The Armalite would cause havoc among local Republicans. I wanted the snake to start eating itself. I wanted the Republican movement to implode in an internal feud. I decided on a Saturday to coincide with a Derry City home match. I decided to operate alone. I could move and operate more easily under cover of the massive crowd decked out in their uniform of red and white. McGuinness loved his football and attended every match that was played at the nearby ground. I opted for a car rather than the motorbike and the idea was to hit him with the .38 as he went into the newsagents, then switch to the Armalite to finish him off. I dressed as a football fan, wrapping the red and white scarf around my neck and wearing a coloured monkey hat. With two eyeholes cut in it, the hat would double as a mask. As I made my getaway, it would give me a quick disguise.
I waited for McGuinness to show. He never altered his newspaper run, and hadn’t missed a home match for twenty years, but where the hell was he? The Army had a lookout post on Strand Road and I knew I could be seen. A foot patrol walked past the car and one of the soldiers bent down and looked in at me. I thought the game was up, but they continued walking and I drove out of the city. I met my associate at a safe house and asked him if he knew what was going on. He said there was a major problem with the operation and it would be in my interests to go back to Belfast.
Unknown to me, Tucker Lyttle, the West Belfast UDA brigadier, had sent three volunteers to Londonderry to ‘kill’ McGuinness at the dole office. When I say ‘kill’, I mean Lyttle wanted it to look like a real UFF operation, even though it wasn’t. His three volunteers were game for the sanction and were carrying two Sterlings. They were also going to kill Frank McGuinness and two other men who signed on with the McGuinness brothers at the same time, but they were pulled back to Belfast at the last minute. As a member of the UDA’s Inner Council, Lyttle knew about my attempt to kill McGuinness because all sanctions had to be passed by the Inner Council, but he stood up at the meeting and insisted his volunteers would do the job. Lyttle was a tout and he needed to give the impression he was involved in big operations. He needed to keep his cover. In reality he wanted to fuck things up. He reported back to the Inner Council that the operation wasn’t feasible and ‘we should leave well alone’. Lyttle knew that with McGuinness’s death his own death warrant would be signed.
He spent most of his time socialising in Republican West Belfast and racing his prized greyhounds in Dunmore stadium in the heart of Provoland with his Republican pals. He even drank in IRA bars. Lyttle knew the assassination of Martin McGuinness would mean all bets were off and he would automatically become a target. He knew his Provo pals would turn on him. He spilled the beans to his RUC handlers. I am absolutely certain McGuinness was tipped off and deliberately changed his routine because he knew he was a target.
My options to assassinate McGuinness were reduced. His house and the newsagents were ruled out. I couldn’t kill him at the dole office because the then Mid-Ulster brigadier had been photographed, by the Army, with an off-duty RUC officer. They were in the RUC man’s car watching McGuinness as he arrived to sign on.
I would let things sit for a while before going back to Londonderry and trying my other option: his daughter’s primary school. McGuinness was a marked man. He would be assassinated and his death would be claimed by one of the Loyalist paramilitaries I associated with. I was not letting anyone stand in my way. Several weeks later I returned to Londonderry and met up with my associate. In a car registered in his name we sat outside the school. It was a dry run, but if McGuinness appeared I was going to shoot him with the .38 revolver hidden between my legs.
By now my associate was beginning to panic a little and told me I was ‘on my own’ as he couldn’t risk drawing attention to himself. I was prepared to cowboy it if McGuinness showed. He did turn up, but I didn’t shoot him. He was walking hand in hand with his little girl. He bent down and hugged her and she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him back before running up the lane to school. I couldn’t shoot Martin McGuinness in front of his daughter. I couldn’t live with the responsibility of forcing a little girl to watch her father die. I left Londonderry and returned to Belfast.
I am not a gangster or a criminal. I don’t assassinate targets in front of their wives and children. I have never burst into a man’s home and shot him in front of his family. When my time comes, and it will, I do not want my family to be around. I wouldn’t want them to be caught in a hail of bullets or executed just because they are mine. I saw my own family reflected in his daughter and she stopped me in my tracks. I saw the human side to Martin McGuinness and I couldn’t pull the trigger. His little girl saved his life. McGuinness had got away from me. Later, he would get away at Milltown too. I read he boasted about leaping over gravestones as he pursued me. I have seen photographs of him crouched on all fours, mouth open in a scream, terrified look on his face, hiding behind a gravestone. It proved he had blood running through his veins.
Martin McGuinness is still ever present in my life. He is constantly on the news and is now a minister in our government. He is in charge of the education of my children and grandchildren, but I can watch and listen to him now. Years ago I would have shot the screen.
It was an open secret among Loyalists that Tucker Lyttle had Special Branch handlers. With him on the UDA’s Inner Council and blabbing to his RUC handlers, I was banging my head against a brick wall. Big operations were never going to succeed. There were a lot of dirty games, counter-intelligence and misinformation generated by career Loyalists like Lyttle who were more interested in retaining their lavish lifestyle than the war with Republicans. I am in no doubt that he compromised the attempt to assassinate McGuinness by telling his Special Branch handlers what was discussed at the Inner Council. I am in no doubt that his actions ultimately led to McGuinness becoming aware that there was a genuine attempt to take him out. John McMichael had warned me about Lyttle several times. He told me he didn’t think twice about sacrificing Loyalist volunteers. I was beginning to understand exactly what that meant.
11
THE POPPY DAY MASSACRE
MCGUINNESS LEFT ME WITH A SOUR TASTE IN MY MOUTH. I WAS DISAPPOINTED THAT THE MAN WAS STILL ALIVE, BUT I WAS DETERMINED MY WORK WOULD CONTINUE. Intelligence was coming to me thick and fast and my list of targets was growing by the day. Peter Joseph Bateson was an IRA man from Magherafelt in County Londonderry. When he came to my attention he had been out of prison just two years.
He was one of the IRA’s most feared and dedicated volunteers, a golden boy who was ruthless, organised and highly motivated. He was a cradle-to-grave Republican whose family was steeped in Irish politics.
Bateson had served only half of a twenty-year term for attempted murder. The RUC finally caught up with him in 1977 and he was charged for his part in the attack on three policemen in 1974. Despite being ambushed in their patrol car, the three officers escaped with their lives and were able to identify Bateson from RUC ‘wanted’ posters. I knew he socialised in the Elk bar, where he met his five-man active-service unit every Monday night. I knew where his girlfriend lived, her name and what she did for a living. I knew where Bateson lived. I stalked him for six weeks.
I wanted to kill him in the Elk. I chose an AK47 because I knew I would have to shoot round me to make the operation a success and a pistol would be useless in this situation. In addition, an intelligence officer warned me that Special Branch were watching Bateson and were likely also to be in the Elk. If I opened fire on Bateson and his unit, they would open fire on me. I decided to blow him up.
I chose two RDG5 grenades with five-second fuses to make my bomb. I filled a plastic bottle with sugar and oil and taped the grenades either side of it. This was then attached to a litre of petrol. The device was to be attached to the steering column of Bateson’s car. Each grenade contained six ounces of TNT. The combination of petrol and explosives would cause a massive fireball. Bateson would die in the blast and then be incinerated.
It was a two-man job
. The back-up man had a scanner that picked up RUC broadcasts on the security forces’ movements in the area. We knew, even before the security forces on the ground, when the RUC and Army were on the move. We knew which areas were hot and which were cold. For two nights I sat in the car park of the Elk waiting for Bateson to show. I also kept my personal weapon, a Ruger, in my pocket, and if he arrived in the car park I wouldn’t hesitate to pump him full of lead. I had spent six weeks organising this operation but Bateson never appeared. I don’t know if he was tipped off. I don’t know if was coincidence, but according to his file, which stretched back many years, it was the first Monday-night meeting he had missed.
I was disappointed that Bateson had slipped through my fingers. I was suffering from what Vietnam veterans called the dreaded ‘cluster fucks’. A string of operations weren’t working out: Bateson didn’t happen because he didn’t show; McGuinness didn’t happen because Tucker Lyttle compromised the operation; and Robert McAllister was also a no-result.
One year after my thwarted attempt on his life, Bateson was caught red-handed by the security forces with a bomb. He was about to explode a massive Semtex device weighing eighty-five pounds, which he had planted in a drain near Army living quarters. The IRA had a policy of attacking the families of security forces. Bateson was caught with the control wire in his hand, dressed in overalls and hiding in undergrowth. When he was asked what he was doing, he is reported to have said he was on a death list and in hiding. Bateson got his second jail term, this time twenty-five years. He was a dedicated Republican soldier.
The next name on the UFF montage was a taxi driver called John James Bloomfield. He lived in Ballynahinch and was the owner of JJ Taxis in the town. His file had him marked as an intelligence officer for the IRA who used his taxi to watch the security forces at Ballykinler Army base. Bloomfield categorically denied this in court. I made one attempt on his life and had previously tried to lure him to his death with a request to pick up a fare at the Royal Ascot disco in Carryduff, but he failed to bite. I made the phone call to a number given to me by intelligence officers, but he knew something was up. On the phone he was very coy and nervous. He wanted to know where I got the number, and I said a girl I met in the disco. He wasn’t convinced and told me he couldn’t pick me up. So I went back to the drawing board. I waited a few months and got a female acquaintance to make a call to Bloomfield requesting a pick-up from the Spa restaurant, to go to Newcastle, County Down. He fell for it. With a girl caller, Bloomfield had no reason to suspect a ploy.
I waited for Bloomfield in the car park of the Spa. I was armed with a 9mm Luger and a shotgun, but he got away. Even though I fired a hail of bullets, he escaped without being injured. Bloomfield was a skilled driver, and his ability to drive saved his life. I tried to block his exit, but he accelerated at me and drove off into the night. Unknown to me, the car used for the operation had been hijacked in another part of the county and a woman driver, Agnes Dickson, had been taken hostage. The volunteers put her in the boot and she came with us on the operation. I knew nothing about this until after the event. By putting the woman in the boot of the car used in the attempt on Bloomfield’s life, the volunteers had turned her into a human shield. I don’t know the lady but she has my sincere apologies for her horrific experience.
I was never indiscriminate or sectarian, never like the PIRA, targeting innocent people as they did in Enniskillen on Remembrance Sunday. To my mind the ‘Poppy Day’ massacre is one of the horror stories of the Troubles. Eleven innocent people were killed. Countless numbers were maimed. It was 11 November 1987 and people had gathered in the town to pay tribute to the dead of two world wars when the IRA struck. In my eyes it was sacrilegious. The IRA said it was a mistake and the bomb was for the security forces. I thought it was a pathetic attempt to justify a sectarian attack on civilians. These people were gathered at the cenotaph to pay homage to the men who fought fascism in Europe. Meanwhile modern-day fascists had plotted to take their lives. It was a big body count and I was horrified.
On the same day as the Enniskillen massacre, another large IRA bomb failed to go off. It was also on the route of a Poppy Day commemoration, in another border town. At the time Republicans tried to write it off as a one-off and a mistake, but I didn’t believe them. They knew exactly what they were doing.
I wanted revenge. I wanted to do something so terrible it would be burnt for ever into the minds and hearts of the Republican movement. It had to be something spectacular and it had to be unforgettable. My attack had to be a shock to the collective Republican consciousness and I knew there was only one way: to wipe out the entire Republican hierarchy.
Six weeks before the Enniskillen bomb, an off-duty RUC man had been shot dead. The shooting was part of an IRA operation, a spectacular double whammy to eradicate high-profile members of the RUC and the government. The young officer was to be interred at Roselawn cemetery, a quiet and peaceful place on the outskirts of Belfast where members of my family have been laid to rest. The Secretary of State, Tom King, and the Chief Constable of the RUC, Sir John Hermon, were expected at his funeral. The IRA planted a bomb at the gate lodge of the cemetery and detonated it just as the cortège was passing. It weighed three hundred and fifty pounds, an unusual size even by the IRA’s standards. The booster, charged with Semtex, failed to ignite the bomb but still caused an explosion scattering debris and bits of car over the mourners. Miraculously, no one was killed, but several people, including members of the dead officer’s family, were injured.
The Provos staged a spectacular assault. They killed a policeman and used him as bait. They killed a secondary target in order to attract the primary target. They knew important people would come to the dead officer’s funeral and they exploited mercilessly this window of opportunity. It was a very radical move as it eliminated the need for an around-the-country chase. I could modify this idea for my own operations. I would kill my enemy and make his comrades come to me.
I still wanted to eliminate the IRA leadership. I could not make a further attempt on Martin McGuinness’s life. Tucker Lyttle had closed that opportunity for good, and if I were to try I would probably end up dead. But I could get him at Milltown if I targeted and killed the right Republican. A new plan began to form in my head.
12
TOUTS INCORPORATED
THE POPPY DAY MASSACRE IN ENNISKILLEN STRENGTHENED MY RESOLVE AND I SWORE TO AVENGE THE DEATHS OF THE ELEVEN INNOCENT CIVILIANS. McMichael and I vowed to work even more closely masterminding a strike so horrific the Republican movement would never recover.
But time was running out for John McMichael. Just like Tommy Herron, McMichael knew he ran risks. We often met in the car park of the Old Crow pub in Comber, County Down, for our regular meetings. One evening he was quiet and withdrawn, not his usual self. When I asked him if there was something in particular that was bothering him, he nodded. He gave me two names. One was Jim Craig, the UDA’s fund-raiser-in-chief and a gangster and criminal posing as a Loyalist. The other was McMichael’s quartermaster. He said to me, ‘If anything ever happens to me the first name is responsible and the second name will help you.’ McMichael was telling me that if he was killed, and he believed his days were numbered, Jim Craig would be behind it and his quartermaster would provide a weapon for a retaliatory strike. I told him I had never killed or wounded a Loyalist before and his answer was short and to the point: ‘You will.’
McMichael constantly warned me about Tucker Lyttle and on this particular night he took the time to ram the point home. I distinctly remember him saying, ‘Tucker is a tout, so never tell him anything, don’t befriend him and keep him away from your UDA business.’ He knew Lyttle had Special Branch handlers and was the weakest link in the UDA’s Inner Council. Also, he knew that Lyttle had a better and more intimate working relationship with his Special Branch handlers than his Loyalist brothers. McMichael wasn’t telling me anything I hadn’t discovered for myself. I had first-hand experience of Tucker the Traitor.
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br /> John McMichael was killed on 22 December 1987. It was a massive personal blow to me and for the second time in my life I was robbed of a good friend and ally. He died after the IRA booby-trapped his car. The device exploded outside his Lisburn home. McMichael was conscious after the blast but died on the way to the hospital. He suffered terrible injuries. The IRA had been given the intelligence on McMichael by Jim Craig, the man he suspected would try to have him killed. Craig even organised and supplied the safe house for the Provo unit.
On 26 December a special service for John McMichael was held in Dromore, County Down. A UDA colour party fired a volley of shots over his coffin in honour of his life and work. The small town was sealed off at midnight on Christmas night to allow members to prepare the square and to prevent people from straying in on the proceedings. The shots were fired into the air just hours before the funeral. The Supreme Commander of the UDA, Andy Tyrie, summed up the feelings of most of us when he said, ‘John was killed because he was the best person we had and the Republican movement didn’t like him. I didn’t have anybody as astute in politics as he was. They also didn’t like him because he was being listened to and they knew the loss we would incur when he was killed.’
John McMichael was buried with UDA but few paramilitary honours in his home town. Andy Tyrie carried the coffin, which was draped in the Union Jack and UDA flag. A guard of honour, formed by local members of the Apprentice Boys, escorted the coffin. I didn’t go to the funeral. I knew Special Branch would be watching and photographing every person and every vehicle arriving for the service, within a half-mile radius. John McMichael was my friend, but I couldn’t run the risk of being seen or photographed by the security forces. My work as a volunteer depended on staying anonymous.
None Shall Divide Us Page 9
