Document:Is Martin McGuinness a British Agent?

Document Provenance

An article by Brian Nugent - originally posted to Irish Indymedia on 6 February 2006 and included as chapter 8 of his book "In Defence of Conspiracy Theories ISBN 978-0-9556812-2-6. The book is available as a pdf download from Wikispooks: File:In defence of Conspiracy Theories.pdf

The article is an exploration and critique of allegations by Former British FRU Agent Martin Ingram (aka Ian Hurst) that Sinn Fein Chief Negotiator and latterly Deputy First Minister of the Nortern Ireland Assembly Martin McGuinness was and remains a British MI6 Agent. The article attracted a lot of informed comments which should still be available on the Indymedia site

Wikispooks comment

The article argues forcefully in support of the allegation. It is considered suitable for Wikispooks because it is well referenced and flies in the face of conventional Authority and opinion. Wikispooks only reservation is that it is arguably the sort of allegation that the British Intelligence Services would concoct were they seeking to discredit and undermine a senior figure opposed to Brtish influence in Northern Ireland. Several of the comments on the Indymedia site state as much quite forcefully.

Is Martin McGuinness a British Agent? The new revelations considered

A look at the recent statements by the FRU source known as Martin Ingram who states that Martin McGuinness is a paid agent of the British government

As I think everybody knows there has been an upsurge in revelations about British intelligence agency infiltration of (some would say control over) the IRA in recent weeks. This has culminated in a definitive statement from a former British army intelligence officer and handler that Martin McGuinness, widely considered the most powerful IRA figure of the last two decades, is a paid agent of the British government. It has come from a former warrant officer in the Force Research Unit who uses the pseudonym Martin Ingram. His real name is well known, he is personally also known and friendly with many Irish journalists so there is no real doubt about his identity or the fact that he really did serve in the British Army's Intelligence Corps in various places in Northern Ireland in the mid-80s. (The Force Research Unit is sort of a special Irish unit of that Intelligence Corps). In particular he served in Derry and was the handler for Frank Hegarty who infiltrated the Provisional IRA on his behalf during c.1984 and its the story of what happened to Hegarty that seems to confirm for Ingram that McGuinness is in fact a British agent. So basically he was told by his superiors to use Hegarty to get close to McGuinness and that is what happened the thing being that Hegarty rose suspiciously fast in the local IRA hierarchy even though he wasn't all that well known to McGuinness. In a space of only a few months he knew enough to pinpoint a huge arms dump held locally for example. So it seems that Ingram feels that Hegarty rose through the ranks so fast because he was an informer, in other words that McGuinness knew that and was systematically assisting the FRU in its task of infiltrating all ranks of the IRA. Hegarty after a while fled to the UK and was watched by FRU minders until he received word from McGuinness inviting him back to Ireland where he was ultimately to meet his death. The crucial point in this episode is that Ingram says that it was the commander of the FRU who "thought Frank to be a security concern and his depression was a potential problem for the FRU." So according to Ingram no great pains were expended in delaying him in the UK and his return and subsequent death seem to have been designed to solve that problem from the FRU's point of view.

So sure for most people its a conspiracy theory too far to say that McGuinness is a British government agent but the fact is that we now have a person in the know in the British intelligence community in Derry who is saying just that and his opinion must carry some weight. It is not the only reference that points this way and I thought I would point out a few more references for people to mull over before they dismiss this theory out of hand:

1) This is an account of a conversation between the former O/C of the Southern Command of the IRA (while being simultaneously a garda agent) Sean O'Callaghan, and Brendan Dowd, discussing the opinions of the senior IRA figure Brian Keenan while they were both held in Full Sutton prison in England:

" 'Does he [Brian Keenan] really think he was set up?' I asked Dowd. Dowd just smiled and said 'He thinks it was McGuinness.' 'He must be off his head,' I said, while at the same time being perfectly aware how Keenan came to such a conclusion. Keenan had been arrested at a security force roadblock just outside Banbridge in County Down, in March 1979. McGuinness was arrested at the same roadblock, but in a different car. Keenan maintained to Dowd that shortly before his arrest McGuinness, who was driving a car that may well have been known to the security forces, waved him down to tell him something that he, Keenan, regarded as unimportant. Keenan was adamant that the car he was in was clean and unknown to the security forces. He thought it possible that McGuinness, spotting that he himself was under surveillance, decided to take the opportunity to get rid of Keenan, who he knew was wanted on specific charges relating to the British bombing campaign. Waving down Keenan's car, he maintained, could have been McGuinness's way of pointing out to the police that there was another 'interesting' car in the area. Even Keenan, paranoid and untrusting as he was, couldn't really believe that McGuinness was an informer.....[goes on to say that the Marxist Keenan was against the Catholic Adams and McGuinness]...

Whether or not there is any substance in Keenan's belief that he was set up by a member of the Army Council, or in Dowd's allegation that Keenan blamed McGuinness in particular, it is certainly true that following Keenan's imprisonment Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness assumed a degree of control over the republican movement that they could not have dreamed of while Keenan was around.....

If Keenan really believed that he was set up by McGuinness, he has done nothing about it since he was released from prison four years ago. Was he simply speculating, thinking out loud ? But if that was the case why did he send such a definitive message out of the jail: 'I was set up by a member of the Army Council. I know who it is. Wait until I get out.' "^[1]

2) I believe it was Andrew Hunter the then conservative MP who stated once in the Sunday Times that he had heard that one of the British army units stationed in Derry in the 70s was given strict instructions to leave McGuinness alone.

3) One book that some claim has spurred a lot of the new thinking on British government control over the IRA is 'The Secret History of the IRA' by the experienced local journalist Ed Moloney. Here are a few quotes from a review of this book in the Telegraph (Oct 12 2002 p.3) by Toby Harnden:

"Is Martin McGuinness a high-level informer who has been working for the British for the past two decades? .....[This is one of] the tantalising questions raised by this important and compelling work, which slices through many of the convenient untruths that have been peddled by the political elites of Belfast, Dublin and London.
...
Moloney also offers remarkable insights into such men as Martin McGuinness, who he says held nearly every senior IRA rank but did much to undermine the organisation.
...
Although the book does not name the high-level informer who was apparently working for the British, there is a strong implication that McGuinness is the most likely "tout" . As with a good mafia thriller, the reader is soon guessing which of the protagonists is wearing a wire for the Feds. If Moloney knows, he is not saying. But when he writes that "no one ever suggested Martin McGuinness or any other senior figures at his level were passing on information to the British", one suspects that this was not meant to be taken at face value."

Yet if this was true I respectfully submit that the accepted interpretation of the troubles has to go out the window. Basically its obvious then that the Republican paramilitary groups were just as much in the pocket of the British intelligence agencies as the loyalist groups and yet if that is the case then clearly those agencies, and indeed the occupying British army, had to be there for some other reason than the suppression of terrorism because the 'terrorism' was all along their carefully nurtured baby. My tuppence worth on that question is that the troubles were an Irish version of the Italian 'strategy of tension'. This strategy was so called by the Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti and describes the reason why the Italian intelligence agencies, in alliance with those of the US and the UK, sponsored terrorism in Italy in the 70s and 80s. Basically they wanted to scare people into supporting those agencies and accompanying draconian security legislation etc. Again the story unfolded for the Italian public in much the same way that it has for us here in that first people began to realise that the right wing groups were really just the security agencies out of uniform and then they were later to find out that the left wing Red Brigades, ostensibly the latter's enemy, were also run by the security forces in alliance with the CIA and the P-2 masonic lodge.^[2]

But I think furthermore that this revelation, if it is true, that McGuinness is a British agent must in fact also make people think about the whole structure of Irish civil society and not just the paramilitaries. What I mean is that the same intelligence agencies from the UK and the US (and working no doubt through domestic agencies as well, North and South) obviously also attempt to control political parties, media outlets, trade unions, police forces and judiciary etc and the question is have they had as much luck controlling those entities as they have the paramilitaries? Bear in mind they bring a lot of power and money to the table to do this. Ingram says that in the mid 80s he knew of one offer of £50,000 cash being offered to an IRA figure as an initial sweetener to persuade him to inform. If Tom Gilmartin's revelations about some Irish politicians are anything to go by then you have to wonder what you could buy with that kind of money in those circles. Of course those agencies also have huge information sources that they can use to blackmail people with as well and in fact Ingram says that Denis Donaldson was blackmailed when the RUC Special Branch found out that he had been caught stealing on a covert Marks and Spencers security camera. ^[3] Just look at the recent leadership contest in the Lib-Dem party in Britain and imagine how you could manipulate that race if you had access to the sort of information that modern agencies have access to by electronic and other means.^[4]

Ingram provides a glimpse of that kind of infiltration of civil society when he talks about RUC Special Branch running senior agents within the Official and Democratic Unionist Parties where "they could and would be able and willing to exert influence." He says likewise that as regards the UK intel agencies' relationship with Irish government ministers and the gardai that "the level of penetration was high including Gardai commissioners." So maybe its sensible for Irish people to ask some hard questions sometimes about the various elements of Irish civil society and without being paranoid maybe we should be cautious if there is too cozy a consensus between this 'establishment' and the policies of the UK or US governments. I include the US because its obviously the home of the most powerful of those agencies as this reference in the Guardian to the CIA's role in the UK illustrates:

"Indeed, in 1991 journalist Richard Norton-Taylor revealed the existence of a list of something like 500 prominent Britons, including around 90 in the media, who were in the employ of the CIA, and paid through the old friend of the intelligence services, the BCCI." (Guardian May 5 2004)

There are a lot of rumours out there of course and for example the Phoenix has this to say about Minister for Justice Michael McDowell who is particularly distinguished in criticising the Republican movement including McGuinness:

"In the present climate of dirty tricks, the Stormont controversy and other manoeuvres by shadowy people in Britain Intelligence, one is entitled to ask if the same people are pulling [Lord] Laird's strings - as well as McDowell's." (The Phoenix Dec 16 2005)

Without adding or detracting from the obvious implication of the Phoenix's remarks you cannot help thinking that if this was true, taken together with the story on McGuinness, it implies that much of Irish political discourse is a kind of Punch and Judy show with the participants no doubt sharing a great joke at the gullibility of the Irish public as they wait for their checks from the one 'puppetmaster' !

Notes: Martin Ingram's revelations are contained in an article at cryptome (http://cryptome.org/ingram-spies.htm), an interview with Radio Free Eireann in New York (http://archive.wbai.org/files/mp3/060114_133008rfeirean...n.MP3) and a long discussion at the slugger o'toole website *http://sluggerotoole.com/2006/05/30/spy_story_rumbles_on/

• http://sluggerotoole.com/2006/06/02/more_on_the_mcguinness_theory/

---

Part 2

One simple point that I forgot to include above is that it is apparently accepted among Irish journalists that Sean MacStiofain was an agent of the Gardai, possibly from 1969. ^[5] But if that is accepted then why not the allegations against McGuinness since MacStiofain's role and status in the IRA in the early 70s would be directly analogous to McGuinness' for the late 70s and since ? Also does that not call into question the people selected by MacStiofain to attend the Cheyne Walk conference in 1972, which includes McGuinness. Presumably he would be expected to select other government agents in order to assist his handlers in controlling the IRA?

In any case I thought I might summaries where we are in this controversy:

On Sunday 28 May the northern edition of the Sunday World and the Sunday Tribune revealed a document that Martin Ingram received from a member of RUC Special Branch which it is felt proved that Martin McGuinness was an agent for MI6. It was a transcript of an intercepted phone conversation between McGuinness and his handler, since it is a short document I might as well reprint it here:

"J118: As I said, Patsy (SA3) was all for it, Tommy (SA1) was ready to go, he said he would have no problems asking the crew for their support.

G: Do you think there will be any problem with it?

J118: I know our fella (J119) has everyone geared up for it, he (J119) thinks it is his idea.

G: I think you should push this along as quickly as possible.

J118: Murray (B328) is pushing, starting to ask a lot of questions about Belfast Command.

G: Don't worry, we will look after things in that department, you just concentrate on the checkpoints.

G: We must have another meeting next week. In the meantime you can use the number I gave you in updates on the progress of things."

The numbers correspond to computer or file index reference numbers that identify each person of interest. In other words if anybody reading the document wanted to get background information on the person mentioned then they could just punch those numbers into a computer terminal and get the info. The point is that these are not codenames as such, they don't prove that anybody is an agent. G is said to be the MI6 handler, J118 Martin McGuinness, J119 Martin's brother Willie McGuinness, and B328 Sean 'Spike' Murray, Operations Director for Northern Command. It is reported to refer to planning for the 'human bomb' attack on the Coshquin checkpoint in 1990 and that it shows the MI6 handler was the prime mover in that incident. Obviously its a confusing document standing on its own but Martin Ingram says that he has checked it with other sources in the intelligence community which have authenticated it. The document he got also had various intelligence codes and jargon attached that proves its authenticity but which he cannot reveal for fear of compromising his source. The Sunday World newspaper followed the story up the next week reporting that it had a second security source, albeit anonymous, which confirmed the information and added that McGuinness' codename was 'Fisherman'.

So the bottom line is that a lot rests on the interpretation of the document by Ingram - and his sources - but the fact is that Ingram has already been proved right and trustworthy over Stakeknife and quite a number of other issues. Personally I think he has to be authentic when you see this kind of line being put about against him from some security sources who are briefing Jim Cusack:

"Many [British Intelligence officers who served in the North] suffered from high stress levels and nurtured suspicions ...Since the ending of the Troubles these tensions have evolved into bitterness and anger among former members of the intelligence community who now wish to reveal the fact that deaths were allowed to occur.....Many of these police and military intelligence officers suffered breakdowns after the Troubles ended as a result of the pressure they had been placed under. The decision by some to begin to talk about what they did and knew is - according to other former senior police - a kind of "therapy"."^[6]

Frankly once you hear that kind of talk made against Ingram then you know he is cosher. The intelligence agencies are always looking for their slander angle and the 'mad' or 'Walter Mitty' one is particularly popular. I think they are trying to discredit Peter Preston the same way. ^[7]

More details emerged later about the source of the document. Martin Ingram received it (and other documents not yet revealed, he stated in the radio interview) in a dead letter drop from a member of RUC Special Branch approximately two years ago and apparently at the same time as the DUP received similar but not identical documents which show McGuinness as a British agent. In passing it might be worth pointing out that when Martin McGuinness responded to these allegations he said that it was part of a DUP plot against him. That's as opposed to blaming the British security forces or intelligence agencies which maybe was a little unusual. You might speculate that he did that to anticipate the DUP, preventing them from releasing their documents, because if they revealed them at that point it would look too much like the plot that he was talking about. Its also interesting to note that two years ago there was quite a lot of upheaval in PSNI Special Branch after the head of Special Branch, Bill Lowry, had been sacked.^[8]

Martin Ingram also says that during the testimony he gave to the Saville Inquiry the British government seemed particularly anxious that he wouldn't name any agents. He reckons this was because they were nervous that he would name McGuinness at that time three years ago.^[9] In any case McGuinness came well out of the enquiry having fortunately secured the services of Dermot Gleeson (a leading Irish lawyer and one time attendee at Bilderberg meetings) to represent him.

Anyhow for a few weeks this has obviously been the topic of the day (although the big media outlets in the Republic were strangely mute for a few days after the story broke and played down the story after that) and this thrown up two important voices that agree with the claim that McGuinness is an agent:

1) Raymond Gilmour was an RUC Special Branch agent in the IRA in Derry in the early 80s and he is now on the record saying that he feels McGuinness protected him because he was also an agent:

"I could never understand how I was allowed to run so long and do so much damage. Now I suspect that McGuinness was looking out for me."

Gilmour in his book also points out how he was advised not to give evidence or implicate McGuinness during his supergrass trial and this apparently wasn't the only time that happened:

"Statements by another supergrass, Robert Quigley, implicated McGuinness in organising IRA activity, but he was never charged." ^[10]

2) Fr Denis Faul who, among other things, was at one time chaplain to the Republican prisoners in the Maze, also believed that McGuinness (and most of the IRA leadership ?) were British agents:

"Faul often would tell them [warning his pupils], “it will sooner or later emerge that your commanding officer was a tout, and that his commanding officer was a tout too. And whilst you’re rotting away, they will be getting off scot-free.”

If only more imams in Britain today spoke like that to young Muslims tempted by jihad.

Faul’s warning was only mildly hyperbolic. He was vindicated when it emerged that two leading Provisionals, Denis Donaldson and Freddie Scappaticci, had been on the British payroll — the tip of an iceberg. And he would have been unsurprised by allegations that Martin McGuinness was a British agent: he had claimed as much to me more than five years ago. “One thing about the Brits,” he would say. “Just remember, they play cricket. Nice and long and slow.”

This observation brought him little pleasure: he felt that though the British State was clever, it had cynically sold out the ordinary decent Catholics...."^[11]

Two further points might be made by way of corroborating what Ingram has said. The first is the point that his handler was said to be from MI6 which is interesting because there have always been rumours of MI6 communication with, and closeness to, the IRA in general and McGuinness in particular.

From Liam Clarke: {{QB| "Some links to MI6 were even approved by the IRA. McGuinness had a so-called "back channel" to Michael Oatley, a former head of MI6's anti-terrorism operations. Oatley negotiated an IRA ceasefire in 1974-75. After it broke down he left open a secret channel of communication with two intermediaries in Derry, Brendan Duddy and Denis Bradley. This allowed messages to be passed to the IRA and McGuinness.....His [McGuinness'] political value, underlined by his hotline to a senior MI6 officer, may be sufficient to explain why McGuinness has often seemed a protected species."[I wonder is that hotline an example of 'hiding things in plain sight' !lol] ^[12]

From Ed Moloney:

"Perhaps the most surprising aspect of last week’s rocket attack on the London headquarters of MI6, apparently by the Real IRA, is that this is the first time that its headquarters, or indeed any building belonging to Britain's foreign spy agency, has been the acknowledged target of an attack by a Republican paramilitary organisation. One possible reason why serves to highlight intriguing aspects of the odd relationship that has existed between the various leaderships of the Provisional Republican movement and members of Britain's Secret Intelligence Services over the years of the Troubles......[the article hints at the closeness of the relationship, and ends:] All this may give a cogent explanation as to why the Provisional IRA never targeted Michael Oatley’s colleagues." ^[13]

From the Phoenix Magazine:"

[Michael Oatley] He first met McGuiness in 1972 in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, when he was a highflyer at MI6 headquarters in Century House. A year later he became second in command at British Secret Service MI6 headquarters in Northern Ireland at Laneside, Craigavad. Since then , McGuiness and Oatley have got together regularly over the years in secret, and at one time (during the 1981 hunger strike) met on an almost daily basis. More recently, Oatley and McGuinness met in Donegal in 1990. It was that meeting which sparked the ongoing peace process of the Hume-Adams talks, a Downing Street declaration, and speculation about a peace deal. Officially, Oatley retired as a Controller (one of the highest ranks in the Secret Service) in 1991 on reaching the age of 56. However, never a man to let friendships die, he kept in regular contact with Martin - with consequences which we are now reading about." ^[14]

By James Casbolt – Former MI6 Agent:

"...many organised crime and terrorist groups and these groups like the IRA are full of MI6 agents." ^[15]

The second point of corroboration as it were concerns the question of whether or not it was remarkable and suspicious that Frank Hegarty was promoted so rapidly and given access to great secrets despite being known as indiscreet and even known for earlier giving information to the army while he was in the Official IRA. Liam Clarke seems to accept that Ingram's account of this is agreed in Republican circles:

"IRA veterans agree with Gilmour that McGuinness often promoted suspected informers to positions where they could do most damage. One example was Frank Hegarty, an agent who worked for Martin Ingram. He was suspected of being an informer, but McGuinness personally put him in charge of hiding newly imported weaponry from Libya." ^[16]

Barry in one of his comments has also said that that is the feeling in Derry while during the radio interview Ingram cleverly extracted the same opinion from Eamonn McCann, a friend of Frank Hegarty and neighbour of Martin McGuinness, who admitted that he was "astonished at Franko's progress in the Provisional IRA." Eamonn conceded that Hegarty was "absolutely absolutely" not a discreet or particularly intelligent person, in fact Eamonn says that he was indiscreet "in a way I have never encountered in anybody else" among paramilitaries and that he was "not up to the job" of being an IRA/FRU agent. This then obviously corroborates Martin Ingram's view that his rapid promotion in the IRA was suspicious.

Now for the speculative bit! I was just wondering about one phrase that Ingram used in the radio interview when he said that he doesn't think that McGuinness was motivated by money and this has got me thinking about what could have caused him to become an agent. While this is just pure speculation I just wonder whether or not he might have succumbed to another weapon in the intelligence agency armoury which is known as the 'false flag' operation. To explain how this works imagine some target called X living in Ballydebob who an intelligence agency wishes to recruit. Say for the sake of argument that he isn't motivated by money, is not the sort that would be easily intimidated and is suspicious and unsympathetic to intelligence agencies and the security forces in general. But a survey of his loyalties and lifestyle has thrown up the fact that he is a diehard supporter of the local stamp collecting club, hypothetically speaking !lol. So what the agency might do is that it will get him to work for them under false pretences in that it will encourage him to do some act thinking that it was for the good of the stamp collecting club rather than the agency. They would do this either by recruiting his superior or colleague in the club or by using somebody from the international stamp collecting club who is on their books. (Philip Agee in his book on the CIA (Inside the Company) says that the CIA control a huge list of international organisations like that, trade unions, student bodies etc). Of course after a period of time if the guy has done anything illegal then they will blackmail him, threatening to charge him over the illegal act or expose him to irrate colleagues, and this blackmail will keep him working for them after he has discovered that he was conned.

This has got me thinking about the problems in the Catholic church and I would just like to say at the outset that I, a Catholic, derive no pleasure from pointing out these issues. And although I am no theologian I would also like to point out that AFAIK Catholics do not worship the Pope or look upon him as a God. Catholics pray 'for' not 'to' the Pope at the end of mass and Papal Infallibility is just a canon law legal doctrine a bit like the way the divine right of kings impinges on English common law and the way similar doctrines work in French law that encapsulate a kind of 'infallibility' on the part of the state. It doesn't mean that the Pope is considered a God after all if that was the case then Pope's who are later canonised would not need to go through such a lengthy process to get there. I say this because the depth of scandal and corruption that is now evident in the Catholic Church could possibly touch those at the pinnacle of what is after all a very hierarchical organisation. Consider this kind of statement from Fr Brian d'Arcy:

"This is the man [head of the Legionaries of Christ and the subject of 'well founded' accusations of child abuse] who accompanied John Paul II to Mexico in 1979, 90 and 93. Despite knowing that these accusations had been made against him, Pope John Paul gave a public tribute to him calling him, "an efficacious guide to youth." And as late as 2004 John Paul II congratulated him for, "intense, generous, and fruitful priestly ministry."...[earlier in the article:] If you want to find out why the sex abuse scandals were handled badly by the church that's the reason. The clerical club, right to the very top, closed ranks and destroyed the credibility of our precious church." ^[17]

Clearly a serving Catholic priest is not going to write that in a mass circulation newspaper unless he feels strongly that there is huge corruption at the Vatican level of the church. It is this background that must be considered when you hear that a former member of US Army Counter Intelligence in Italy in 1947, William Gowen, in a deposition given as part of a court case earlier this year, has apparently claimed that the then Monsignor Montini, the future Pope Paul VI, was an OSS/CIA asset. Possibly an agent of none other than James Angleton. ^[18]). While this is only one source for a serious charge it nonetheless ties in with the many stories of cooperation between the Vatican and the CIA e.g. in relocating German political refugees after WWII and in Poland in the 80s. It also might be linked with the many other allegations of shady dealings at the Vatican made by people like the Kerry Jesuit Fr Malachi Martin. ^[19]

Fascinating, I hear you say :-), but how does that fit in with Ireland and the IRA? The point is that the former personal secretary of this Montini, Archbishop Alibrandi, as the Papal Nuncio to Ireland from 1969-1989 was very close and supportive of the IRA leadership ^[20] and was lobbying the Irish government on Ulster politics as early as 1970. ^[21] Other stories circulate which must have involved the Papal Nuncio in 1970:

"Take a look at the Timewatch programme on this shown on BBC2 in 1996. They had witnesses who said the CIA had a meeting with the Provo high command to be and leaders of the Catholic heirarchy in Co. Fermanagh in 1970." ^[22]

So I know its speculation but I would suggest that if the CIA are the close colleagues of MI6 in this destabilisation, as e.g. the former UK Defence Minister Enoch Powell stated ^[23] , then it was probably done through their agents at the high ranks of the Catholic Church.

And you thought the Republican Movement had problems!lol

Note: The radio interview mentioned is at: http://irishfreedom.net/RFE/radio%20free%20eireann.htm (Radio Free Eireann, New York, 3/6/06), the other article here on indymedia: http://www.indymedia.ie/article/76319 , and the Sunday World story: http://cryptome.quintessenz.at/mirror/mcguinness-spy.htm .

Footnotes

1. ^ . Sean O'Callaghan 'The Informer' (London, 1998) p.264 .
2. ^ . You can read a more elaborate discussion of the strategy of tension in the Irish context at www.indymedia.ie/article/70223 . This is revised at http://oireland.tripod.com/index.html with more international comparisons in the Appendix.
3. ^ . He was working as a security guard on contract for them at the time.
4. ^ . Even Tony Blair was an agent of MI5 before he became PM: http://tinyurl.com/d9b32 which is the Bristol 'Evening Post' of 13 September 2005. This is from David Shayler who reviewed his MI5 file, see http://www.bilderberg.org/sis.htm#agent .
5. ^ . http://saoirse32.blogsome.com/2005/11/26/sean-mac-stiofain/ noting Liam Clarke's article of the Sunday before Mac Stiofain died and Jim Cusack in the Sunday Independent 21 Dec 2003 http://britishcollusion.com/monaghan14.html .
6. ^ . Sunday Independent 4 June 2006 .
7. ^ . http://www.indymedia.ie/article/76492 .
8. ^ . He was interviewed here: http://www.phoblacht.net/lowry1.html . He seemed pretty tight lipped about it all saying at one point: "Were they [the IRA] extensively penetrated? The former RUC man smiled, but refused to be drawn. 'Penetration of all terrorist organisations was good.'"
9. ^ . http://www.martiningram.blogspot.com/ .
10. ^ . Sunday Times 4 June 2006 p.5 .
11. ^ . The Times 23 June 2006 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-2239124,00.html .
12. ^ . Sunday Times op. cit.
13. ^ . Sunday Tribune 24 Sept 2000 http://www.bytecenter.com/members/bbs/RepublicanAlterna...=3406 .
14. ^ . 14 Jan 1994 quoted in "Orwellian Ireland" http://oireland.tripod.com beginning of Chapter 3 .
15. ^ . http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=4540 I know this article stands on its own in the sense that there is no way to prove that Casbolt was genuinely in MI6 but at least as part of a pattern surely you cannot ignore sources like this. Incidentally there is no reason to shy away from his statements about the drug trade, books like Rodney Stich "Drugging America"( Alamo, 2005) (available free at http://www.defraudingamerica.com/list_of_books.html ) show that he is not alone in claiming that MI6 and the CIA have an undocumented but powerful role in that area.
16. ^ . Sunday Times op.cit.
17. ^ . Sunday World 11 June 2006 p.71 .
18. ^ . radio interview with Attorney Jonathan Levy 27 Feb 2006 http://mp3.rbnlive.com/Greg/0602/20060227_Mon_Greg1.mp3 and http://mp3.rbnlive.com/Greg/0602/20060227_Mon_Greg2.mp3 .The background to the courtcase is at www.vaticanbankclaims.com .
19. ^ . Malachi Martin was from a Republican family in Ballylongford in Kerry, a brother of the UCD historian and conservationist F.X. Martin ( http://www.historyireland.com/magazine/features/feat5.html ). For his shocking insights into corruption at the Vatican see e.g. the reviews of the his books on Amazon (like at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/03854...75210 ) and an interview with William H Kennedy, a friend of Malachi's, at http://mp3.rbnlive.com/Greg/0605/20060502_Tue_Greg2.mp3 . A Dominican friend of his, Fr Charles C. Fiore, says that: "He knew the Popes from Roncalli to Montini to Wojtyla, and on several occasions met secretly with John Paul II, to whom he gave a copy of Keys of This Blood."(http://www.unitypublishing.com/newswire/fiore1.html) Fr. Fiore himself has been trying to highlight the type of abuses that we have seen in Ireland: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_I...26940 .
20. ^ . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaetano_Alibrandi and http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4161/is_200...45885
21. ^ . http://gazette.ireland.anglican.org/150202/panorama1502...2.htm .
22. ^ . http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=72419 .
23. ^ . "Orwellian Ireland" http://oireland.tripod.com Chapter 4 footnote 114 .