.
But there hasn't been a peep out the Great Bearded
One, nor from any of the legion of spin-doctors
who faithfully churn out the party message week
after week in places like The Irish News, Andytown
News and Daily Ireland. Not a peep.
In such circumstances it is difficult not to conclude
that the reason they are all so quiet is that there
is no deal on the Finucane inquiry and that if there
ever is a tribunal it will be the truncated and
emasculated one which suits MI5 and all the spooks
who were party to the recruitment and deployment
of Brian Nelson, the UDA intelligence chief and
double agent.
Now call me a party pooper if you like but why do
I have a nasty suspicion that this suits not just
British Intelligence but also our friend P O'Neill
and his colleagues?
Well one reason is explained by some of those who
are involved in the campaign to expose the truth
about Pat Finucane's killing. These people say that
if you want something done, say pressure put on
this or that bureaucrat to meet someone, then you
are wasting your time asking Sinn Fein to do it.
Far better, they say, to go to the SDLP. Sinn Fein's
rhetoric about Pat Finucane is as strong and stirring
as anybody's but their delivery....well it just
isn't there when it should be.
Another reason why the dark thought occurs is because
of some interesting coincidences and inconsistencies
that crop up in the story of Brian Nelson and his
role as a double agent.
The first is that the Force Research Unit (FRU)
which, with MI5's assistance, recruited him and
then propelled him speedily upwards to the top of
the UDA intelligence tree brought him back from
Germany to Belfast in 1987 to begin his work. That
just happened to be the year in which Gerry Adams
began reaching out secretly to the British and Irish
governments with startling proposals, put together
with senior Catholic Church clerics, for a peace
process that bore a striking resemblance to the
peace process that actually took place a few years
later.
The public was given two stories to explain why
British Intelligence had recruited Brian Nelson
and neither added up. One was that Nelson and 'D'
Coy of the UDA, armed with all the intelligence
on the Provos sitting in FRU and MI5 filing cabinets,
would cut a swathe through the IRA's upper reaches
in a campaign of devastatingly accurate assassination.
Well the track record shows something very different,
if also depressingly and squalidly familiar. Instead
of targetting IRA leadership figures, Nelson and
the UDA settled for mostly ordinary Catholics, only
some of whom - as many working class Belfast Catholics
do - had family links to the IRA or INLA. Indeed
the killing of Pat Finucane, a high profile defence
lawyer specialising in IRA clients who had brothers
in the Belfast and national leadership of the IRA
was the only Nelson-FRU operation that came near
a top target.
The other explanation for Nelson's recruitment,
given by the FRU CO, Colonel 'J' at Nelson's trial,
was that his job was to save lives. Well that doesn't
stack up either. Col 'J' claimed scores of people
had been saved by Nelson's information but the various
inquiries into collusion have concluded that in
actual fact only two people can thank Brian Nelson
for saving their lives. The identity of those two
may give a clue as to why a beefed up Finucane inquiry
was noticably absent from the list of recent British
concessions to the Provos.
One of those spared was Freddie Scappaticci the
now notorious double agent who worked inside the
Provos' spycatcher unity, the Security Department.
When Brian Nelson told his handlers that one of
their most precious assets had been targetted they
discreetly steered him and the UDA away from Scap
and towards a hapless and elderly ex-IRA man, Francis
Notarantonio (a coincidence that he also was of
Italian background?) who was duly shot dead in his
bed.
One of the real purposes of the operation then appears
to have been the need to get advance knowledge of
any UDA plans to bump off valuable spies working
for the British inside the IRA. (One can only speculate
as to whether a similar arrangement had been contrived
inside the UVF)
The other person who lived on thanks to Nelson was
Gerry Adams. Now no-one has ever suggested, least
of all Luby, that Adams was also an informer but
there were very good reasons nonetheless why British
intelligence would rather keep him alive than see
him dead.
British intelligence must have known about the Adams
peace process approach to Secretary of State Tom
King. While the British were in two minds about
Adams' real intentions it would have been surprising
had the spooks in FRU and MI5 not decided that it
would be in their interests to see where he was
going to go with all this peace stuff - all sorts
of interesting and intriguing possibilities might
open up.
So when Nelson told his handlers of a UDA plot to
kill Adams by planting a limpet mine on the roof
of his car - the only non-armoured part of the vehicle
- as Adams left the Housing Executive's offices
in downtown Belfast the Brits intervened to save
him and the limpet mine was discovered in a British
Army/RUC raid. Adams lived on to deliver the ceasefires
and ultimately full IRA decommissioning.
It is inconceivable that any proper and thorough
investigation of Pat Finucane's death and Brian
Nelson's role would not only have to explore the
Scappaticci affair but also why Adams' life was
spared and that of Pat Finucane was not. Remember
as well that Finucane's brother would later become
a key member of a group of senior Belfast Brigade
staff officers, which included OC Brian Gillen,
who would oppose Adams' peace strategy.
It is not difficult then to work out why it is not
just MI5, the FRU and the rest of British spookdom
who want only a castrated inquiry into Pat Finucane's
death but also the IRA. The affair also sheds a
new and different light on those hoary Sinn Fein
allegations of British securocrats working to undo
Gerry and the lads. The truth might well be a lot
different.
