Operation #Tuleta:Peter Hain confirms investigation by police of high security hacking

News International's chief executive denies that company was involved in any interference with Hain's computers

Letters from Peter Hain and Tom Mockridge to the Guardian

• 

Peter Hain says 'the Guardian story [about the possible hacking of his computers] was an entirely accurate account of my interaction with Operation Tuleta'. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Peter Hain has confirmed that police have met him to investigate the possible hacking of his computers while he was in his high security cabinet post as Northern Ireland secretary between 2005 and 2007. The approach by officers from Operation Tuleta was first reported in the Guardian last month.

News International, the former publisher of the News of the World, which has been accused in another case at the Leveson inquiry of using a former soldier to plant computer viruses, had challenged the Guardian report about the police investigation. In an email to the paper the company's chief executive, Tom Mockridge wrote: "News International has been advised that Mr Hain's computer equipment (and that of the Northern Ireland Office) was not and has not been the subject of an investigation by Operation Tuleta and there is no belief or suspicion that this equipment was hacked."

But Hain said in a letter the NI claim was incorrect. "The Guardian story was an entirely accurate account of my interaction with Operation Tuleta.

"I met with DI Beswick, head of Operation Tuleta, at his request last month to discuss an investigation into the possible hacking of three of my computers during my time as secretary of state for Northern Ireland. Two of these computers were issued by the Northern Ireland Office. One was my personal computer. I have provided the Met with account details for all three computers as they requested. This is a matter of national security and subject to a police investigation."

He added: "But I can say that the police confirmed to me they had not eliminated any news organisation from their investigation."

Mockridge denies that News International was involved in any interference with Hain's computers. The Leveson inquiry has heard from Ian Hurst, a former British army intelligence agent who recruited and ran agents within the IRA in Northern Ireland. Hurst, who also used the pseudonym Martin Ingram, told the inquiry his computer was hacked into by a Trojan virus in 2006 by private investigators on behalf of the News of the World.

The Met, whose Operation Tuleta is one of three linked investigations into computer hacking, phone hacking and police corruption, declined to comment on the meeting with Hain. Met detectives working on Tuleta have made one arrest, of a man aged 52, in Milton Keynes last month. He was held at a Thames Valley police station and later bailed. The Tuleta team reports to Scotland Yard's deputy assistant commissioner, Sue Akers.

On Wednesday detectives working on Operation Elveden, the investigation into alleged illegal payments to police, made their first arrest of a police officer. A 52-year-old woman, believed to be a royal protection officer, was arrested in Essex.

In total there have been eight arrests in connection with Elveden, and 16 arrests by officers in the Met's phone-hacking investigation, Operation Weeting.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/dec/23/peter-hain-investigation-police-hacking?CMP=twt_gu

#Stakeknife : Some Stories Never Die

One such is the extraordinary Stakeknife story.

The legend of Freddie Scappaticci is about to receive renewed attention.


http://redfellow.wordpress.com/2011/06/09/some-stories-never-die/

#Smithwick : Narrow Water Cover-Up Claims Are Not Lies Insists Agent

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/northern-ireland/narrow-water-coverup-claims-are-not-lies-insists-agent-16091881.html

The #Smithwick Tribunal

Tribunal of Inquiry  into suggestions that members of An Garda Síochána or other employees of  the State colluded in the fatal shootings of RUC Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and RUC Superintendent Robert Buchanan on the 20^th March, 1989.

The Smithwick Tribunal was established by Resolutions passed by Dail Eireann and Seanad Eireann on the 23^rd and 24^th March 2005 respectively, and by Instrument entitled Tribunals of Inquiry Evidence Act 1921 (Establishment of Tribunal) Instrument 2005.

The sole member of the Tribunal is His Honour Mr Justice Peter Smithwick

http://www.smithwicktribunal.ie/smithwick/HOMEPAGE.html

#Smithwick Tribunal May Hear Evidence From Scappaticci

FREDDIE SCAPPATICCI, the man who denies he was a British double agent in the IRA known as “Stakeknife”, may give evidence to the Smithwick Tribunal.

The tribunal was yesterday told Mr Scappaticci was in fact “Stakeknife”, regardless of his consistent public denials. Kevin Fulton, who worked as an informer for British security services after infiltrating the IRA in the Dundalk area in the 1980s, said Mr Scappaticci was a member of the IRA’s internal security, or “nutting squad”.

But in an occasionally heated exchange with Martin O’Rourke SC, counsel for Mr Scappaticci, Mr Fulton said it was “an actual fact” that “your client is an informer and he is Stakeknife”.

Following a break for lunch Mr Scappaticci’s legal team applied for additional legal representation. When tribunal chairman Judge Peter Smithwick asked if this meant Mr Scappaticci would make a statement and appear as a witness, he was told by the legal team that this was “under active consideration”.

Mr Fulton had earlier told the tribunal he also believed convicted IRA volunteer Patrick “Mooch” Blair was effectively another British agent who was “being protected by some state agency – North and South”.

Mr Fulton said Blair had made a bomb just days before the Omagh bombing and he believed this had in fact been the Omagh bomb. He and his M15 handlers had then decided to target Blair for arrest.

An elaborate sting involving the sale of £10 million worth of Viagra tablets was set up, but he said all his efforts to target Blair were thwarted, usually by police north and south of the Border.
He told Michael Durack SC, for the Garda, that he had been eventually told by his handler: “I am not to talk to you anymore.” Mr Fulton said he came to believe Blair was protected by State agencies and “walked on water” and was “more or less an agent”.

Mr Fulton – who is also known as Peter Keeley – has also alleged retired detective sergeant Owen Corrigan of Dundalk Garda station was an IRA mole in the Garda. But he agreed with Mr Durack that when he sought Garda help in securing “a financial package” from the British in 2002, he hadn’t mentioned any Garda-IRA collusion.

The tribunal is inquiring into suggestions of collusion between members of the Garda or other employees in the State in the murder of two RUC officers, Chief Supt Harry Breen and Supt Bob Buchanan, in March 1989.


http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/1217/1224309215606.html

Garda Collusion Allegations :Author of the book ‘Bandit Country’, Toby Harnden, speaks exclusively to the Examiner

Speaking exclusively to The Dundalk Examiner, author of Bandit Country Toby Harnden gave us the following statement in relation to Garda collusion allegations...

"I have always said that I would be happy to assist any inquiry into the circumstances of the Breen and Buchanan killings, subject, of course, to my duty as a journalist to protect confidential sources. That remains the case."
 
"I willingly assisted both the Garda and the RUC on separate occasions in 2000 when two officers from each force flew out to speak to me informally. No one from Judge Peter Cory's inquiry team saw fit to contact me, an omission that clearly calls into question the thoroughness of his investigation."
 
"In 'Bandit Country', I identified the two Garda officers suspected of collusion with the IRA as Garda X and Garda Y. At this stage I am not going to make any comment as to their names."
"As far as I can recall, before publication of my book in November 1999 I had never met or spoken to Kevin Myers."
 
"My book is a serious work of scholarship based on extensive research as well as interviews with British Army, RUC, Garda and IRA members, amongst others. The section on the killings of Ch Supt Harry Breen and Supt Bob Buchanan - by far the most detailed account of what happened - speaks for itself and I would urge anyone interested in this issue to read it carefully before rushing to any judgements."
 
"The section is, however, only one element of the history of South Armagh. About 150,000 copies of 'Bandit Country' have been bought in Ireland, the UK and elsewhere in the world and I have no doubt that the publicity surrounding the Breen and Buchanan killings - the overwhelming majority of it not generated by me - has played but a small part in this."

Garda Eoin Corrigan : DETECTIVE TO FIGHT SPY CLAIMS

Dundalk Examiner (Page 1 dated Friday, April 8, 2005) (Page 4 dated 26 March, 2005)

EXCLUSIVE

Ex-Garda says tribunal allegations are fiction

By Larry Carberry

A Garda detective alleged to be an IRA spy has said he is delighted that a government inquiry which will clear his name is being set up.
 
Former Special Branch Det. Sgt. Eoin Corrigan has described claims that he worked for the IRA while serving as a Special Branch officer in Dundalk as "total fiction." Mr. Corrigan is to be a key figure in the judicial tribunal chaired by Judge Peter Smithwick into the killing of RUC men Chief Supt. Harry Breen and Supt. Bob Buchanan at Edenappa in March 1989.
 
They had just crossed the Border on a return journey from Dundalk Garda Station when their car was ambushed Claims that a rogue garda had set up the operation were made in the British media.
 
Later, Eoin Corrigan was named by Jeffery Donaldson in the House of Commons. Because of Parliamentary privilege, the former garda officer could not take legal action.
 
Det. Sgt. Corrigan, now Drogheda businessman, has until now refused to speak to the media since the allegations were first made.
 
He has spoken exclusively to The Dundalk Examiner.
 
PAISLEY
 
"Ian Paisley was the first man to shout that there was Garda collusion in the Breen-Buchanan ambush. After that, a lot of people jumped on the band-wagon," said Mr. Corrigan.
 
"I am absolutely confident that some of those who made these claims will be shown up."
 
Two of those who reported the allegations of Garda collusion, journalists Kevin Myers and Toby Harnden, are expected to refuse to appear at the tribunal, where they would be questioned about their sources. Both have already been criticised by Judge Peter Cory, the Canadian investigator who examined their claims at the request of the Irish Government.
 
Det. Sgt Corrigan is confident that the truth about him would emerge from the Smithwick inquiry. But he is uncertain if the whole truth will emerge.
 
"I don't rule out that, for their own reasons, false information about me may have been fed to the RUC by certain Garda members. How else would Paisley and the others have got my name?"
 
SUBVERSIVES
 
At the time, there was friction among Garda officers in Dundalk. "Some of the things that were said about me were very hurtful," said Mr. Corrigan.
 
"Nobody was more opposed to the IRA than me. I had 30 years of service, in and out of the Special Criminal Court, and keeping surveillance on subversives at great personal risk. I am hurt at the suggestion that I conspired in the Breen-Buchanan killings."
 
The ex-sergeant said: "Nobody gave the IRA more hassle than I did."
 
The former Special Branch man also spoke about a Newry convict, Peter Keeley, who provided information to unionist MPs and to Judge Peter Cory.
 
Keeley who uses the name Kevin Fulton is quoted by Judge Cory as making allegations about Garda collusion.
 
Fulton appears on British TV regularly wearing a mask and claiming to be a former British spy.
"My lawyers have said they cannot wait to get him in the tribunal witness box. They believe they will take him to pieces - if he turns up," Mr. Corrigan told The Dundalk Examiner.
 

DROMAD
 
The former Special Branch officer also revealed that gardai had no advance information which would have allowed the IRA to set up the ambush.
 
He said the two RUC men had said before leaving Dundalk Garda Station that they intended to return the way they come - travelling on the N1 from Newry through Dromad. There was an escort waiting for them at Killeen, but they went up a back road.
 
"This may have been for security reasons. Or they may have changed their minds on the journey, and decided to go the Edenappa way. But one thing is certain, they were followed all the way from Dundalk," said Mr. Corrigan.
 
The IRA had every Border crossing covered long before those RUC men arrived. Breen was their target. The IRA wanted him because he appeared on TV to talk about the SAS killings of 8 IRA men at Loughgall. He was in charge of that operation, he said.

Ian Hurst : Smithwick Tribunal

http://cryptome.org/0005/hurst-fru.pdf

Robert Black Jailed For Jennifer Cardy Murder

Collect picture of Jennifer Cardy provided by the PSNI.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/northern-ireland/robert-black-jailed-for-murder-of-ulster-schoolgirl-jennifer-cardy-16088463.html

Images : Northern Ireland Troubles 1970

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/nostalgia/in-pictures-northern-ireland-troubles-1970-16087805.html

#Finucane Family Launch Legal Bid Against British Goverment

The British government is to face a legal challenge over its failure to launch a public inquiry into security force collusion in the murder of solicitor Pat Finucane, it has emerged today.

Relatives of the Belfast solicitor are to seek a judicial review of UK Prime Minister David Cameron's decision that Desmond de Silva QC should instead review the papers on the case.

Mr Finucane's widow Geraldine stormed out of Downing Street when informed of the Government plan in October and has now confirmed her intention to launch a challenge in the High Court in Belfast next week.

British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Owen Paterson apologised at Westminster for the state's collusion in the 1989 killing in which Mr Finucane was shot 14 times by gunmen from the loyalist Ulster Defence Association (UDA) in front of his wife and three children.

During talks on the peace process at Weston Park in Shropshire in 2001 the government of the day entered into an agreement with the Irish Government to hold inquiries into allegations that their respective security forces were linked to a number of notorious murder cases, including the Finucane killing.

The Finucane family said that having considered their options, they were now to mount a legal challenge.

Ms Finucane said: "Not for the first time have we had to resort to legal proceedings to vindicate our legal rights.

"It is clear that the British government have cynically reneged on the commitment made at Weston Park.

"The Cameron decision is also incompatible with Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights (the right to life).

"We take the view that the decision not to hold a public judicial inquiry is just another obstacle which we will have to overcome.

"We are determined to get to the truth surrounding my husband's murder. Our campaign will continue."

The legal papers will be lodged in the High Court within days and a date for hearing will be sought.

In the wake of the Weston Park talks, it was eventually agreed that the Westminster government would conduct inquiries into four cases, while the Dublin Government would hold one inquiry.

All have been held, except the proposed probe into the Finucane case.

It is now known that many of those involved in the murder were agents of the state, but the family has said they want to find out who sanctioned the killing and to expose the full extent of the plot.

The family had objected to holding a probe under what they saw as restrictions contained in the Inquiries Act, but following talks with the Conservative-led Government, after the Secretary of State sought a meeting with the Finucanes, there had been predictions that a deal was to be brokered on the shape of a mutually agreed inquiry.

Mrs Finucane and her family left the Downing Street meeting in October and held a press conference where they said they were angry at the surprise announcement of a review of the case.

The family has refused to co-operate with the review.

Mr Paterson defended the British government's decision at the time. At Westminster he repeated the apology issued over the state collusion, and said the plans to call in a top lawyer were the best way forward.

Mr Finucane was 39 when he was shot 14 times by the UDA gunmen as he was eating dinner.

His family have campaigned for a full public inquiry since the attack, and his widow has said she felt insulted after Mr Cameron proposed the QC-led review of her husband's death.

Given Mr Finucane's high-profile status as a lawyer who had successfully represented clients facing allegations of IRA activity, the claims of a security force role in the murder quickly emerged.

Retired Canadian judge Peter Cory, asked by the British and Irish governments to examine the allegations of collusion following the Weston Park deal, recommended a public inquiry into the death.

A separate report by former Met commissioner John Stevens in 2003 also said there was collusion.
http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/finucane-family-launch-legal-bid-against-british-government-531357.html

PANORAMA :Video - Ian Hurst - Tabloid Hacks Exposed

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00zn7hk

Ian Hurst's statement 2 Smithwick secret court is on Cryptome. RUC/MI5/Army corruption on a staggering scale . NB illegal to tweet!

Ian Hurst :Was The Sunday Times Involved In Computer Hacking ?

High Tec Touting

It has been suggested that some of those involved in the computer hacking scandal may have been working for Government agencies, So we would have a case of spies hacking spies and reporting back to MI5/6 and police special branch.

It has also been suggested that an email address of a Sunday Times journalist from Northern Ireland may have been involved in the hacking(with out his permission of course )so he may have been hacked so the hacker could hack others.........read more

http://stakeknife.blogspot.com/2011/11/high-tec-touting.html

Sean Hoare Whistleblower Found Dead Speaks Openly About Phone Hacking

http://themurdochempireanditsnestofvipers.blogspot.com/2011/07/hackgate-sean-hoare-speaking.html

Leveson Inquiry :NOW installed Trojan virus onto intelligence man’s family computer

Former British army intelligence officer Ian Hurst. Picture: Getty

Published on Monday 28 November 2011 15:10

The News of the World hacked into the emails of a former British Army intelligence officer in a possible attempt to find out information about the IRA double agent Stakeknife, the Leveson Inquiry heard today.



Ian Hurst told the hearing he learned this year that the paper installed a “Trojan” programme on his family computer in 2006 that allowed it to access his messages and other documents.

Mr Hurst served in covert Army units in Northern Ireland between 1980 and 1991 specialising in recruiting and developing agents within paramilitary organisations, the press standards inquiry heard.

He featured in a BBC Panorama programme broadcast in March this year which alleged that a fax containing extracts of his emails was sent to the Dublin office of the News of the World in July 2006, the hearing was told.

Mr Hurst said in a statement to the inquiry that the News of the World may have been trying to obtain information about the British intelligence agent within the IRA known as Stakeknife.

Panorama’s journalists told the former intelligence officer that the now-defunct Sunday tabloid hired a private investigator to target him, who in turn commissioned a specialist hacker - referred to only as Mr X - to access his computer.

Mr Hurst knew Mr X as someone who had served in the intelligence community in Northern Ireland and arranged to meet him to question him about these claims, the inquiry heard.

“He more or less charted the events from the middle of June 2006, he states for a three-month period, and all the documents he could access via the back door Trojan - emails, the hard drive, social media,” Mr Hurst said.

“He did not say this but the Trojan that we have identified would have allowed the webcam, so he could have actually seen me or my kids at the desk.”

Mr X said he infected the computer by sending an email from a bogus address and tricking Mr Hurst into opening the attachment, the inquiry heard.

But the former intelligence officer said he believed the virus actually came from a “trusted media contact from a well-known newspaper”.

“The type of Trojan which is deployed by newspapers or private detectives isn’t that sophisticated, and you have to open an attachment,” he said.

“The ones which would be used by governmental agencies would be, for instance, with a microdot, a full stop, so you wouldn’t need to open the attachment.”

Counsel to the inquiry, Robert Jay QC, said: “The unusual feature of your case is that the targeting of you is likely to have been not for the purpose of investigating issues relating to your personal privacy, but perhaps in a very different and in one sense sinister way, matters bearing upon your work in the intelligence community in Northern Ireland and any aftermath which followed from that.”

Mr Hurst replied: “I don’t think that’s a fair analysis. I think they were looking to obtain a commercial advantage as well.”

He told the inquiry that when police arrested Mr X in April 2009 they found the hacker had obtained his wife’s CV, pin number and documents connected to their telephone number and address.

Mr Hurst alleged that the police were involved in covering up the journalistic abuses and urged Lord Justice Leveson to require the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) to provide him with “all intelligence of police corruption, including at the very highest level”.

“The MPS have let society down, they should be making a full disclosure to you,” he said.

Jane Winter, director of human rights charity British Irish Rights Watch, told the inquiry that Mr Hurst contacted her in July to tell her that emails she sent to him had been illegally accessed.

She said: “From the point of view of my organisation, we really rely on trust and confidentiality and we deal with people from all sides of a very difficult situation in Northern Ireland.

“When I first heard that these documents had been compromised, my first thought was if all the people we help hear about this, they will lose confidence in us through no fault of our own and that is a very chilling thought.

“It is a real issue that this could dent our reputation for confidentiality.”

http://www.scotsman.com/news/uk/leveson_inquiry_now_installed_trojan_virus_onto_intelligence_man_s_family_computer_1_1987893

FRU :MP Patrick Mercer Denies Working For The FRU

http://cryptome.org/fru-mercer.htm

More on the murderous FRU:
http://cryptome.org/fru-portrait.htm

Patrick Mercer as MP and in FRU portrait.
Mercer denies the right photo is him.

Pat Finucane : IRA - Time For The Truth !

http://www.madden-finucane.com/douments/pat_finucane/14may03.htm

Kevin #Halligen :MI5 operation in Northern Ireland

Intelligence Online
Hired to spring the chief executive of Trafigura from jail in Abidjan, the Oakley company now finds itself under attack by the trader’s lawyer. Founder of the private security firm Red Defense International, Britain’s Kevin Halligen had until the first of September to respond to a suit filed by lawyer Mark Aspinall that called upon him to pay USD 1.3 million. He let the deadline pass and was thereby declared in default by the U.S. district court for the District of Colombia.
Intelligence Online reported in its 576th issue how Aspinall recruited Halligen, who took part indirectly in a MI5 operation in Northern Ireland, to help organize the release of his client, Claude Dauphin, founder of Trafigura, from the Maca prison in Abidjan. Dauphin had been arrested in Ivory Coast following the unloading of toxic waste by the vessel Probo Koala that had been chartered by Trafigura.

The rescue operation mounted by Red Defense, which involved using a Falcon corporate jet and South African mercenaries, was finally cancelled in February, 2007. Dauphin was released a few months later against payment of USD 198 million.

Following that episode, Aspinall and Halligen remained in contact and, in September, 2007, the lawyer invested USD 500,000 in two firms founded by Halligen in the United States, Oakley International Group (OIG) and Oakley Strategic Services (OSS). 

Six months later, he lent USD 250,000 to Halligen to replenish the coffers of the two firms, whose managing director was the former deputy assistant secretary of defense for counternarcotics, Andre Hollis. The latter is also a lawyer in the firm Van Scoyoc Associates.

Despite his investments, Aspinall never had access to the books of OIG or OSS, nor was his loan repaid. Under pressure from the lawyer to make good on his promise, Halligen instead left for Italy last December, and has yet to return.

His two companies declared bankruptcy and Aspinall, the only stakeholder who remained creditworthy, had to pay off their debts. To recover money he lost in the venture, Aspinall filed suit (1-09-cv-00655) against Halligen. But even if he wins his case, he probably won't get his money back. 

#Finucane Family Angered By Cameron

Geraldine and John Finucane, the widow and son of murdered solicitor Pat Finucane, with their solicitor Peter Madden outside 10 Downing Street, London, after a meeting with British prime minister David Cameron. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire

Related

• Campaign for new inquiry into Finucane murder | 12/02/2009
• Decision due on Finucane inquiry | 11/11/2010
• Finucane family welcomes move on files | 13/12/2010
• Finucane family seeks public inquiry | 11/01/2011

The widow of murdered Northern Ireland solicitor Pat Finucane said today she felt “angry” and “insulted” after David Cameron told her he was proposing a barrister-led review of her husband’s case.

After meeting the prime minister in Downing Street, Geraldine Finucane told reporters the whole family was “very disappointed” and would not support the initiative.

The family wants a full independent inquiry into the loyalist shooting in 1989.

Mr Finucane was shot by the UDA as he sat eating a Sunday meal at home. His wife was wounded in the attack, which was witnessed by the couple’s three children.There were allegations that some members of the security forces collaborated with loyalist paramilitaries to the extent that they could have stopped the killing.

Speaking in Downing Street, Mrs Finucane said: “I am so angry and so insulted by being brought to Downing Street today to hear what the Prime Minister had on offer.

“He is offering a review. He wants a QC to read the papers in my husband’s case and that is how he expects to reach the truth. All of us are very upset and very disappointed.”

She added that she was “so angry with the prime minister that I actually called a halt to the meeting”.

Mr Finucane’s son Michael, who also attended today’s meeting with Mr Cameron and Northern Ireland Secretary Owen Paterson, accused the prime minister of “reneging on a commitment that the previous government made to hold a public inquiry”.

He said Mr Cameron gave the “feeble” explanation that public inquiries had not worked in similar cases. “He seemed oblivious to the fact that the absence of participation by our family would mean we simply couldn’t support what he proposed,” he added.

In a statement, the Pat Finucane Centre campaign group said: “It is absolutely vital that any inquiry be allowed to delve into the involvement of the British Army Force Research Unit, RUC Special Branch and the security service MI5 in the murder.

“Britain is failing to honour the commitment it made at Weston Park to implement the recommendations of Judge Cory, the Canadian judge appointed by the two governments to evaluate the evidence in a number of contentious cases.”

Retired Canadian judge Peter Cory was appointed by the British and Irish governments to examine allegations of collusion surrounding the Finucane murder  and other controversial killings.

He recommended a public inquiry into Mr Finucane’s death, as well as inquiries into the murders of Portadown Catholic Robert Hamill, solicitor Rosemary Nelson and Loyalist Volunteer Force leader Billy Wright, shot dead by republicans at the high-security Maze Prison. The three other inquiries have already been held.

Former prime minister Tony Blair promised the victim’s family that the allegations would be investigated but no inquiry was set up.

Speaking in the Dáil today, Taoiseach Enda Kenny said if Mrs Finucane was not happy with the outcome of her meeting with Mr Cameron, then the House would not be happy either.

He was responding to comments from Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams who called for the Government to challenge Mr Cameron’s proposal to organise a barrister-led review rather than a full inquiry.

“I think the Government needs to press it and very, very hard,” said Mr Adams. “This is once again the British government looking to play a long game on this issue and it isn’t fair.”

The Taoiseach agreed, saying all parties in the Dáil were behind the Finucanes. He said he spoke to Mr Cameron who had informed him of intentions for the case. “He indicated to me it was his intention to get to the truth of this matter as quickly as possible and to issue an apology on the death of Pat Finucane,” he said.

“I told him that the house had always supported Geraldine Finucane in her search for the truth and the issues surrounding the death of her husband," he said. “I haven’t changed my mind and I indicated quite clearly that if Geraldine was not happy with what was on offer then clearly we would not be happy either.”

He said Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore will invite Mrs Finucane to meet the Government next week to discuss the meeting with Mr Cameron and to establish how to move forward.

PA 

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2011/1011/breaking9.html?via=rel

#FINUCANE Case may go to INTERNATIONAL COURT; Tánaiste Confirms Diplomatic Conflict :

Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore has hit out at British prime minister David Cameron over his refusal to order a public inquiry into the controversial murder of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane.
Mr Gillmore, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, accused London of falling short of a deal struck at the Weston Park peace talks in 2001.

He said Dublin had already conveyed its dissatisfaction and disappointment and would be preparing a formal response in the coming days. “There are sometimes occasions when frank disagreements arise between states,” Mr Gilmore said. “This is one on this occasion.”

The Finucane family walked out on a meeting with Mr Cameron at Downing Street last Tuesday when he told them he would ask a senior barrister, Desmond de Silva QC, to review the files into the killing rather than set up a full inquiry.

Mr Gilmore said Taoiseach Enda Kenny was only told about the decision during a telephone call from Mr Cameron shortly before the meeting. Both Mr Kenny and Mr Gilmore have expressed their dissatisfaction personally with Mr Cameron and Northern Ireland Secretary of State Owen Paterson.

The Finucane family’s legal team will work with Government officials in the coming days on their contacts with the British government in recent months ahead of a formal response from Dublin. Top level meetings are expected to follow.

Mr Gilmore said Ireland had an agreement with Britain over the investigation of certain murders involving alleged State collusion during the Troubles with which Mr Cameron’s government had to comply.

“It is our view that what has been proposed by the British government falls short of that,” he said.

Speaking after a meeting with Mr Gilmore in Dublin, Pat Finucane’s widow Geraldine said he had described last Tuesday’s decision as a dark day for her family, the country and the rule of law.

“I do believe the Government are as upset about what happened on Tuesday as the family are,” she said.

Mrs Finucane said she was disappointed Taoiseach Enda Kenny could not make the meeting but said it was clear anything Mr Gilmore was pledging had the full backing of the Taoiseach.

Michael Finucane, son of Pat Finucane, described the fall-out as a significant diplomatic incident.

Himself a solicitor based in Dublin, Mr Finucane said the British government had reneged on a bi-lateral political agreement and he understood the Irish government was seeking the legal advice of the Attorney General.

On the possibility of taking their case to an international court, he said: “Such a step would require detailed consideration and legal advice, but I would imagine it is one option.”

Mr Finucane said the British government had misled his family, the media and the Government. “At the very least their actions are disingenuous in the extreme,” he added.

A masked gang from the loyalist Ulster Defence Association (UDA) shot Pat Finucane in front of his wife and three children as they ate dinner in their north Belfast home in 1989.The British government has admitted there was state collusion in the murder.
PA 

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2011/1017/breaking62.html#.TpziCWh4U3g.twitter


@the_irish_times

#Finucane : #Amnesty - United Kingdom/Northern Ireland: Deplorable government decision to renege on promise of public inquiry into Finucane killing

http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/EUR45/017/2011/en?refresh

Pat #Finucane : Tom Watson - House Of Lords Debate

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2011-10-12a.335.0&s=speaker:11309#g348.1

#FINUCANE: Apology for 1989 Finucane Murder

The British Government is "deeply sorry" following the murder of Belfast solicitor Patrick Finucane, Northern Ireland Secretary Owen Paterson has said.

 

Making a statement in the Commons, he told MPs that Mr Finucane's killing in front of his family on February 12 1989 was "a terrible crime", adding that there have been long-standing allegations of security force collusion in his murder.

Former Metropolitan Police commissioner Lord Stevens was asked to investigate the murder in 1999.

Mr Paterson said Prime Minister David Cameron invited the family to Downing Street on Tueday so he could apologise to them in person and on behalf of the Government for state collusion in the murder of Mr Finucane.

He said: "The Government accepts the clear conclusions of Lord Stevens and Judge Cory that there was collusion. Mr Speaker, I want to reiterate the Government's apology in the House. The Government is deeply sorry for what happened."

Mr Paterson said he and the Prime Minister were committed to ensuring the "truth is revealed". He told the House he had asked former United Nations war crimes prosecutor Sir Desmond de Silva QC to conduct an independent review to produce a full public account of any state involvement in the murder.

"We do not need a statutory inquiry to tell us that there was collusion," he said. Mr Paterson maintained that the process outlined would be the "quickest and most effective way" of getting to the truth. Experience had shown, he added, that public inquiries took many years and could be subject to prolonged litigation.

But newly installed shadow Northern Ireland secretary Vernon Coaker labelled the review "inadequate". He said it was "a source of great regret" to the last government that they were not able to agree terms of reference with the Finucane family for an inquiry to take place.

Mr Coaker said that while inquiries take time and cost money, it is "possible for these to be both reasonable and, in themselves, should not be a barrier to the pursuit of justice". He added: "By seeking the truth and by honouring agreements, the cause of justice is served and, with it, the cause of a better future for Northern Ireland."

Mr Paterson insisted that, unlike his predecessors, he met the Finucane family. He denied ever indicating that the Government would launch a full public inquiry.

Read more: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/northern-ireland/apology-for-1989-finucane-murder-16062903.html#ixzz1aawKwOsA

#FINUCANES : Abruptly Halt Meeting With PM After Shock Murder Probe Decision

The family of murdered Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane have reacted with fury after the Prime Minister brought them to Downing Street to personally reject calls for a public inquiry into the controversial killing.


They have accused the Prime Minister of being scared to open an inquiry into one of the most notorious killings in Northern Ireland’s history.


Instead David Cameron is to press ahead with a review of the evidence in the case led by QC Desmond DeSilva.


The decision has been welcomed by unionist politicians who see it as drawing a line under a series of costly public inquiries, but attacked by nationalists and the Irish government.


Catholic lawyer Finucane was shot dead by loyalists at his north Belfast home in February 1989 — a killing that sparked allegations of collusion. Some key UDA figures at the time were working for Army intelligence and RUC Special Branch.


Expectations had been raised that Mr Cameron was set to establish a public inquiry, which would have had the power to call witnesses and gather evidence, after the family were asked to come to Downing Street.


Six members of the Finucane family were at the Downing Street talks yesterday. But the PM quickly told the family that there would be a review instead.


A Downing Street spokesman said the Prime Minister had “expressed his profound sympathy for the family” and accepted “that State collusion had taken place in Mr Finucane’s murder”. He also apologised to the Finucane family.


It was Mr Finucane’s widow Geraldine who called an early halt to the Downing Street meeting.
She said: “All of us are very upset and very disappointed.”


Mr Finucane’s son John told the Belfast Telegraph: “We felt insulted — being brought over to London to be offered something so insulting. It’s a step back.


“We’re still in the aftermath of trying to take it all in. After 12 months of engagement (with Government officials) what has been put on offer was never mentioned.


“It’s a step back. We said ‘you are making an absolute mess of it’.”


But the shock for the Finucane family is the news that the case will not be examined in a full public inquiry.


“We feel they are scared to have an inquiry into the murder of my father,” Mr Finucane said. “Every action that the British Government has taken since Cory (the report by Canadian Judge Peter Cory on the murder) shows that their goal is to ensure that the truth does not come out. We’ve been asked to accept a behind-closed-doors review of the evidence — a process into which we would have no input,” he said.


Mr Finucane told this newspaper that the Prime Minister had made clear that the Government’s intention was to push ahead with the review even if the family refused to endorse it. And it means one of the ugliest killings in a decades-long conflict is not going to be the subject of public scrutiny, but rather the evidence gathered in the Stevens investigations will be reviewed with a report by a QC due by the end of next year.


It is a long way short of the family’s hopes and expectations.


The Irish government has pledged to support the Finucane family. Speaking in the Dail, Taoiseach Enda Kenny said if Geraldine Finucane was not happy with the outcome of her meeting with Mr Cameron, then the House would not be happy either.


But DUP North Belfast MP Nigel Dodds said: “Everyone understands the desire of relatives to get the full facts about the death of their loved one. However, history in Northern Ireland has shown that the kind of expensive open-ended inquiry demanded in some cases has not been able to bring closure for anyone involved and has actually increased community tensions.”

Read more: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/northern-ireland/finucanes-abruptly-halt-meeting-with-pm-after-shock-murder-probe-decision-16062677.html#ixzz1aavPm230

#IRA: Pat Finucane: Secret footage :Ken Barret, a UDA member and British agent talks about the murder of Solicitor Patrick Finucane. What Barret did not realise was that the man who gave the order to have Mr.Finucane murdered, Jim Spence, was also a British Agent

#IRA: Shoot to Kill : Lurgan Funerals.

#IRA: #Freemasons ousted John Stalker (a non mason) from shoot to kill inquiry !

Byline: SONIA PURNELL

MPs yesterday gave new credence to suspicions of a masonic plot to oust John Stalker from the shoot-to-kill inquiry in Ulster.

The powerful Commons Home Affairs Committee confirmed for the first time that masons were 'prominently involved' in one of the biggest police controversies of recent times.

Two of the seven high-ranking officers involved were or had been masons, it revealed.

It said it could not entirely exclude claims that Freemasonry 'played a significant part' in the removal of Mr Stalker, then deputy chief constable of Greater Manchester.

Mr Stalker was appointed to head the investigation into … read more

http://business.highbeam.com/5900/article-1G1-109749044/masons-may-have-plotted-oust-stalker-say-mps

#IRA: Bloody Sunday compensation could open door for other payouts

Families of those killed on all sides during the Troubles may take up civil claims once this precedent is set

Belfast in 1978. Victims of state violence and paramilitaries on both sides during the Troubles may now seek compensation. Photograph: Alex Bowie/Getty Images

 

Costing nearly £200m, the Bloody Sunday investigation was the most expensive and longest running inquiry in British legal history.

Amounting to millions of words the inquiry laid out in scientific detail the minute by minute events on that fateful day in January 1972 which led to the biggest massacre of civilians by the British military since Peterloo.

The shooting dead of 13 unarmed civilians (a 14th died in hospital) following a civil rights march left an indelible scar on the city and drove hundreds, perhaps thousands of young recruits into the arms of the Provisional IRA.

For three decades, the families of those who died fought a dogged campaign to clear the names of the victims and to establish an internationally recognised tribunal into the atrocity carried out by the Parachute Regiment.

But when David Cameron stood up in the House of Commons in June 2010 and roundly condemned the killings labelling them "wrong", his historic statement seemed to draw some kind of line under the past. The fact that it was a Conservative prime minister who had acknowledged the innocence of those that died on Bloody Sunday was all the more poignant given that it was a previous Tory government under Ted Heath that had ordered the paratroopers into Derry's Bogside that day.

Now the Ministry of Defence has said that it will be compensating those families and victims still around after nearly four decades. On a practical level the compensation process may be complicated because many of those wounded on Bloody Sunday are dead and even some relatives of those killed have themselves passed away.

The figures available will of course be much more than the hundreds of pounds the army paid out back in the 1970s to some of the families without the military accepting any blame. Moreover, the payouts will focus wider attention on other potential compensation areas – eg from victims of state violence during the Troubles. Those directly injured or who had loved ones shot dead by the British army may also seek recompense once the Bloody Sunday payouts commence. That picture would be complicated further if the families of those killed by loyalist paramilitaries seek compensation. Those who argue that the police or army colluded or helped the loyalists target them or their loved ones could also sue the state once this precedent is set.
On the other side, some victims of terrorist organisations have attempted to sue suspected paramilitary leaders in the civil courts most notably the families of the Omagh bomb victims. They successfully used a landmark civil action against several Real IRA suspects whom they were able to name and shame through the courts. Although in this case the Omagh families were less concerned with compensation but rather a desire to get to the truth about the 1998 massacre — the single biggest of the Troubles.

Separately, there have also been moves by victims injured in IRA bombs and attacks to sued the now-toppled regime of the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in Libya over the dictators' logistical support for the IRA. It is expected the new Libyan government will compensate these victims in the near future.

Finally, the prospect of Martin McGuinness as president of Ireland following October's election in the Republic also holds out an interesting prospect. Were the former IRA chief-of-staff to become president, would unionist victims of the IRA seek retrospectively to sue him and the state he would head for crimes committed while he was an IRA commander?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/sep/22/bloody-sunday-compensation-more-payout?CMP=twt_fd

Bertie Ahern the Irish Revenue and Rupert Murdoch

http://johnlifebooks.wordpress.com/2011/07/18/how-cozy-was-bertie-ahern-and-the-irish-revenue-with-rupert-murdoch/

WikiLeaks revelations have shone further light on the degree of state collusion. The Guardian reported last month that the leaked US embassy cables revealed Bertie Ahern, the former Irish prime minister, told US diplomats "everyone knows the UK was involved" in the murder and that US diplomats feared "elements of the security-legal establishments" in Britain were fighting to resist an inquiry....read more

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jan/17/wikileaks-pat-finucane-inquiry

Pat #Finucane #Wikileaks data gives fresh impetus to Pat Finucane inquiry campaign

Leaked US cables could throw fresh light on the level of state collusion in the 1989 murder of Belfast civil rights lawyer

• 

Pat Finucane, the Northern Ireland civil rights lawyer killed by loyalist paramilitaries in 1989. Photograph: Reuters

 

"Some Americans might decry Julian Assange as some kind of anarchist – someone who should be locked up for a thousand years," reflects Michael Finucane, a 39-year-old Dublin-based solicitor. "But all WikiLeaks is doing is filling the vacuum created by governments unnecessarily."

Readers who know the Finucane name will understand the significance of those words. Michael is the son of Pat Finucane, the murdered civil rights lawyer. In 1989 Douglas Hogg, then junior home office minister, told the House of Commons some solicitors in Northern Ireland were "unduly sympathetic to the cause of the IRA". Michael Finucane has described these words as "a verbal hand grenade lobbed into the cauldron of Northern Ireland".

Three weeks later, two gunmen from the loyalist paramilitary group the Ulster Freedom Fighters burst into the family home in Belfast, wounding Pat Finucane and his wife, Geraldine. One gunman stood over him as he lay on the ground and fired 14 shots into his body and head.

Michael, then 17, was in the house with his brother and sister. Two decades later, the Finucane family is still trying to find out why their father was targeted and whether the government was involved in the killing. They continue to call for a full and independent public inquiry.

The WikiLeaks revelations have shone further light on the degree of state collusion. The Guardian reported last month that the leaked US embassy cables revealed Bertie Ahern, the former Irish prime minister, told US diplomats "everyone knows the UK was involved" in the murder and that US diplomats feared "elements of the security-legal establishments" in Britain were fighting to resist an inquiry....read more

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jan/17/wikileaks-pat-finucane-inquiry

#Smithwick Tribunal Inquiry .

http://www.smithwicktribunal.ie/smithwick/HOMEPAGE.html

Ian Hurst: Statement to the Smithwick Tribunal of Inquiry Made Public.

http://stakeknife.blogspot.com/2011/09/ian-hurst-statement-to-smithwick.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/sep/11/ira-murders-claim-to-smithwick

Pat #Finucane Centre : British army 'covered up' UDR units links to UVF

By Barry McCaffrey

The British army has been accused of a ’cover up’ after it was disclosed that it has withheld evidence for more than three decades revealing that UDR units were being used to finance and support the UVF in Belfast, with at least 70 soldiers on one base linked to the loyalist terror group.

The Detail website can reveal top secret government papers which disclose that the UDR’s Belfast battalion was heavily infiltrated by the UVF in the late 1970s.

The `For UK Eyes Only’ documents, uncovered by the Pat Finucane Centre, reveal how:
• Army chiefs feared that 70 soldiers in one UDR unit were linked to the UVF in west Belfast, including one member of the notorious Shankill Butcher gang;

• One UDR unit was suspected of siphoning-off £47,000 to the UVF while UDR equipment was regularly stolen from another unit to support the loyalist terror group;

• UVF members were regularly allowed to socialise at the UDR’s Girdwood barracks social club;

• Army chiefs considered secretly testing firing UDR soldiers’ weapons to check whether they had been used in sectarian murders;

• The collusion investigation was then suspended after a senior UDR officer claimed it was damaging morale within the regiment....read more

http://www.thedetail.tv/issues/20/udr-girdwood-story/british-army-covered-up-udr-units-links-to-uvf

#hackgate #metfail : Martin Ingram on Spies in Northern Ireland.

http://www.google.es/search?q=%22Martin+Ingram%22+site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fcryptome.org%2F&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=Hle&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&biw=939&bih=564&num=10&lr=&ft=i&cr=&safe=off&tbs=

#IRA #PSNI :'I'm not going to put my life in danger to do the PSNI's job'

Northern Editor Suzanne Breen explains why she will not comply with police pressure to reveal her sources in the Real IRA

On Monday, a Police Service of Northern Ireland officer arrived at my Belfast home with a letter. Detectives wanted my computer, disks, notes, phone, and any material relating to stories I'd written about the Real IRA.

I was given three days to comply. If I didn't, they'd seek a court order under the Terrorism Act. I won't be complying. The duty of a reporter to protect their sources is part of the National Union of Journalists' code of conduct. It doesn't matter whether those sources are police, paramilitaries, politicians, or civil servants.

Compliance would also destroy my livelihood and life. No organisation or individual with sensitive information would trust me again. If I did what the PSNI wants, my life would be in imminent danger. The Real IRA is utterly ruthless.

It shoots men delivering pizza to the security forces. It doesn't grant special status to journalists who, in its eyes, "collaborate". My Sunday Tribune stories related to the murder of two British soldiers at Massereene in March and that of Denis Donaldson three years ago.

Both investigations are matters of great public importance. But it's the job of police, not journalists, to bring those responsible to justice. The information I have about both attacks was printed in this newspaper. It's in the public domain.

I've no other information to substantially advance the police investigation. The Real IRA don't tell journalists their gunmen's identities. I wasn't allowed to record my interview...read more

.

 

http://winnowinghistory.blogspot.com/2009/05/im-not-going-to-put-my-life-in-danger.html

http://paper.li/mccnr9/caso-madeleine-mccann

Freddie “Scap” #Scappaticci has been named as the FRU agent Stakeknife.

His name was published on 11th May 2003 in the Sunday Tribune, the Sunday Herald, the Sunday World and the Sunday People[3]. The Scottish Sunday Herald approached the D Notice Committee in the days prior to publication on 11th May 2003 and were told that they would not be injuncted if they named Stakeknife so long as a newspaper in another jurisdiction had named him already. When they asked the committee whether they would put Scappaticci’s life at risk if they named him, he was told that Stakeknife was out of the country[4], which was apparently untrue. Andrew Jaspan, editor of the Sunday Herald, waited for the first editions of the three Irish Sunday papers that named Stakeknife before going to press himself[5]. Some newspapers claimed that Stakeknife was named as Scappaticci on the Cryptome website, but this was not in fact the case[6].

Scappaticci is in his late fifties[7]. He comes from a large, staunchly republican family in west Belfast. He has had homes in both Dublin and Belfast[8], where he lives at Riverdale Park North in Andersonstown[9].

He joined the IRA in 1970 and was interned with Gerry Adams in 1971[10]. He was interned again in 1974[11]. He is reported as having approached British military intelligence in 1978 and volunteered to act as an informer after he was severely beaten up by a Belfast IRA man[12]. He became the Force Research Unit’s most highly placed agent within the IRA[13]. A dedicated team, known as “the rat hole” was set up within FRU solely to handle Stakeknife[14].

Over time, Stakeknife rose through the ranks of the IRA to become a key figure in the “security department” known as the “nutting squad”, which sought out and eliminated informers and security force agents. He is alleged to have been second in command under John Joe Magee[15]. The IRA is said to have executed over 50 people: 16 IRA members, 7 ex-members, and 24 others.[16] ...read more

http://www.birw.org/archive_stakeknife.html

'Voices from the Grave ' (Video) Provisional IRA

http://stakeknife.blogspot.com/2010/11/voices-from-grave.html

#Stakeknife : Undercover Britain by Kevin Fulton.

http://stakeknife.blogspot.com/2011/01/undercover-britain-by-kevin-fulton.html

#Whistleblower: Kevin Fulton makes complaint to police in 2003, about Stakeknife and his intelligence handlers.

Whistle blower, Kevin Fulton makes complaint to police in 2003, about Stakeknife and his intelligence handlers, after they kidnapped & questioned him, On November 1st 2006, Fulton was arrested for a number of Murders, he was released without charge. This is a warning to stop him from exposing British More » agents involved in false flag operations in Ireland.

http://www.videosurf.com/video/whistleblower-british-agent-kevin-fulton-147227966

#Stakeknife and the #IRA (Video)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TE726HdZSsU

#Stakeknife:The Story of Britain's Army Spy at the Top of the IRA

By HARRY BROWNE

Editors' Note: On Thursday, May 29, elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly should have taken place. However, earlier this month Tony Blair decided to postpone the elections because, he said, of the failure of the IRA to come up with a statement that declared an end to all paramilitary activity. He said it would be pointless to go ahead with elections to an Assembly that was incapable of forming a power-sharing government. Many people in Ireland believed the decision was coloured by the likely 'centre cannot hold' outcome of the election: gains for Sinn Fein and Ian Paisley's DUP, and further damage to former 'First Minister' David Trimble from uncompromising elements in his own UUP. (Is this a preview of 'democracy' in Iraq?) At present Northern Ireland is again being ruled directly by British ministers, to the consternation mainly of the local politicians missing out on salaries and limousines. Harry Browne visited Belfast, where the talk is not of elections but of informers. AC/JSC

Belfast.
The 'war on terrorism'? Northern Ireland knows something about that particular concept, and is learning more and more about how easily 'on' mutates into 'of'.

The other day an apologist for the security forces said on radio what a tough job cops and soldiers had, working through all the years of the Troubles to "control terrorists". Someone pointed out to him just how terribly apt that verb, 'control', had turned out to be..

It would be unfair to say that Belfast is reeling from the news that the British Army had a highly placed informer in the IRA. "If you had asked me 10 years ago if there were informers, I would have said 'of course there are'," one senior republican told me in a Falls Road coffee-shop. "And the Brits were hardly going to bother putting them in black taxis."

So Sinn Fein tries to wax philosophical and even 'optimistical' -- the same republican insisted that the revelations were simply a sign of the British security apparatus disintegrating sloppily in the post-war context, and said they were not affecting morale locally. In public the party even tries to throw a veil of doubt over the particular claim that Freddie Scappaticci, formerly a central figure in the IRA's 'internal security' unit, was 'Stakeknife', a key British agent.

Scappaticci is one of hundreds of people of Italian descent in Northern Ireland and one of several of them known to have been involved with the IRA. Second generation, Belfast-accented and unable to speak Italian, he insists he was not baptised 'Alfredo' and resents the media for making Mafia noises with his name. On May 15 he made a monkey of those mediosi who had been reporting he was in hiding in Britain, when he appeared at a Belfast press conference to deny that he was Stakeknife. Since then, he has given a long interview with a local republican-leaning paper, the Andersonstown News, painting a fuller picture of himself as a granddad with a bad back just trying to get on with his life.

Be that as it may, most people here believe he was indeed Stakeknife, and that now he is 'toughing it out' because he has done a deal with the IRA. The IRA, observers suggest, could not afford the political fallout of such an obvious ceasefire-breach as the murder of Scappaticci, and so is playing along with his story in the hopes that the confusion and finger-pointing does more to embarrass the state than to divide the republican movement.

That remains to be seen.

The British state may be beyond shame in the wake of the report by English cop John Stevens into its widespread collusion with and manipulation of loyalist terrorists, especially in the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) -- watch out for some intriguing prosecutions -- but there's little doubt that the publicity about Stakeknife has opened up old internecine furies between different elements of that state.

One feature of the subsequent media frenzy has been the way army and police sources have been taking turns to claim that their agents had better information, more clout and/or cleaner hands than the other guys'.

Even before the Stakeknife revelations, investigative journalists at Phoenix magazine had discerned the battle lines: "the Foreign Office, supported by MI6 (the Secret Intelligence Service), the SAS, and the PSNI [formerly RUC] intelligence section plus ODSC (ordinary decent service cops) versus MI5 (the security service) and the Defence Intelligence Staff, which controls the various military intelligence groups."

Stakeknife belonged to army intelligence (the original information about him came, it seems, from a disaffected army source, which adds another twist to the spin, as it were) and his hands are filthy: some reports link him to 40 killings.

 His IRA 'internal security' role meant he knew a great deal about the work and identities of his colleagues; ironically, he was involved in investigating and killing alleged informers, putting him in a useful position to direct speculation away from himself.

His army 'handlers' not only let him go on killing, but on one occasion apparently protected him from loyalist assassination by redirecting a UDA murder squad to another man of Italian descent, Francisco Notarantonio, a senior citizen who had abandoned republican paramilitarism long before.

Still, Fred Scappaticci was not a key player in the Sinn Fein 'peace strategy', something conspiracy theorists, out in full force since the codename first began to circulate publicly a few years ago, have reckoned Stakeknife must have been.

Writer Danny Morrison, no longer a Sinn Fein official but still 'republican-minded', claims Scappaticci was one of three people under suspicion for leaking details that led to Morrison's own arrest in what appeared to be an IRA 'kangaroo court' in 1990; and so 'Scap' was kept away from sensitive information and operations after that date.

This is somewhat contradicted by another ex-agent who claims he was interrogated by 'internal security' in the form of Scappaticci in 1994 after an IRA operation went wrong. On the other hand, a newspaper report that he was also more recently providing information to the US DEA about 'narco-terrorism' links between the IRA and the Colombian FARC is probably just so much hyped-up spy-spin.

Efforts to dull the edge of the Stakeknife story won't stop the speculation in republican areas that some sort of cooperation with Britain ran to the very top of the Sinn Fein/IRA organisation.

For some dissidents, the presence of one or more 'touts' at a high political level is all that can explain the movement's abandonment of 'armed struggle' with a settlement that falls so far short of traditional objectives, however 'transitional' Gerry Adams says it is.

If the current clatter of skeletons tumbling from closets is bad for the Provos, it should be worse for the Brits.

 It is increasingly clear that commitment to extra-legal means of fighting the IRA -- commitment, that is, to directing terrorism-- reached to the very top of the British government. Prime minister Margaret Thatcher took a particular interest in Irish 'counter-terror' from her election in 1979, and especially after the bruising hunger strikes in 1980-81. The army's Force Research Unit (FRU), cited by the Stevens Report for its direction of the UDA through agent Brian Nelson (and also the very same spooks who 'ran' Stakeknife) was a pet project of hers; she allegedly met personally and privately with its officers in Northern Ireland.

The longstanding myth of Britain as a neutral party standing between two atavistic Irish factions -- shockingly popular among the Dublin media classes as well as in middle England -- is has taken a lethal hit.

Nonetheless, to some extent all this is water under the bridge.

While most elements of Ulster unionism still have an instinctual aversion to sharing political power with Irish republicans, that aversion is no longer shared by the British government (or, indeed, by the US government). For the British state, a successfully co-opted republican movement constitutes at least as good a 'partner' for governing Northern Ireland as John Hume's once-beloved, now-neglected Social Democratic and Labour Party.

The short-lived Northern Ireland executive included Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness as education minister, while he was alleged to be still a senior member of the IRA. (Unlike Adams, McGuinness has acknowledged his earlier role in the IRA in his native Derry.) Another Sinn Fein assembly member, Bairbre de Brun, was health minister, and neither she nor McGuinness was notable for the revolutionary overthrow of the bureaucracies they were assigned to oversee.

Nonetheless, there are new tensions that arise with each revelation. Republicans enjoyed only a brief period of "I told you so" over Stevens's report on collusion between the state and loyalists before a Stakeknife was driven into its own community-- whether the code-name refers to one person, a number of people or a whole operation that included electronic surveillance as well as agents.

 All over republican areas there are people whose family members were killed as alleged informers; there are others who lost loved-ones in operations that must have been betrayed by highly placed double-agents.

While their discontent bubbles under the surface, the Sinn Fein leadership has to worry. An IRA source told the Sunday Tribune that there was a danger of Scappaticci being killed by the dissident 'Real IRA'; it seems unlikely, given the discomfort his survival causes to their rivals in the Provisionals. (Further danger to Sinn Fein arises because of the terminal-looking tailspin in Northern Ireland's political process; the only way for the Northern parties to pull up and restore devolved government appears to be some sort of potentially humiliating act of disarmament by the IRA.)

For the moment, all the organizations involved are left to conduct the usual round of bureaucratic finger-pointing and ass-covering. University of Ulster sociology professor Bill Rolston is something of an international specialist in how communities and societies unearth the truth after a conflict situation ­ he warns sharply against the idealization of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission -- and when CounterPunch met him in the Lisburn Road he threw up his hands in despair at the notion that, given the state's interest, its evident capacity for cruelty and its self-protective instincts, an unspun truth about the actions of all combatants in the Troubles can be discerned.

With the official tribunal of inquiry into a single set of events, the 1972 Bloody Sunday killings in Derry, now in its fourth expensive year, it's not surprising that Rolston has written in Race and Class 44: "If a truth commission is open to manipulation by the same state forces that it seeks to bring to task, if trials cans find individuals but not systems guilty, and if tribunals become over-legalized, surely the odds are stacked against the community that is seeking truth." The latest revelations will further demoralize such communities: how much truth can they stand about the duplicitous roles played by some of their own?

Harry Browne lectures in the school of media at Dublin Institute of Technology and writes a weekly column in the Irish Times. He can be reached at

harrybrowne@eircom.nethttp://www.counterpunch.org/browne05292003.html