In a conversation with his handlers shortly after the Stevens Inquiry had begun interviewing senior officers within the security forces, Nelson was asked, ‘You’ve read about this inquiry in the papers, haven’t you?’
‘Aye,’ replied Nelson, ‘but it’s got nothing to do with me, has it?’
‘It’s got a lot to do with you if you don’t keep quiet and play down the fact that you are the UDA’s chief intelligence officer,’ he was told.
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because you have been supplying information to the UDA and the Stevens Inquiry is trying to find out their source for all this accurate intelligence material.’
‘Well, we know that,’ said Nelson, ‘I’m the source.’
‘Exactly,’ one handler said.
‘So there’s no problem then,’ he retorted.
‘Of course there is a problem, because you are probably the person they want to talk to more than anyone else.’
‘But I work for you,’ he said, ‘I work for the British Army. I’m your agent in the field – so how can I possibly get into any trouble?’
‘Because this is the world of intelligence where secrets are of paramount importance.’
‘But if I tell the inquiry that I work for you I can’t get into any trouble, can I?’ he asked, confused as to why his handlers appeared so concerned.
‘But you’re not supposed to be working for us,’ one handler impressed on him. ‘No one, not even the Special Branch or the government knows you work for Military Intelligence.’
‘But why can’t I just tell them the truth? I can’t possibly get into any trouble because I’m paid by you and I work for you. I’ll just say what’s what – there can’t be any harm in that.’
‘There could be great harm for you if you so much as whisper that you have worked with us,’ he was told. ‘You could be in real trouble, I promise you.’
‘Why?’ Nelson asked, still failing to understand his vulnerable position.
‘Because as a result of what happened, with people being targeted and killed, you could face a trial and possible imprisonment.’
‘What the fuck for?’
‘Because the authorities would see you as the person providing the information which resulted in people being killed.’
‘Even when I work for Military Intelligence?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Fuck me,’ replied Nelson. ‘No one ever said anything like this to me when I began working with you lot. I thought that if I worked for Military Intelligence I would be safeguarded, totally protected by the system.’
‘It doesn’t work like that.’
‘Well, I don’t like the sound of this,’ he said. ‘If I’m asked any questions, I’ll have to tell the truth; I’ve got no option.’
‘Have it your way, Brian,’ said one, treating him more like an equal than he had ever done before. ‘But mark my words. Open your mouth and you’ll probably end up in jail doing twenty years.’
‘Fuck off,’ he replied. ‘Twenty years for helping Military Intelligence. Bullshit, that’s bollocks.’
‘It isn’t bullshit. I’m telling you what might happen if you ever broke the law. Understand?’
Those last words, spoken slowly and quietly, seemed to impress Nelson and he slumped back in his chair, thinking hard, saying nothing for a few moments. Finally, looking somewhat downcast, he said, ‘Is that the truth, the honest truth?’
‘I hope it may never come to that,’ the officer told him, ‘but I’m just giving you the worst-case scenario. However, it’s up to you. If you keep stum then all will be well. But if you open your mouth and blab what’s being going on we won’t be able to save you. The law will step in and, as I’ve already told you, you could find yourself banged up for twenty years.’
Nelson wiped the back of his hand across his mouth as though that might help him to think more clearly. Then he said, ‘I dunno. I’m not sure about all this. I don’t believe I could do time for what I’ve done. I’ve done nothing wrong; I’ve just worked with you fellas, that’s all. You’re British Army, right? Well, working for the army means I’m protected like you guys. I’ve just passed on intelligence that you lot have given me, nothing else. If I’m in the shit then you’re all in the shit, too. Right?’
‘Wrong,’ he was told adamantly, ‘it doesn’t work like that. We’re officially employed by the army but you’re not. You’re an agent and that’s different.’
‘But that’s not fair,’ replied Nelson.
‘We know it isn’t,’ said the most senior handler, ‘we know it isn’t fair but that’s the way the system works. If there’s any trouble, Brian, the odds are that you will take the blame.’
After a couple of minutes and a few gulps of tea, Nelson said, ‘Well, I can’t believe that’s true but if it is I’ve got just two options, keep quiet or tell the truth.’
‘Quite right,’ he was told, ‘but one way all will be well and nothing whatsoever will happen to you; the other way, speaking out, could end with you doing time. It’s your decision.’
Seconds later, Nelson returned to business. ‘Well, what have you got for me?’ he asked. ‘Any new names, any new targets?’
‘Good,’ said one handler, ‘that’s the spirit.’ And the three men began to discuss the latest intelligence material.
But the Force Research Unit had finally decided to slow down their supply of intelligence material to Ten-Thirty-Three, telling him that a decision had been taken to lie low for a while until the Stevens Inquiry team had completed their investigation, made their report and gone back to the mainland. They didn’t want to alarm Nelson that there had been a change in operational circumstances and tried to show him that, officially at least, nothing had altered. They urged him to continue receiving information from his team of amateur agents around the country and to keep them informed of what was going on, but he was advised not to plan any more killings until the air had cleared.
For their part, the UDA leadership were confident that all the information being provided by Brian Nelson was of the highest calibre. They had no intention of stopping their killing machine simply because some chief constable from the mainland, who had little or no idea of how the politics of Northern Ireland really worked, had started an investigation into the possibility of there being a link between the security services and the Protestant paramilitaries. The UDA command also had confidence that officers and handlers in Military Intelligence would keep their mouths shut. The UDA executive had been convinced for some time that Brian Nelson was receiving most of his high-grade source material from the British Army but the matter was never openly discussed with Nelson. And it is almost certain that members of the UDA leadership never met or spoke to Force Research Unit handlers or officers. They were just happy that Nelson was providing such first-class information, enabling them to get on with the job of killing Provo terrorists. They also knew full well that no matter how long the inquiry team spent interviewing their UDA members they would never receive any co-operation, assistance or information that could possibly be used as evidence against them or their chief intelligence officer. Their men, their killers, they believed, were too professional, too committed to the Loyalist cause to breath a word of what had been going on, week in, week out.
Behind the scenes, Military Intelligence officers were preparing the defence, making sure that Stevens was kept well away from the unreliable Brian Nelson. As soon as the inquiry had been announced, MI5 officers in Northern Ireland immediately stopped advising their FRU counterparts how they should deal with the investigation. Of course, MI5 knew everything that had been going on, down to the most insignificant detail. They had read all the Military Intelligence Source Reports from FRU handlers, all the MISR supplements, and every one of the all-important Contact Reports – and, of course, throughout the years of the FRU’s existence, MI5 had always had one of their officers sharing a room with the FRU’s operations officer. Indeed, in their bid to extricate themselves
from what they feared could become a major problem, MI5 went as far as informing Military Intelligence officers that they had originally advised the FRU not to recruit Nelson as an agent because they believed he was ‘a Walter Mitty character’. In their words, Nelson ‘didn’t come up to the mark’. Conveniently, MI5 omitted to mention that they had in fact fought hard to recruit Nelson themselves, even offering him ‘Agent status’, a privileged position. But MI5 had neither forgotten nor forgiven the FRU for beating them to the punch and landing Nelson as their main operational informant. The moment the Stevens Inquiry was announced, MI5 informed the Force Research Unit that they were on their own.
Ironically, the RUC and the RUC Special Branch, who had originally warned the FRU against recruiting Nelson – describing him as a ‘head case’ and a ‘hot potato’ – would come to their rescue in more ways than one.
Those staunch Loyalist RUC officers had never forgotten their own experience when being put through the mill during the Stalker Inquiry into the alleged ‘shoot-to-kill’ policy. They could not forget how they had felt during that time when their every effort to contain the terrorist situation, to root out the Provo activists, to protect the population from IRA gunmen and bombers, often at great personal risk to their own men, had been brought into question and brushed aside. They remembered all too well how they had felt when John Stalker, a senior officer from the mainland, with no experience whatsoever of fighting a ruthless terrorist organisation like the IRA, had come to Belfast and conducted his investigation. They felt such inquiries by senior mainland police officers were unfair, unnecessary and nothing but a waste of valuable time. In their opinion, such officers were trained for policing a normal, ordinary, decent society – like dealing with traffic offences, according to some RUC officers – and totally ill-equipped to comprehend how a force like the RUC should conduct itself when faced with implacable hatred, shootings and bombings, many such attacks directed at the RUC officers themselves.
Many ordinary RUC officers found the situation intolerable: they had to operate on a daily basis with one hand tied behind their backs and now they had to deal with the additional pressure of having official inquiries hanging over their heads if they dared to handle the terrorists with anything but kid gloves. And many deeply resented the strictures placed on their operations. Many RUC officers involved at street level in combating the Provos were convinced that the politicians of Westminster and the civil servants of Whitehall had not the slighrest idea of the life and the pressure their men had to survive week in, week out, not knowing when they left home each morning whether they would return that night. As a result, many were prepared to do all they could to help their FRU counterparts extricate themselves from what they perceived to be another unjust, partisan, one-sided government inquiry.
Of course, this was not the view held by the top brass of the RUC who, understandably, were expected to give every assistance to any government-backed inquiry, whether it was investigating alleged misdemeanours by the RUC or Military Intelligence.
Initially, the Stevens Inquiry team had no interest in the Force Research Unit for they had been called in to check the alleged supply of intelligence material from the RUC, the Special Branch or the Ulster Defence Regiment to Loyalist paramilitary organisations. The FRU were not in any way in the frame, nor were they considered a possible conduit of reliable intelligence to any of the Loyalist groups. There had been rumours that a young woman employed by the UDR had been involved in giving material to a lance-corporal in a British regiment who had been passing on the material to Loyalist paramilitaries. As a result, the investigation concentrated on such possible links to determine whether the supply of intelligence to the Loyalists was rife within the security services or simply confined to this one single alleged breach.
Some weeks after John Stevens and his team arrived in Belfast, they began to hear rumours and bits and pieces of information from those they were interviewing within the RUC that much of the source material reaching the Loyalist paramilitaries had originated from the UDA’s chief intelligence officer, a man by the name of Brian Nelson. At this stage the Stevens team had no idea that Nelson worked directly for the Force Research Unit, an organisation which, in fact, they did not know even existed. It was in the late autumn of 1989 that they came to the conclusion that they should bring in Brian Nelson for an interview.
That news sent shockwaves through the Force Research Unit – though they had of course been expecting such a move. At urgent meetings between the officers and handlers, they way they should react to this threat was discussed. Many options were considered and but the question that kept coming up was whether they should put their trust in Brian Nelson, the lad from the Shankill Road whose reputation since the first weeks he was employed by Military Intelligence had been decidedly dodgy.
At one time, Military Intelligence considered resettling Nelson outside Northern Ireland, giving him a completely new identity and settling him a long way from the Province, either in Australia or Canada. They believed that if they took that course of action the investigation would probably take such a long time to trace Nelson and bring him back to Belfast that the political momentum behind the whole investigation would have subsided.
In the end, though, they agreed they had little option but to put their faith in Nelson. They decided to have another candid chat with their man, whom they believed was now in a position to save their jobs and their reputations. More than that, indeed, for there was little doubt that if Nelson confessed there was a real possibility that countless serious charges would be brought against FRU personnel and result in long prison sentences. FRU officers and handlers had to hope and pray that, although MI5 had decided to let them sink or swim, their valuable work in disrupting the Provos and their ASUs had earned them the support of the Thatcher government. They feared that if the government, urged on by the media, also threw their demand for legal action behind the Stevens Inquiry, there would then be the most serious moves to denounce totally and prosecute the FRU officers and disband the unit.
As usual, Nelson was picked up by a car and brought to a safe-house. He was firstly asked whether he was fully aware of the Stevens Inquiry.
‘Aye,’ he said.
‘What exactly have you heard?’
‘Well, you told me to watch my step and that’s what I’m doing,’ he replied.
‘You do realise how serious this matter is becoming, don’t you?’
‘Aye, everyone is talking about it.’
‘Have you said anything yourself?’
‘Not much.’
‘Well, listen, listen very carefully. If you keep quiet and say nothing, everything will go away, understand?’
‘Aye.’
‘But if you open your mouth and begin talking, the shit will hit the fan and you will be for the high jump.’
‘Why? Why me?’ he asked.
‘Because you would be in the frame, that’s why. Because you have given information to the UDA which has resulted in people being killed.’
‘But only on your orders,’ Nelson protested.
‘Not our orders,’ the FRU handler said, ‘only our advice. What you did with that advice was your responsibility. Get it?’
‘No, not really. I thought we were in this together. I thought I was part of your team.’
‘You are an agent, an informant, working with us, that’s true. But you are still responsible. Do you understand?’
‘So who knows what went on?’ Nelson asked, confused as to all the fuss.
‘No one knows and no one will know if you keep your mouth shut. That’s all you’ve got to do, keep quiet. Okay?’
‘But who’s going to ask questions?’
The FRU handlers looked at each other in desperation. It was obvious that Ten-Thirty-Three had no idea of what the Stevens Inquiry was all about.
‘Members of the Stevens team might want to interview you about what you know, what you did, what your connection was with the UDA and with us.’
‘So what do I tell them?’ he asked looking from one handler to the other.
‘Nothing,’ he was told, ‘absolutely nothing.’
‘But I will have to tell them something.’
‘Tell them that you simply gave us information about various people, information that you received from your men in the field, your intelligence agents dotted about the Province.’
‘Okay, then,’ he replied, ‘that’s easy.’
‘Good,’ said an FRU officer, ‘anything else?’
‘No,’ said Nelson, ‘that’ll be fine. But do you know when they will be questioning me?’
‘No idea,’ he was told, ‘any time during the next week or so, we would imagine. But, remember, as long as you say nothing and just talk about your fellas in the field, everything will be fine.’
‘That’s okay then,’ he said. ‘Is that all?’
‘That’s it, that’s all. Okay?’
Nelson was dropped off as usual and the FRU personnel gathered once more, discussing whether Ten-Thirty-Three could be trusted. They concluded that their future was in the lap of the gods; they were not convinced that Nelson understood the seriousness of the inquiry or why he might be questioned and cross-examined. They could only wait and see.
And they didn’t have long to wait.
Forearmed with mounting evidence that Nelson was the vital link between the Protestant paramilitaries and the security forces, the RUC were asked to raid the UDA’s offices in a bid to determine exactly what evidence could be discovered that might prove this link. Not unsurprisingly, Nelson’s fingerprints were discovered on some security-force documents found at the Loyalist headquarters. Stevens let it be known that he would be interviewing Brian Nelson some time shortly after the team returned from Christmas and New Year leave. The arrest was planned for dawn on Thursday, 11 January.
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