Back in June 1987, an excited Brian Nelson asked for an urgent meeting with his handlers and jubilantly proclaimed: ‘I’ve got great news for you. We’re going to bump off Gerry Adams and his bodyguard!’
Trying to stay calm, one officer asked, ‘Has any date or time or place been fixed for Adams’ assassination?’
‘Well, I understand he’s going to be taken out in two days’ time.’
‘Where?’ said the handler, a note of anxiety in his voice.
‘Outside the Belfast Housing Executive offices in the centre of the city,’ Nelson told them gleefully, as though everything had been arranged and finalised.
‘And who’s going to shoot him?’ asked the handler, wanting to find out every possible piece of information about the planned killing. He realised that this was one attack that would have to be stopped – the assassination of one of the Republicans’ most senior leaders was something that would have to be ordered and agreed at the highest level of government. It was certainly not to be undertaken lightly by some over-eager UDA gunmen who had decided that Gerry Adams should be removed from the scene.
‘I don’t know the names of the people who will carry out the killing but I think three will be involved,’ Nelson replied. ‘I’ve already done one recce and I’ll be doing another tomorrow before the go-ahead is given.’
‘How’s it going to be carried out? What’s the plan?’
Nelson’s excitement at the prospect of killing the Sinn Fein leader spilled out as he described the plans for the attack. ‘This is really good,’ he began, ‘I’ve worked out exactly how we will do it. It’s brilliant. One bloke will be sitting in a car parked in the square outside the Housing Executive offices. Using his two-way radio, he will notify two other two guys who will be waiting round the corner on a motorbike. One will ride the motorbike and the pillion passenger will have a sub-machine-gun.’
He looked to the two officers for approval and, even though none was forthcoming, he continued, still excited at the thought of what lay ahead. ‘We know that Gerry Adams arrives between half past ten and eleven o’clock every Thursday morning to attend a housing meeting. He is always driven in his Ford Granada, an armoured vehicle, an ex-police chief’s car. We have the colour and the registration number. He is accompanied by an armed bodyguard. As soon as our man sitting in the car sees Adams drive up, he will radio the motorcyclists. They will arrive within seconds, just as Adams and his bodyguard are getting out of the Granada. The pillion passenger will open fire with his sub-machine-gun, killing Adams and the bodyguard. It’s all worked out; it can’t go wrong. We are certain to get the bastard.’
‘How do you know he will be there this Thursday?’
‘We don’t,’ said Nelson sounding cocksure. ‘But he turns up at the same time on the same day virtually every week. If he doesn’t arrive this week, we’ll postpone the attack till next week. One way or another we’ll nail him, don’t you worry.’
‘This is a most serious matter,’ stressed the handler who had been asking all the questions, ‘why didn’t you tell us about it earlier?’
‘Because it was only decided a couple of days ago,’ replied Nelson, ‘I’ve been busy since doing the recce, planning the operation.’
The officers asked Nelson to sketch the area and explain the plan as accurately as he could. They wanted to make sure that the information he was supplying was correct. They knew that if he had recced the area, as he claimed, he would know every detail of the square, the surrounding streets and the traffic flows. They were concerned and disconcerted to discover that his plan was totally feasible.
‘Do you know exactly what weapons will be used?’
‘No,’ Nelson replied, ‘but we anticipate the pillion passenger having an SMG and a handgun. The look-out driver in the car will also be armed in case there’s any trouble.’
Nelson’s disturbing news made his handlers realise that action would have to be taken immediately to inform all the intelligence agencies and security services of what was going on so that a plan of action could be drawn up to thwart the UDA’s plans without anyone being the wiser. One officer left the room to make a telephone call while the other stayed behind, chatting to Nelson. After talking to a senior officer in Military Intelligence at Castlereagh, the decision was taken to let Nelson go, to allow him to complete his recce the following morning, and ask him to report back immediately to his handlers.
As soon as the officers returned to Castlereagh, the TCG was informed of the murder plot and officers were ordered to devise a suitable plan of action to stop the killing. The TCG debated whether Gerry Adams should be informed that a plot to kill him had been uncovered by British Intelligence, but it was decided not to tell him, primarily because the TCG’s senior officers were confident they could stop the assassination taking place without arousing undue suspicion. They also believed that if Adams was informed that he had been targeted by the UDA he might well decide to make a great deal of political capital out of the alleged attempt. But everything possible would be done by the authorities to prevent the attack succeeding.
The Joint Irish Section was immediately informed and, as a result, officers from 14th Int were dispatched to the square to stake out the area, remaining undercover on the scene for the following forty-eight hours, reporting back anything that seemed relevant. They were informed that Brian Nelson was expected to be in the square, checking out the area the following day, Wednesday. As expected, the agent did recce the square the next day and this was reported by 14th Int.
Later the same day, Nelson turned up, as requested, for a meeting with his two FRU handlers.
‘Is the operation still on?’ he was asked.
‘Yes, it’s all systems go,’ he replied, sounding chirpy and confident.
‘And who are the three gunmen?’
‘Fuck knows,’ he replied, ‘I don’t fucking know; they don’t give me that sort of information.’
The handlers told Nelson to pass on the information he had gathered during his morning recce of the area to the UDA chiefs and then to make sure that he stayed completely clear of the centre of Belfast the following morning – the time of the attack.
By nine o’clock the following morning the square and the area surrounding the Housing Executive offices was being patrolled by twelve armed E4A officers and men from 14th Int, all in various disguises and all wearing civvies. A strong military and police presence was also ordered in a bid to deter the gunmen. Around the immediate vicinity of the square, fully armed, uniformed British troops were brought in, as well as more than fifty armed RUC officers. The plan was to frighten off the UDA gunmen before they even approached the offices where Adams was expected between 10.30 and 11 a.m.
Officers from E4A and 14th Int were under orders to take out the UDA gunmen – killing them, if necessary – if the terrorists did manage to break through the military cordon and appeared to be in a position to assassinate the Sinn Fein president.
At half past ten Gerry Adams arrived at the offices of the Housing Executive in the back seat of his armoured Ford Granada, totally unaware of the reason for all the police and army activity in the area. Two hours later he left and returned home. There were no incidents.
‘What happened?’ Nelson was asked when he met the FRU handlers later that evening.
‘The hit squad went out as planned,’ Nelson told them, ‘but when they approached the area they found police and army swarming all over the fucking place. They decided to split up and return to base. It would have been far too risky to go ahead in those circumstances.’
‘So what’s the plan now?’
‘We’ll try again in a couple of weeks,’ Nelson replied.
Two weeks later Nelson reported to his handlers that the decision to kill Gerry Adams was to go ahead as before, using the same plan. Once again, a tremendous effort to prevent the assassination attempt was ordered by the TCG, the area once again being flooded with troops and police. Officers from E4A and 14th Int were also in
position in the square. In spite of this, the UDA driver took an enormous risk, driving through the heavy army and police presence and arriving as planned outside the Housing Executive offices in his car, parking as ordered in the exact spot where he could wait for Gerry Adams to appear. This daring move caused alarm bells to ring at the TCG, army headquarters and among the top brass in Military Intelligence, for there was suddenly a real fear that Gerry Adams could be hit.
Instructions were immediately flashed to the camouflaged 14th Int troops in the square to be on stand-by for the arrival of Adams. They were also told that the ‘decoy’ car had arrived and parked and the make and registration number were passed to them. They were advised to keep a watch for the arrival of the motorbike which would be carrying two men, and were instructed that, if necessary, they were to shoot the man riding pillion first if Adams should arrive in the square. The troops and RUC officers who had been called in were put on alert but told to do nothing until further orders were given. Everyone in the square, and those at base listening to the army intercom, waited tensely for the arrival of the motorbike and Gerry Adams. Minutes passed and no sign was seen of either. The time of his appointment came and went and still nothing happened. Thirty minutes after Adams should have been shot, the UDA car pulled out of the square and nothing whatsoever had been seen of the motorcyclists or the target. Eventually, the RUC, the British troops, 14th Int and E4A were ordered to stand down. The crisis was over.
The following day, Nelson would report back that the attempted assassination had been aborted because, once again, the area had been flooded with troops, and the motorbike gunmen, having set off for the square and witnessed the extraordinary activity on the ground, had no option but to return to base.
An angry and disappointed Nelson also reported that the UDA had taken the decision to put the mission on hold, to await a better opportunity to target Gerry Adams. The news brought a sense of relief to the British authorities in Belfast for they feared a vicious backlash of Republican violence across the Province had Gerry Adams indeed been murdered.
At no time was Adams ever informed that the UDA had seriously intended to kill him and that a plan to assassinate him had been worked out, nor did he know that but for Brian Nelson and his close relationship with British Military Intelligence he might well have died in a UDA gun attack in 1987.
But the UDA leaders were in no mood to forget Gerry Adams, the man many believed not only to be a hardline Provo but also the architect of the campaign of the bomb and the bullet which had devastated the lives of the great majority of people in Northern Ireland, both Protestant and Catholic. In Protestant circles Gerry Adams was considered the devil incarnate; because they knew of his background and his well-earned reputation as an IRA brigade commander, they saw him as the mastermind behind many appalling attacks in Northern Ireland and the mainland. They would try to assassinate Adams at a later date. All they had to work out was the surest way of arranging his murder.
Months later Ten-Thirty-Three brought up the question of Gerry Adams at one of his meetings, saying, ‘I know your lot are against taking him out but we’re adamant and, what’s more, we believe we have found the best and the surest way of getting him.’
‘What’s that, then?’ he was asked. The FRU handlers could see that Nelson and the UDA were serious and they needed to find out the plan so they could stop it. The orders from above had not changed: every possible effort had to be made to ensure the safety of Gerry Adams.
‘We know that Adams’s car is well armoured so there is no way we could stop the vehicle and just open up ’cos we have learned that those windows would stop a grenade attack and maybe even a rocket-launcher hit.’
Nelson paused for effect, watching the reaction his words were having on the handlers.
‘Well?’ one of them said. ‘Go on.’
‘Here’s the clever part,’ Nelson said. ‘The top of the car isn’t armoured at all. We’ve checked. And that’s how we will hit him.’
‘How exactly?’
‘With a limpet mine. Get it?’ he asked.
‘Go on,’ he was asked, ‘explain yourself.’
‘We have planned an attack at a set of traffic lights somewhere in Belfast. We don’t know where exactly, but we’ve been looking at the Broadway traffic lights off the Falls Road. He’s always driving around there. We plan to follow his car on a motorbike with the pillion passenger holding the mine. When he stops at the lights our men will pull up alongside and place the magnetic mine on the car roof. Whoosh. Neither Adams nor anyone else in the car will stand a fucking chance; they’ll be blown apart.’
‘But where are you getting the mine from?’ he was asked.
Ten-Thirty-Three replied, ‘We’ve made one already. Our lads in forensic put it together for us. We’re almost ready to go. We’ve stuffed it with gelignite and attached a remote-control detonator. We’ve already had a dry run on an old banger and it worked brilliantly.’
‘When do you plan this?’ he was asked.
Nelson gave his customary answer to that question: ‘Don’t ask me, I don’t fucking know. I just come up with the plans. Someone else says when and where. I’ve explained that a hundred fuckin’ times.’
‘All right, all right,’ he was told, ‘keep your hair on.’
‘These mines and the detonators are very difficult to handle and the timing has to be spot on,’ the senior handler commented casually. ‘Why don’t you let our lads take a look at it, to make sure it will go off within seconds of placing it on the car roof? You don’t want Adams to be driving around with the mine on top of his car, not knowing where the hell it will explode. That could kill others, too.’
Finally it was agreed that Nelson would bring in the limpet mine for the Force Research Unit’s forensic team to examine. Two days later he walked in with the mine and the detonator in a hold-all.
‘Here it is,’ he said. ‘Take look if you want to.’
The FRU personnel cast their eye over it and then, after chatting for a while, suggested it would be better if Nelson left it with them so that they could pass on the mine and detonator for examination. In fact, FRU forensic bomb experts were very surprised because the mine had been carefully sculpted with a hollow in the middle so that the full force of the explosion would detonate downwards, into the car. They also confirmed that if indeed the mine did go off when attached to the roof of a car, everyone inside would be blasted into tiny pieces.
One week later the mine and detonator were returned to Nelson. ‘It’s lucky our men had a look at it,’ he was told. ‘In the condition they found it there was a real possibility the thing could have gone off at any time – the detonator remote-control device was wrongly set.’
‘Great, thanks,’ said Nelson. ‘Is it okay now?’
‘As right as will ever be,’ he was told.
Weeks passed and Nelson said nothing about the limpet mine, nor were there any reports of such a device being attached to the roof of Adams’s car. Nelson eventually admitted that a decision had been taken not to try to assassinate Adams in that fashion but to wait for a better opportunity.
‘So you still intend to target him?’ he was asked.
‘Fucking right,’ was the reply. ‘We’ll get him one day, you can bet your life on that.’
Military Intelligence chiefs who were on a tour of duty in Northern Ireland at that time were surprised that the authorities, which included the TCG and MI5, had been so determined to prevent any attack on Gerry Adams when they knew him to be one of the most influential members of the Provisional IRA. There had been rumours in intelligence circles some years before that, during the seven months Adams had spent on remand in Crumlin Road jail following his arrest in February 1978, he had been persuaded to work for the British in an effort to bring peace to Northern Ireland. It was noted that after one bail application by his solicitor (which was refused), the judge, for some unknown reason, had asked the prosecution to process the Adams case speedily. Later, in the remand wi
ng of the H-Blocks where Adams enjoyed a cell on his own, he was treated as a special security prisoner, which meant that he was taken on his own whenever he had to go anywhere in the jail, normally for visits from his wife, Colette, but also to attend other meetings. There were not many Provo leaders in Crumlin Road jail who received such special treatment. While these may be nothing more that small titbits of circumstantial evidence, such tenuous scraps can form the basis of an argument in the cauldron of Northern Ireland politics.
Chapter Twelve
Kill, Kill, Kill
By the spring of 1989, less than two years after Brian Nelson became an integral part of Military Intelligence, all those people in regular contact with the cocky, overconfident, bumptious Nelson were becoming heartily fed up with his posturing, his demands and his arrogance. Agent Ten-Thirty-Three was becoming more and more difficult to control. He had reached the stage in his relationship with his handlers where he saw himself as a Very Important Person – someone who could say or do as he liked, whose every whim should be tolerated and whose every idea be acted upon. He believed that he was God’s gift to Military Intelligence and the fact that he was treated with respect, that this handlers were encouraged to listen to his every word and treat him with deference, perhaps persuaded him to see himself as a man of honour engaged in a noble cause. To his handlers he was a nauseating pain, a trumped-up little tout whom, they hoped, would one day have his comeuppance.
In the meantime, however, the intelligence material Ten-Thirty-Three was providing was treated as manna from heaven by those security officers and Intelligence chiefs whose job it was to try contain and, if possible, defeat the Provisional IRA’s campaign of violence. Most senior government ministers in the Northern Ireland Office in London believed that if the Provos could be defeated then the Loyalists groups, including the UDA, would end their own military campaign and allow peace to return to Northern Ireland. Consequently, instructions continued to flow from London and the JIS in Belfast that Ten-Thirty-Three must be encouraged, at all costs, to continue his vital intelligence work. There was a strong belief in 1989 that the new material Nelson was providing, almost on a weekly basis, was having a real effect on the Provos, causing them endless problems, and dividing the Catholic population between those who wanted the bloody conflict to continue and those who would do anything to bring peace to the Province.
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