Social Items

TPQ
Showing posts with label Collusion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Collusion. Show all posts
Paper Trail ✒  Secret British Army documents prove just how close its agents were to Ulster Defence Association (UDA) leaders and UDA “Romper Room” killers in the winter of 1972.

 

The previously unseen British Military Intelligence files lead families to question why the killers were not stopped long before many other Catholic civilians died at their hands.

Paper Trail has been working with a number of families whose loved ones were murdered by the UDA’s notorious G4 Romper Room killers led by Ned McCreery and British soldier Albert “Ginger” Baker in 1972.

G4 referred to Number 4 Platoon of G Company UDA in the Lower Newtownards Road area of East Belfast. In these British military files, the gang is also referred to as the Young Newtons.
Romper Rooms

They have a particularly dark space reserved in our shared history due to the terrible deaths they gave their victims in “Romper Rooms”.

The torture chambers became known as “Romper Rooms” in UDA parlance after the children’s television show and “rompering” referred to the vicious beating and torturing of victims prior to their murder.

The gang was responsible for multiple murders from the summer of 1972 to the late winter of 1973.

Continue reading @ Paper Trail.

British Soldiers, British Agents And The UDA's Romper Rooms

Brandon Sullivan ✒ I recently chanced upon a series of films on YouTube – Firing Line, with right-wing intellectual William Buckley interviewing a series of political leaders from Northern Ireland.

A 22 year old Bernadette Devlin dealt masterfully with Buckley, who later on in the interview was flanked by some Tories straight out of central casting. John Hume was asked questions by Nell McCafferty, Vincent Browne, and Kevin Myers, after the initial interview with Buckley. It was the question that Myers asked that led to me to researching a few violent days in 1974. Myers questioned Hume’s opposition to internment without trial, given that one of the alleged murderers of SDLP founding member Paddy Wilson was off the streets and in Long Kesh. This is probably a reference to John White, who later confessed to, and was convicted of, the savage double murder of Paddy Wilson and Irene Andrews.

Myers said to Hume that there was “violence yesterday” and the date he referred to was the 11th February 1974. I decided to have a look at the events of that day.

11th February 1974

The day before the Buckley/Hume interview, as reported in the Belfast Telegraph, two men armed with a sub-machine gun and a pistol leapt out of a Hillman Minx call (stolen from an RUC officer in Rathcoole the previous month), and opened fire on a car containing five Catholic civilians on their way to Abbey Meats, where they were employed. One 16 year old male died that day (Thomas ‘Tucker’ Donaghy), and wounding the other four occupants of the car, one of whom, 18 year old Margaret McErlean, died of her injuries a week later. The gunmen’s bullets also struck a car behind the intended targets, seriously injuring two young people: Marion Rafferty, and her boyfriend, Mark McGowan, who was the son of a Newtownabbey unionist councillor.

The car had been waiting for them for a period of time, reported as an hour in the contemporaneous press, and half an hour in Lost Lives. The RUC were on their way to the scene when the shooting happened, responding to a call from a security guard from Abbey Meats.

13th February 1974

The day after Buckley interviewed Hume, a meeting took place between the Northern Ireland Office and UDA leaders Andy Tyrie and Hugh David Cecil “Davy” Payne, and a senior NIO official, James Allan. Allan brought up responsibility for recent sectarian murders by loyalists. Payne and Tyrie not only denied authorising the murders, but claimed to have no idea who was responsible. Kevin Myers was not the only person thinking about the internment of John White. Davy Payne challenged senior NIO official James Allan about White’s continuing detention, blaming the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Francis Pym, for this, claiming that Pym had told the SDLP that the man responsible for murdering their colleague, Paddy Wilson, was imprisoned. A minute taker at the meeting noted that Payne “hovered in a rather crazy way by Mr Allan declaring that even he, Davy, had been accused of this murder.”

We can only speculate on the effect that Payne’s “hovering” had on Mr Allan, but it does seem that Allan, and the NIO, were concerned with loyalists murders.

The aftermath of the Abbey Meats murders

Lost Lives reported that the UDA members suspected of the murders at Abbey Meats were interned. A man, William James Miskelly, then 27, of Rathcoole stood trial for the murders in January, 1982. He was found not guilty but was, however, jailed for eight years for taking part in a “UDA ambush of an army patrol” in 1973, in which a soldier and a civilian were injured. Miskelly was also found guilty, along with two other UDA men, of robbing a bank. Associates of Miskelly were found guilty of burning down a cinema in Rathcoole. It is unclear what motivation lay behind that particular brave blow for Ulster.

Six months after the Abbey Meats murders, Miskelly was one of 30 UDA men arrested as they returned from Ballymena to Rathcoole, having ransacked the town, murdered two Catholic brothers, and assaulted and intimidated other Catholics unfortunate enough to encounter the lawless loyalists whose orgy of violence was apparently part of the Ulster Worker’s Council strike. Miskelly, then 19, was charged with grievous bodily harm of Brendan Byrne, who was 45 years old, and murdered along with his brother Sean in front of other members of the Byrne family. Miskelly was part of a group of loyalists who had decided to attack Catholic pubs to intimidate them into closing during the UWC strike. So drunk were this group of sectarian thugs that they did not notice a police car following them, and they continued into a roadblock, where the RUC arrested all of them. Miskelly was jailed for three years for wounding Brendan Byrne, presumably before he was murdered. Most of the other men involved in the drunken, sectarian violence were sentenced to two years. One man, Thomas McClure, was convicted of murdering the Byrne brothers.

The RUC did a pretty good job of rounding up the Rathcoole UDA, even if it took them a few years to put Miskelly, and others, behind bars for a considerable period of time.

In 2013, the Irish News carried an article that made two allegations. The first was that a UVF member convicted of multiple murders as part of the “Shankill butchers” could have been involved. The second allegation, was that:

Staff at the meat plant had reported a suspicious car sitting close to the entrance of the factory for more than half an hour before the shooting took place. However, police didn't arrive on the scene until the gunmen had already fled.

The article also said that “the RUC investigation was raised at the time by then MP Gerry Fitt in the House of Commons who demanded an inquiry” and “Paul Butler of Relatives for Justice said: "There has been concern that the killing of Thomas Donaghy and Margaret McErlean involved collusion.”

19th February 1974

A telegram was sent by someone in the UK Government to the US State Department, the objective of which seems to have been soliciting for business for Abbey Meats. The telegram goes on:


“NEWTOWNABBEY AREA IN GENERAL HAS HISTORY CONSIDERABLE

VIOLENCE SINCE 1969. THERE 24 MURDERS OF POLITICAL NATURE

SINCE 1972. TWO OF THESE WERE WORKERS AT ABBEY MEAT PLANT

WHO KILLED FEBRUARY 1974 AND WHO, ACCORDING RUC, HAD HISTORY

IRA INVOLVEMENT. RUC OFFICIALS ASSERT IT HIGHLY UNLIKELY

AMERICAN CITIZENS POTENTIAL TERRORIST TARGETS NEWTOWNABBEY.

THEY STRESSED AREA ABBEY PLANT PATROLLED REGULARLY PARTICULARLY AT

BEGINNING AND CLOSE BUSINESS."

Promoting businesses is standard diplomatic soft-power politicking, of a type carried out by diplomats across the world. This work is obviously made much harder for government entities in a situation where people are being killed and bombs are going off. This will be entirely lost on troglodytes like William James Miskelly and Thomas McClure, but is true. But what caught my attention was the RUC asserting that the two murder victims had “IRA involvement.”

Neither Thomas Donaghy nor Margaret McErlean were members of the IRA. Ms McErlean’s brother, John, was a member of the IRA’s Third Battalion, and died when a bomb he was making with two other IRA members exploded prematurely. Ms McErlean’s father, John Joseph McErlean had been in the UDR, and the territorial army. Mr McErlean was convicted of firearms offences, but the judge accepted that he was not part of any illegal organisation, and commended him for his “service to the community.”

Collusion is a term that appears frequently in the media. I think it has been used so often as to be close to meaningless. The RUC arriving on the scene after the murderers had fled the scene of the Abbey Meats murders could be because of a number of reasons. Working backwards, the UDA team would have had to have been colluding with a number of people, possibly from emergency services dispatchers, to logistics managers at a local RUC station.

But the RUC apparently did say that the two politically uninvolved teenagers murdered by the UDA had “IRA involvement.”

Could this be true? There is no evidence to prove this. Did the RUC believe this? Did the RUC actually express this belief to the authors of the telegram to the US State Dept? Could the US State Dept have taken reassurance that two murdered members of staff at a meat plant they were considering using were republican paramilitaries?

It could well be that UKG and/or the RUC made a call that besmirching the name of two murdered Catholic teenagers was a price worth paying for the possibility of winning contracts that improved the crippled economy of Norther Ireland. Or, it could have another explanation. Investigating the content of the telegram seems more worthwhile than speculating over why it took an RUC patrol more than half an hour to investigate a suspicious car, during one of the most violent years of the Troubles.

⏩ Brandon Sullivan is a middle aged, middle management, centre-left Belfast man. Would prefer people focused on the actual bad guys. 

Loyalist Murders, NIO Diplomacy, RUC Actions ✑ February 1974 Revisited

Matt Treacy ✒ writing on the anniversary of loyalist war crimes in Dublin and Monaghan assesses their impact.
 
On This Day 17 May 1974: The Dublin-Monaghan Bombings Was Used To Terrorise The South: It Worked.

Firemen are pictured assessing the damage at a small garage on Parnell Street
Photo Credit: Irish Photo Archive

I was ten in 1974. It was the year that I mainly remember for the fact that Dublin won the All-Ireland and I had been at my first big game – although not my first ever game – in Croke Park, when they beat Cork in the semi-final.

The other main memory I have is of the day of the Dublin-Monaghan bombings. It was a sunny Friday afternoon, and we were all out on the road in Greenhills messing about surrounded by the neighbourhood dogs. Friday was a big day, because my Dad who was working on Nassau Street used to bring us home magazines and comics and other treats assuming he and Paddy Campbell had collected from their customers.

Greenhills is about five miles from the city centre but we heard the explosions at 5.30pm, or so we believe we did. Then there was something approaching panic as radio reports told where the bombs had been detonated, and suddenly the noise of children and dogs had abated and the road was taken over by anxious families waiting for fathers and mothers and siblings to return from work.

My mother must have been particularly worried given that one of the bombs had exploded close to where my father’s tailoring shop was on Nassau Street. There were no buses to the city because of a strike, and it seemed like hours before people started to arrive home having mostly walked.

An hour and a half later, another bomb exploded in the centre of Monaghan. In total 34 people were killed. It was immediately suspected that the bombs had been planted by loyalists who were in the midst of a general strike against power sharing. However, the Ulster Volunteer Force did not claim responsibility until 1993.

That claim was only made in response to growing suspicions backed by substantial investigative findings, that the loyalists responsible had at the very least been security forces informants. The UVF statement was a combination of machismo, threats and – very possibly given their ongoing manipulation by elements of the intelligence services – deflection from any attribution to RUC Special Branch or British intelligence.

Given what we know of the involvement of loyalists who were also part of the Glenanne death squads, and their connections to the various branches of the state, some involvement at several levels in the Dublin-Monaghan bombings seems to be pretty certain. The Mitchell farm at Glenanne was central to the bombing operation.

There is also the fact that Garda files from those years are sparse, and that for many years it would seem that the relatives of the victims were treated by Garda Special Branch as politically suspect, a smear that was upheld by most of the political and media establishment in the Republic.

It seems incredible now that it took a quarter of a century for the Irish state to establish an official enquiry. The Dáil record in which representations by Tony Gregory, Joe Costello and a small number of other TDs were almost dismissed with contempt makes for sorry reading. What became the Barron Report was published in 2003 and concluded that British state agents had been involved at some level, but that their efforts to get to the bottom of this had been hampered by the refusal of the British to hand over documents on the basis of national security concerns.

The report’s conclusions with regard to both the British refusal to cooperate and the missing Garda files is pretty damning:

As the Final Report from the Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Equality, Defence and Women’s Rights on the Independent Commission of Inquiry into the Dublin and Monaghan Bombings observed: .


2.19 In the opinion of Mr. Justice Barron, the fact that the Inquiry never saw original intelligence documents and was only allowed access to sixteen pages of a summary of the documents, was a hindrance to its work.

2.48 One of the most extraordinary revelations contained in the Barron Report is that there is an amount of official documentation, which has disappeared. Given that this was the largest atrocity in the State, it is astonishing that better care was not kept of these documents and there exists no complete explanation as to their whereabouts.

Among the Garda Special Branch files that “could not be located” were ones labelled “Dublin bombings,” “IRA activities,” and two related to suspect cars pertinent to the bombing investigation, and to a file concerning an apparent suspect. Another missing file concerns the appointment of a Special Branch detective, which some believe is part of the cover up of one Garda who was strongly suspected of colluding in various incidents with the northern and British security forces, most likely as a paid agent of one or other. Whether he had any connection to the bombings remains conjecture.

The object of the bombings of course was to frighten people in the south and to undermine any support there was for the IRA. Another motivation was to encourage the Irish state to take more draconian measures against the IRA. Both of those aims were successful. Two years before the bombings, our road had many black flags on houses after Bloody Sunday.

I remember my Dad and one of our neighbours with packets of Christmas cards to be sent to IRA prisoners in Mountjoy and Long Kesh. After 1974 there were few who were openly republican, and those who were had regular visits from Special Branch in their little Ford Capris.

For Dubliners, the bombings brought home what was taking place less than 100 miles up the road. Many more people were to die before it ended. And like all armed conflicts most of the victims died needlessly for no worthwhile outcome.

The report of the Oireachtas Committee also records some of the harrowing memories of the victims.

Mr. John Molloy also detailed the scene of the Parnell Street bomb. He felt he was:

looking into hell from what he saw. People were lying on the roads moaning, with bits of pieces of bodies here and there.

So great was his trauma at witnessing these scenes that he did not realise that he had been injured in the blast himself and was in need of medical attention.

Kevin O’Loughlin spoke of the agony of waiting for his mother to arrive home, knowing that her route home from work along South Leinster Street coincided with one of the bombsites… He recalled how his father eventually found his mother’s body in the morgue where he identified her. Because of the horrific nature of her injuries, the rest of the family were prevented from viewing her body.

I did not see my mother’s body when she was killed and I have no memory of what she looked like. She was wiped off the face of the earth in the eyes of myself and my brother. One day she was there and the next she was gone.

Ms. Marie Sherry described being injured in the Parnell Street bomb and stated that her physical injuries were nothing when compared to the mental turmoil that she has suffered since:


I can only describe my life, particularly in my 20s and 30s although not so much now, as one of constant alert. For weeks and months after the bombs I used to go home and say, ‘Mum, any news on those people who did the bombing? Was anybody charged?’ There never was news. There were no names. Nobody was charged. I lived my life thinking ‘These guys are walking around. They could be sitting beside me in the cinema. They could be on the bus. These guys are free to do the same thing again’. It was just awful and it ruined my life. I did not want to go into town to socialise with my friends, I did not like being in a pub and I did not like being at the cinema … Only when one has been through it can one realise how horrific it is to live one’s life like that. I wish it had never happened. It was just awful.

Mr. Thomas O’Brien told the Sub-Committee of the anguish suffered by members of his family following the murder of his brother, his sister-in-law and his two nieces in the bombings:

My father died in 1972 and when Johnny, Anna, Jacqueline and Anne-Marie died, my mother was heartbroken and she is still. Johnny was the eldest brother of 11 and I often wonder what the two kids would be now. They would be in their 30’s and could be married and so on. We will never get over it.

Matt Treacy has published a number of books including histories of 
the Republican Movement and of the Communist Party of Ireland.  

Dublin-Monaghan Bombings Used To Terrorise South

From the Loyalist blog It's Still Only Thursday, a piece which featured October last asking questions of republicans about collusion.

The Irish republican narrative has apparently shifted yet again. No longer content with allegations of so-called “collusion” in certain incidents, mostly in the assassination of prominent republicans, the narrative shifted to “collusion in most cases“. Unhappy that this did not sufficiently smear Loyalism, or the Security Forces, they now seem to be heart set on a complete and total rewriting of history, now presenting armed Loyalist groups as being nothing more than mere “proxies of the British state”, armed, organised, funded and directed by the Army, MI5, UDR, RUC and even the RUC Reserve.

This ludicrous, almost laughable, narrative is so fantastical, so evidently false that I contemplated scrapping this blog post. What could be funnier and more entertaining than watching Irish supremacists, especially the online troll variety, tie themselves up in knots trying to defend such a ludicrous fairy-tale?

As comical as it is however, I feel that it is important to forensically tear apart such tall-tales. Irish republican extremists have so successfully rewritten Ulster’s recent past over the last 20 years or so that (personally) I feel that to leave any of their myths unchallenged is something of a dereliction of duty.

Continue reading @ It's Still Only Thursday.

➽ Follow It's Still Only Thursday on Twitter @0nIyThursday

30 Questions Republicans Can’t (Or Won’t) Answer About Alleged “Collusion”

From The Village - As allegations continue to be made about the involvement of Robert Nairac in the Miami Showband massacre, how compromised is Garda Commissioner Harris who was PSNI liaison with Britain’s intelligence services?

By Deirdre Younge
In the High Court in Belfast the British Government’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) and British Army are applying to have cases relating to the Dublin and Monaghan bombing atrocity of 1974 dismissed, alleging they are out of time. The bombings were carried out by the Glennane gang also known as the Portadown UVF who were also at the heart of an organisation that came into existence in the 1980s called Ulster Resistance (UR). A recent BBC ‘Spotlight’ programme dealing with UR confirmed extensive collusion across the loyalist spectrum from DUP to UVF, UDA, UFF to MI5


Members of UR became aware that some of its members were MI5 agents. The key MI5 agent inside UR was carved out of the distribution of the weapons it had procured in late 1987 by those who were not under the control of the intelligence services. At the same time, information was leaked from RUC and the UDR which provided them with details of ‘suspected republicans’.

The BBC NI Spotlight programme showed images of RUC intelligence that ended up in the hands of the UFF/UDA. It was used to target suspected republicans, including Loughlin Maginn, shot in Rathfriland in August 1989. His death, following that of solicitor Pat Finucane in February 1989, sparked the decades-long investigations by Sir John Stevens into collusion by the Security forces. Stevens was not shown evidence of RUC collusion.

The fact that the UDA were receiving large volumes of intelligence material from RUC sources was known to the agent Brian Nelson, his Army Intelligence handlers and M15. That intelligence also, no doubt, informs the de Silva Report into Pat Finucane’s murder. De Silva was given access to British Army and MI5 intelligence that RUC officers at every level were leaking information to Loyalists. That intelligence is also integrated into the Ombudsman’s report on the Loughinisland murders as it relates to RUC ‘tip-offs’ about surveillance operations carried out in an attempt to seize UR weapons in Armagh in 1987 and 1988. 


An article in the Portadown News, November 1988


"Awareness among members of UR that some of its members were M15 agents led to a disastrous loss of control by the Security Services and Special Branch – and multiple murders"


Part 1: Commissioner Harris
Drew Harris, the Garda Commissioner, didn’t leave the ‘Troubles’ of Northern Ireland behind him on entering Garda HQ. 
Drew Harris
As former Assistant and Deputy Chief Constable of the PSNI and its former interface with the Security Services (UK), Harris has been accused of fighting attempts to get information about the perpetrators of atrocities like the Miami Showband murders and of blocking access to files about the many murders carried out by the Mid-Ulster, UVF ‘Brigadier’ Robin Jackson. In 2011 the Historical Inquiries Team found Jackson had been connected to a weapon used in the Miami Showband murders by fingerprint evidence.

In the High Court in Belfast in 2017 Judge Seamus Treacy ruled that there should be an overarching investigation into State collusion with the ‘Glenanne Gang’ and asked the PSNI to respond. In the Court of Appeal in Belfast the Lord Chief Justice ruled in July against an appeal and said there must be an independent investigation carried out by the PSNI.

More recently in Belfast a high-profile ‘trial on the facts’ to determine whether veteran Republican Ivor Bell was guilty of ordering the abduction and murder of Jean McConville collapsed because of the contentiousness of evidence derived from Bell’s conversations recorded as part of the Boston College college project. That prosecution was initiated while Harris was in the PSNI with responsibility for ‘Legacy’.

With the signing into law in Ireland of the Criminal Justice (International Cooperation) Act 2019, the Garda can now give evidence and share intelligence with Coroners’ Courts in Northern Ireland.

The Miami Showband
In an interesting twist of circumstances, Commissioner Harris now has charge of the legacy files of secret Garda intelligence. Clearly how ambitious he’d want to be in sharing this information with authorities in the North is uncertain.

In 1989 MI5 reported the overall picture seems to be one of RUC collusion and links with the Loyalists which is similar in scale to that of the UDR, but the latter is much more likely to become involved in very serious crimes

Dealing with the past is also causing problems for some retired RUC men – members of the Northern Ireland Retired Police Officers’ Association (NIRPOA). They now apparently believe a policy of non-co-operation with bodies like the Police Ombudsman of Northern Ireland has been counterproductive.



Part 2: Ombudsman confirms collusion

NIPROA took a Judicial Review against the Police Ombudsman of Northern Ireland and his 2016 report on the 1994 Heights Bar murders in Loughinisland. Former Head of Special Branch and Assistant Chief Constable Ray White often acts as its spokesman.


"In 1989 MI5 reported the overall picture seems to be one of RUC collusion and links with the Loyalists which is similar in scale to that of the UDR, but the latter is much more likely to become involved in very serious crimes"


Their affidavit was submitted in the names of Ray White and retired Chief Superintendent Thomas Hawthorne, the former Sub Divisional Commander in Co Down and chief investigator of the Loughinisland killings. They challenged the powers of the Ombudsman to come to a verdict of collusion in his report on the murders. The report tried to establish the trail of the weapons which were used in the attack, from their importation into NI in late 1987 to their use in 1994. “Tried”, because as he said in his report: “Throughout my investigation I have been unable to obtain key documents, including records relating to the police response to the importation of firearms in 1987”. The former Officers had a victory of sorts when Justice McCloskey gave judgment for the RUC officers and vindicated Hawthorne. The judge finally and reluctantly recused himself from the case. He had represented the RUC in an appeal against a previous Ombudsman’s finding in the investigation of the Omagh Bombing.

A finding on the remaining issues will fall to another judge.

The Ombudsman’s report was damning of the RUC investigation into the murders of six men and of earlier searches for weapons; and concluded that there was collusion from beginning to end. One of his chief criticisms was of an inexplicable failure to conduct a proper search for the weapons, particularly at the farm of the now notorious Glennane-based farmer, Ulster Resistance supporter and UVF accomplice, the late James Mitchell.

Part 3: Murder of RUC Commander and colluder with UVF, Harry Breen

Harry Breen
The RUC Divisional Commander for Armagh and parts of Co Down was Harry Breen until he was shot dead in March 1989. His was a hugely important role with access to Special Branch intelligence, and to operationally-central Tasking and Co-ordination Group (TCG) briefings. His command of the Divisional Mobile support groups based in Newry and Armagh which carried out surveillance operations, as well as manning checkpoints and searches, meant he was in command of every operation carried out in his Division. As Divisional Commander, Breen was constantly on the move and his police journal shows that he regularly visited every station in the Division from Aughnacloy to Richhill, Forkhill, Armagh, Loughgall, to Ballynahinch and Rathfriland in Co Down.

Harry Breen probably knew more than anyone about the secret world of Loyalists informers. Sources say he was one of the very few who also knew the whereabouts of the “Resistance” arms cache.

At this time, according to Security Forces sources, Breen was deeply distrustful of the new security directions coming from the Security Services and the NIO. Like many RUC men, he saw them as appeasement rather than taking the fight to the IRA, with a new emphasis on talks with Republicans rather than on fighting their terrorism. They say Breen would never have agreed to a “ceasefire” which they saw coming down the line.


"Breen had been a member of a notorious Special Patrol Group (SPG) in Armagh, in the 1970s. It was said to have been aided and abetted by the mid-Ulster UVF."


Whether Breen was sympathetic to UR as some believe, or acting on an intelligence agenda it’s unlikely he reached a senior position in the RUC as a “rogue” policeman.

Breen’s death still causes unease among former members of the Security Forces in Armagh. One former UDR man said “The couldn’t have let him live. He knew too much”.

The RUC and UDR in Armagh at this time were under ferocious attack from the IRA – often shot down in front of their families. This has left a residue of bitterness to this day. But they also came under another form of attack over the constant flood of leaks from RUC stations allowing the targeting of Republican suspects and activists, by Loyalists. The Irish Government regularly protested about the leaks and threatened to stop sharing information under the structures of the Anglo Irish Agreement.

The Security Services also pointed the finger at the RUC as can be seen in documents published in the de Silva Report. A memo from the Head of the Assessment Group (M15) to the Director and Coordinator of Intelligence (29 September 1989) gives a stark warning: “All in all the overall picture seems to be one of RUC collusion and links with the Loyalists which is similar in scale (if not greater in some respects) to that of the UDR, but the latter is much more likely to become involved in very serious crimes…”.

Pat Finucane
Pat Finucane and Loughlin McGinn were shot dead on the back of leaks in February and August 1989. The UDR in Rathfriland had used RUC documents to identify targets including McGinn.


‘Spotlight showed images of RUC intelligence that ended up in the hands of the UFF/UDA. It was used to target suspected republicans’


BBC ‘Spotlight’ showed some of the RUC documents used to target Republicans. In his report on the Heights Bar in Loughinisland the Ombudsman quoted a Special Branch officer in Co Down who kept the fruits of a 1988 search of Clough Orange Hall secret for fear of leaks to Loyalists. He had retrieved assault rifles and other weaponry. The marathon Stevens Investigations into collusion began in September 1989 as a result of the murders.BBC journalist Chris Moore was shown these documents by the UFF to ‘prove’ they were shooting the right men in August 1989 after the murder of Loughlin McGinn. The documents were RUC Collator bulletins from Harry Breen’s H Division stations, generated in late 1988. (Shown in Spotlight) De Silva was scathing about the withholding of information from Stevens in 1989

Breen had been a member of a notorious Special Patrol Group (SPG) in Armagh, in the 1970s. It was said to have been aided and abetted by the mid-Ulster UVF led by notorious Commander Robin Jackson a member of the UDR. There seems no doubt Jackson was a protected State informer. Even Senior RUC Officers find it hard to work out exactly which agency was running Jackson. One concluded recently that it was probably multiple agencies at different times. However British Army sources have recently said that Jackson was handled by or through the RUC and not Army Intelligence.

A former member of the UDR who lived near Glennane said, ‘Sure that SPG [Special Patrol Group] down here – they took off their uniforms and put on their camouflage gear and shot people. Then they put the uniforms back on and went to the house to investigate. Sure someone knew what was going on.’

John Weir
John Weir, a former SPG member in South Armagh, described Breen in a statement to the Barron Investigation into the Dublin and Monaghan Bombings in 2003, as being fully aware, and encouraging, of their actions. Weir’s statement first made in 1999, includes numerous mentions of Breen. Weir said in a later interview that Breen wasn’t a rogue policeman but that he was “doing his duty” in his dealings with Jackson and other loyalists. Weir had been imprisoned for ten years in 1979 for for his part in a conspiracy to murder Catholic chemist William Strathearn in Aghogill in Antrim. He maintained Jackson was actually the gunman but that he was not charged after an ‘intervention’. Jackson only ever served one short term of imprisonment.

According to Special Branch sources, Brian Fitzsimons, former Chief Superintendent at Newry Station and, for the much of the 1980s Deputy Head of Special Branch, as early as the mid-1970s said that Breen was “gathering arms” for Loyalists in Armagh. Ex Army Intelligence officer Colin Wallace gave a statement to Judge Barron’s investigations into the Dublin and Monaghan bombings in 2003 which alleged that Army Intelligence believed Harry Breen and Frank Murray, who was the Head of Special Branch in Armagh, were sympathetic to Loyalist paras: “Harry Breen was one of the key figures giving information and support for (their) operations generally”. However, Breen’s career proceeded apace. He became Chief Superintendent in Bessbrook and then Divisional Commander in H Division containing a good deal of Armagh and part of Co Down. Breen succeeded Chief Superintendent Brian Lally as Divisional Commander in February 1988. Lally retired aged 53 after refusing transfer to a post liaising with the new Army Battalion which policed the border, as he considered the transfer a demotion. In 1982 Lally was reported by the ‘Irish News’ to have helped prepare the CID file after INLA men Roddy Carroll and Seamus Grew were shot dead on the outskirts of the city.

After just over a year as Divisional Commander, Breen was ambushed by the IRA on the Edenappa Road on 20 March 1989. An IRA statement to the Smithwick Tribunal investigating the murder said Breen was a target after Loughgall when the IRA’s East Tyrone Brigade were wiped out attempting to bomb an RUC station. Breen was in charge of the armed RUC officers at the scene according to sources.


"The actions of Breen and the RUC SPG operating in Armagh in the 1970s will now be an integral part of an investigation into what became known as ‘The Glennane Gang’."


As described in Village in April 2017, Breen’s RUC journal described a series of weapons searches, arrests and convictions in Armagh and Down during 1988 in obvious Loyalist areas like Richhill and Hamiltonsbawn, that did not feature in the NI Ombudsman’s report. Sources in Armagh have also described intensive searches by the Army in 1988 and 1989 and later and there is much information in published sources about arrests and convictions in connection with weapons finds. The ballistics trail of Ulster Resistance and UVF weapons does not end at Mitchell’s farm in January 1988. It leads to Loughinisland in 1994.


‘The actions of Breen and the RUC in Armagh in the 1970s will now be an integral part of an investigation into what became known as ‘The Glennane Gang’

Part 4: Ulster Resistance (UR)

Leading members of Ulster Resistance (UR)
The trail begins with the founding of Ulster Resistance by Ian Paisley, Noel Little, Peter Robinson and others, to resist the Anglo Irish Agreement in 1985. There followed various Loyalist plots to import Arms. Normally reliant on stolen weapons or weapons ‘donated’ by part time members of the Security Forces, the importation of high-velocity weapons, especially CZ58 assault rifles in late 1987, gave the Loyalists new killing capacity. All in all Kalashnikov-type weapons like the CZ58 killed over 70 people.

The Ombudsman focuses the first part of his report in Armagh, the engine room of the UR/UVF/UDA plots to import weapons. It traces the arms importation to the 1985 visit of loyalist covert-army-FRU (Force Research Unit) Agent Brian Nelson to South Africa and his dealings with the massive arms conglomerate, Armscor. The UR contact Richard Wright was a director of Nimrod, the Marketing arm of Armscor and an uncle of a UR founder, Alan Wright. One of the UR founders, Markethill man Noel Little, also had long-standing links with Wright.

The Loyalist connection with the arms trade was through Shorts’ East Belfast factory which manufactured sophisticated ground-to-air missiles. The Blowpipe and more sophisticated successor the Starburst, were highly sought after by the South Africans for their bush wars.

Lt. Col. Oliver North
Shorts were willing sellers to a myriad of customers including US Colonel Oliver North involved in his nefarious schemes to arm the ‘Contras’ in Nicaragua, and to exchange arms for hostages with the Iranians in the 1980s.

Peter Kornbluh in The Pinochet Files has some fascinating details of North’s relationship with Shorts:

Their elaborate scheme (North and fellow conspirators) called for Short Brothers, the Belfast-based manufacturer of the Blowpipe missile, to facilitate the transfer of the weapons from Chile to the Contra forces through El Salvador, using falsified end-user certificates.

North reported:


The VP from Short Bros sought me out several months ago and I met with him again…Short Bros, the manufacturer of the Blowpipe is willing to arrange a deal, conduct the training and even send UK “tech reps” fwd if we can close the arrangement. Dick Secord has already paid 10% down on the delivery and we have a (country deleted) EUC (end user) which is applicable to Chile.


North had an Irish passport and, interestingly, former US Vice President, Dan Quayle, once associated with North, still retains some involvement in Northern Ireland as Chairman of Cerberus’ Investment arm. In other words despite an arms embargo the UK Government covertly supported the arms trade.

The arrangements in 1987 were facilitated by Douglas Bernhardt, an Armscor agent in Switzerland, who apparently brokered the deal with ‘Brigadier’ John Michael, the UDA leader, who was murdered by a car bomb shortly before the arms arrived in 1988. After receiving the money Bernhardt bought the guns from a Lebanese middleman. They were then shipped from Beirut to Belfast. The weapons consisted of 206 CZ58s high velocity rifles, 26 .38 Browning’s, 4 rocket launchers, 25,000 rounds of ammunition, and grenades. Loyalist sources are convinced the entire deal happened under the eyes of the various security services. Indeed it was only through Security Service and Army agents that some weapons were seized after they had initially been slipped out of Belfast port and driven to Armagh.

Robin Jackson
The deal to import weapons was made between the UVF, commanded by ‘Brigadier’ Robin Jackson, whose enforcers lived around the UVF power base in the Lurgan, Portadown, Armagh, Tandragee area; and Ulster Resistance, also rooted in Armagh. They were a colourful mixture of Paisleyites and unionists including Noel Little, Alan Wright, and Peter Robinson, in alliance with the UVF, whose stronghold was in Armagh. ‘Resistance’ as it became known was supported by ‘small men’ – townspeople and farmers many of whom were members of the Territorial Army or UDR. The third party to the importation was the Belfast UDA with its informers including FRU agent Brian Nelson.

The shipment came into Belfast Port in late 1987. The weapons were transported by an Armagh man who drove articulated trucks in a 40-foot lorry to a location outside Portadown. One source connected to Ulster Resistance pointed out that the weapons stayed in the container and had to be stored in a large yard. He named a UVF leader who had such a yard near Portadown. Having lost track of the initial delivery, which the Ombudsman described as a “major intelligence failure”, it was through the UDA link that Special Branch in Belfast picked up the trail again on 8 January 1988. The Head of Belfast Special Branch at this time was Ray White, mentioned above, who had served in Special Branch in Lurgan in the late 1970s and had a particular knowledge of Loyalist paramilitaries in Mid-Ulster, as he told the Smithwick Tribunal in 2011.

The Chinook helicopter crash
The book Phoenix: Policing The Shadows,  published in 1996, after Chief Superintendent Ian Phoenix had been killed in the Chinook crash in 1994, describes how Phoenix, then head of an RUC Intelligence unit, responded when he learned a “Prod resupply was in the Province and due for dispersal tomorrow”. Phoenix described how “Surveillance was carried out on one of the suspects N, who met twice with the UDA leader Andy Tyrie on the date…a watch was let [sic] on B all night”.

Phoenix described how the day after the shipment arrived, two Ford Granada cars were seen acting suspiciously in the Tandragee area. A road block was mounted and the cars were stopped. Inside was Davy Payne. Two other men, his UDA helpers, were also arrested.

The next day follow-up searches were begun in the Tandragee area and on 3 February the police uncovered a UVF arms-hide containing rocket launchers, a submachine-gun, rifles, revolvers and 12,000 rounds of ammunition. Phoenix concluded that “The only group to successfully get its hand on the…weapons was Ulster Resistance. However, it later reached an agreement with the other two organisations and shared its portion of the haul with them, ensuring a loyalist escalation of violence would take place over the coming years”.

Sources in Armagh recently gave Village magazine background detail to the operation – how the UDA had been offered a delivery to Belfast but had decided to pick up their share of the weapons in Armagh. It was the main UR organiser in Armagh who insisted that the UDA Belfast contingent hire Ford saloon cars in Belfast, which had the effect of making them conspicuous in rural Armagh. Davey Payne the UDA ‘Brigadier’ with his two low-level UDA men set off in the two Fords and an Austin Maestro with a prominent Ulster Resistance man’s number on his hand. Tracked by the E4A surveillance team from Belfast, Payne and his entourage parked in a car park in Tandragee before setting off down the B3, which is a winding road, in the direction of Markethill, from which there are small roads and lanes leading off to Richhill and Hamiltonsbawn. They were making for the farm which later Intelligence said was within five miles of the town where the weapons were said to be stored, still in the original container. E4A apparently “became unsighted” of the three.

The next day, in a planned operation by the Tasking and Coordinating Group (TCG) in Armagh, the trio were tracked from Tandragee to the Mahon Road near Portadown on their way back to Belfast laden with weapons, and were arrested outside the UDR barracks and RUC station. Former UDR Major John Potter in his book on the UDR “Testimony to Courage” (2002) is, strange as it may seem, one of the clearest sources for searches at this point and later significant finds in November 1988. He says the UDR were part of these planned operations.

Davey Payne
The three – Davey Payne, and the footsoldiers Aiken and McCullough – were remanded in custody to Belfast and then taken to Castlereagh holding centre for interrogation.

That evening the UDA HQ in Gawn Street was raided, arrests followed and documents were seized. The following October Payne was sentenced to 20, and the others 14, years by Belfast High Court.

Despite these obvious attempts to track the weapons by Belfast Special Branch and the TCG in Armagh there was a general policy of non co-operation with the Ombudsman when he tried to investigate the arms importation. The Head of the TCG in 1989 refused to give information to the Ombudsman and all TCG records have been destroyed. He did, however, give evidence to Smithwick, anonymously under a cipher number. His only contribution was to confirm that the TCG in Armagh had no operation in place on 20 March 1989 in or around the Edenappa Road.

James Mitchell
However, as a result of the arrests and interrogations of the UDA men on 12 January 1988, the investigating officers obtained intelligence that the weapons were stored in a barn beside a blue-coloured house within five miles of Tandragee, the main arms “depot”. The Ombudsman was convinced this description points to James Mitchell’s farm in Glennane a few miles South of Markethill and ten miles from Tandragee. He based this belief on the description above, on an allegation gathered by investigators, and on other intelligence that he has seen. He stated in his report “I have seen intelligence that, shortly after the arrests at Mahon Road, individuals at James Mitchell’s farms were warned to remove the remaining weapons”.

However, some sources in Armagh say the arms never reached, nor were they intended for, Glennane. Not only were the small country roads full of troops so transporting large loads was dangerous, the container could only fit in a large barn, not in Mitchell’s sheds.

The Ombudsman view, however, is understandable. Mitchell, whose farm was the meeting place for the gang formed around the SPG in Armagh in the 1970s, was involved with the UVF for decades and was in on the Ulster Resistance plot with other Markethill men. He had been arrested in 1980 and sentenced to three years imprisonment for the possession of arms and explosives. In 1990, as the Ombudsman’s report detailed, there was intelligence describing meetings between Mitchell, the UR leaders and the UVF about the arms arrival.

In 1991 Mitchell’s farm was searched and ammunition of a different type to the imports of 1987 seized. However, the Ombudsman Investigators also saw an entry in the RUC’s Reports Book from Markethill from January 1988 which describes a search by the Royal Engineers of a House on the Lough Road, Glennane, owned by Mitchell – at which nothing was found. Sources in Armagh are adamant that a large swathe of countryside, including Glennane, was searched at this time: cattle turned out of barns, grain stores emptied and a ten-mile cordon erected around the town of Markethill. However, they say, the arms had gone elsewhere.

The failure to stop or retrieve all the weapons, despite the involvement of informants in the arms importation, was a significant intelligence failure…This is particularly the case in relation to the failure to retrieve imported weapons from a farm owned by James Mitchell. The outcome of this failure was that not all the weapons were recovered by the police and many, including the VZ58 rifle used in Loughinisland, were subsequently used in a wide range of murders.

Between March 1988 and May 2005 there were at least 70 murders or attempted murders using the VZ58. The weapons added a new edge to Loyalist gunmen campaign which increased in intensity.

The Ombudsman rightly points out that  “Despite being implicated by Intelligence in the importation of these weapons senior members of the UVF, UDA and Ulster Resistance were not subject of police investigation”. The arrests and convictions that followed were of relatively minor players. The leaders of the UVF were largely untouched. The small men of Ulster Resistance faded into the background.

By now many Loyalists in Armagh had enough of being used as the various intelligence services mudguards. As one said recently “what you must remember is – Loyalists hate M15”.

The Ombudsman appears to conclude that the blame for the failure of the surveillance operation and loss of weapons rests with the local RUC who by implication were colluding in covering up the weapons cache at Mitchell’s Farm.

Mitchell was described recently as a decoy – a convenient scapegoat to hide the real and often anonymous power brokers in the Loyalist paramilitary leadership in Armagh. One loyalist commented that “every time anything happened in Armagh the men in Portadown had a saying – ‘ Ah, Jimmy Mitchell’s for it now’ “.

There was a significant find of UVF weapons at Flush Road on the outskirts of Belfast on the 4th of February 1988 including a rocket launcher with 26 rockets and 40,000 rounds of ammunition, during a “planned search” as reported by the Irish Times.

Apart from 1990 intelligence that Jackson had assault rifles and a rocket launcher and that he gave weapons to the ‘Brigadier’ of East Belfast UVF, the trail of the weapons in Armagh ran cold as far as the Ombudsman has been concerned.

Sources maintain to Village that the UR share of the weapons was supposed to go to one of the UR leaders, in Markethill, about four miles north of Glennane, but suspicion fell on one of the leaders, believed to be working for M15 so the UR men insisted their share be diverted from his chosen location, a property near Markethill.



"Despite an arms embargo the UK Government covertly supported Ollie North’s efforts to arm Nicaraguan Contras."


The weapons, say the sources, had initially been collected by a man connected to the Portadown UVF, driven in an articulated lorry to North Armagh and stored in a container in the barn between Tandragee and Armagh. The weapons’ distribution remained under UVF supervision. The UR share was, eventually, loaded onto a Territorial Army ambulance and ultimately ended up in Armagh TA barracks. Where it is today, remains a closely guarded secret.

Willie Frazer from Markethill was alleged in the ‘Spotlight’ programme to be a transporter and distributor of UR weapons. His family has denied that assertion. However, he at least had sweeping knowledge about events in Armagh over the years and a close relationships with senior loyalists in Belfast. As a young man in Armagh in the mid-1970s the SAS warned Frazer off getting close to Robert Nairac, MI5-controlled provocateur, who was a familiar figure in the Markethill and Whitescross areas as well as in South Armagh. Nairac was designated a “Grenadier Guardsman” but worked for a ‘special unit’ accountable to MI5 and led by SAS agent Tony Ball though, confoundingly, not answerable to the SAS. Security sources in Armagh say a four man SAS unit was in Forkhill RUC station the night Nairac was taken from the Four Steps Inn in Drumentee.

Documents recently released to solicitors for one of the Miami Showband victims allegedly reveal Nairac obtained equipment and weapons for, co-ordinated and executed the massacre which was perpetrated by the UVF led by their commander Robin Jackson. However, the Ministry of Defence has emphatically denied this. Survivor Stephen Travers has said one of the attackers spoke with an English accent. Two serving UDR officers, and one ex-UDR officer served life sentences for the murders.

More revelations about Nairac’s activities here are expected in coming months. One of the reasons they have not emerged earlier is that MI5-generated information is covered by the Official Secrets Act.

Frazer was approached in recent years and asked about the location of the remaining UR weapons – by various figures from a preacher to a former RUC officer – but he kept his secrets. Well informed sources say the Ulster Resistance weapons cache remains in Armagh

In part 2 of his report the Ombudsman describes the emergence of a UVF gang in Co Down and murders carried out from 1988 including Paddy Kielty’s father shot dead in Dundrum. They were later to carry out the murders of 6 people in Loughinisland, acting with the mid Ulster and Shankill Rd units.

The weapon used in the attack on the Heights Bar to devastating effect was one of Jackson’s CZ58s a rifle equivalent to the Kalashnikov or armalite. The PONI Report traced the weapon used to other crimes. Joseph Reynolds had been murdered with the same CZ58 on the 12th of October 1993 on his way to work in Shorts Aerospace in Sydenham East Belfast. On the 22nd March 1994 there was an attempted murder at a butchers in Cromac Street, Belfast, a joint effort by East-Belfast and Mid-Ulster. The gun used was a 9mm Browning-type pistol matched to one found at Loughinisland. Another attempted murder in Boucher Crescent in South Belfast was linked to a gun later used by the South Down unit at the Thierfurth Inn.

In June1994 four men with links to the UVF were shot by the INLA on the Shankill Road. Two died from their injuries. This was to unleash a revenge attack.

Robert Nairac
After these murders the command went out for “blood on the streets” and killings followed. The “intelligence picture” in relation to the South Down UVF Unit based around Newcastle indicates it took orders from Trevor King the commander of the Shankill Road unit and were supplied with weapons including a VZ58, according to the Ombudsman.

On the evening of June 18th 1994 the UVF gunmen drove to the Heights Bar, a quiet country pub near Downpatrick. They opened fire in the bar with a CZ58 and within seconds 6 people were dead and 14 injured. Ever since their grieving relatives have been trying to discover why no one has stood trial for the murders. The Ombudsman gave a damning verdict on the RUC investigation and says that there was collusion from start to finish and that the RUC was infiltrated by or had close links with the UVF.


"The Ombudsman appears to conclude that the blame for the failure of the surveillance operation and loss of weapons rests with the local RUC who by implication were colluding in covering up the weapons cache at Mitchell’s Farm but Mitchell may have just been a convenient scapegoat."



In his report the Ombudsman used cyphers to identify two brothers living locally to the pub, one of whom he believes was the gunman. Alex Gibney in his powerful documentary “No Stone Unturned” names two men he alleges were the gunmen based on a leaked intelligence document and a letter implicating – local man Ronald Hawthorne. Hawthorn has made complaints to the press Ombudsman North and South, about being named as one of the gunmen.

Robin Jackson’s arsenal of weapons was used in multiple murders. Senior Garda, and well informed loyalist sources, believe he was a highly protected agent. There were other untouchables associated with the Mid-Ulster UVF. Some, wealthy men unknown outside their own areas. It is now also known that the UVF in Belfast was thoroughly infiltrated. The recent trial of UVF leader ‘Brigadier’ Gary Haggarty, a Special Branch agent while he carried out numerous murders, saw him get a shockingly short sentence in the High Court in Belfast.

Why are former RUC men reluctant to talk about the searches for weapons?

One source in mid Ulster with an insight into events would only say “because the whole point of it was to put pressure on the Provos”.

Recently a man describing himself as a former RUC officer and claiming to have worked closely with the late Chief Superintendent Harry Breen, has been in Armagh enquiring about the whereabouts of the Ulster Resistance weapons. His identity is not known.

William Frazer (left) died in 2019 and his funeral service (right) was held near his home 
in rural Armagh. Arlene Foster, his friend and solicitor, gave a warm oration at it.
As the Judicial Review against the appointment of Drew Harris as Garda Commissioner and the recent arrest and subsequent dropping of charges against the journalist/researcher and television producer of No Stone Unturned (over an investigation into alleged stolen documents) has shown, the past has a way of forcing its way into the present.

Willie Frazer was a witness at the Smithwick Tribunal in September 2012. He felt he had been excluded from the Tribunal he had helped set up but there were promises to keep. In evidence, he revealed that one of Harry Breen’s last meetings was with RUC Sgt Billy McBride; despite the disparity in rank McBride was Breen’s close friend. He also features in the John Weir’s 2003 statement about the Glenanne gang. McBride was a proficient amateur gunsmith. McBride revealed details of Breen’s anxious state of mind after being ordered to travel through South Armagh and over the Border. Breen he said was fearful not of a Garda but because he knew from his intelligence sources that he was a high priority target and in imminent danger. McBride said Breen told him he was getting his affairs in order. Frazer told Smithwick that he – Smithwick – was being manipulated by the British Security services, ‘I would love your honour to be sitting in Newtownhamilton and doing this inquiry, because I would guarantee that you would get at the truth. The problem is the British Government have not put all the facts in front of you’. Frazer realised too late that getting at the truth had never been the object of the exercise

Published in Village magazine, December 2019 and amended primarily to reflect allegations of Robert Nairac’s involvement in the Miami Showband murders.

⏩Deirdre Younge is a writer/producer/director.

Drew Drawn In


From the Ancient Order of Hibernians notification of events promoting the latest book on British state collusion in the killing of Irish citizens. 



A ground-breaking new book shows Britain armed, directed, paid and protected loyalist agents to carry out murders in Tyrone and Derry, then denied blame. Professor Mark McGovern, joined by Mark Thompson of Relatives for Justice, will begin a seven state American launch of Collusion Counterinsurgency In Northern Ireland, on June 2nd.They will present shocking new findings in public events and Congressional meetings in a tour organized by the Ancient Order of Hibernians and Relatives for Justice, but now supported by a growing list of Irish-American groups.

At Stake

A central claim used by British officials to justify their campaign during the Troubles is the statistic that crown forces were only responsible for 10% of the North's killings. This figure, compiled decades ago, accounts for only those directly killed by British troopers or the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

The number gets cited to claim the British played an impartial role in a sectarian war between nationalists and unionists. It is also used to claim that legacy investigations of killings should be artificially limited to a 10% fraction of conflict related inquiries.

Meanwhile nationalists in Tyrone, south Derry and across the north saw a pattern of murders committed with hallmarks of deep British state force collusion. Loyalist killers travelled freely in heavily patrolled areas where nationalists could not move without being stopped. Crown patrols often spiked hours before murders then vanished. Covert camera surveillance was disabled. Loyalists had precise intelligence of the sort only available to British forces, from searches of locations

Hallmarks

Mark McGovern, Professor of Sociology at Edge Hill University in England, studied dozens of these killings in Tyrone and South Derry, applying academic research standards. Helped by Mark Thompson and Relatives for Justice, Professor McGovern combined original eyewitness accounts, and unpublished materials, with court transcripts and British military studies to put together a shocking new look at British collusion. His findings raises questions on hundreds of murders that were attributed to loyalists, but may have been carried out as part of an overall British strategy.

Anyone familiar with any loyalist murders in Tyrone or South Derry during the late 1980s and early 1990s will find new facts detailed here. There is even new information about the murder of my own close friend, American citizen and Bronx resident Liam Ryan.

Professor McGovern and Mark Thompson will appear at a series of not to be missed events, that will include New York City, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Rutherford New Jersey, Boston, Newport, Rhode Island, Fairfield, Connecticut and Albany. They will reveal startling new facts and personally signed books will be available for purchase.


AOH Freedom for All Ireland Chair Martin Galvin added:

The British deny using loyalist criminals to commit murders. Again and again victims' families asked how else could low level loyalist killers get away with so many murders? How could criminals get through heavily patrolled areas undetected and undetectable? How did they turn off cameras, wipe tapes, and make British patrols vanish, unless these loyalist criminals were backed by planning, approval, and direction at a high level within the British military and constabulary? Victims' families deserve to have the shocking truth told. The AOH is proud to help bring that truth to Americans who need to hear it.

Schedule

They will premiere in Philadelphia on Sunday June 2nd at the MacSwiney Club, 510 Greenwood Avenue, Jenkintown Philadelphia, beginning at 1:30pm, organized by Gerry McHale and Pearse Kerr.(267-767-7854).This venue was specifically chosen in memory of Liam Ryan, the former Clan na Gael member, whose murder is one of those investigated in the book, and who attended events there.

On Monday June 3rd. Professor McGovern and Mark Thompson will be in New York City for an event at O'Lunneys Time Square, 145 West 45th street starting at 7pm.

They travel to Washington DC for a series of key Congressional briefings on Wednesday June 4th and Thursday June 5th and are arranging an event at the prestigious National Press Club. Malachy McAllister's case will also be highlighted during these briefings.

On Thursday June 6th, they will appear in Rutherford, New Jersey at an event now being organized by Malachy McAllister.

Professor McGovern and Mark Thompson will speak on Friday ,June 7th at the Watertown AOH Hall, 151 Watertown Street, near Boston, organized by Jack Lahey-(603-560--8192) and starting at 7pm.

They go to the Newport Rhode Island AOH Hall, from 1pm to 3pm on Saturday, June 8th organized by Kevin Doyle.(401-641-8183).

On Sunday June 9th,Bridgeport AOH will hold an event at the Gaelic American Club, 74 Beech Road in Fairfield, Connecticut starting at 2pm. (Tom Keane-203-256-8033-203-913-0375)

They will finish in Albany with a Monday evening June 10th event at the Irish American Heritage Museum,370 Broadway, at 7pm before meeting Irish American Legislators on Tuesday morning at the State Capitol.

McGovern-Thompson Launch Groundbreaking Book On American Tour

Anthony McIntyre shares his thoughts on the British police arrest of two Northern journalists.

PSNI Stone Journalists For Turning Stones

Writing last month Mick Hall discussed allegations that MI5 sought to have the UVF target Charles Haughey. 

MI5 Sought To Have Haughey Assassinated

How much should Unionists trust the London Establishment when it says there will never be joint authority between Westminster and the Dail over Northern Ireland? Political commentator, Dr John Coulter, uses his Fearless Flying Column to express his fears that Unionism has had its fingers badly burned politically before when it put its trust in a London Establishment.

British State Not To Be Trusted

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)