Big Boys' Rules

by Mark Urban

Acceptable Levels

  The period from December 1983 to February 1985 had seen aggressive use of Army special forces. From then on, however, the pace of operations seemed to slow slightly, although there was another spate of special forces operations in 1990 and 1991. The reasons for this slight reduction are unclear. It may have been simply that the Int and Sy Group was unlucky and that planned operations produced no results, but it may also have been the case that officers had deliberately cut down ambush-type operations because they perceived a small reduction in the levels of IRA activity and because of pressure from external political developments.

  Douglas Hurd, who took over as the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in September 1984, was a shrewd enough politician to understand the potential damage to relations with the Republic that fatal operations involving undercover soldiers could cause. It is worth recalling the comment by a senior officer at Lisburn following the wave of lethal SAS operations in 1978 that the Army is not in the business of ‘embarrassing politicians’. Mrs Thatcher’s major initiative on Ireland, the Anglo-Irish Agreement with the Dublin government, was by this stage at an advanced point in negotiations. Signed in November 1985, the Agreement was welcomed by the non-violent section of Northern nationalism (in the form of the Social Democratic and Labour Party), but its provisions allowing the Dublin government regular consultations with Britain over affairs in Ulster smacked to the loyalist community of a sell-out. They launched a campaign of protest under the slogan ‘Ulster Says No!’.

  In the wake of the Agreement the RUC had to confront loyalist demonstrators. Many police officers were firebombed out of their homes. In the eyes of many of those around him, John Hermon’s handling of this difficult period marked his finest hour as Chief Constable. A senior officer at Lisburn who watched with alarm as many loyalists turned on the RUC says, ‘Jack Hermon personally kept the RUC on the rails. That man saved Ulster from a terrible bloodbath by forcing the RUC to face up to its responsibilities.’ Many nationalists confessed that their faith in the force had been boosted, for example by the Chief’s refusal to allow a loyalist march into a Catholic area of Portadown – a move which brought his officers into violent conflict with the crowd.

  In 1985 a new CLF arrived at Lisburn, Major General Tony Jeapes. He had the unique distinction among CLFs of being a former CO of 22 SAS Regiment. He had run the unit during the 1970s and had published a book about his experiences in the Dhofar campaign in Oman. There was also a new GOC, Lieutenant General Robert Pascoe who, some years before, had worked on Maurice Oldfield’s Planning Staff at Stormont. Both men were open to the idea of using special forces for ambushes, but both were also aware that there were circumstances when such operations were not desirable and that other courses of action were available.

  During the previous few years the covert operators had tried various approaches to the use of the foreknowledge which their penetration of republican groups gave them. ‘It is all a matter of acceptable levels’, says an intelligence officer borrowing a phrase used by politicians a decade before in a reference to terrorist rather than security forces violence – ‘We could ambush a lot more, but people realize that would stir things up too much.’ If the covert operators still had foreknowledge, but attempted to ambush on only a few occasions, what did their revised strategy consist of?

  Some of those who have worked in the world of undercover operations in Ulster are frank about the alternatives to ambushing which the SB can choose. SB officers tend to be concerned first and foremost with protecting the life of their source. An action which causes the IRA to stop and think about where the security forces obtained their information must be avoided because it may lead them to the source. It is worth emphasizing that it is on this basis that some SB officers object to ambushing on principle, since operations like those at Tamnamore or Gransha in 1984 are bound to trigger witch-hunts within the organization. On the other hand, the SB is often reluctant to arrest Provisionals on lesser charges, for example picking them up at an arms cache and charging them with possession of firearms because many covert operators feel that sentencing someone to seven or eight years in prison, ‘which means three or four with remission’ as one officer puts it, does not justify the risks to the source and surveillance operators of a long-term covert operation.

  Instead, the undercover experts have evolved various types of operation which can be used to prevent an attack happening while protecting the identity of a source. The technique of doctoring of firearms and bomb-making materials was used many times in the 1980s, says an intelligence officer. The IRA emerges from such an operation uncertain as to whether its cache was compromised, whether the Army simply managed to defuse the bomb in time or whether its detonator failed.

  Another important tactic is to use uniformed patrols. For example, an IRA team sent to assassinate a UDR reservist will not press home its attack if there are several uniformed police, perhaps stopping vehicles to check their tax discs, outside his or her house. The police or soldiers involved will almost always be ignorant of the covert reason for their presence. Such patrolling is usually requested from battalion commanding officers or RUC divisional commanders by the TCG.

  The vagueness of much informer intelligence means that the security forces may have to show great ingenuity in their attempts to frustrate the terrorist. Police cannot check tax discs in the same place every day, to follow our example, since this would arouse suspicion and make them the target for terrorist attack. If the terrorists are under surveillance the intelligence specialists will wait for an ‘indicator’ of a forthcoming attack, for example the meeting of three individuals associated with previous incidents, before triggering their thwarting operation.

  It may be that the target of their attack is not known. In this case it may be necessary to step up checkpoints on the road around the ASU’s village. Such duties are normally carried out by Army, UDR or police DMSU uniformed patrols. To the terrorists and to most of the security forces personnel taking part there is nothing to distinguish this activity from their normal work.

  An intelligence officer relates one incident where it was known that an IRA. team was to travel along a particular route on its way to an attack. They arranged for a car ‘accident’ to take place on the road. ‘There wasn’t a uniform in sight,’ he recalls, ‘but it was assumed that they would get unnerved sitting in the tailback, thinking the police were about to arrive.’ The ploy succeeded.

  Such operations can also be used to channel terrorists in a particular direction. One intelligence officer believes, ‘You can say, “Let’s persuade the operation to go this way by putting a heavy presence in an area” – it comes down to the rules of war and deception.’

  IRA members are acutely aware of surveillance and informers. Many attacks are called off after what communiqués refer to as ‘suspicious security forces activity’. In some cases they are duped by the TCG. In others they may simply have imagined innocent patterns of traffic to be connected with undercover operations. Sometimes, rarely, the compromise of a covert observation post or car may alert them to the presence of real danger. These contests of nerve increased during the mid 1980s and contributed to the slow decline in IRA operations. Republicans admit in private that most of their operations are cancelled but stress in public the increasing amount of preparation which has to go into an attack if it is to be successful in current conditions. The fact that surveillance and thwarting operations are more easily carried out in the bustle of urban life contributed in particular to the continuing decline in IRA activity in the cities.

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  Despite all these methods for avoiding and pre-empting confrontations with terrorists, there were still some instances where security forces did select the option of an aggressive operation. In February 1986 security chiefs authorized an Army undercover operation in the village of Toomebridge, County Londonderry. An IRA arms cache at the rear of a house, among some outbuildings, was placed under observation. It contained an Armalite rifle, which subs
equent tests were to show had been used in several killings, and an FNC rifle. On the evening of 18 February two unmarked cars drove into the village. Five SAS soldiers were dropped by the two cars and made their way to positions behind the buildings. Soldier A, a thirty-eight-year-old senior NCO, said later that there were reports of terrorists in the vicinity of the buildings and ‘We had been instructed to take up the most suitable positions to apprehend them.’

  A car arrived and shortly afterwards two men appeared at a gap between two of the outbuildings which is a few feet wide, the soldiers said. Francis Bradley, a twenty-year-old local man, went into the yard and the soldiers opened fire. Soldier A said he had called ‘Halt!’ but, ‘Before I could say any more the gunman turned sharply as if to confront me.’ Bradley had picked up the rifle and turned it towards the soldiers, the Army said. He was hit by eight bullets and died a few minutes later.

  The soldiers arrested Colm Walls, forty-six, owner of the house and Barney McLarnon, fifty-three, who had been driving the car. The logic of the soldiers’ evidence was that McLarnon had accompanied Bradley into the back yard, something which he denied.

  None of the three men belonged to the IRA or INLA. Bradley had been questioned by the police and, it was subsequently claimed, threatened by them, but had never been charged with any offence. There can be little doubt that the Provisionals would have said Bradley was a volunteer if he had been: the importance of martyrs being greater in the republican movement than the chance to make propaganda capital out of the death of a non-member. But if Bradley was not a Provisional, what was he doing recovering a weapon?

  Local people suggest that the IRA pressurized Bradley into moving the weapons on its behalf. After the shooting, a man in Toomebridge told the Irish News, ‘It is common knowledge that soldiers have been lying in the fields around the house for the last two weeks.’ The locals felt that the soldiers had mounted a stake-out and were intent on shooting whoever came into the yard.

  The possibility that the SAS soldiers might have been unknowingly compromised in an ambush position opens many lines of speculation. It is, for example, possible that the local IRA knew there was a chance their cache was under observation and therefore chose to risk somebody else’s life rather than one of their own member’s when the time came to move the weapons. The possibility that the cache had been under surveillance for several days also prompts the question why the Army did not send in Weapons Intelligence Unit experts to render the weapons safe in the event of a confrontation with those who came to collect them.

  During the inquest one year later forensic evidence was used to challenge the soldiers’ version of events. One bullet had hit Bradley in the buttock – its impact was consistent with having been fired as he knelt to recover a weapon, rather than standing up. The post-mortem examination showed he had been killed by a burst of three bullets fired from about 3 metres away as he lay on his back. It appeared from the analysis of his wounds that Bradley had been hit by four bursts of fire. The first had hit his buttock, he had then been hit in the arms. The third burst had caught him down the left side, injuring his arm, leg and one bullet entering his armpit. The fourth, fatal, burst had been fired by the soldiers after they had moved forward from their positions with Bradley lying on his back and presumably incapacitated after already being hit by five rounds.

  The inquest also led to further questions about the way soldiers are interviewed and their statements prepared after such incidents. The shooting had happened at about 9.50 p.m. All of the soldiers had made a note in their depositions saying that it had been a bright night: Soldier A had said there was, ‘a good moon’; Soldier B that there was ‘good visibility’; Soldier C, ‘a moon and visibility was good’; Soldier D, ‘a good moon’ and Soldier E, ‘a good moon’. However, a witness from the local weather centre said under oath at the inquest that the moon had not appeared in the sky until 11.08 p.m. that night. The significance of this episode, the Bradley family solicitor felt, was that it suggested the Army was writing the same script for each soldier and that if they had got wrong the time when the moon appeared, how much credence could be placed in the soldiers’ assertions that Bradley had picked up the gun and turned it towards them?

  Toomebridge was an unsatisfactory episode for the Army. Neither Walls nor McLarnon was subsequently convicted of any offence for their part in the evening’s drama. A man had died who was, if not entirely innocent of connections with terrorists, at least not a member of the IRA. The possibility that the soldiers had been compromised in their position for days without knowing it must also have been a worrying one. The only comfort that could be taken was in the recovery of the firearms.

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  For the security forces, possession of informer intelligence posed real dilemmas. While most attention centres on operations to counter actions by republican groups it is apparent that penetration of loyalist terrorist organizations must also sometimes offer the chance to pre-empt their actions. Yet, in the many years of special forces operations only one loyalist has ever been shot dead by Army special forces, following the killing of a Catholic late in 1989.

  From 1987 members of the Field Research Unit, the Army’s élite agent running team, had an agent high in the Ulster Defence Association. Brian Nelson, a former member of the Black Watch regiment, returned to Ulster at the behest of the FRU after working in Germany. Nelson had been both a loyalist terrorist and an Army agent before, but on his return became the UDA’s senior intelligence officer, with a key role in targeting Catholics. Nelson’s work put him in an ideal position to give the security forces the chance to pre-empt such killings. In January 1990 detectives of the Stevens inquiry, investigating how loyalists had obtained security forces intelligence documents, arrested Nelson. At his trial in January 1992, Nelson pleaded guilty to five charges of conspiracy to murder and fifteen other offences. Crown lawyers dropped two murder counts at the last minute, leading to claims of a deal whereby Nelson pleaded guilty to lesser charges to prevent details of his secret work becoming public.

  It emerged that Nelson had told his handlers in advance of UDA plans to kill two loyalists believed to be republican terrorists. Gerald Slane and Terence McDaid were gunned down in 1988 despite these warnings. An unnamed colonel, in fact a former Commanding Officer of the FRU, appeared in court to plead mitigation for Nelson, saying the agent had warned of 217 individuals targeted by the UDA. Nelson’s information was said to have saved Gerry Adams from a UDA bomb in 1987.

  Despite evidence of Nelson’s success as an agent, the case raised uncomfortable questions about the difference between the security forces’ response to foreknowledge of republican and loyalist attacks. Clearly Nelson’s intelligence and that of other loyalist informers has been used to thwart attacks, in the same way as information from republican groups. But it is clear that attempts to exploit this intelligence to ambush loyalists have rarely if ever been made.

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  During the 1980s the TCGs and Int and Sy Group had exploited informer intelligence to intercept republican terrorists on a number of occasions. As their practice in such techniques improved, their ability to tell good information – ‘hard int’ – from vague informer hearsay allowed them to place surveillance teams and SAS men in the right place at the right time more often. However, a by-product of this process was that regular infantry battalions in Ulster on four-month and two-year tours very rarely had the chance to take any kind of initiative against the IRA or INLA. Uniformed Army or police patrols remained the target for terrorist attack but were rarely used when the security forces had the intelligence to pre-empt it.

  The character of Northern Ireland tours had changed considerably since the early 1970s, when battalions fired hundreds of rounds in running street-battles during their four-month tours. During the period from December 1983 to February 1985 when the Group had been involved in the deaths of nine IRA men, the other 10,000 members of the Army in Ulster had not been involved in a single killing of an IRA member. When such inc
idents did happen, for example in the case of Tony Gough, a Derry Brigade member killed in February 1986, they resulted largely from chance encounters between uniformed patrols and IRA members who were preparing or had just carried out an attack on them.

  For the vast majority of soldiers Northern Ireland tours mean an often frustrating combination of avoiding IRA ambushes and trying to keep your temper in the face of insults and provocation from an alienated nationalist population. Squaddies often invoke the imagery of the rifle range. ‘We’re just Figure 11s out on the streets’, a young commando says – the ‘Figure 11’ is the graphic representation of a charging enemy soldier which the Army uses for target practice. Better trained battalions are normally able to contain these frustrations, but where discipline is not so good they sometimes result in assaults on local people, death threats to terrorist suspects and vandalism during house searches.

  Officers tend to be philosophical about the position in which the centralization of intelligence and covert operations places normal units. ‘Attrition,’ the commanding officer of an infantry battalion says, ‘is most effectively carried out by the many specialist agencies who are specifically trained to do it.’ But very occasionally ordinary soldiers can play a key role in a covert operation.

  During a patrol of the south Fermanagh countryside in April 1986, a young soldier noticed something unusual – a wire which he felt might be a command wire for a bomb. It was near a road which runs along a field outside Rosslea, only about one mile from the border with the Republic. When the soldiers returned to their base, he kept his discovery to himself during the routine de-briefing which follows all such patrols. Afterwards he told his commander about what he had seen and the SB was notified. What followed was, an Army intelligence officer says, ‘about the only recent example I can think of of an SAS operation which did not result from informer intelligence’.