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Transcript: Radio Free Eireann interviews Liam Clarke about his recent article on informers
Radio Free Éireann
WBAI Radio 99.5 FM Pacifica Radio
New York City
Saturday 6 April 2013

John McDonagh (JM) and Martin Galvin (MG) interview via telephone from Belfast Liam Clarke, (LC), Political Editor for The Belfast Telegraph newspaper.

(begins 1:16PM)


JM: This is from The Belfast Telegraph: (John reads from Liam's article)

The £450,000 figure is paid to those who inform on the loyalist paramilitaries and criminal gangs, two groups who are not judged a threat to UK national security. This is the relatively clean end of the business. Such informers are now termed Covert Human Intelligence Sources (CHISes), they have legal rights and their handling is strictly regulated.

The targets don't include dissident republicans – they are generally handled by MI5 who pay bigger bucks for information and are less bound by rules and regulations. That was also the way with the old RUC Special Branch whose budget for paramilitary agents was doled out by MI5 from secret funds. MI5 also set the intelligence priorities.

With local control of policing, and the scrutiny that brought to PSNI operations through the Ombudsman and Policing Board, the middle-man was removed. MI5 took direct control of republican informants in 2007, except the odd one who might be run by the police or customs to combat fuel laundering and smuggling.

The importance of MI5's Northern Ireland role is shown by the fact that it shares Thames House in London with the Northern Ireland Office.

A dinner was held to mark the handover. At the gathering, Chris Albiston, former head of RUC Special Branch, told 300 guests that "in an attempt to belittle your efforts and to rewrite history, the word 'collusion' has been bandied about in a disgraceful, irresponsible and potentially libellous fashion".

He added that some members of the power-sharing Executive "would really not be too keen on any public revelations of the truth about the last 35 years".

Was this intelligence insider hinting that agents of influence had helped steer the peace process which led to the Good Friday Agreement?

The list of influential republicans now confirmed as Troubles- era intelligence agents is very long, so let's take just three examples. Freddie Scappaticci headed the IRA's internal security department responsible for rooting out other agents but reported everything to the British Army who codenamed him Stakeknife. Willie Carlin, a former British soldier, argued enthusiastically for peace within Derry Sinn Fein and reported all he heard to intelligence handlers. Denis Donaldson first ran Sinn Fein's operations in America and later managed their office in Stormont.

(John now begins interview)

The author of that piece is Liam Clarke and he's the Political Editor of The Belfast Telegraph. Liam, maybe you could tell us what was this get-together? Everyone seems to get together for the intelligence agencies in London. What was it about?

LC: Yeah, but it was actually up in Belfast. It was held I think in a hotel near Stormont. This was whenever they were handing over basically that MI5 were taking control of information gathering that bore them national security of the UK; now for them that would be dissident Republicans and also if there was any, for instance, Middle Eastern-based group that ever wanted to use Belfast as a base.

They took control of that and part of the reason was that they didn't want to be under...the British State wasn't prepared for that to be under the scrutiny of people like the Police Ombudsman, the Policing Board, local administration at Stormont-any more than they would have given say those bodies control of the British Army. This was central state business. And Chris Albiston addressed that meeting (and he gave the dinner) and he made it certainly clear that in his view that the methods that had been used by RUC Special Branch would be continued and would become a model in other areas of conflict.

JM: What I like about it in one of the quotes: they do not want the re-writing of history. I mean, from the Republican end - every week here in New York we're trying to counter the re-write of the likes of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, who you wrote his biography on. I mean you can't even get Gerry Adams to admit that he was in the IRA. Martin McGuinness says that he quit the IRA at an early stage.

But yet you have the history of them meeting with British security forces...the history of them meeting to negotiate peace processes, ceasefires, handing over of weapons...So what is it on the MI5 front that they don't want re-written?

LC: What? With Chris Albiston saying he doesn't want the re-writing of history?

Well I think he's just basically just defending the role of Special Branch and saying he doesn't want them portrayed as the bad guy. He's saying that they held the line and so on.

But he's also throwing out the hint there as in that speech he also made reference to the Executive at Stormont and said that everybody knew it was vulnerable and there were many people there who wouldn't want the truth about the last thirty-five years to come out.

I suppose he may have been thinking about the number of informants that were in the Republican Movement. Perhaps he was thinking of other figures like Denis Donaldson, we can't say that (as) we can't be sure who are still in the Stormont apparatus but he was certainly thinking of the people that surrounded them. And he may have also been thinking of the degree of contact that there was between the Sinn Féin leadership and the British authorities, alot of which has now come out and seems okay because it led to the peace process but might have caused a fuss at the time.

JM: Now at the end of the article you have: Denis Donaldson first ran Sinn Féin's operations in America and later managed their office in Stormont.

But prior to that Denis Donaldson had been to Syria, he had been to Lebanon on behalf of the Republican Movement...I don't know if you want to say Sinn Féin or the IRA...he was a top man within the Republican Movement long before he came to New York because that's what gave him, Liam, the credence.

When he came to New York, and that had to do with the FBI doing a raid on The Irish People office in Upper Manhattan where they busted in, I was there that day, and they took Hugh Feeney away, which left a vacuum in New York for Denis Donaldson to come out.

And that's how that whole process got started. So I would have to believe the FBI, working in conjunction with MI5, wanted to get their man out from The Six Counties, get over to New York and do what he had to do here.

LC: Well it's quite possible that they wanted to move him around to where they thought he would have been of most use.

If you remember the whole background to the outing of Denis Donaldson as an informant was quite complex. But at one stage the police were investigating a Sinn Féin spy-ring in Stormont and they arrested Denis Donaldson as part of that. And most people, most analysts would say well that was a sign that perhaps he hadn't told them everything and they were prepared to throw him to the wolves.

But eventually the charges were dropped. If you remember when he was on trial Brian Keenan, the Beirut hostage, appeared as a character witness for him. (Brian Keenan: an Irish man who was kidnapped in Beirut and kept in a cellar for some years) and he said that Denis Donaldson was one of the few people to come out and he negotiated with the militias to try to get him out. Now you think about him using up all/any brownie points that Sinn Féin have in the Middle East and also reporting it all back to British intelligence, I mean...that's a very interesting situation....I mean there's a making of a movie in this.

JM : Well Liam, I can tell you when I used to hang out with Denis up in the Bronx he would regale us of stories of his world travels, and about the time he did meet with Hezbollah and going through the Bekaa Valley and reporting about what was going on (with) Terence Waite being held hostage. He would also tell about the time he landed in Damascus trying to meet there for buying weapons and working with the Syrian government to do something for the Republican Movement. And you know...we were thinking...ah these are nice little stories being told in the wee hours of the morning up in the Bronx and nobody else would ever hear these stories when here he is when he was coming back: this is who I met with in the Syrian government, here's who I met with Hezbollah, here's who I met with here...and they would say...well that was a good job now we're going to send you over to New York and you've got to meet with all these other people and report back to us.

I mean, he had an unbelievable world history, but... the thing about it is, no matter who complained about Denis, and with us in the studio is Martin Galvin. There was people in this country that complained about Denis, Gabriel Megahey was one, Martin Galvin was another. It meant nothing when you called up or you went over to Ireland to say: listen, there's alot of people in New York (who) do not like Denis Donaldson...we were told: who are you in New York to tell us what to do? This is our man in New York. And you deal with him. And he is our point man in New York. I'm gonna have Martin just talk about that...go ahead, Martin.

MG: What had happened with Denis...Brian MacDonald had come out in 1989. Brian from Clones worked with Irish Northern Aid for a year. He did an exceptional job, an outstanding job. During that period Brendan Hughes had come to the United States on a fund raising tour and had gotten a great deal of money and support.

We were also in the process of building up to a tenth anniversary of the Hunger Strike of 1981. Elizabeth O'Hara who lived here was not only trying to put together a major event that she was going to work to do through Irish Northern Aid but also was attracting support for a film that would be on that.

Denis came out to replace Brian MacDonald. Denis subverted all of that work – he was a complete disaster. And whenever we went back and said: look this guy - there's some problems – something wrong with him. He's able to use the phone, identify himself over the phone, as somebody who had been a political prisoner and still is in the United States with apparently no problems. And in fact on one occasion, the FBI came into a bar, The Phoenix Bar, and Denis bought them a round of drinks as they asked people if they knew me and asked for information about me. And whenever we went back and talked to people in Ireland we were told that Denis had impeccable Army credentials and that no one could question his loyalties and ability.

Hugh Feeney then came out after Denis, undid alot of the damage that Denis had done, and as John has just explained Hugh Feeney then got arrested at The Irish People office and who comes out again but Denis Donaldson. So we always felt that Denis was being put in that position in New York for strategic reasons. He was being sent here at the behest or in cooperation with the British set out to do that work and that's why he was allowed to remain here. And while others who did a good job, like Hugh Feeney, were being arrested and sent back to make way for Denis to come back.

JM: Well Liam, that's a little bit of the history out here in New York and our dealings with Denis that he couldn't be shifted for love or money because his hooks were Gerry Adams back in Belfast.

LC: He obviously led a charmed life.

I mean it's just interesting listening to what Martin said there at the same time what he was doing was what Sinn Féin wanted and it may have what the British wanted; but it was possible for him to serve two masters.

And the other, just another little thing about his charmed life if you remember on one occasion he was stopped with Blue Kelly at Orly Airport by the French authorities and he told them he'd just been to a training camp in Lebanon and they sent him on his way. I mean...that made the papers at the time...they let him continue his journey...I mean that's very lucky, isn't it?

JM: Little bit more than luck going there!

MG: He also...if you go to Ireland...for example, Gerry McGeough was being pushed to be a candidate at one time within Sinn Féin and Denis Doanldson turns up to get him knocked out, get somebody else put in and then Gerry McGeough, when he runs as an independent, gets arrested.

There's other members, people, who were prominent members of Sinn Féin who were very Republican minded...who were eliminated. Denis got in.

We have no idea. There's a number of different places where he surfaced. But we have no idea about other things that he gave up of a military nature, that he heard about, learned about. People would have trusted him, spoke in front of him.

When you do an article as you did about the money that the British spent that they might consider it well spent...it certainly was well spent in terms of paying the traitor Denis Donaldson for the work that he did for Britain to undermine Irish Republicans and betray them.

LC: Another point I'd make, and this could be just a speculative one, if you look at British agents, say Martin McGartland or Raymond Gilmour that have emerged who basically told the police everything they knew, very quickly the IRA identified them as such and you know they'd maybe would run for a few years and then they'd be caught or they'd have to get out.

But he ran for twenty years and that would maybe suggest that he didn't pass on quite all that he knew, that he was somehow he was playing both sides to some degree. It's very hard to survive ten-twenty years without being tumbled.

And it's interesting: the story about buying drinks for the FBI. I mean that's the sort thing of which now that we know he's an agent it looks very funny but I mean it's the sort of thing that could have been just another of his wonderful stories...what chutzpah he showed. I mean, they told stories like that about Michael Collins at roadblocks and so on but we see it now in a different framework.

JM: Now Liam, you have Gerry Adams, he's calling for a Truth and Reconciliation Committee.

Here's a man that won't even admit that he was in the IRA and would he ever go before and say: Listen: What did you know of Denis Donaldson? Why did you pick him to come out to New York? Why did you pick him to go to Lebanon, to Syria, know all about that was going on in Libya...knew every facet of the Irish Republican Movement. And it's just unbelievable when you read in the papers he's down now in Dublin talking about a Truth and Reconciliation Committee when he can't even admit to certain basic facts because it would be very interesting if everyone did sit down at some committee like they did down in South Africa and admit to what they did during the last thirty or forty years.

LC: Well it would of course but the difference was in South Africa you got an amnesty...if you admitted then you were let off...and we haven't got an agreement for that in Ireland. For instance, Martin McGuinness admits being in the IRA up to the point when he was last convicted of it in '73.

Gerry Adams never admits being in it because he was never convicted of it and if he did admit it you would have Unionist calling for him to be charged. So I think that the chances of people coming and fessing up are very slim.

And I think possibly even for people of that seniority if you did have an amnesty and you'd say: well, yes it'll all be excused, they'll be no charges and we'll put it in the past, they wouldn't want to talk in detail about what they did it would cause political embarrassment at this stage so I think the chances of his Truth and Reconciliation Commission are very slim.

You remember at the Bloody Sunday Tribunal: Martin McGuinness would have had the opportunity to say quite alot that he couldn't have been charged with but he was quite restricted in what he said. He kept it very narrowly focused just to the day of Bloody Sunday really.

JM: Liam, do you foresee any time in the future some leaks to the newspapers (hopefully to you) about people that are sitting in Stormont who were informers or gave information out because in the article he sort of hints at: don't push it too much fellas because we'll release some information to the papers and expose what you did during that time.

LC: Well I mean as I said to you at the start I don't know of anybody who is an informant in Stormont. I mean there's been different rumours and so on but actually you don't know. But I would imagine alot of the history of this period will come out eventually but how long it will take I don't know. People do tend to write memoirs (and) things tend to emerge but some times not for a generation. And other things are kept secret, I mean, there were two...weren't there two informants in 1916 “Chalk” and “Granite”? And we're still not sure who they are, we've just got their code names.

JM: And do you think that we have to wait on the papers that are released thirty years afterwards and that people can go through the archives?

LC: That'll not be in them, John, they'll not release that.

The British never release the names of agents and I think probably most countries are the same with intelligence services because they don't want to cause any possible embarrassment to the sentence and so on. I remember one thing that was raised during the...when the Soviet Union was still going on...they wouldn't say who'd been their agents in Czarist Russia; and there's been a Soviet Union in between and now there's a new state.

They want to avoid embarrassment to reputations, to family all that sort of thing. So they won't come out in Thirty Years papers. But they may come out in some other way.

JM: Well Liam after Denis Donaldson admitted at a press conference down in Dublin that he had worked for MI5 and British intelligence, for whatever reason he was debriefed by the IRA - they would have been taking notes, finding out what he did - and he must have been given some assurances that he could move to Co. Donegal which is, to put it mildly, a fairly Republican county, and to live in a cottage there and not very long after someone busted open the door and blew his head away with a shotgun.

And it seems that the Guards, when they went in there to do autopsy and to collect forensic, they found a journal that he was writing that still hasn't been put out to the media and his family are looking for why Denis had that press conference and what happened in Donegal.

Can you explain maybe to our audience what has happened? I think there's been about four, well ten enquiries into what's going on or what happened to Denis Donaldson and each time they've been stopped.

LC: Yes, you did get to the facts. You would think that sort of thing that might come out eventually some of the IRA people who had access to his debriefing might bring it out.

I mean clearly Denis Donaldson did know he was in danger. But it seems from all we know of him that basically he was prepared to take a chance at being killed even a quite high risk chance of being killed in order to retain some sort of contact with his family. The cottage in Donegal (where) he was taken was of course a family holiday home. So he was kind of on his own.

I imagine he got assurances from the IRA and Sinn Féin that we'll leave you alone if you tell us everything. But you can't answer for anybody else (but) you'd imagine that was the process and then he went to Donegal. Nobody else helped him, that was a family place, and he hoped to I presume build some sort of a relationship with his relatives. He didn't want to be dumped off by British intelligence in the middle of some strange city (like) Newcastle or Birmingham or somewhere where he knew nobody.

JM: But how are these inquisitions or court cases how are they being stopped...I know the family wants, particularly in the twenty-six counties, to get to the bottom of what happened and who was outing him in the intelligence service at that stage because from reading accounts Denis got a phone call saying: there's a newspaper gonna come out that you are an agent. You better take care of your business.

LC: Yes. It sounds like he was warned and he was made some sort of an offer: if you want us to take you out, you're in danger now....if you want us to take you out and re-settle you we'll do so but he obviously didn't wish to do that.

And everybody will have an interest now in preventing the full story of what he did, who he knew and so on coming out and it will be very hard to poke through that layer of secrecy. I mean, for instance the authorities won't admit he's an agent they've never done that...they'd never officially admit they'll not admit it in court. If you put a request about anything like this through Freedom of Information you'll just be told there's a complete exemption and we won't answer it. So the state can close down on those sort of things. There is an Ombudsman Inquiry still going on, a Police Ombudsman, but we'll see the outcome.

MG: Liam, when you say about embarrassment to his family: one of the two people who did question or interrogate, however you want to call it, Denis Donaldson when he was outed as a traitor was a relative of his, one of the Kearneys, Denis' daughter is married to one of the Kearneys, and it was another relative who was one of the two people in charge of doing whatever interrogation was done. And allowed him to walk out. There's a joke or a story going around, and I don't know if it's true or not, that he then put in for expense money before he left the Sinn Féin office that day to leave. So I don't know how much this interrogation was, I don't know how much questioning was done or how strongly they put it to him that they wanted to find out how much information they wanted to get from him.

But when you have a relative of yours, an in-law, doing the questioning in the office and then you get expense money afterwards it doesn't seem that that is the sort of questioning that other people who were accused of being informers went through when they were leaving.

LC: Oh certainly not. But I mean at that stage it would have been too late in the game. It would have caused tremendous political damage to Sinn Féin had he been found dumped at the side of the road or something like that. That was at the point where they couldn't do what they'd done previously. And they couldn't claim it. And just to be clear, when I was talking about embarrassment I wasn't talking particularly about the Kearney or Donaldson family I was saying the British don't disclose who their agents were even a generation later or even thirty years later. They don't give out the details because they feel they have a duty to their silence or that's the reason given.

JM: Well, Liam, thanks for coming on. That was Liam Clarke, Political Editor of The Belfast Telegraph. I have a feeling this is not going to end - and that this is going be a continuing story.

LC: I think it'll keep on and we'll keep wondering for this one for a while – it'll probably dribble out in bits and pieces.

JM: Yes. Okay. Thank you, Liam, for coming on.

Now Martin, our paths crossing at Irish Northern Aid, The Irish People - it's just amasing the people that we did come in contact (with) and meeting with Denis Donaldson and going out with Denis Donaldson. And then there was an FBI informant in David Rupert who was wired by the FBI and now I'm reading this book called Whitey Bulger, written by Kevin Cullen and Shelly Murphy who, if you listen to NPR and alot of the interviews that go on they don't get so much into Whitely Bulger's relationship with the IRA. But there is one chapter in here about how Joe Cahill - and how proud Whitey Bulger was to meet with Joe Cahill - up at a bar down in South Boston.

Now, myself and you know Joe Cahill pretty well to the extent: I drove him around alot, he was at alot of fund raisers here in the New York City area, I remember when he was arrested in Queens, he had a wig on, we tried to get the wig so we could raffle it off at one of the Irish Northern Aid functions and he was at a couple of weddings that we were at.

And Joe went around telling alot of lies particularly when he came back out during peace process. I remember I was at, there was a meeting...I think maybe at The Sheraton somewhere, and he declared in '92 that all the within ten years the country would be united and that all the prisoners would be released.

MG: He also declared in 1998 that there would be a United Ireland within five years and that it would occur before the anniversary of Robert Emmett's death, which would have been in April of 2003.

He was famous for a number of things. I know he told the Sands Family at one time that if Sinn Féin ever went back into Stormont he would leave the IRA. (That's the family of Bobby Sands, hunger striker.) And that day they saw posters in the town that not only was Sinn Féin about to go into Stormont but that Joe Cahill was one of their candidates to go back into Stormont.

There's many, many things like that. We saw him. He was actually sent out in 1998 to try and push through American support for the Stormont deal.

And one of the things that swung the vote in the Army Council for the first ceasefire, he would actually have been sent out at that time also, one of things that swung the vote for the first ceasefire was that Joe was told he could get a visa to come to the United States and to put it to people like you and like me who were questioning this who were saying...wait a second! What's going on doesn't seem like we're still striving to get a united Ireland - what it may mean was acceptance of British rule and ultimately end up in an acceptance of British rule.

Joe Cahill was a swing vote on the Army Council and he agreed, once he found out he'd get a trip to America and come back out and appear at those functions freely and make those announcements that you're talking about, about everybody getting out, a united Ireland in no time...that was what Joe Cahill was interested in.

JM: The last time I saw Joe Cahill was out in New Jersey (in) '98 that's when the peace process was being put together and Martin Ferris, who's now a TD in the twenty-six county government, they were there to support the peace process that was being proposed at that time.

Myself and Martin Galvin were there against...I can tell you it was a hostile room at The Grasshopper - about three hundred people were there, RTÉ filmed it, we got up and said this was a complete sell-out which did not go down well.

But then Rob O'Sullivan got up and he asked Martin Ferris, he said: Martin, would you be recommending that the youth of The Six Counties join the police force? He looked down with such indignation and he said: I wouldn't even dignify that with a response.

And then Joe Cahill gets up and looks around, because he had all the authority of the IRA, he was trying to intimidate us, Martin and myself, who were we to question what was going on in The Six Counties? And I'm hoping we're going to a have film clip of that that we're going to be airing here Radio Free Éireann.

MG: John, it was a tremendous night. I remember it just as being a very respectful debate....

JM: It was but you know the intimidation factor was there, and the way they treated us...and I'm saying Sinn Féin....not the audience.

MG: Well I thought it was...I was invited to the debate – Malachy McAllister was the person who set it up. And the next thing I'm reading – or being told about a story in The Irish Voice because I hadn't read it in many years, Martin is coming to sort out Martin which was Martin Ferris was coming to sort me out and humiliate me at this debate and set me straight. I actually called Malachy McAllister and asked was I being set up at this thing? What was going on?

But we went to the debate and we raised alot of things. Just the issue of: Would Sinn Féin have to endorse British constabulary? Would Republicans still be arrested? Would they end up criminalising Republican prisoners? Brutalising them? Would the constabulary boards (and) the other things that they were talking about end up as being cosmetic veneers behind which British policing could defend itself?

And we didn't go as far as we should have. If you got those quotes today they'd be calling us the Nostradamus (or the Nostradami) of what was gonna happen and we didn't go half far enough in the predictions of where this strategy would end up.

JM: Let me tell you...we were far from Nostradamus - we only looked at Irish history.

1:45 ends