Republican News · Thursday 31 January 2002

Dangerous fantasy

BY JIM GIBNEY

Torsion: the twisting of a party by application of equal and opposite torques; the condition of twist and the shear stress produced by a torque on a part or component, twisted of being twisted, gripping pains... What, you may be asking yourself, has got into the head of this occasional columnist? What meandering of the mind has produced such tautology?

Don't blame me. Blame the PSNI, Special Branch and MI5. They plumbed the depths of their lexicon to produce that opaque word to describe the latest sensational fantasy to burst out of their mouths before being planted in the mouth of one of the BBC's most respected journalists Brian Rowan. With the help of one of Belfast's press officers I divined the above.

Operation Torison we were told on Tuesday 12 November was the code name of a PSNI Special Branch spy operation, which was aided by an 'informer' or 'double agent' or 'tout' depending on your political bias, who operated "deep within the IRA".

The purpose of this elaborate, secret and highly sophisticated scheme: to capture the IRA's 'Director of Intelligence', who according to the BBC, lives up the road from this office. Unlike the extensive use by the BBC's hilarious comedy programme 'Have I got News for You', I did not hear the word 'allegedly' once.

Tuesday's dramatic news followed quickly on the heels of another equally dramatic instalment in this gripping thriller of spies and counter spies.

The previous day, the new PSNI's acting Deputy Chief Constable, old RUC man of many years standing, Alan McQuillan, gathered the at times pliant media of Belfast to inform them that the PSNI had destroyed "a major intelligence unit within the IRA" and their investigation took them "into the heart of the IRA".

Forty detectives, no less, had seized a huge quantity of documentation and wait for it: judges, forensic scientists, British military personnel and loyalists, not to mention over two thousand prison warders, were warned 'their lives were in danger'. With a list like that, one is of a mind to ask who was left off and are they annoyed?

I am also of a mind to ask and write, which none of Belfast's scribes were motivated to do, why 40 detectives? Forty detectives in a line stretched along the Albertbridge/Mountpottinger Roads, in east Belfast or their equivalent in north Belfast could help end the sectarian violence there.

McQuillan was at pains to point out but not noticing the obvious contradiction to his claims of a 'huge find' (he used the word 'small' three times in the same sentence), that the IRA's spying operation was confined to a handful of civil servants, who were probably coerced by the IRA.

He also wanted to assure Catholic civil servants that he wouldn't be party to a witch hunt, as the civil servant he was responsible for arresting and releasing the week previous, in another blaze of publicity, was suspended from his post.

Despite smashing this IRA spy ring, despite seizing thousands of sensitive documents, Mr McQuillan drew a strange conclusion: the IRA did not plan to use this information in an "offensive way". Could he not just stretch his vivid imagination that little bit further and praise the IRA for its prowess as 'archivist'?

At this point I would like to remind readers that Mr McQuillan has a penchant for hyperbole. At the height of the attacks by loyalists on Ardoyne in north Belfast during the summer, he told the media that the IRA were importing IRA activists from other areas (yes, into Ardoyne), and that they were bent on creating mayhem as an Orange parade forced its way past the area, courtesy of the PSNI.

To prove his much-vaunted claim he produced 'evidence': spike shaped objects which looked cunningly like security protection for the tops of shops. When the mayhem didn't occur we later found out, without much interest from the media, that PSNI personnel had in fact removed spike shaped security devices from the roofs of Ardoyne's shops and the shopkeepers wanted them back.

At the start of the week leading up to these spy stories on a cold and lonely road on the outskirts of Lurgan a group of relatives and supporters laid wreaths at the side of the road in memory of their loved ones.

Twenty years earlier a number of RUC personnel hatched a deadly scheme, approved and directed by the Special Branch. It led to the summary execution of several IRA men unarmed and armed in what became known as a 'shoot to kill' policy.

The same Special Branch has used loyalists to kill nationalists, republicans and Catholics. The same Special Branch has used various tactics to retain military control and supremacy over the PSNI.

Their dead hand has rested on the peace process and held back the promised new beginning.

They were described by Chris Patten as a 'force within a force'. They are undoubtedly a malign influence with too much power.

With that reality in mind, it struck me and I wondered why it didn't strike one of our scribes to ask: when was the last time or indeed the first time the Special Branch admitted publicly they ran informers, even ten pound ones?

If that is the case, then why would they 'hand over' to the public and per se the IRA via the BBC one of their 'key' agents at the 'heart of the IRA'?

I'll hazard a guess... it helps their project of wrecking the peace process.