Dirty tricks’ seen behind spy rumours

Sinn Fein has warned that speculation more spies could be unearthed within the party may be coming from some elements within the British intelligence service.

After the revelation three weeks ago that Sinn Fein’s former head of administration, Denis Donaldson, was a British spy, media reports have speculated that other republicans may be exposed as spies.

Mr Adams dismissed stories of more spies emerging as nonsense.

“It used to be when the IRA were centre stage that sections of the media fed every weekend with who was the chief of staff, who was this and who was that, and who was the mole,” he said at the party’s Ard Chomhairle meeting in Dublin today.

“Now I think what we are seeing is a continuation of much more of these nonsense type stories, there is a sinister aspect to it in that some of them may be above and beyond media trivia.

“Some of it may be fed by elements within the British intelligence service, either active members or people who used to be in the old RUC special branch. So there can be quite a sinister dimension to it. Of course a sinister dimension is about trying to confuse and cause uncertainties and difficulties in republicanism.”

The North’s political institutions have been suspended since October 2002 when allegations about a republican spy ring at the Belfast Assembly threatened to permanently destroy them.

However, it has since emerged that Denis Donaldson, Sinn Fein’s head of administration at the Belfast Assembly, was working for British military and police for over twenty years. He confessed his role to party officials and later appeared on Irish television reading from a prepared statement admitting he was a spy.

Donaldson has now been expelled from the party and is reported to have gone into hiding.

A number of prominent republicans have been named in the speculation about other possible British agents. There were reports of “several senior and respected republicans in Belfast” being warned by the PSNI police that they were about to be exposed as informers.

A Sinn Fein spokesman has said that three republicans were currently consulting their solicitors about such cases.

Sinn Fein has characterised the rumours as black propaganda and an attempt by British intelligence to sow confusion and suspicion within the Republican Movement.

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