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The timing of the raids and arrests suggests that it had less to do with uncovering 'a republican spying operation at the heart of the NIO' and more to do with the 'save Dave' process
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It was mid-morning on Friday and the telephone was ringing. "Switch on the television," said a familiar voice. "They're raiding Sinn Féin's offices in Stormont."
d then the images.
Lines of armoured vehicles, carrying up to a hundred armed PSNI offices, pulling up to the side of the grand entrance. Around 40 to 50 armed riot squad officers, dressed in black flame resistant overalls, streaming through the doorway and up a marble flight of stairs.
A shocked Bairbre de Brún and an angry Gerry Kelly. And then, at Kelly's invitation, a media scrum as journalists fought their way through the narrow front entrance. Film footage of dozens of PSNI officers, many covering their faces as they scurried past the cameras, beating a hasty retreat.
One officer was carrying a couple of plastic envelops, later revealed as containing a Windows 95 software programme and a recovery disk seized from Sinn Fein's office. Within days, the PSNI Chief Constable Hugh Orde would be forced to apologise for the manner of the raid and return what was seized.
Proof, as Martin McGuinness would point out, that the computer disks were as innocent as Sinn Féin. But on Friday, it was all visual impact followed by high drama and political fallout, literally and metaphorically.
Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams swiftly condemned the Stormont raid as "political theatre". The scene had been set during the meeting of the Ulster Unionist Party's ruling council over a fortnight ago, he said. Now we were watching the pantomime.
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With the Ulster Unionist Party now openly endorsing an anti-Agreement agenda, nationalists inadvertently became the only defenders of the Good Friday Agreement. Unionists exposed. Emerging nationalist unity. Even the possibility of such a configuration was just too much for the British
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Like the boy who cried wolf, David Trimble and the UUP had threatened the power sharing arrangements so often, nine times in four years, that most commentators had been lulled into a false sense of security when the UUP leader survived the latest challenge by the anti-Agreement wing of his own party.
But after years of failing leadership and a reluctance to present the Good Friday Agreement for what it was, the best deal unionists can hope to achieve given the changing political and demographic landscape, Trimble had finally capitulated to the unionist No camp. Trimble was no longer leading the UUP; he was merely running to keep up at the front.
The proposals, universally endorsed by the Ulster Unionist Council, weren't just against republicans; they were against the Good Friday Agreement. If Trimble emerged 'triumphant' from the council meeting, it was not by overcoming the naysayers' challenge, but by endorsing it.
d as Brian Feeney, writing in the Irish News pointed out, the significance was more than "a ploy to fend off the DUP in the assembly elections" and then back to business as usual. UUP members were set to oppose any attempt by Trimble "to find a way back into a power sharing executive", said Feeney.
"What clinches this conclusion is that in the process of nominating UUP candidates for the Assembly, supporters of the Agreement have retired or been tossed overboard. Quite simply, the complexion of the UUP next year will be such that no executive can be elected."
The UUP had adopted "a wrecker's charter" and it was widely perceived as such. Trimble's display of moral indignation at being required to work with republicans was no more than a fig leaf to cover a sectarian agenda that harked back to the Orange state and the old Stormont regime. And for once the media knew it.
The IRA, wrote Pat McArt in the Newsletter, "is being scapegoated in a totally cynical way in order to allow unionists to exit from an agreement that unionists cannot stomach because it is delivering equality". Given the ensuing events McArt's comment proved prophetic.
But this was only part of the story. In recent weeks, a new ideological configuration was emerging which did nothing to enhance David Trimble's image as Nobel Peace Prize winner, let alone the position of the British government, his main sponsor.
For months, David Trimble and the UUP had claimed that ongoing violence on the streets was undermining their participation in the power sharing arrangements. Trimble, with a lawyer's training, was careful not to specify exactly where this violence was emanating, leaving the context simply to imply republican violence.
But sooner or later, the truth had to come out. An ongoing loyalist campaign of sectarian violence against vulnerable Catholic communities, which involved hundreds, perhaps thousands of pipe and petrol bombings and gun attacks against Catholic homes and property, as well as a series of sectarian killings, could not be ignored forever.
Even the PSNI abandoned trying to shore up Trimble's position by pretending loyalists and republicans were fighting it out on the streets. The PSNI admitted that the overwhelming majority of violence was being perpetuated by the UDA and UVF.
Furthermore, a report, yet to be published, by the Police Ombudsman Nuala O'Loan, recognises that in so much as republicans had a presence on the streets, they were using their best offices to avoid conflict and defuse confrontation.
Journalists began to develop the idea that loyalist violence could be seen as the cutting edge of anti-Agreement unionism. "The UDA did all it could to assist mainstream unionism this summer," wrote Susan McKay of the Tribune, attacking Catholic neighbourhoods, "in an effort to provoke the IRA. Frustratingly, Alex Maskey just kept laying wreaths".
It was becoming increasingly apparent that unionists' anti-Agreement stance was less to do with a moral dilemma of working with republicans and more to do with a sectarian rejection of power sharing with nationalists.
Furthermore, with the Ulster Unionist Party now openly endorsing an anti-Agreement agenda, effectively creating a rejectionist unionist power block with the DUP, nationalists inadvertently became the only defenders of the Good Friday Agreement. Unionists exposed. Emerging nationalist unity. Even the possibility of such a configuration was just too much for the British.
Like the BBC play of the same name, what was to follow was a very British coup. The 1980s' television political drama suggested that subterfuge and sabotage underpinned the workings of the British state. Behind the smokescreen of perceived scandal, the parliamentary system could be manipulated and the balance of power shifted.
But that was just fiction and these are the facts.
A porter, William Mackessy, had worked briefly for the NIO and left his job over six months ago. A year ago, he had allegedly been caught photocopying, possibly with the intension to leak information. Following the incident, Mackessy had been disciplined and transferred to another department.
It had been treated as a relative minor misdemeanour. After all, as Martin McGuinness pointed out, Ian Paisley has received more leaked government documents than he has had hot dinners.
Last Friday, Mackessy was arrested by the PSNI and his home raided. Four days later he was charged in connection with possession of information likely to be useful to terrorists. In court, the PSNI admitted that no incriminating documentation had been found at this person's home or work or in his possession.
The PSNI 'believe' they can link the defendant by way of handwriting 'analysis'. It's a slim, and very subjective criteria by which to attempt to justify bringing down an elected power sharing government.
According to the PSNI, amongst papers seized during a raid on the home of Sinn Féin administrator Denis Donaldson were documents leaked from the NIO.
In the past, there have been numerous press conferences during which members of the DUP have produced documents leaked to their party by the NIO civil service. No one has ever been raided or arrested in connection with this.
"Suppose the Fine Gael party had some sort of leaked government documents and there was a Garda raid on Fine Gael headquarters," a Dublin Senator commented, "and tons of documents were taken away. There would be a huge furore."
Two other people have been arrested. Fiona Farrelly was charged with possession of information on Sunday night, while Ciaran Kearney, the son of veteran human rights campaigner Oliver Kearney, remains in continued detention.
John Reid has admitted that he had been made aware of 'the situation' in July. The timing of the raids and arrests suggests that it had less to do with uncovering 'a republican spying operation at the heart of the NIO' and more to do with the 'save Dave' process.
"With John Reid claiming that the security forces have been aware of the 'leaking problem' since the middle of last year," commented a Newsletter columnist, "why the big full scale public raid on Sinn Féin offices now?"
Once Sinn Féin's offices had been raided, said Gerry Kelly, charges were inevitably going to be brought. But to raid the offices of an opposition party within a parliamentary building under any circumstances is a serious business.
As the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern's former adviser on the north of Ireland, Martin Mansergh commented: "It is the kind of thing associated more with semi-democratic, (by which he meant undemocratic) countries like Turkey and (regimes like) Robert Mugabe.
"It is an extraordinary thing in any democracy for the parliamentary offices of a political party to be heavily raided by a police force," said Mansergh. "This is a very, very serious development which has yet to be fully justified."
But while nationalist Ireland, including the Dublin government, was angry, Irish America was livid. "The raid on the Stormont Sinn Féin office," wrote US correspondent Roy O'Hanlon in the Irish News, "has gone down like a lead balloon."
A few days earlier, a group of Members of Congress had written to the British secretary of State complaining about the PSNI's failure to protest Catholics in the Short Strand. Now the PSNI appeared to be openly pursuing a unionist anti-Agreement agenda within the offices of government.
In the US, the Ancient Order of Hibernians were furious and called for the immediate release of Denis Donaldson. The AOH demanded an investigation of the "political tactics of those acting for the British government during the raids on the offices of Sinn Féin" which was "an assault against democratic principles".
There was no place in a democratic society for "staged police raids on the offices of an oppositional political party", said the AOH national secretary.
But in the British and Unionist press there were plenty to endorse the British agenda. "To Trimble the spoils," Malachi O'Doherty wrote in the Belfast Telegraph. "From looking near suicidal two weeks ago David Trimble now looks like an astute politician, almost a prophet."
A miraculous transformation no less, but O'Doherty shows no interest in how this apparent transformation was achieved.
The editorial continued: "Unionist patience has been stretched to breaking point and the ultimatum issued by the Ulster Unionist Council last month appears to have been vindicated."
While the Belfast Telegraph finds words such as 'wise', 'astute' and 'vindicated' to describe Trimble, Liam Clarke of the Sunday Times is considering the "nightmare scenario for Sinn Féin", which is "a breakdown of the peace process for which republicans and not unionists will carry the bulk of historical blame". Clarke predicts that in any future negotiations, "Sinn Féin will find its hand seriously weakened.
"It is they and not unionists who will have to make concessions and build the confidence," Clarke concludes.
But is anyone really fooled?
Pat McArt, writing in the Newsletter, suggested republicans have already made significant confidence building concessions. "But this is not enough progress for rejectionist unionism and many suspect that anything the republican movement does will never be enough."
Commenting on the raids and arrests, McArt outlines the way in which nationalist Ireland is interpreting events.
"For many - if not all - nationalists the whole thing smacks of a charade. Nationalists have seen the UUP walk to Stormont flanked by representatives of loyalist paramilitary groupings who have carried out horrific sectarian murders mostly against unarmed, totally innocent Catholics. There was no outcry from unionism about democracy being corrupted then.
"And for several months every year nationalists can expect heavy duty intimidation, particularly in places such as Portadown, Larne, Ballymena and large swathes of Belfast when tribal unionism celebrates its culture. So when Trimble, Donaldson et al rant on about republicans breaking the rules, it tends to ring hollow.
"And as for the leaked documents, the Brits have done - and will do - the same. Neither side can claim to have played by Marquis of Queensberry rules."
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