My cousin, Provisional IRA Chief of Staff, Kevin McKenna would tell me when I was a child and later, about our Forefather, Neil McKenna, who in 1641, led a campaign of Ethnic Cleansing, against the Protestant people of the Northern Counties of Ireland, Neil and his Clan’s men slaughtered over 2,000 Protestants and drove thousands more from their homes.
Kevin McKenna wished to replicate the campaign of Ethnic Cleansing that had been led by Neil in 1641. Official sanction for a policy of Ethnic Cleansing was granted by the Sinn Fein/Provisional IRA Army Council in 1986.
My Grandfather’s favourite ancestor was Brigadier Juan MacKenna (26 October 1771 – 21 November 1814) was an Irish-born, Chilean military officer and hero of the Chilean War of Independence. My Grandfather spoke of Juan's life as a great adventure.On New Years Eve 1957, my Father was a 16 year-old apprentice Barman in McManus's Pub on Glaslough Street in Monaghan Town. On this night my Father served tea and soft drinks to Fergal O’Hanlon, Sean South, Vincent Conlon and others as they prepared to leave Monaghan Town and launch a gun attack on the Royal Ulster Constabulary barracks in Brookeborough, County Fermanagh, during the IRA Border Campaign.
Chapter 1
The Early Years
I, Vincent McKenna, was born 1 December, 1963, In Saint Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, London. This was shortly before the Queen's Christmas Broadcast in 1963, which was made by radio, as Queen Elizabeth was pregnant with her fourth child, Prince Edward, who was born in the March, 1964. And my birth was shortly after the assassination of American President, John Fitzgerald, Kennedy, 22 November, 1963.
I am told that we lived in a basement flat in London in 1963, and that our neighbours were asylum seekers and various ethnic minorities seeking a better life for themselves in Britain. My Father, Patrick McKenna worked as a labourer on British rail. My Father was the third eldest, of a family of nine, and was from Clara in north Monaghan in The Irish Republic.
The McKenna Clan had farmed in north Monaghan for centuries and we were direct descendants of Clan Chieftain, Patrick McKenna, who had held a seat on the Hill of Tara, inauguration place and seat of the High Kings of Ireland.
I had been visiting north Monaghan and Monaghan Town from I was a small child, family walks on a Sunday would take us from Aughnacloy in County Tyrone, down Ravella Road to Clara, Trough (An Triúcha) and Carrickroe and back home by the Moy Bridge that straddles the Blackwater River linking County Monaghan with County Tyrone. Periodically I would also attend funerals in the same parts of north Monaghan as this was my ancestral home.
As a child I would often go fishing along the Blackwater, I could cross low points of the river into north Monaghan quit easily, particularly in summer time when the water was lower.
My Paternal family had been hill farmers in north Monaghan for centuries, while in the 20th Century the McKenna Clan was diverse in its political outlook, there was always a core strain of the Clan who were and remain in the 21st Century Militant Republicans.
On Thursday nights I would travel with my Mother and Father to Bingo in The Hillgrove Hotel in Monaghan Town and stop at The Monte Carlo chip shop in Glaslough Street, Monaghan Town, on the way back home. On Sunday afternoons I would travel with my Mother and Father to afternoon bingo in The Four Seasons Hotel in Monaghan Town, the burgers wrapped in tissue paper and oozing with red sauce and a cold bottle of coke were my favourite part of the outing.
On a few occasions I had travelled to Monaghan Town with my Mother and Father to visit my Uncle Patsy and his Family who were living in Mullaghmatt housing estate outside Monaghan Town. Patsy and his family had originally lived in Clara and Patsy was renowned for growing his own strawberries and selling them locally, we had often picked up a punnet in the early days while on family walks.
With all of my visits to Monaghan Town as a child I never really grasped the size of Monaghan Town compared to Aughnacloy. I had always travelled into Monaghan Town at night for the bingo or to visit Uncle Patsy, and bingo in The Four Seasons Hotel was Sunday afternoons on the periphery of Monaghan Town.
My Father at sixteen years-old, had been an apprentice barman in McManus’s Bar in Glasslough Street in Monaghan Town in 1957. He had on New Year’s Eve 1957, served Fergal O’Hanlon, Sean South, Vincent Conlon and other IRA Volunteers, tea and soft drinks before they lead an attack on an RUC barracks inBrookeborough, County Fermanagh, in which Sean South and Fergal O’Hanlon were shot dead and other IRA members wounded, later that night.
My Mother the fourth eldest of a family of nine, was from a farming background, just outside Newport, County Mayo, in The Irish Republic. My maternal ancestors had fought in the Irish War of Independence in 1916 and the Civil War in the 1920s. I was three years-old when in 1966, my Mother and Father, who had married at the age of eighteen and seventeen respectively, decided to return to Ireland.
Before returning to Ireland, I had already a number of health issues, I had major surgery for reasons never explained, I had consumed a significant amount of bleach believing it to be lemonade and I had chronic asthma.
In 1966, our family, including my Father, Mother, two older sisters and I, arrived in a small market town called Aughnacloy, County, Tyrone, Northern Ireland. Aughnacloy is a few hundred yards from the border with County Monaghan, in The Irish Republic. I was and remain the third eldest of a family of eight, six sisters and one younger brother.
When my family first arrived in Aughnacloy, in 1966, it was, I am told, particularly difficult for Catholics to get public housing. We initially lived in a house just outside Aughnacloy, that was best described as semi-derelict, in summer it was fine, in winter it was very cold and damp and this aggravated my asthma.
In better times this would have been a fine house, set on some acres of land. The land was rented separately by a family known as Kyles, but we could use the land for playing and catching rabbits. By 1966, the once fine house was passed its sell by date. The road that led to our house was not well maintained as it was viewed as a secondary road, and there were only four houses on our road.
The long narrow road known as Tully Hill went a few hundred yards past our house to the River Blackwater. While Partition between The Irish Republic and Northern Ireland was a political Partition, much of the land border is drawn by the natural run of the River Blackwater. Tully Hill had some significance for the McKenna Clan as our ancestors Michael and Rose McKenna had been shot dead on Tully Hill by BritishYeomanry at the turn of the nineteenth century.
The rent for our house in 1966 was ten-shillings per-week. The house consisted of two bedrooms upstairs, one of which could not be used due to damp. Damp which left a lingering green fungus on the walls. The second room was more of a loft in which my Father, Mother, sisters, brother and I slept.
Downstairs there was a kitchen, with a large black cast-iron stove. There was a small parlour, where hedgehogs, would find shelter in the winter, and a sitting room with an open fire. There was no running water or inside toilet. Water had to be carried from a spring well, at the opposite side of the road. A small galvanised out house, was used as the toilet. Initially there was no electricity supply to our house, however, my Father had created an unofficial electric supply by connecting a cable to an electric pole that stood close to our house.
My Father planted some potatoes and cabbages in the large back garden of our house. The privet hedge that ran along the perimeter of our back garden was used for drying clothes and bed linen. When retrieving clothes from the hedge row, ear-wigs and other foreign bodies as voyeuristic interlopers had to be painstakingly removed as they would invade every crevice of the garments.
There was no outside lighting and so nightly visits to the out-house could be something of an adventure. One had to negotiate rows of potatoes and knee-high nettles with the natural guide of the moon-light.
My older sisters and I, would catch wild rabbits in the big field at the back of our house and keep them in a pen that was made from chicken wire. We also had some chickens, and at Christmas my Mother and Father would rear turkeys to sell. I had a beautiful black and white collie dog. The dog had been given to me when she was three-months old, by Gordon Thompson, the Protestant man who owned our house.
I spent my time going across fields with my dog and chasing rabbits. In the summer my sisters and I would go to the River Blackwater to swim, and wash. The River Blackwater was great as there was nobody else about, occasionally local teenagers such as Ray Singleton and Tom Heaney would pass by as they were always fishing the River Blackwater for trout.
We would spend long summer days swimming, playing and using jam jars to catch minnows (baby fish). On our return from the River Blackwater, we would collect wild strawberries, blackberries and crab apples. My sisters and I would agitate nests of wasps, that had made their hives in the high hedgerows, that bordered both sides of the narrow winding road.
As a child I can remember long summer evenings sitting alone on the northern bank of the River Blackwater. I would sit close to the Moy Bridge that linked County Tyrone with County Monaghan across the River Blackwater, not many passed.
My sparkling clean jam jar attached to my hand by a long piece of white parcel twine that I would have sought from Joey Woods the Greengrocer. The jam jar had to be crystal clear so that the minnows (baby fish) could not see the jar and would swim into its cul de sac of glass.
It took some time to prepare the jam jar for minnow fishing. The glued label had to be soaked in hot water and scrubbed for several minutes with a wire pad to detach it from its glass foundation. The string had to be cut to a manageable length and secured around the neck of the jam jar, this task took particular care and attention as too much string around the neck of the jam jar could alert the minnows to the presence of the impending trap.
The jar and string had to be cast several times before any serious fishing could begin. Several casts would remove any odours or soap residue that may remain on the jam jar or string. The flowing current would carry away these excesses downstream. The jar was then cast and allowed to settle to the bottom of the river on a bed of moss or river silt.
Caution had to be taken to ensure the jam jar did not strike any of the many rocks on the river bed. The initial cast would scatter the minnows. After a moment the shoal of want-to-be-trout would return to the shadow and illusion of safety created by the long grass and ad hoc shrubbery of the river bank.
The ad hoc shrubbery that adorned the river bank was made up of wild rambler rose bushes whose thorns could pierce to the bone an unsuspecting intruder lured by their fragrant and bright coloured blossoms. Rushes could grow unhindered among the protective armour of the battalions of thorn clad roses.
The River Blackwater was crystal clear in the summertime and only a few feet in depth. I had to pull quickly on the string once my prey was inside the jar. Having captured my prey, I would hold the cold wet jar in my hand and pour the small fish into my holding jar. In the short journey from catch jar to holding jar, the minnows would, like migrating salmon, attempt to swim against the torrent of pouring water.
My holding jar was one of those family sized Robinsons jam jars. At the end of an evening fishing, I would return the minnows to their watery community. I would watch as the Mayflies like fighter jets in search of a target skimmed the surface of the river. Sometimes by way of navigational error the Mayfly would touch the water’s surface and create a radiant ripple.
This ripple was to the trout, what the starting gun is to an athlete. A trout would spear up from the water below and pluck the Mayfly from the air. Rocks pierced the water’s surface creating small white-water rapids which provided camouflage for the lurking trout.
The large oak trees that stood to attention on the perimeter of the large field behind me would be tickled by the cool evening breeze. The hills in their snooker table greenery rolled to the river’s edge. The smell of freshly cut grass filled the meadow air. The delicate stems of Buttercups and Bluebells remained in defiance of the farmer’s mower.
Rabbits would scurry and play in large dry mud beds cut from the hillside by the borrowing of generations of their forefathers. However, even in those early days the cruel pain of myxomatosis had reduced the numbers of the rabbit clan. Bloated eyes and the smell of imminent death stalked the small furry white-tailed caricatures of Disney’s famous movie Watership Down.
A few of the Mammy and Daddy rabbits had been reduced to maggot infestations. The baby rabbits would instinctively run back and forward to the place where their parents had fallen dead from this heinous man-made disease. The smell of death was too much for the small creatures who simply wanted to be playful.
In a final act of selflessness, the adult rabbits always moved a safe distance from the borrows of family and neighbours before falling dead in what must have been excruciating pain. The virus had been deliberately introduced to Ireland in 1954 to reduce the number of rabbits, whom it was alleged were consuming large volumes of farm produce.
Cattle would come down to the water’s edge on the southern side of the river bank, their hoofs would muddy the water momentarily. The small clouds of muck would be carried away by the current. Although cumbersome animals, the cattle of multi-breed and colour, moved gently on the water’s edge.
Although moving in numbers of a dozen or more, the cattle made no sound. Perhaps these animals aware of the delicate task of the fisherman on the bank opposite. Whatever the reason for the nodded acceptance of each other’s presence, I shared the river with my friends from the animal kingdom contently. As dusk fell, I would collect up my fishing tools and begin the journey home.
As I crossed the meadow, frogs hopped along the deep tracks cut into the soft ground by the farmers heavy machinery. I would walk along the narrow overgrown twisted single lane road that ran back to our house. Along the middle of the road stood a tuft of grass that was occasionally manicured by the underbelly of the farmers tractor. From the high hedge row, I would pick a few bright red strawberries while discarding the yellowish green ones.
LikeEbony, the blackcurrants would shine from the hedgerows as the setting sun flashed across their moist tender flesh. In early evening the fruit fly would already have squatted upon its hammock of Ebony berry. Overnight the fruit fly would feed on the berries luscious blood red juices within. I had often watched the fruit fly at close quarter as its small intravenous tongue penetrated the succulent flesh of the ripe fruit.
The transfusion of juice from fruit to fly would reduce the fruit to a vampirine corpse. I could not pass the crab apple trees whose branches reached their fruit alluringly to head height. The tempestuous bitter fruit of the crab apple trees would take a heavy toll on my digestive system. Yet the bitter first bite of the crab apple is like no other tastebud experience. The wrenching of face and squinting of eyes as the bitter juice touches the tongue, is one of nature’s electrifying moments.
At the bottom of Tully Hill, which was the name of the road on which we lived, William and Sarah Clarke, had a small farm. I would as a child help the Clarke’s, at every opportunity. The Clarkes had four milking cows, each of whom had a name, beef cattle and a selection of fowl. William and Sarah, were beautiful people, they treated me like a son, as they had no children of their own. My Father, sisters and I, would help to harvest the hay in the summer.
When animals had to be taken to the mart, it would be my Father and I, who would help get the animals loaded into the cattle lorry early in the morning. William and Sarah’s cottage, was situated on low lying ground, just a few yards from the River Blackwater. I remember the River Blackwater breaking its banks during some heavy rain, in the early 1970s. The Clarke’s house, had water flowing in through the front door of their house and out the back door into the meadow beyond.
I remember my Father and a neighbour Paddy Sherry, rescuing the animals from the sheds, everything in Clarkes house was destroyed. The water mark on the internal walls of Clarke’s cottage remained for many years.
William Clarke had been a member of the B Specials in the late 1960s. The B Specials were a special police unit who had been viewed by many within the nationalist community as a mirror image of the former Black and Tans, who had a poor reputation. I think that if the truth be told, many Protestant farmers living on small farm holdings joined such organisations for extra income to supplement their low earnings from their farm.
William Clarke never displayed any sectarian characteristics, he had a small TVO tractor and an old Morris Oxford car, both were prized possessions. Willie’s wife Sarah was a big strong woman whom with her husband shared equally the work load on the farm. Sarah made great dinners and baked bread. Treacle bread was my favourite.
On occasion Sarah would stand at the half door of her small thatched cottage and call to me as I walked to school. Sarah would have some freshly baked treacle bread for me, carefully wrapped in brown paper. I always looked forward to helping William on the farm on a Saturday morning as the breadman would call in his well-stocked van. I would help Sarah carry in large soda Farrells, potato bread and a batch loaf.
When William and I finished milking the cows, we would be sat down to an Ulster Fry. As we entered the kitchen, we could smell the freshly baked wheaten bread. Bacon crackled on the heavy iron pan. Fresh eggs collected from the dozen or so hens, spat their juices onto the top of the old cast iron Stanley stove. The Denny sausages had to be put into the security of the oven or Willie would have tasted them away to nothing.
We sat at the table Willie and I, Willie would read The Belfast Newsletter, while Sarah busied herself laying a feast on the lace table cloth. Both Willie’s sheep dog and mine lay beneath the breakfast table. The dogs would be rewarded for their mornings work with the rind of the bacon. I cut into the soft homemade butter with one of Sarah’s prized ivory handle knives. The butter melted into the fresh wheaten bread. Soon Willie would be sleeping in his armchair. Sarah and I would settle to watch the wrestling on the television. Those were the days when wrestlers such as Big Daddy, Giant Haystacks and Mick McManus were household names.
In the 1960s, I would as a small child travel with my Father, Grandfather and Great-grandfather to my Uncle Sean’s house in O’Neil Avenue in Newry. My Uncle Sean and his family had moved to Newry from Clara in north Monaghan in the 1950s and my Uncle Sean would be involved in organising Sinn Fein/IRA in County Down for the 1957-62 failed IRA border campaign.
When I travelled to Newry as a child these were social visits, my Father, Uncle Sean, Grandfather and Great-grandfather would go to the local pub for a drink and then we would return to Aughnacloy. In the 1960s travel was not as it is in the 21st Century, a journey to Newry was a big outing and would only happen periodically due to the cost of petrol and so forth.
In 1969, my Father had borrowed his boss’s car, a Hillman Minx, and we travelled to Newry for the usual get together. However, 1969 was different, there was violence on the streets, and journeys at night were just eerie. When driving along the road men in uniform, with blackened faces and guns would simply step out onto the road and wave the car to a stop. It was normally the British army from 1969, but not always, as I would discover at my Uncle Sean’s funeral in 1975.
When we arrived at Uncle Sean’s house in Newry in 1969, Uncle Sean told my Father, Grandfather and Great-grandfather to go on to the pub and he would join them later, I would stay in Sean’s house.
I was in the kitchen eating a bun and drinking a glass of milk given to me by Aunt Bridget, Uncle Sean and other men were at the Kitchen table, Sean’s pearl handled revolver sat uncomfortably beside the teapot that was quenching the thirst of the IRA men gathered and a man called Ian Paisley on the black and white TV was shouting so loud that he was drowning out the seditious talk at the table.
In the late 1960s trouble had begun in Caledon a few miles away from Aughnacloy, when a large Catholic family the Gildernew’s were refused a council house, and the house was given to a young Protestant woman. I remember watching houses being burned in Belfast on the black and white television, there was a great deal of violence starting to emerge.
In 1969, the British Army had been brought into Northern Ireland to act as peace-keepers between Protestant and Catholic gangs in Belfast, or at least that is how it appeared to a child. The deployment of the British Army was known as Operation Banner. I remember a fleet of helicopters flying over Aughnacloy and they frightened everyone as nobody knew what was happening. The British Army built a military checkpoint close to Clarke’s home on the Monaghan border. The Clarkes could no longer keep their cows, as by now the Provisional IRA were high-jacking creamery lorries and placing bombs in the creamery cans.
The creamery lorry had to pass through the barrier of the military check-point so it was viewed as a serious threat. The British Army checkpoint also meant that our local shop, Donnelly’s had to move up into the middle of the town as the military base expanded.
I remember shortly after the British Army arrived in Northern Ireland, and as I was leaving our remote house in the darkness to go to Donnelly’s shop, British Soldiers jumped out from behind the dry-stone white-washed wall that was to the front of our house. The British Army foot-patrol called on my Father and I to halt.
The army would often go out into the countryside for two or three-day patrols to reassure border communities against the threat posed by The Provisional IRA who would often cross the border from The Irish Republic, plant bombs and shot people. The soldiers told us that they thought we were terrorists coming out of what appeared to be a derelict house. I remember the English voices shouting “Halt” and the sound of guns being cocked.
It was a frightening experience, and my first on the ground encounter with the British Army. I suppose in retrospect, the encounter was as frightening for the young English soldiers who had been transplanted from cities such as Liverpool and London to the border roads of Tyrone, where potential danger lurked in every shadow.
My Father, who was a hard worker could not get a work permit in Northern Ireland, as he was originally from the Irish Republic. There were a number of laws in Northern Ireland that were perceived to be discriminatory against the Catholic community. The Stormont Government which was in the majority Unionist, was viewed by Catholics, as pursuing policies that treated Catholics as second-class citizens.
To have a steady income for a growing family my Father had to sign on for a social welfare payment each week. My Father had to travel to Ballygawley which was a small town about five-mile away. My family now consisted of my Father, Mother and six-children, received eleven-pounds-sterling per-week from The Department of Social Welfare. My Father engaged in casual labour to supplement the Social Welfare payment.
As my Father was a good worker, he eventually got more permanent work on a local pig farm, that was owned by Mr and Mrs Johnny Wilson, who had two sons, Mervyn and Norman. The Wilsons were a traditional Protestant farming family living close to the border with County Monaghan, in the Irish Republic.
My Father would leave the family home early in the mornings and make his way to Wilsons farm by walking across a number of fields.
I would work on the farm with my Father whenever I could. I got to drive the tractor, and Mrs Wilson who owned the farm, made great dinners, from fresh produce that she grew on her farm. Mrs Wilson worked a cottage garden that Monty Don would have been proud of.
The Wilsons had two sons, Mervyn and Norman, who would both go on to be successful business men outside of the family farm. Both Norman and Mervyn would take me fishing on the River Blackwater. When Mervyn got married, his Maternal Uncle, Robert John McCready, who had a furniture factory in Emyvale, County Monaghan, gave Mervyn a lorry load of furniture to start a furniture business.
Mervyn bought a yard with some sheds in Dungannon, and my Father and I, cleaned out the sheds and painted them for Mervyn. Mervyn filled the shed with the furniture given to him by his Uncle for a wedding present, and so began the story of Starplan in 1972. Mervyn’s younger brother Norman would create another Northern Ireland brand name, Style Furnishings in Cookstown, County Tyrone.
Family life was not good, my Mother who had been in America and England, now found herself in a very small town, the anonymity of large urban spaces such as Chicago and London, had been replaced with the valley of the squinting windows. My Mother did not suffer fools and she was not afraid to say so.
I have early childhood memories of long days spent in the public houses of Aughnacloy where Catholics would drink. I would have Tayto crisps and a bottle of coke in Ma Thompson’s Pub, Ma Thompson’s son Gordon, owned our rented house. Boyle’s Pub, Bob O’Neil’s and Joe McLoughlin’s were regular watering holes for my Father on Market day in the town.
Sometimes there were farcical episodes as my Great Grandfather, Grandfather and my Father would get together for a drink, one Black Saturday all three were very drunk and walking down the town. Black Saturday was a Protestant celebration linked to the Royal Black Institution.The Royal Black Institution was formed in Ireland in 1797, two years after the formation of the Orange Order in Daniel Winter's cottage, Loughgall, County Armagh, Ireland. The society is formed from Orangemen and can be seen as a progression of that Order although they are separate institutions.
During the early years when we lived on Tully Hill, I have memories of my Mother pushing a four-stone bag of coal up the steep hill in a push-chair as she did not have the extra few pennies to pay for delivery, and she would not be beholding to anyone.
My Mother was fearless of everyone and everything, my Father was passive unless he had drink taken. My Mother’s frustration with life was often misplaced, which in turn lead to repercussions mainly on myself and sometimes my older sisters at primary school.
In my early years I was very sick with acute asthma, which had been aggravated by the poor conditions in the old house in which we initially lived. Eventually my health deteriorated to the point that a Catholic Priest was summoned by my parents, Father Dara would give me a blessing, as it was believed I would not survive. My asthma had turned to pneumonia.
I still have clear memories, when I was about seven years old, of people gathered around me, in the draughty front room of our house on Tully Hill. Following the blessing by Father Dara, I made a very quick recovery and never suffered asthma again, that is what I remember and nobody has ever contradicted that version.
Following my recovery from asthma, I remained small and weak. It was during this time that I was walking up the street with the local Orange Order and a loyalist band as they were practicing for the annual twelfth of July parades. I simply heard the music and seen the bright colours of the uniforms and banners; I did not understand any political aspect.
An older Catholic lad had seen me walking up the street with the Orange Order and at the first opportunity, he subjected me to a savage beating. The attack took place at my primary school when the Head-master and his wife, which made up half the staff, were gone home for lunch. Mrs Connolly would also go home for lunch while the remaining teacher, Mrs McCullagh would remain in her class room for lunch.
The older lad dragged me by my hair down the grass hill to the front of the Chapel next to the primary school, he dragged me into some bushes at the bottom of the hill. The older lad had dragged me with such force that a large part of my scalp came off in his hand, leaving a gaping and stinging wound on my head.
When the older Catholic lad had beaten and kicked me, he simply walked of down the town. I covered over the large wound on my head with the remaining hair. I knew that if my Mother seen the injury to my head she would not hesitate to go to the Headmaster, and this would simply make matters worse.
It would be about three weeks after the assault that my Mother was washing my hair, that she discovered what was a festering hole in my scalp. I would not say what happened. My Mother thought it was ring-worm. An old man called James McFadden lived down the Caledon Road and he had the ‘cure’ for ring-worm.
My Mother decided to bring me to James McFadden for the ‘cure’ for ringworm. James McFadden looked at the wound my head, and in the absence of any other explanation, agreed that it was ring worm. James who chewed tobacco, spat three times into the wound and then rubbed the spittle in deeper, believing this to be the cure.
Within days of receiving the ‘cure’ the wound had become a red and yellow festering lump, my Mother took me to our GP, Dr McCord. Dr McCord immediately took a scalpel and cut the festering lump from my head. The smell was overwhelming and the filth that he removed was putrid. Dr McCord said that another day and the sepsis would have got into my eyes and I would have at least been blind.
Dr McCord, then covered the wound with red surgical disinfectant, I had often seen this type of disinfectant, used on pigs on the farm, where I often worked with my Father. Dr McCord placed a bandage around my head, like a turban. My bandage had to be changed regularly and I was off primary school for a couple of months.
When my Mother and I walked out of the surgery that day we meet Mrs McKillion and she brought me into Joey Wood’s shop and bought me a bar of Cadbury’s chocolate, a rare treat back then.
It is only at the time of writing this autobiography in 2021 that I finally disclose how that head injury was inflicted. My battles at school would not end there, if my Mother made any complaint to the Headmaster at our primary school about abuse directed at my sisters, then it was I, who felt his wrath.
The Headmaster was a malicious man, but he knew who to target for his sadistic pleasure. The Headmaster had a heavy leather belt with brass studs embedded and he would build himself into a frenzy when he brutalised a child with it. His violent actions, were in the 1970s supported by the Law, corporal punishment was legal, and there was no specific definition of where it could start nor where it could end. I would never cry or show weakness.
I remember one day as the Headmaster was giving me a severe beating in front of class. I would have been about nine-years-old. He made me hold my hands out flat, one on top of the other, he then began a frenzied assault where he would strike down on my hands with his closed fist, my hands were tiny.
The Headmaster, had built himself into a frenzy, but I would not give in. Eventually the Headmaster’s glasses, flew of the end of his nose, and into the top of the open potbellied stove, that burned a fuel known as slack. There was a flash of colour when his glasses hit the burning slack, his glasses were gone.
The Headmaster bellowed at me to sit down, the girl whom I was seated beside, was crying, because I had been beaten so badly. As I turned to tell the girl I was OK, the Headmaster ran to where I was sitting and punched me on the side of the head with his clenched fist, the punch knocked me to the ground, I got up and sat back in my seat.
These were difficult times, I was very small for my age due to various health issues, but I refused to give in to anyone. Some days I would have jam sandwiches, wrapped in wax paper from a loaf of Irwin’s bread and at school we got a free quart of milk each day, to wash down the soggy sandwiches. The milk would be delivered to the school gate, and sometimes the birds would have pecked open the tin foil cap to get the cream on the top of the milk.
In the 1970s there was no school meals in primary schools in Northern Ireland, and so there came a time when social services intervened in our family circumstances and paid for my siblings and I to have a warm meal in Hillen’s café each lunch time. We would get a bowl of soup with mash potatoes and a glass of milk, which was great, especially in the winter.
The primary school had four large rooms, and the height of the ceiling meant that the rooms were virtually impossible to heat. The potbellied stove was the only heating available, and so I was regularly sent out to get a scuttle of slack from the shed. If it was raining my clothes would get wet, and the steam would be rising from my clothes for the rest of the day.
In my final year at primary school, I was learning to fight back, mainly as my class was now the oldest in the school, so my peers no longer had older brothers to do their fighting for them. As it was my final year at primary school, I decided to retaliate against the Headmaster who had abused me over many years, without just cause.
It was just coming up to the end of the school year or summer holidays. I was told by the Headmaster to remain in my seat while the other children in the class took down our paintings and other classwork done through the year, from the walls. A general clean up before the holidays. At a point during the day the Headmaster left the class room and hung his jacket on the back of his chair.
I wrote a note calling the Headmaster a bully and so forth. Another pupil, Conor McGirr decided that he wanted a piece of the action and so he volunteered to place the note in the breast pocket of the Headmaster’s jacket that was hanging on the chair. Before the Headmaster returned to the classroom Conor chickened out and decided to retrieve the offending, but truthful note, from the Headmaster’s jacket. Conor then gave me the note and I placed it in my pocket. When the Headmaster returned to the classroom, the first thing he done was put his jacket on and sit in his chair.
I watched as The Headmaster reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and took out a piece of paper. I was safe in the knowledge that my offending note was safely in my trouser pocket. The Headmaster began to read the piece of paper that he had taken from his pocket, I could see his face get very red. I looked over towards Conor, he too had noted the colour change in the Headmaster’s face.
I reached into my trouser pocket and took out the note that Conor had retrieved, I opened the note under my desk, my heart sunk, the note that Conor had retrieved from the Headmasters’ pocket, was the time-table for the school sports day. The note that the Headmaster was reading, so attentively, was my note calling him a bully and worse.
The Headmaster called out a pupil whom he knew would tell him who had placed the offending note in his pocket. Although, it was not going to require a super-grass to identity the culprit. The Headmaster returned to the classroom and called Conor and I to the front of the room. The Headmaster lost the plot, roaring and shouting obscenities and threats.
I told the Headmaster that Conor had nothing to do with the note. Conor, following my plea in mitigation, received six-slaps with the Headmasters heavy studded leather strap. Conor was ordered back to his seat and was kicked in the rear by the Headmaster as he done so.
The Headmaster told me to hold out my hands, however, having finally decided to fight back, I refused his order and told the Headmaster to “Fuck-off”. The Headmaster battered me with the heavy leather studded belt all over my body. I just kept telling the Headmaster to “Fuck-off”, I would not give in. After what seemed like about an hour, the abuse stopped, the Headmaster had exhausted himself.
I returned to my seat; I was satisfied that I had not given in. I was bleeding from my nose and I could feel lumps rising all over my body. The Headmaster took some time to compose himself and he then announced that neither Conor nor I would be performing as Altar Boys for the funeral of the Parish Priest, Father O’Kane who had just died. This was an added punishment, as Altar Boys could get as much as £1 for performing at a funeral service.
I contented myself that £1 was worth paying for exposing the Headmaster for the sadistic bastard he was.The position of Catholic Headmaster in a small divided town like Aughnacloy was not one normally challenged by ordinary citizens. The Headmaster was in a position of absolute power and protected by the Catholic Church. Absolute power wielded absolute abuse.
My only good memory of Saint Mary’s Primary School, Aughnacloy, was when I was in Mrs McCullagh’s class, I would have been about eight-years-old. We had a general knowledge quiz in the class and my team won, we were given a box of Quality Street sweets by Mrs McCullagh. Mrs McCullagh and Mrs Connolly were good teachers.
These early years had been difficult, home life and school life were reflections of each other. If our family had lived in Brixton or Birmingham we would have fitted quite easily into that academic categorisation, the ‘underclass’. In those days children’s rights were not on any social policy agenda, unless of course you had money.
We had a big black and white television that was hired from Irwin Brothers electrical shop in Dungannon, every day, the news blasted out reports of bombings, shootings and murders. I am not sure that black and white television presented the true horror of what was happening at that time in Northern Ireland, one moment it would be the news and then Laurel and Hardy.
However, the true gravity of the murderous sectarian campaign would be very clear when neighbours were murdered by terrorist organisations. Or when bombs would explode in Aughnacloy, one such Provisional IRA bomb blowing the windows out of our house and leaving the roof tiles on the ground. The 500lb bomb at the British Army base that was a short distance from our house had been delivered by my Father’s employer Norman Wilson, whose family had been held captive by the Provisional IRA.
As a child in 1973, I meet Gerry Adams at another Uncle’s house when Gerry was On-the-Run, he had forgotten me by the time I meet him at an Army Council meeting in Monaghan in 1984, I always believed that Gerry was born with a malignant sense of self-righteousness tainted with Psychosis. While I would not find the words to describe Gerry Adams for many years, I am confident that the best words to describe Gerry after knowing him for fifty-years, is, a Machiavellian, Narcissist, who on dark-days, like sanctioning, Bloody Friday, becomes a fully-fledged Psychopath.
Chapter 2
A New Beginning
Eventually in 1972, my family was allocated a council house in Aughnacloy. These were newly built houses in a cul de sac. Our house had a large rear garden with a high wooden fence enclosing the space. I wondered at this point if Catholics were being discriminated against, how was there only two Catholic families available to take on new council houses yet there were dozens of Protestant families who needed council houses in our town.
This was a new beginning; the house was warm and dry. In the house opposite ours was an RUC man, his wife, daughter and son. My new friend was a Protestant and the son of our RUC neighbour, when I was at home, he was my friend as we lived in an almost exclusively Protestant area. When I was at school or playing GAA my friends would be Catholic. It was a small town, but I had effectively two lives.
Aughnacloy would have been predominately Protestant, however, in the 1960s the local soccer team (mainly Protestant) and the Catholic GAA team would have enjoyed their annual dinner dances together in the Four Seasons Hotel in Monaghan. In 1968 when I had started primary school things began to change in Aughnacloy, a short distance away in Caledon, Civil Rights campaigners had protested about the refusal of the local authority to give a vacant house to a Catholic family and instead gave the house to a single Protestant woman. Due to the building of new council houses in Aughnacloy our family were given a new house at Sydney Lane this was a small cul-de-sac and the majority of our neighbours would have been Protestant and members of the RUC, UDR and Prison Service.
The British Army had arrived in Aughnacloy (1969) and initially nobody was too bothered, however, as a large checkpoint was built on the Monaghan Road and minor cross-border roads were permanently blocked by the army, people became inconvenienced and normal life was disrupted. In the 1970s cars were not that plentiful, so people could cycle or walk from Clara, Carrickroe, Truagh in north Monaghan to Aughnacloy and do their shopping.
When Ravella Road was permanently blocked, people had to do round-trips and come in from Monaghan via the British Army check-point and depending on the Regiment on duty there could be long tail backs, intensive and invasive searches.
Soon both loyalist and republican groupings were engaging in acts of violence in our small town, innocent Catholics such as Owen Boyle and a 21-year-old Catholic woman were murdered by the Loyalists, while the IRA murdered Protestants such as Dennis Wilson, Franklin Cadoo, David Morrow and so forth. A 500lb IRA bomb went off at The British Army base which was only 100 yards from our house and the roof and windows were blown off and out of our new house.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s there was a limited number of Television Stations available in Northern Ireland, unlike the proliferation of such channels in the twenty-first-century. My favourite Television programmes were those such as The Avengers, The Professionals, The Sweeney, The Man from Uncle and the weekly cowboy movie starring John Wayne. Periodically, before video recorders, my favourite movies would have been James Bond 007, A little way behind might be Harry Palmer, played by Michael Caine in The Ipcress File or Alec Leamas, memorably played by Richard Burton in 1965's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, just to mention three.
I guess the reason I liked the ‘spook genre’ was due to the fact that what was on the Television was in real life playing out on our streets. If one were being geared up for a life in espionage or an agent infiltrating a terrorist organisation, then the above listings were not a bad place to start. The craft of counter-insurgency could also be viewed in real life each day.
Our new council house had the British Army base to the rear and the RUC station to the front, all within a couple of hundred metres. If I stepped out into the back garden I could almost reach up and touch the British soldiers in the helicopter as it took-off from the base, in fact soldiers would wave and I would wave back, because we were so close it would have been impolite not to have waved.
My friend Trevor and I would cycle over to the British Army base, the soldiers on duty at the barrier would ask us to go to the chip-shop for them, we would take orders for fish and chips, burger and chips and so forth, the soldiers would give Trevor and I money to get ourselves fish and chips and a can of coke. This scenario was being played out all over Northern Ireland as both Catholics and Protestants were initially happy to see the army arrive.
In return for doing messages for the army, soldiers would allow us to look through the night-scope on their rifles, or get into one of the helicopters (Wessex) when it landed inside the base. The soldiers would allow us to hold their flack-jackets so we could see how heavy they were, some of the jackets had tears and you could see that they were made from twisted wire and very heavy. Regiments would be on short tours of duty, and so Trevor and I probably meet most regiments that arrived in Northern Ireland.
When regiments would first arrive at the British Army base in Aughnacloy for the start of their tour, they would have coins from their previous posting, they would give Trevor and I some coins which were treasure to us.
When soldiers returned from patrol, they would each point their rifles at the ground level sand-bags to ensure that their weapon was not loaded. Sometimes I would walk into the base and watch as soldiers cleaned their rifles and polished their boots.
While Trevor and I were only children, the soldiers were not much older, probably 18 to 25 years-old. I always found the soldiers to be friendly even when some of their comrades were murdered not far away. It is unlikely that they knew that some of my extended family were the ones doing the killing. Even as a child, when I did not understand all that was happening in Northern Ireland, I always felt that the army was somewhere they did not want to be.
The only time that Trevor and I were now welcome at the British Army Base was when the ‘Red Caps’ or Military Police would arrive, the soldiers had to do everything by the book when the Military Police arrived and so fish and chips from The Rainbow Café were off the menu.
The IRA would regularly engage in gun battles with the British Army, the IRA would fire from a position in north Monaghan down onto the army checkpoint, I would watch these gun battles as you could see the flares going up and tracer bullets going across the horizon, it was like watching a movie. Following such battles, I would the next day go across the fields and find empty cannisters that had little parachutes attached, I assumed these were the burned-out flares.
The terrorist incident that would change my life happened in 1973, my Uncle Cyril McCaul, who was twenty-four-year-old and his Protestant workmate, nineteen-year-old, Ivan Charlton, were killed when they were on their way home from work. Cyril and Ivan, were both mechanics and were returning home after finishing their days work. As they drove along the Dungannon Road and made their way around a dangerous bend they were meet head-on with a high-jacked lorry that had been placed across the road.
The lorry had been placed across the road by the Provisional IRA in order to lure the RUC into an ambush. The bodies of my Uncle and his friend could not be retrieved for twelve hours as a hoax bomb had been left in the lorry. When the bodies were cut free by the fire-brigade, Cyril’s body had been decapitated by the impact.
Cyril had been very good to me; he had worked on my Father’s Hillman Minx car and had always taken the time to explain to me what he was doing. Cyril left behind two babies to my Aunt Agnes, Noel and Tracy. I was nine-years-old, but I was certain that the people responsible for the murders of Cyril and Ivan would pay for their evil deed.
My Father was asked to go to Dungannon Hospital to do the formal identification of my Uncle’s body, my Aunt Agnes had two babies to take care of. My Father had some drink in Thompsons Pub before he took me with him to Dungannon Hospital. My Father and I were shown into the morgue at the Hospital and my Uncle’s body was on a steel trolley with a sheet over him. When the sheet was pulled back from his head, I could see the large/crude stitching on his neck, he had been decapitated as his car drove under the hi-jacked lorry.
There were other bodies in the morgue, it was like being in a horror film. Cyril was an innocent Catholic and a hard-working mechanic, who loved getting home in the evening to see his babies. When Cyril and Agnes were first married, they lived beside us in Aughnacloy and Cyril always took his time to explain to me what he was doing when working on cars including my Father’s Hillman Minx.
I remember in 1974 the Headmaster of the local Protestant school, Cormac McCabe being kidnapped by the PIRA from the Four Seasons Hotel in Monaghan while he was having dinner with his family and he was murdered. Cormac McCabe was also a UDR Captain but would have been well liked in Aughnacloy. I can only imagine that Cormac McCabe was not well informed about who owned the Four Seasons Hotel at that time, Alan Clancy was the owner of the Four Seasons Hotel and he was a bag-man for Sinn Fein/PIRA. The PIRA regularly patrolled the car-park of the Four Seasons Hotel in anticipation of loyalist attack.
There was a revolver kept in the safe in the hotel and this would be handed out to PIRA members patrolling the car-park each night and then returned at the end of the night if there were no issues. The bouncer/doorman who provided the revolver each night was not Sinn Fein/PIRA but simply concerned about protecting the Hotel from loyalist attack. Cormac McCabe was kidnapped by a senior PIRA member from Aughnacloy, Kevin McKenna (died 2020) (PIRA Chief of Staff 1983-1997) who was on the run and living in Smithborough, Co Monaghan. Hennessy McKenna was also involved in the murder, Hennessy was on-the-run and living in Smithborough, Co Monaghan. Jeff McKenna and others provided logistical support.
The same PIRA Unit would kidnap, murder and secretly bury teenager Columba McVeigh whose body remains undiscovered. Columba McVeigh was not an informer and this was proven by his interrogation, however, he had been so badly beaten about the head by his PIRA captures that the decision was taken to kill and secretly bury him. The key consideration here was whether to allow Columba McVeigh to return to Tyrone with his grievous and life changing injuries where he could be used by Catholic Priest, Father Dennis Faul to highlight Sinn Fein/PIRA brutality against their own community, or simply dispose of the problem.
Former IRA man and double murderer Sean O'Callaghan, the most senior Garda agent in the Provos, previously credited McKenna's "hate" for convincing him to turn his back on terrorism.
In his book The Informer, O'Callaghan claimed he preferred to target British soldiers, but local IRA men "would rather shoot a Protestant neighbour who was in the UDR or police reserve". In one chilling account he described being in a safe house with McKenna in 1975 when a TV news bulletin reported that a policewoman had been killed in a bomb explosion.
"McKenna turned his head slightly in my direction and said: 'Maybe she was pregnant and we got two for the price of one'," O'Callaghan wrote.
Aughnacloy had a ‘Fair Day’ every couple of weeks, stalls would be set-up by a local man called Tommy Taylor and traders would come from all around the north to sell clothes, tools, shoes and so forth, the Fair was particularly popular with people from north Monaghan. Each time the market was on I would go up the street early as a stall holder from Belfast would employ me and another lad to help him set-up, there would also be some work at Clarke’s Mini-market where lorries would be unloaded before we got the bus to go to school in Ballygawley which was about four-mile away. Each day that the Fair was on the RUC would routinely place traffic cones along parts of the street to keep it clear for the traders.
In 1977, on the morning that RUC Officer David Morrow was murdered by the PIRA in Aughnacloy, I had just walked up Sydney Street from my home to the main street to help out with the stalls when I noticed a van drive up towards the chapel. The van stopped beside the RUC car, men jumped out the back door of the van and opened fire on the RUC car, as the van drove off, they left one of their men behind and they had to reverse back up the street to collect him, I could see that as the man jumped into the van his gun went off and he shot himself in the leg. I moved towards the RUC car to see if I could help, but the RUC and Army arrived very quickly and ordered me away.
The van was driven down Ravella Road towards north Monaghan and burned out at the Bridge. Shortly after the shooting that morning I noticed a Catholic lad who would have been a couple of years older than me coming out of a house in which he did not live, this house was directly across the street from the shooting. This lad would later become known to me as a member of The PIRA and I asked him about the morning that David Morrow was murdered, this lad told me that he was the tic-tac-man on the operation, for example, when the RUC car was in position, he used the phone (not many private phones at this time) in the house to contact another man who lived on Ravella Road and that man gave the signal to The PIRA Team to go.
As the years moved into the 1970s Internment was introduced and members of my Father’s wider family were interned, my Uncle Sean McKenna and his 17-year-old son Sean were interned. My Uncle Sean McKenna was one of the ‘Hooded Men’ who would be tortured during internment and my cousin Sean McKenna would lead the first IRA Hunger Strike in 1980. In 1975 my Uncle Sean McKenna died at the age of 45 years; his death was a result of the torture that he was subjected to during internment.
When my Uncle Sean was being buried in Clara in north Monaghan the Gardai moved on the IRA Colour Party who were about to fire a volley of shots over Sean’s grave, I was standing beside my Uncle Patsy when the Gardai tried to take a gun from my cousin Sean the gun went off and shot my Uncle Patsy in the leg, I was splattered with blood. The pearl handled revolver was my Uncle Sean’s personal weapon. A riot began in the grave yard and eventually the Gardai were beaten into retreat. Senior republicans Ruari O’Bradaigh and Marie Drumm gave the orations at Sean’s funeral. My cousin Sean McKenna would later be kidnapped from Dundalk by the SAS.
A Garda Officer had risked his life to take me from the grave-yard and to the safety of the road opposite when he seen me covered in blood, this Garda Officer was Christy McNamee, with whom I would be reunited five-years later in 1980.
Each year as the 12th of July would approach attitudes hardened in Aughnacloy, however, I was never too bothered and I would attend the Orange Order parades and the festival in the field afterwards, there was always homemade cake, buns and sandwiches. I enjoyed the Protestant jumble sales as they always had good clothes and toys. I do not remember any other Catholics attending the Orange Order parades, most Catholics would go to Donegal on holidays during the marching season or they would simply stay behind closed doors.
When I was 8 years old, an older Catholic lad had seen me walk up the main street while the Orange parade was on, this lad would at the next opportunity subject me to a brutal beating for attending the Orange parade. I was very small for my age and not very strong due to my sickness when I was younger, the worst injury inflicted on me by this individual was that he pulled a large part of my scalp off as he dragged me along the ground. I did not tell anyone about this assault and my head injury would only be discovered when my Mother was washing my hair.
I did not tell my Mother what had happened and so she thought the injury was ring-worm and she took me to a man who had the ‘cure’ for ring-worm, within days my head wound turned ‘septic’, as part of the ‘cure’ involved the man chewing tobacco and spitting three times on my wound. Dr McCord had to use a scalpel to cut away a large part of my scalp and I had to wear a head bandage for several weeks and stay off school.
From the mid-1970s to the end of the 1970s there were some serious incidents in Aughnacloy and the surrounding area. In 1975 my cousins Marion Bowen (21) (7 months pregnant), Seamus McKenna (25) and Michael McKenna (27), all Catholic civilians, were murdered by a loyalist booby-trap bomb at Marion’s house at Killyliss, near Dungannon.
In 1977 I was working part-time in the local Protestant butcher shop for Christmas and I had just left when the IRA entered the shop and shot and injured a young Protestant Nigel Beatty with whom I was working, he was a part-time RUC Officer. One of the owners of the butcher shop Jack McCann (aged 70) went at the IRA gunmen with a meat clever and they shot him in the hand.
On another occasion when my cousin Leo McKenna was getting married his brother-in-law was a Prison Officer, Michael Christopher Cassidy, and Michael was shot dead by PIRA on the Chapel steps on April 16, 1979 as Leo and his Bride (Michaels’ sister) left St McCartan’s Church in Clogher, on their wedding day.
In or about 1976 when I was 13 years old, I won an adult darts competition during a festival week in Aughnacloy, I had beaten the Deputy Headmaster of the Protestant Secondary School in the final. As part of the festival, a ‘Blue-lamp’ disco was organised by the RUC for young people in the town, the disco at the Protestant Secondary School was attended by both Catholic and Protestant youths. As the disco came to an end that night the older Catholic lads told us all to leave together. When I went outside, I asked a Catholic lad from Caledon if he had seen Aidan MacAnespie come out of the hall and he said no.
I went back into the hall to get Aidan out, however, he was already gone. When I came out of the hall for a second time there were only Protestant youths waiting around, I knew I was in difficulty. I made my way out onto the Dungannon Road where I was set upon by a large group of Protestant/loyalist youths. I would have been killed if a local Protestant business man had not driven into the crowd and warned them that he knew who they were and he would name them to the RUC.
Following this assault by loyalists I became angry, I did not report the assault to the RUC (although I know others did) and I set about taking on the loyalists one-by-one, which inevitably brought me before the courts for assault, assault is really a strong word, these were just one-to-one fist fights with lads who were older and bigger than me.
I also challenged loyalists while they were painting the kerbs of the footpaths red-white-blue and again I was charged with criminal damage as I pulled down their loyalist bunting. On another occasion I was playing darts in a local pub when there was a gun battle between the IRA and the RUC/Army, following the gun-battle and as I made my way home, I was verbally abused and threatened by local RUC Officers.
My Protestant friend Trevor was now 16 years old and I was 14 years old and he told me he was joining the RUC Cadets. He asked me if I was in the IRA and he were in the RUC would I shot him, I said yes, we shook hands and parted company, he lived 30 feet across the street from me.
Chapter 3
Moving On
1974 was a very unsettling year in Northern Ireland, as well as dealing with what had become routine bombings, shootings and murders on a daily basis, Loyalists called a national strike that lasted for two-weeks, Loyalists also planted bombs in The Irish Republic killing 33 people.
Ian Paisley led the Loyalist strike and closed down industry including the Northern Ireland Electricity power stations. Many of our Protestant neighbours who would not have shown any active interest in the sectarian conflict would take their place on illegal check-points set-up by Loyalist paramilitaries. It may be the case that many people who took part in this illegal activity done so under duress from Loyalist paramilitaries.
In 1975, I finally left Saint Mary’s Primary school in Aughnacloy and would move to Saint Ciaran’s secondary school in Ballygawley which was five-mile away. I was given a free school uniform, received free school meals and we would take a ride on the school bus each morning and evening.
The school uniform meant that everyone was dressed the same and I did not get bullied for wearing clothes that I had got in the jumble sale or market that might have seen better days. I had on some occasions been bullied at school as some of the second-hand clothes that I wore had previously belonged to one of the better off children in primary school.
Sometimes the clothes that I would get in the jumble sale or market would be a style that had long since passed its sell by date. I remember being very excited when I bought a complete Bay City Rollers outfit in the Protestant Jumble sale in the local Orange Hall. While I was excited about having a trouser, shirt, jacket and platform shoes that matched, the reality was that the Bay City Rollers had left the stage and I looked like a left-over groupie.
Saint Ciaran’s Secondary School in Ballygawley was very big compared to the primary school that I had just finished. I would get a free dinner every day and if Mrs Canavan was on duty as dinner lady, I would get extra portions. My two older sisters who had preceded me at Saint Ciaran’s had told me about the fine dinners and desserts, the food was great.
Every day I would position myself to the back of the queue into the dining hall, so as I could be close to the hatch from where the dinner was distributed. Any left-over meals could be quickly claimed. Some of the dinner ladies who worked in the kitchen were good to me, especially Mrs Canavan, from Ballygawley, who always kept something for me and a couple of the other lads.
Unfortunately, by the time I had reached Ballygawley, I was full of anger at everything and everyone. I do not know exactly why that was, but I was angry. In my first week at Saint Ciaran’s, I was involved in six fist fights and the interior of the headmaster’s office was known to me in every detail. The Headmaster, Eugene McSorley was a gentleman, and administered punishment with his six-metre bamboo canes with some measure of proportion. The punishment, fitted the crime, as it were.
The headmaster constantly pleaded with me to settle and focus on my education, but I was struggling with routine and structure. In Saint Ciaran’s there were four categories of student, A, B, C and D. A was regarded as the class for the smart students, which coincidently was where the wealthier students could also be found. In my first year at secondary school, I was placed in 1B which was unusual, as my 11 Plus results would have placed me in 1D, from where one was expected to make little progress in life.
In my second year I was moved down a class to 2C, this was mainly due to the fact that I spent more time fighting than studying. However, teachers were not prepared to give up on me, Mrs Carney who was my Form Teacher (in charge of our class) asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I said an Electronic Engineer. Mrs Carney explained how I would need to study hard if I wanted to be an Electronic Engineer.
Mrs Carney encouraged me at every opportunity and by the end of my second year I had achieved a balance between fist-fights in the school yard and academic study. I came first in a class of 29 students and I was promoted to 3B in my third year. The Headmaster Mr McSorley personally congratulated me on my achievement, but I was constantly back in his office for fighting.
While I was still small in stature, I was training hard with the GAA in Aughnacloy and I was on the GAA team at school, I was a scrapper on and off the field and fearless. On one occasion a student was much older than I, gave me a savage beating, for no reason other than I had a reputation for fighting. One of the teachers Peter Keenan had seen the beating and taken the older student to the headmaster’s office, for once I was the victim rather than the co-accused.
My fights were always with my peers and so the headmaster would always discipline us equally. However, this older student who had assaulted me was a different matter as far as the headmaster was concerned. The headmaster would not tolerate bullying and this student had a reputation for bullying younger students, it is fair to say that the headmaster taught him some manners.
I played left-half-back for my school team and local GAA team, this was a well-chosen position, as nobody got past me, even if it meant a fist fight. My cousin Brian McKenna (Ross) owned a pub in Aughnacloy and I played darts in Brian’s regularly. I was good at darts and I would win the Clogher Valley individual darts championship in 1976 during Aughnacloy Festival Week.
The final of the Clogher Valley individual darts championship took place in Brian McKenna’s Pub, now known as The Rossmore, however, in 1976 Brian’s pub was very small. The pub was packed for the final, I played against the Headmaster of the Protestant Secondary School in Aughnacloy. There was a great atmosphere in the pub as I was still only thirteen-years-old.
The final went down to the wire, literally, I hit double-two and it was game over, needless to say I enjoyed many free bottles of coke and packets of Tayto crisps. For winning the final I received £15, a Trophy and had my picture taken with Brian McKenna for the Tyrone Courier. However, my moment of glory was short lived.
After I won the Clogher Valley individual darts championship The RUC organised a Blue Lamp Disco as part of the festival week and their contribution to community relations. I was to attend the Blue Lamp Disco as I was one of the winners of an activity during festival week.
The Blue Lamp Disco was harmless enough, Catholic and Protestant youths attended but there was no cross-over between the two communities due to the on-going sectarian murders in Northern Ireland. It was clear that there was no love lost between older Catholic and Protestant youths, some of whom had already lost family members to sectarian violence.
At the end of the night the older Catholic lads told all of the Catholics to leave at the same time. When I went outside, I could not see Aidan Mac Anespie, I asked Colm Sherry if he had seen Aidan and he said he thought Aidan was still inside. I went back into look for Aidan but he was not there. When I came out of the hall for the second time, all the Catholics were gone, only Protestant youths remained.
I began to walk down the long drive from the school to the darkness of the Dungannon Road. It was eery and unnerving, when I got out onto the Dungannon Road a car carrying a number of mature Protestant lads stopped and began to shout sectarian abuse at me. I ignored them, and then I thought I was ok as a car parked on the footpath in front of me, looked like a car belonging to a Catholic lad.
The sectarian abuse got louder and the Protestant lads got out of the car, the car on the footpath which I thought might be a friendly, was in fact another car full of Protestant youths. I was battered, there was that many people kicking at me that they were actually kicking themselves. My Adams Apple was broken with a kick and as an older youth broke a bottle to do me serious harm, a car drove into my attackers.
The car was driven by a Protestant business man, he warned the Protestant youths that he would name them to the RUC if they did not desist. Mrs Jimmy Douglas then pulled in and gave me a lift home. I went into the house got changed, and went up the street to try and find some of my attackers on their own. A car arrived with some Catholic lads and there was some fighting, but it was all over very quickly without serious incident.
I never told anyone what had happened, and I set about taking on the loyalists one at a time. I would be charged with assaulting two loyalists, receive a suspended sentence due to my age and pay Doctors fees of £7. There was laughter in the Court House when I and the alleged victims were asked to stand up, I was tiny compared to the two lads I was accused of assaulting, I never told the Judge that I was simply getting them back for assaulting me.
I was not happy with older loyalist youths who were stirring up trouble and others were paying for their actions; the PIRA were constantly carrying out attacks in Aughnacloy and loyalists were reacting to those attacks. On one occasion I went up the town when loyalists were painting the footpaths red, white and blue and I fought them. There were probably thirty loyalists, I pulled down their bunting that they had tied on one side of the street.
I had a good interest in darts and so I began to thrown darts for a protestant Bar in Augher, called the Railway Bar. The bar was owned by Winston Montgomery. I organised a Million-and-One darts competition for the flood disaster in Cambodia and this was a great weekend that raised a lot of money. We had a good darts team in the Railway Bar and I travelled to many competitions with Eddie and Millie Martin from the Moy.
Civil Rights Campaign Northern Ireland
Civil Rights Campaign Northern Ireland: Did SF/IRA high-jack Civil Rights Campaign or did they Manufacture it, as they did Manufacture opposition to Loyal Order Parades in the 1990s? Here is something you did not know!
According to Joe Campbell, “While the local council provided the opportunity, we in The IRA exploited that opportunity”
Gerry Adams, 1996, admits Sinn Fein/PIRA manufactured opposition to Loyal Order Parades
Joe Campbell, with Austin Currie and Patsy Gildernew
In June 1980, when I joined Sinn Fein/PIRA, my first significant role within Sinn Fein/PIRA was working on Internal Security with J.B. O’Hagan. In June 1980, J.B. O’Hagan was living outside Monaghan Town on the Ballybay Road and sharing a house with Joe Campbell.
Joe Campbell (in front of man with child) Hunger-Strike march, Monaghan Town, 1981
So, what was Joe Campbell, an alleged ‘Civil Rights Activist, doing sharing a house with a notorious Sinn Fein/PIRA Serial Killer and Assistant Chief of Staff of Sinn Fein/PIRA?
In the 1970s, J.B. O’Hagan had gone On-The-Run to Monaghan, was arrested by An Garda Siochana and imprisoned. J.B. O’Hagan would then escape from Mountjoy Jail by helicopter with other senior Sinn Fein/PIRA members Seamus Twomey and Kevin Mallon.
In the 1970s J.B. O’Hagan was Quarter-Master for Sinn Fein/PIRA in Monaghan/East Tyrone, he ensured a constant supply of weapons and explosives for attacks in border counties. J.B. O’Hagan had supplied all of the weapons and explosives used to attack Clogher Barracks when Eva Martin was murdered.
By 1980 when I joined Sinn Fein/PIRA in Monaghan, J.B. O’Hagan was Sinn Fein/PIRA Recruiting Officer and also in charge of Internal Security. J.B. O’Hagan was present when I was sworn in to Sinn Fein/PIRA and he recruited me to work on Internal Security.
![]()
Me, front left carrying coffin to commemorate death of Kieran Doherty, 1981
While I worked on Internal Security with J.B. O’Hagan, I would regularly visit his house on the Ballybay Road. Joe Campbell sat in on our conversations and this was encouraged by J.B. as Joe Campbell had been a trusted member of Sinn Fein/PIRA from the Sinn Fein/PIRA Border Campaign, 1956-62.
J.B. O’Hagan, Joe Campbell and I often enjoyed a cup of tea together in the house on the Ballybay Road, neither J.B. O’Hagan or Joe Campbell drank alcohol, however, part and parcel of my Internal Security work involved drinking and socialising with Sinn Fein/PIRA members. One would not sit long in the company of Jim Lynagh, Laurence McNally and so forth while drinking mineral water.
Joe Campbell told me that he had recruited Patsy Gildernew to Sinn Fein/IRA in 1960 and it was this relationship that had ensured that both men were able to exploit the opportunity presented in Caledon in 1968, Joe said;
“While the local council provided the opportunity, we in The IRA exploited that opportunity”
When I asked Joe Campbell about the role of Austin Currie in the Caledon situation, Joe said that Austin Currie was a good man with honorable intentions, for Sinn Fein/PIRA Austin was useful in that he provided good political cover for what was an IRA operation.
Joe Campbell said that Austin Currie had no idea what was about to unfold, or the capacity of Sinn Fein/IRA at that time to exploit the situation.
It was clear from conversations with J.B. O’Hagan and others that following the humiliation of the Sinn Fein/IRA Border Campaign 1956-62, Sinn Fein/IRA were re-grouped and re-armed by 1968 and ready for any spark to light the flame of sectarian violence.
It has since been shown by released official documents, that prior to 1968, the Irish Government had been preparing to take action against a re-grouped Sinn Fein/PIRA, however, this action was over-taken by events in Northern Ireland.
1973, 27 November, the day that changed my world
When my Aunt Agnes got married to Cyril McCaul in 1970, they initially lived just off the Caledon Road in Aughnacloy. There was a Georgian style street with old houses and small iron mongery enclosed gardens. These houses were home to older residents of Aughnacloy such as James McFadden, a generation that were fading into history.
Cyril was a mechanic, who often worked on my father’s boss’s car, an old Hillman Minx, and Cyril would take his time and explain to me what he was doing as he worked on cars outside his house just off the Caledon Road. Cyril and Agnes were very good to me and Cyril was my favourite Uncle.
Cyril travelled to work each day with his Protestant friend Ivan Charlton, they were both in their early 20s, both married and enjoying life to the full. Cyril and Ivan would work long hours to support their families. By November, 1973, Cyril and Agnes had two babies, Noel and Tracy, my first cousins.
In November, 1973, my two older sisters had moved from the Primary school in Aughnacloy to the secondary school in Ballygawley, some five-mile away. I was the oldest, 9 years-old, of our family now at primary school in Aughnacloy. If my mother wanted some help with my baby brother and sister, she would keep me at home.
On the 28 November, 1973, my mother had kept me at home from primary school to help with my baby brother and sister, my mother would do the laundry and so forth and I would take care of my baby brother and sister on the sitting room floor.
In the corner of the sitting room there was an 8-track stereo, with built in radio, modern for its time, but as big as the original video players that would follow in the 1980s. On the 28 November, 1973, I was minding the babies, when the one o’clock news came on the Radio.
The news reported that two young men in their 20s had been killed on the Ballygawley to Dungannon Road, when they drove into a lorry that had been hi-jacked by The Provisional IRA, by this time Cyril and Agnes had moved to Aghinduff Park, Cabragh, Dungannon.
Upon hearing the news of two young men having been killed, I went to my mother in the kitchen and I told her that I thought it might be Uncle Cyril. As the day became more and more chaotic, it transpired that it was my Uncle Cyril and his workmate Ivan Charlton who had been killed when they drove into a lorry that had been hi-jacked by The Provisional IRA and left on a bad bend on a very dangerous stretch of the road.
The Provisional IRA issued a statement stating that they had placed the lorry on the road in order to lure the RUC into an ambush, however, it was a reckless, murderous act, and I have always viewed it as such. The Provisional IRA could have declared that there was no bobby-trap in the lorry, and they did not, meaning that Cyril and Ivan’s bodies could not be retrieved from the crash scene for many hours.
My father arrived home from his work on Wilson’s pig farm, I went with him to Ma Thompson’s Pub on Moore Street, my father had some drink, he had been very close to Cyril. My father was tasked with going to the morgue in Dungannon Hospital to formally identify Cyril’s body. I travelled with my father to Dungannon Hospital.
Cyril and his friend were covered with sheets, when the Doctor pulled back the sheet there were large stitches on Cyril's neck, like when a teddy bear's head is sewed back on.
1980 Raped by a Sexual Sadist, Silenced by a Kangaroo Court
In 1980 I was 16 years old and on my school holidays, I had secured a job in a factory in Monaghan Town. I had chosen Monaghan Town as I was politically motivated and I wanted to join Sinn Fein/PIRA. While I was politically motivated, and I knew exactly what I wanted to do, on a personal level, I was a child that knew little of the ways of the world.
I began working in Monaghan Poultry Products as a general labourer and I was paid what was officially known as child’s wages at that time. I worked hard in the factory and this meant that I got on well with everyone as I was well able to pull my weight. I was the only child working in the factory, the youngest of the other lads working alongside me would have been 18 years-old and upwards, all good lads and we got on well.
As there was no public transport from my hometown of Aughnacloy on the border, I secured a bedsit for 7 punts (pounds) per-week in Monaghan Town so that I could be on time for work each day. By the end of my first week in Monaghan I had joined Na Fianna Eireann (Junior PIRA), my quick entry to the Fianna was due to the fact that some older lads in the factory were already in The Fianna. The Fianna in Monaghan Town was harmless, more like the boy scouts, no weapons or anything, just marching on Easter Sunday and so forth.
The older lads invited me to The Hillgrove Hotel as there was a disco there on a Friday and Saturday Night. On my first social outing a girl called Mary asked me to walk her home, the lads thought this was great crack as it was my first encounter with a girl. I walked Mary home, she sat on one seat and I sat on another, we listened to The Undertones record and then I said I better go. As I walked out the door, she kissed me on the cheek, I got embarrassed and walked on.
The bedsit was not a great environment to go back to in the evening after work, the people who owned the big house were good people, but there was no TV in the bedsit so it was a bit lonely. I got into a habit of going into one of the local pubs, having a bottle of coke and a packet of Tayto crisps and watching the big colour TV. It was like going to the cinema and it was better than being in the bedsit. Back then a big TV was probably 20inchs.
One night while I was in The Clara Inn (later The Chieftain) in Monaghan Town, I was having my crisps and coke and watching TV in the bar when I was approached by a big man. This man introduced himself as Michael Lynagh and he explained that he was Jim Lynagh’s brother. Michael Lynagh chatted to me for a while and then invited me back to a house. As Michael Lynagh was Jim Lynagh’s brother I went back to the house with him. The house was not far from The Clara Inn and belonged to a couple who had a serious drink problem.
Michael Lynagh poured two glasses of whiskey for he and I, it was horrible stuff, but he was insistent and I suppose I thought it was manly to be drinking whiskey. When Michael believed I was drunk enough he forced me face down on the coach and drove a knife through the back of my left hand and pinned me to the wooded arm of the couch and he raped me, I fought like mad but he was a brute, an animal. I was very small for my age due to childhood illnesses.
Michael Lynagh warned me not to tell anyone, he reminded me who he was and so forth. I left and went back to my bedsit, I understood the violence, I cannot say that I understood everything that had happened. The next day I went to work as normal and I made an excuse and went and got my hand stitched. I decided to speak with a member of The PIRA, I told him what had happened. A meeting was arranged and I was taken to meet other PIRA members, the most senior of which was J.B. O’Hagan.
J.B.O’Hagan told me how important Jim Lynagh was to The Republican Movement, he told me that the Gardai would use the attack on me to damage Sinn Fein/PIRA, and he remined me what had happened to 17 year-old Columba McVeigh 5 years earlier in Monaghan. J.B. O’Hagan finally told me that Michael Lynagh would be moved to Dublin. I was not the only child raped by Michael Lynagh in Monaghan.
When I left Monaghan Town in 1992, I would have known at least 20 Sinn Fein/PIRA Paedophiles who had been protected by Sinn Fein/PIRA in Monaghan. In cases where files had been created by Child Protection workers in The NEHB in Monaghan Town in relation to some of those Sinn Fein/PIRA Paedophiles, I would be aware that Sinn Fein/PIRA used elected representatives to ensure that those files did not go to An Garda Siochana.
1981-1984-85 Crumlin Road Jail: Joseph 'Joe' Haughey, was either Very Lucky or a Protected Species
In November 1981 I was arrested by The RUC and charged with endangering the lives of three RUC Officers and a civilian. I was remanded to Crumlin Road Jail in Belfast. When you enter Crumlin Road Jail the Governor asks if you wish to be housed with The PIRA, Loyalist terrorists or if you wish to enter an ordinary criminal wing. I said I was able to go on The PIRA Wing. I was remanded onto A2, this was the middle landing on A Wing that had three floors.This Authors Prison Number 3327
I initially shared a cell with Tommy Prendergast and Francis Murphy, two Belfast PIRA men. On my first visit to the yard I was approached by The PIRA Intelligence Officer (IO), of The Command Staff, Joseph ‘Joe’ Haughey or as we all knew him ‘Big Joe’ as he was a stout man. I told Joe the story of my arrest and he told me that he wanted me on the Escape Committee. Before my arrest in 1981 I had meet with Michael ‘Pete’ Ryan who had escaped from Crumlin Road Jail in June 1981.Joseph 'Joe' Haughey who murdered Mary Travers
For, Joe Haughey, to be on The Command Staff of The PIRA in Crumlin Road Jail meant that he was a significant PIRA player on the outside, however, when a PIRA member is imprisoned they lose their outside rank, this can on occasion be replicated in prison, as it was in the case of Joe Haughey.
I got on well with Big Joe and I found him to be an engaging person, however, unlike others in Crumlin Road Jail, Joe never gave the impression that he was expecting to do big time. Joe had been charged with hijacking a car used in the M60 Machinegun killing of the Deputy Governor of Crumlin Road Prison, Mr Edward Jones, who was murdered in 1979.
Joseph ‘Joe’ Haughey would receive a suspended sentence for what was a significant role in the high-profile murder of Mr Jones. Compare this sentence to the Life sentence handed down to Mary McArdle, for her accomplice role in the murder of Mary Travers in 1984.Deputy Governor of Crumlin Road Prison, Mr Edward Jones, who was murdered in 1979
Soon after I was remanded in Crumlin Road Jail I was released on bail as the sitting Judge viewed me as a child and felt it was not appropriate for me to be in an adult prison. The RUC objected to bail, stating that I was heavily involved with The PIRA. I returned to the ranks of Sinn Fein/PIRA, when I was released on bail and I was On-The-Run (OTR) until 1984 when I was returned to Crumlin Road Jail on remand for the same offence as 1981.
When I entered The Republican A Wing in Crumlin Road Jail in 1984, I was immediately greeted by Joe Haughey who was now on remand for the murder of Mary Travers and the attempted murder of her Father, Magistrate Tom Travers. Joe now held the position of Chief of Staff of The PIRA on A Wing. I was quickly recruited by Joe for the Escape Committee and I had a role in planning what was expected to be a significant escape. That escape was compromised when Prison Officer uniforms were found in a carefully constructed hide.
My role on the Escape Committee meant meeting with and talking to Joe every-time we went to the yard for exercise. Joe and I got on exceptionally well, I was a good deal younger than Joe and I think he seen himself as my mentor. Joe was always in good form, but he showed a great deal of regret not only about the death of Mary Travers, but also about Mary McArdle, the young woman who would be sentenced to life for helping Joe and his accomplice to attack the Travers family as they left Mass.
While Solicitor, Pat Finucane, was not my Solicitor, he would request visits with me, as he was the Interlocutor between The PIRA Command Staff in Crumlin Road Jail, and The PIRA Command Staff in Belfast. Mary Travers murdered in cold blood
Joe had no problem telling me that he was the Commanding Officer who led the attack on the Travers family, Joe told me that Gerry Adams was his Commanding Officer and Gerry had personally sanctioned the attack on Tom Travers. I told Joe that I had meet Gerry Adams at a PIRA meeting in Monaghan earlier in 1984.
While Joe was a very personable individual, he sometimes said things that did not add up. For example, in 1981 there had been an RUC informer in with us in A Wing, the informer had told Joe that he had not spoken to the RUC, however, during the informer’s trial it became clear that he had talked and named people. When you entered Crumlin Road jail you had to tell The PIRA Intelligence Officer if you had talked to The RUC or not, if you had talked there was no problem, word would be sent out to The PIRA so they could move weapons or personnel or whatever else had been compromised. If you did not tell The IO the truth, that was a problem.
When I spoke to Joe about this, 1981 informer, in 1984, Joe had a very exaggerated view of how he would deal with the informer if he ever got a chance to go to Monaghan. Joe said he would kick in the door of the informer’s pub and shoot him with an AK47. I thought this a strange description, when there were Supergrasses, Bowe Scally and so forth, who had now retracted their statements walking around A Wing, it was just one of those things that stuck with me.
In the intervening years there have been suggestions that Joe Haughey was in fact a British Agent, and that remains possible, when we consider that one of his closest PIRA associates was Frederico "Freddie" Scappaticci, a long serving British Agent who had murdered many innocent people. The Belfast Brigade of The PIRA was, from a Republican perspective, “Rotten” from the top to the bottom, not simply because it was overflowing with informers, but because of its incessant criminality, Gerry Adams Snr, Liam Adams, Seamus Marley, Marty Morris, and so forth.
Joseph 'Joe' Haughey, was either Very Lucky or a Protected Species, from Carrick Hill, the 66-year-old was first convicted in November 1981 for hijacking a car used in the M60 Machinegun murder of the Deputy Governor of Crumlin Road Prison, for which he received a suspended sentence, this at a time when kids were getting two years jail-time for throwing petrol bombs.
In 1986 Joseph ‘Joe’ Haughey was acquitted of the murder of Mary Travers and the attempted murder of her Father Magistrate Tom Travers, yet Joe openly admitted to myself and others that he was the Commanding Officer on that operation and that Gerry Adams was his Commanding Officer.
Gerry Adams had been shot and wounded in March of 1984; however, his injuries were and continue to be heavily exaggerated. One of the loyalist gunmen John Gregg who had shot and wounded Gerry Adams was in Crumlin Road Jail in 1984. John Gregg was in a holding cell with me as we were being moved across to the Court House which was accessed by means of a tunnel that went under The Crumlin Road.Graffiti that appeared on the walls in Dundalk after Gerry Adams admitted that he knew for 10 years that his brother Liam had raped his four-year-old daughter Aine.
At this time in 1984 PIRA prisoners were seeking segregation from Loyalists who shared the landings in A Wing, but were generally kept apart by being out of our cells at different times. We had been told by The PIRA Command Staff to engage in fist fights with loyalists if we were placed in holding cells with them. I done as I had been ordered and I engaged in a fist fight with John Gregg, however, The Prison Officers broke it up fairly quick. Gregg then told me that when he fired his weapon at Gerry Adams there was no kick of the gun. Gregg believed that the weapons used by his loyalist hit team had been compromised by a UDA informer working for The RUC.
When I returned from my Court appearance I reported to Joe Haughey about my encounter with John Gregg. Joe Haughey then explained to me that there was a Top-man Agreement in place, between, The PIRA, UDA and UVF, this agreement meant that people such as Adams would not be attacked by loyalists and visa vis. The attack on Adams was a breach of the PIRA and Loyalist Agreement. John McMichael was later sold out by his own people for sanctioning the attack on Adams.
Bizarre as it may sound, there were regular meetings between the leaders of loyalist terror groups and the leaders of Sinn Fein/PIRA in Belfast, these meetings were normally related to protection rackets, to ensure that Sinn Fein/PIRA and loyalist terrorists did not step onto each other’s turf at interface areas in the city.
Within 5 days of being shot in 1984 Adams held a press conference and quickly returned to his position on The Brigade Staff of The PIRA in Belfast, where he immediately sanctioned a number of operations including the plan to kill Magistrate Tom Travers. I meet Gerry Adams at a PIRA meeting in Dublin Street, Monaghan Town in the summer of 1984. The PIRA Chief of Staff, Kevin McKenna was On-The-Run and living in Monaghan.
Prison Life in the 1980s:
Prison Life in the 1980s: Crumlin Road Jail was a strange place. It was a Victorian Prison that is now a visitors and conferencing centre. In the 1980s Crumlin Road Jail was used to house Sinn Fein/PIRA Prisoners, UVF/UDA prisoners and ‘ordinary criminals’.
The cells in the 1980s were as basic as the day the prison opened in 1846, there were bunk or single iron beds with a metal spring base on which there was a thin foam mattress and each prisoner had a horse-hair blanket and pillow. There was one plastic chamber pot per-prisoner sharing a cell and each morning during ‘slop-out’ prisoners would empty and wash their chamber pots in the slush room.
In the slush room there were some cubicles where prisoners could use an actual toilet bowl when ‘slopping out’.
Prisoners also had a large plastic mug, a plastic plate and plastic cutlery. Prisoners could also get access to small transistor radios.
I was held on A Wing, A Wing held both Sinn Fein/PIRA and UDA/UVF prisoners. Prisoners were let out of their cells at different times. For example, when UVF/UDA prisoners were using the shower room, Sinn Fein/PIRA prisoners would be ‘slopping-out’. I was always used the showers when opportunity presented.
On one occasion, I was washing at the sink in the shower room waiting on a shower to become available when I noticed that the prisoner using the sink beside me had a UVF tattoo on his arm, we both realised at the same time that I was in the wrong place, he simply said, quietly, your in the wrong place. I walked slowly to the cage type door and told the prison officer that I was ready to go.
Gerry Adams Dead 1985-87
In 1985, Jim Lynagh was in Portlaoise Prison in the Irish Republic, I would travel from Monaghan Town and visit Jim as and when possible. My visits with Lynagh were an exchange of information, I would learn about the latest thinking from those within the prison wall, and Jim would learn what was happening in Monaghan/Tyrone.
In 1985, Jim Lynagh was convinced that Gerry Adams was selling out the Republican Movement, Jim believed that Adams and those around him were diverting money away from The Provisional IRA and into their own political ambitions and bank accounts.
Lynagh was flirting with the idea of setting up a new armed organisation with Ruairí Ó Brádaigh as a figure head at the helm, Lynagh was convinced that Gerry Adams was toxic and that he would have to be removed. Lynagh had developed a plan that would focus more military actions against the Protestant community while at the same time maintaining political cover with attacks on RUC and British Army bases. The latter would ensure a continued supply of money from Irish America.
While it can be said that Sinn Fein/Provisional IRA were engaging in a policy of Ethnic Cleansing from 1969, particularly with their focus in the border region of targeting and murdering the only son of Protestant farmers and so forth, Lynagh wanted that campaign to be more systematic. Lynagh wanted to create Green Zones, where both the British Military and their Protestant supporters would be driven out.
When Lynagh was released from prison in 1986 he began to put in place a plan to Assassinate Gerry Adams. Lynagh was surrounded by a very tight group of Provisional IRA killers, however, only his most trusted comrades would be on the inside of the plan to Assassinate Gerry Adams. In the picture below, Lynagh is to the right of the coffin in monkey hat, he would later say that he was temped to put a couple of rounds in the back of Adam’s head as Lynagh had a pistol in the belt at the back of his trousers.
While the Sinn Fein/Provisional IRA Leadership in Belfast sanctioned the expansion of the target base in the summer of 1986, this was still not enough to quench Lynagh’s thirst for Protestant blood. Martin McGuinness arrived in Monaghan in October 1986, to sanctioned an official policy of Ethnic Cleansing, however, McGuinness’s arrest and quick release following that meeting, simply made Lynagh more paranoid of the Northern Leadership.
Lynagh quickly exploited a feud that was taking place between factions of the INLA, Lynagh secured weapons from Tony McCloskey who was the OC of The INLA in Monaghan Town, warning Tony that if the weapons ended up in the hands of Dessie O’Hare the INLA in Monaghan would face severe consequences.
Tony McCloskey would also provide several bottles of Hydrochloric Acid to Lynagh, upon Lynagh’s request to do so, although McCloskey would not have known that the Acid was to be used in the disappearance of Gerry Adams.
At the time of his Murder in February 1987, Tony McCloskey was the Foreman in Clonkeen Mushrooms, and within that complex there was a small laboratory for testing the compost as it went through a pasteurisation process. This small lab used Hydrochloric Acid for its processes, and it was from this lab that Tony McCloskey secured the Hydrochloric Acid which was stored in large bottles. Tony McCloskey in picture below with beard behind his young son walking on the wall.
![]()
The plan took on new momentum when in November 1986 over one-hundred Sinn Fein/Provisional IRA members walked out of Sinn Fein's Ard Fheis in Dublin after a majority voted to end the long-held policy of abstentionism from Dail Eireann in Dublin. This move by the Gerry Adams lead Northern Leadership was viewed as treacherous by Lynagh and his co-conspirators.
Following the decision to end abstentionism, Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin and I organised a fund-raising event in Clontibret in County Monaghan, to rally the troops. Jim Lynagh and I were standing together at the function in Clontibret when Jim asked me if he should make a speech about the split that had just occurred with Republican Sinn Fein, I said yes. Lynagh was fairly drunk, when he got up on the stage, took the microphone from the group playing music, and announced that there is only “One Sinn Fein/PIRA”.
As Lynagh was making his speech Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin hurried over to me and asked me why I had not stopped Lynagh getting up on the stage. Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin said, “The best form of defence is attack” and so Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin took to the stage and tried to reassert his authority by stating there is only “One Sinn Fein/PIRA”, and order was restored.
Lynagh by making his ill-considered speech was simply giving himself cover for the Plan to execute Gerry Adams. Following Loughgall a few months later, Sinn Fein/PIRA could quote Lynagh’s speech at Clontibret as evidence that Lynagh supported the Adams Project, which he did not.
Gerry Adams was to be assassinated in the aftermath of Loughgall, when Sinn Fein/Provisional IRA would be on a high due to the clear military direction being provided by Kevin McKenna, Jim Lynagh, Paddy Kelly, Padraig McKearney and others. Lynagh was convinced that once Adams was disappeared, Thomas ‘Slab’ Murphy, Michael McKevitt and Martin McGuinness would abandon any process that could bring about the surrender of militant republicanism.
While there has been much speculation that Gerry Adams set up the Loughgall Ambush, in order to remove the threat from McKenna, Lynagh, Kelly and McKearney, that speculation, originates in State papers released in the Irish Republic in 2017.
In those State papers it is stated that Fr Dennis Faul, a Catholic Priest from Dungannon, County Tyrone, advised an Irish Government official that there were rumours that Gerry Adams had set-up the Loughgall Ambush.
The priest, who had taught Padraig McKearney, one of the IRA men shot dead at Loughgall by the SAS in 1987, at St Patrick’s Academy in Dungannon, said the theory doing the rounds was that “the IRA team were set up by Gerry Adams himself”. Fr Faul said he was “intrigued” by the theory.
However, the very rumour that Fr Dennis Faul passed onto the Irish Government official, had come from one of the conspirators against Adams and based in Monaghan Town. This Monaghan based conspirator had used his wife, who was originally from Dungannon to carry the rumour to the ears of Fr Dennis Faul and the republican community in Dungannon.
While there is no question about the plan to assassinate Gerry Adams in the aftermath of a successful Loughgall, the reality is that Gerry Adams had not set-up Loughgall, because Adams had no prior knowledge about Loughgall.
Jim Lynagh was reckless, he had openly told Sinn Fein/PIRA members in Monaghan, who had no part in Loughgall, about the Loughgall operation. Lynagh made no secret of the fact that he was moving to a Safe-house in Coalisland in preparation for Loughgall, that Safe-house was well known to the security services. A Monaghan Town based Informer put the final nail in the coffin of those who died at Loughgall, that Informer is known and has been protected by a higher ranking Informer.
Following Loughgall, the Sinn Fein/Provisional IRA Leadership, were critical of Irish Foreign Affairs Minister, Brian Lenihan Snr for not condemning the SAS killings at Loughgall, however, Brian Lenihan knew very well that there was a plan to assassinate Gerry Adams, and therefore Lenihan had taken the view that Adams could yet surrender The Provisional IRA.
RUC Arrest and Interrogation 1986
In 1986, I was standing chatting to Jim Lynagh in Mullaghmatt council housing estate, where I lived in Monaghan, when an unmarked Garda car drove past, Lynagh told me I would be arrested the next time I was in the north after being seen in his company. This indicated two things, that Lynagh knew information was flowing between An Garda Siochana and the RUC, and that he had an expectation that I would be arrested by the RUC.
A this point in 1986 I was an Intelligence Officer answering directly to Jim Lynagh, Lynagh had plans beyond Sinn Fein/Provisional IRA and he was building what he believed would be a new organisation free from the contamination of Gerry Adams.
A few days after being seen in Lynagh’s company I was in Aughnacloy socialising with my Aunt Susie in Brian Ross’s pub, when Vincent McKenna (Neil) came into Brian Ross’s. Vincent Neil (McKenna) said that the British Army at the check-point had just given him a tough time, as his driving licence states his name as Vincent McKenna. Vincent Neil said that the Brits had tried to removed his beard as they thought it was a false beard as I have always been clean shaven.
I knew by the manner in which the Brits had treated Vincent Neil (McKenna) that I would be arrested when I left Brian Ross’s pub. At approx. 9pm as my Aunt Susie and I walked down Moore Street in Aughnacloy, we could hear the siren of the police car blare its way down the street. I was arrested by local police officers under a seven-day detention order, both RUC Officers apologised for having to arrest me, I had known them all my life.
A seven-day detention order was normally reserved for the toughest of Sinn Fein/Provisional IRA activists, so I knew I was in some difficulty, as the majority of Sinn Fein/PIRA activists arrested over the years broke under interrogation within two-days, only the toughest survived, and that was not many.
The success of RUC interrogations against Sinn Fein/PIRA suspects was highlighted in December 1977, when An Garda Siochana seized an IRA document during a house search in Dun Laoghaire near Dublin. The Sinn Fein/PIRA document explained in detail how Sinn Fein/PIRA activists were breaking under interrogation with such regularity it was undermining the ability of Sinn Fein/PIRA to carryout it most basic functions.
I was driven to Gough Barracks in Armagh, that was known within Sinn Fein/PIRA as an RUC interrogation centre, it was where my cousin Sean McKenna had been taken in 1976 when he had been kidnapped from Dundalk by the SAS. When we arrived at Gough Barracks in 1986 the RUC Officers from Aughnacloy signed me into the RUC at Gough Barracks.
I was placed in a holding cell, the cell was clean, not like the Bridewell in Dublin, a mattress covered in a type of vinyl, a heating pipe that ran under the steel frame of the bed which made the mattress feel like a hot-plate. What was interesting about the cell was that if you wanted to got o the toilet you had to ask, in Garda cells there was usually a toilet built into the floor.
I imagined the point of making arrested persons to ask to go to the toilet was a psychological tool, where one is beholding to the Jailer for the very basics. That said, I may well have over-thought the tactic, if it was indeed a tactic. The same applied to having a shave, you had to ask the Jailer for a razor. From my own point of view having a shave refreshed and rejuvenated me during detention, and so may have been more positive on some detainees than beneficial to interrogators who were trying to break them down.
I knew from sounds around me in the holding area that there were other arrested persons, however, they could have been anyone, loyalists, ordinary criminals and so forth. I would eventually learn that other persons arrested and, in the cells, next to me, were Brian Arthurs who would go on to be OC of Monaghan/East Tyrone PIRA and Sean Tierney, a trusted comrade of PIRA Commander, Seamus McElwaine before Seamus was shot dead by the SAS in early 1986.
During my detention, I made no effort to make contact with other prisoners, this would be a breach of protocol, however, Brian Arthurs did break protocol by placing his initials on the cistern of the toilet using cut-outs of toilet paper, however, I ignored this. Someone also tapped out morse-code on the heating pipe, again I ignored it.
It was the next day, before interrogators were in place to interview me, I was taken from my cell to an interview room. The interview room was clean, a desk type table and three chairs. There was no recording equipment, and I am not sure that such equipment was mandatory at that time.
I expected to be immediately asked about my relationship with Jim Lynagh, as I knew Lynagh was a priority target and that An Garda Siochana had most likely told them that I was close to Lynagh. However, I was shocked, when the RUC Officer set down a file in front of me, that file contained sworn statements by a person called Declan Mohan who had implicated me in the shooting and serious wounding of a UDR member, Robert John Murray outside Aughnacloy in 1984. In this shooting incident in 1984 Robert John’s wife and baby had also been injured.
I had absolutely nothing to do with the shooting of Robert John Murray and the accusation that I had was a grievous error on behalf of the RUC.
Declan Mohan was known to me all of my life, I viewed Declan as a Hood, a local thief in Aughnacloy who often broke in the homes of his neighbours such as Austin and Kathleen Douglas to steal money and female underwear. Declan was non-political in every sense of the word, a village idiot to many.
I had not seen or heard from Declan Mohan for some years, until I was in Crumlin Road Jail in 1984 and Declan Mohan was remanded for being in possession of information likely to be of use to terrorists. When Declan Mohan entered A Wing on Crumlin Road Jail I was simply shocked, I thought the RUC must have made a mistake. Joe Haughey, Seamus Shannon and I were talking in the yard when Declan Mohan walked into the yard.
Seamus Shannon told me to debrief Declan Mohan as I had told Seamus that I knew Declan. I asked Declan what had happened, he told me that he had been asked by another person called Vincent, to gather information about RUC/UDR personnel, and when Robert John Murray was shot and wounded, the RUC raided Declan Mohan’s family home and found details relating to RUC/UDR including Robert John Murray.
I asked Declan why he still had Robert John’s details if the shooting had already taken place, and he said he never thought the RUC would suspect him, that was very believable, as the RUC would have viewed Declan as I did. Declan told me that a person known to me as Vincent had introduced him to Tommy ‘TC’ Cassidy and all three had meet three times including the introduction meeting.
Declan Mohan told me that Vincent and Tommy had meet him twice in McElvaney’s pub in Monaghan Town and once in the Hillgrove Hotel in Monaghan Town. I asked Declan if he had told this to the RUC when arrested and he said yes, he had made several sworn statements of admission.
I told Declan not to worry and worst-case scenario he would serve a couple of years. I reported back to Joe Haughey and Seamus Shannon what Declan Mohan had told me, and Declan was allowed to stay on A Wing.
When I was released from Crumlin Road Jail in 1985, I immediately asked Vincent why Robert John had been shot when his wife and baby were in the car with him, Vincent said that at the debriefing session afterwards, TC had told Brendan McKenna (Adjutant) and Edward ‘Ned’ Hamill (OC) that he could not see the women and child in the back seat of the car from his shooting position.
I told Vincent that I knew that stretch of the road very well, and because of the bend on the road on which TC was positioned behind a tree, he could see very clearly the woman in the back seat, Vincent said that those at the debriefing were not too bothered either way. I then asked Vincent, why in the name of God, had they used Declan Mohan for PIRA business, and Vincent said that they needed other sources of information as well as me.
This again was one of the problems with Sinn Fein/PIRA, they were always trying to out do each other, trying to prove that one was better than the other. This went right from the top, the constant bitching between Martin McGuinness and Provisional IRA, Chief of Staff, Kevin McKenna to those in the lower orders. I did not careless about their petty ego trips, I would go straight to Kevin McKenna and tell him that if Sinn Fein/PIRA wanted to use Hoods to do their work, I would be no part of it, this type of face-off with Kevin and others usually put me back in the intelligence driving seat in Monaghan.
So, there I was in Gough Barracks in 1986 being accused of a serious crime that I had no hand or part in. The RUC officer who was questioning me were very determined to get an admission and charge, however, they had beaten themselves from the outset. Either Declan Mohan had lied to me in Crumlin Road Jail in 1984 when he said he had named the actual conspirators, or, the RUC had manufactured my name onto the Mohan statements, either way, Robert John Murray and his innocent family would be denied real justice.
For the first couple of days the questioning was fairly soft, probing and prodding me with names, places and events. I played along, if they asked me about Aidan McGurk, I would say I knew Jack McGurk (The Coalman) but not an Aidan McGurk. If they asked about Kevin McKenna (my cousin, PIRA Chief of Staff) I would say there are hundreds of McKenna’s in Monaghan. If they asked about Jim Lynagh, which they did, I would say I know the name but can’t put a face to the name.
Effectively I talked absolute nonsense for the first two days and the RUC got nothing. The questioning while going nowhere from my point of view, was intense, on the third day Pat Fahy one of the solicitor’s Sinn Fein/PIRA prisoners were told to ask for when arrested in Tyrone arrived into Gough Barracks. I told Pat that I was being questioned about something that I knew nothing about and I believed that the RUC would stop at nothing to get me to make a false confession. Pat told me to fall silent.
When I returned to the interview room on the third day, I refused to speak, that was it, I would no longer play along with the charade. The questioning now took on an increased intensity, in the room next door heating pipes that ran along the wall behind me were being kicked and shouts of “Provo Bastard” and so forth could be heard. However, none of this phased me, I had seen all the cop movies, I knew about these tactics, and if my interrogators had done any research on me, they would know the one thing I did not fear was physical violence.
As I starred at a spot on my jeans to help focus my mind, I was thinking to myself, that the psychological tactics being used by the RUC were very effective and if they had been accusing me of something that I had actually done, I may well have spoken to them, however, they were accusing me in the wrong and now using tactics that I thought were beneath them.
One RUC detective produced a picture from his shirt pocket as if by magic, he pushed it close to my face and asked if I knew the person in the picture, I remained silent, but memorised the picture. The picture was Tommy ‘TC’ Cassidy, a PIRA serial killer, however, I did not know him, and had only seen him once, when he entered a bar in Monaghan very drunk, I asked the person I was with who he was and he said that is ‘TC’.
On the fourth day and beyond of my detention, I think there were up to twelve plain clothes RUC involved in my interrogation, on the fifth day, more senior officers entered the interview room, by now it was clear I was not going to talk and they were not going to get any satisfaction. Now the emphasis was on recruiting me to work for them, they described Kevin McKenna as the Executioner and Jim Lynagh as the Assassin and these descriptions were interchangeable. One senior officer asked everyone else to leave the room, he sat down beside me, pulled the chair in real close, placed his hand on my leg and pleaded with me to do the right thing.
Frustrated and angered the RUC released me from my seven-day detention, however, they had an RUC car outside to take me to Crumlin Road Jail for some alleged fine from 1984, I was weary. In Crumlin Road Jail I was placed in a cell with someone on the criminal wing, this individual immediately began asking questions, I knew I was in with a Rat, I told the other prisoner that I was Provisional IRA and he should not ask any further questions.
After a few days in Crumlin Road Jail, I was released and returned to Monaghan Town. I immediately walked into The Round House Bar, to the right as I walked in was Jim Lynagh, John ‘Dinger’ Bell, Aidan McGurk and so forth, there was a cheer from the lads and I ordered a well-earned pint of Guinness from Owen Smyth and I paid with my gratuity money from my short stay in Crumlin Road Jail.
As I sipped on my pint, Owen Smyth came over close to me at the end of the bar and asked, “Did you talk?” I said no, and he shock his shoulders and huffed, it hurt him, that I as an unseasoned terrorist could keep my mouth shut, yet when Owen Smyth was arrested by the RUC in 1981, he had turned Supergrass to save his own skin.
A couple of days after being released by the RUC John ‘Donger’ Bell approached me on Church Square in Monaghan Town and said he would be out to the house to debrief me, I told John he would not be out to debrief me, as I only dealt with Lynagh.
Lynagh arrived out to my house and there was a debriefing for about an hour, Lynagh was really only interested in what the RUC said about him, he took pride in the RUC description of him as the Executioner, he understood the description and revelled in it.
Loughgall Martyrs 35 Anniversary Sinn Fein/PIRA
Loughall Ambush a Summary
Three weeks before Loughgall, Paddy Kelly who was Officer Commanding East Tyrone Provisional IRA, arrived in Monaghan Town to meet with Jim Lynagh, Lynagh was Officer Commanding Monaghan/East Tyrone PIRA and he sat on the Brigade Staff as a Military Strategist. When Paddy Kelly could not find Lynagh, which was not unusual, Paddy Kelly made the fatal mistake of inquiring at The Round House Bar about Jim Lynagh’s whereabouts.
In 1987, the Round House Bar was now owned by Owen Smyth, Smyth had turned Super-grass in 1981 when arrested by the RUC and he would again talk when arrested by An Garda Siochana in 1990 in relation to his role in a human bomb attack in 1990. It has long since been believed that Owen Smyth was protected by a higher-ranking informer, this was not unusual.
Two days before Loughgall I meet with and spoke to Jim Lynagh on Dublin Street in Monaghan Town, our meeting was observed by two Garda Special Branch Officers who were parked outside Jim Lynagh’s flat at the bottom of Dublin Street, a flat that Jim shared with John ‘Dinger’ Bell.
I looked Lynagh directly in the eyes and told him that I believed he was about to be killed, I told him that while the SAS might pull the trigger, it was our own that was going to set him up. Lynagh looked me straight in the eyes and asked me if I wanted him to stop, I said yes, what we need is political leadership and he could deliver that. Lynagh dismissed my concerns and our conversation turned to booby-traps and Semtex.
The morning after Loughgall, members of Monaghan/East Tyrone PIRA were telling each other that the SAS had been lying around all remote RUC stations and it was just bad luck, anyone, who was not militarily and politically illiterate knew that Loughgall was a well-planned ambush and its fall-out would have long-term repercussions.
Gerard Harte was, by Kevin McKenna, given the task of investigating and reviewing the Loughgall operation, with a view to identifying an Informer or Agent within Sinn Fein/Provisional IRA. I was with Kevin McKenna when Gerard Harte reported his findings, soon afterwards, Gerard Harte was, with two others, shot dead by the SAS.
In Belfast in 1994, and by pure chance, I meet a former British soldier who had been one of the out-layers at Loughgall, he now worked in retail security, and I had taken on such as job for the summer break from QUB. Mike would leave retail security in August 1994 to join the RUC and be replaced by his former comrade Johnathan who had also been an out-layer at Loughgall. The instructions given to the army at Loughgall was to let no-one out of the Kill-Zone. This instruction would be understood by anyone who knew Lynagh, Kelly and Kearney in particular, as they had no intention of going to jail.
In 1998, I would meet the most interesting of people who had been involved in Loughgall, I have never named this individual. Three weeks before Loughgall, this individual told me that he had signed in and out, to the firing range beneath the forensic lab in Belfast, two senior RUC Officers (later ambushed outside Dundalk), approximately eight SAS Soldiers and weapons similar to those that would be used by the Provisional IRA Unit at Loughgall three weeks later.
I asked this individual why the SAS would use weapons similar to those to be used by the PIRA at Loughgall, and he said, the soldiers were highly trained, and they would be able to distinguish between Friendly and Hostile fire on the evening of the Loughgall operation. While not an absolute requirement in this instance, it would probably be better to have a record of the Provisional IRA Unit opening fire first, for any subsequent political post-mortem.
I would also meet with Sir John Hermon, Sir John had no hesitation in telling me that the gloves came off with Loughgall, the order to kill came directly from Mrs Thatcher following a series of high-profile murders by the Provisional IRA. I would in 1999 have an opportunity to speak with Mrs Thatcher and she was satisfied that Loughgall was the right thing to do, she believed that, while not its main objective, the ambush at Loughgall strengthened the hand of those who were prepared to surrender the Provisional IRA.
I did not tell Mrs Thatcher, about Jim Lynagh’s plan to disappear Gerry Adams, following a successful Loughgall.
Loughgall Introduction
I am constantly asked, if Sinn Fein and The PIRA are separate organisations, and I have to say, No. The PIRA Army Council is the Supreme Ruling authority of Sinn Fein/PIRA, the term Sinn Fein/PIRA is not propaganda, it is shown beyond reasonable doubt in The Green Book (Sinn Fein/PIRA Bible):
"An O.C.'s (Operations Commander) might know how to put a unit on a military footing; an I.O.'s (Intelligence Officer) might know how to create an effective intelligence network; a Cumann Chairman (Sinn Fein) might know how best to mount a campaign on a given issue, e.g. H Blocks etc., and for all members of the movement regardless of which branch we belong to, to enhance our commitment to and participation in the struggle through gaining as comprehensive an understanding as possible of our present society and the proposed Republican alternative through self and group education".
This explanation of Sinn Fein/PIRA being a singular organisation with The PIRA Army Council providing an over-arching strategy was clearly set-out during the Sinn Fein/PIRA Ard Fheis in 1986 when both Martin McGuinness (MI6 Agent) and Gerry Adams (Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead) said:
“A Sinn Fein activist is the same as a PIRA activist, they are one and the same, there is only one Sinn Fein/PIRA”. This mantra was echoed at Sinn Fein/PIRA functions around the country as Republican Sinn Fein led by Ruairi O' Bradaigh had just split from Provisional Sinn Fein/PIRA. While you do not have to be a member of The PIRA to become a Sinn Fein/PIRA TD, senior officer holders in Sinn Fein must be sworn members of The PIRA as they are directly answerable to The PIRA Army Council. This has been in place since the foundation of Provisional Sinn Fein/PIRA in 1969-70, as Provisional Sinn Fein/PIRA believed that The Official IRA from whom they had split, had allowed their hearts to overrule their minds when The Official IRA decided to walk away from a violent campaign in the north. Many members of my extended paternal family were founding members of Provisional Sinn Fein/PIRA.
As a child I sat in the company of Provisional Sinn Fein President and Army Council member Ruairi O' Bradaigh and Provisional Sinn Fein vice-President and Commander in Cumann na mBan (Female PIRA) Maire Drumm. It was clear that to hold these high offices in Sinn Fein one had to be a sworn member of The Provisional IRA, this requirement has not changed.
Other Top Stories
Loughgall Martyrs 33rd Anniversary and Gerry Adams
Was it correct and proper for The PIRA to be surrendered? Yes, it was correct and proper for The PIRA to be surrendered, but not for the reasons advanced by Gerry Adams nor under the Terms and Conditions agreed between Martin McGuinness and his MI6 Handlers.
From a traditional republican perspective, the reason that it was correct and proper to surrender The PIRA was due to the fact that The PIRA had become/and remain The Black and Tans of the latter 20th Century and now the 21st Century. This does not mean that there were not good men and women who genuinely believed in a cause, however, they were blinkered by that cause and blinded from the treachery, corruption and criminality of their leadership.In Gort in December 1920, as observed by historian Roy Foster, “a new level was plumbed” when two local boys with no IRA connections were murdered by the Black and Tans for “impudence”. Their bodies were thrown into a ditch “after being dragged behind one of the dreaded lorries until they were unrecognisably mangled”. This was just one example of what poet WB Yeats referred to in his poem Reprisals as “Half-drunk or whole-mad soldiery”.
For those of us who were actually in the trenches, the reality of Sinn Fein/PIRA from the mid-1970s onward was in extreme contrast to their publicly stated claims of being the defenders and liberators of the Catholic/Nationalist community in the north. A good example of how The British Security Services dealt with Sinn Fein/PIRA can be found in the manner in which The CIA and FBI dealt with The Communist Party in America in the 1970s. When The Communist Party collapsed in America, there were more paid up members of The CIA and FBI in its ranks than there were actual Communists.
By the time the Sinn Fein/PIRA Army Convention was held in Donegal in October 1997, the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership were infiltrated to the point that Agents, Informers and touts outnumbered actual Sinn Fein/PIRA members. This level of infiltration was fully exposed when Bobby Storey and the lads raided Castlereagh RUC Holding Centre in 2002, however, no action could be taken as several levels of the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership would have had to be wiped out.
Those Sinn Fein/PIRA members who had not been compromised sat ideally by while Sinn Fein/PIRA rapists were protected and on many occasions their victims beaten, shot, murdered or exiled. Sinn Fein/PIRA members tied rape victims to lamp-posts and poured paint or tar over them so that other rape victims would not dare to break silence. These were not acts carried out by weak individuals, these were acts directed from the very top of Sinn Fein/PIRA.
Dogs on the street knew that Gerry Adams Snr, Ruby Davidson and many others were prolific child rapists, yet they were protected and on the occasions of their deaths afforded full style Sinn Fein/PIRA funerals.
In 1998, I press released a list of 100 Sinn Fein/PIRA rapists and pedophiles who had been protected by the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership, to highlight the hypocrisy of Sinn Fein/PIRA as self-proclaimed liberators/defenders of the nationalist/Catholic community. In response to my press release some good journalists (who had not sold out to the 'peace-process' gravy train) began to ask serious questions of the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership.
The Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership panicked and ordered an Internal-Audit of Sinn Fein/PIRA around the country to establish how wide-spread the rape of women and children was within the organisation. This Internal-Audit was to estimate the political damage that could be caused to Sinn Fein/PIRA if someone actually investigated the claims. Seamus and Annie concluded their Internal-Audit and reported back directly to Sinn Fein/PIRA HQ in Belfast. The Internal-Audit found that at least 5,000 women and children had been raped by Sinn Fein/PIRA members.
In 2014 Gerry Adams TD would produce a list of 27 Sinn Fein/PIRA rapists that they had Ghosted into The Irish Republic in order to take the political pressure off. This was the 27 origionally included in the initial list of 41 On-The-Runs to receive 'Comfort Letters' from MI6.
Leading members of Sinn Fein/PIRA who had admitted to Sinn Fein/PIRA that they were sex criminals such as Gerry Adams Snr, Liam Adams, Marty Morris, Seamus Marley, Ruby Davidson, Briege Meehan, Michael Marron and hundreds more were and continue to be protected by Sinn Fein/PIRA. Only a handful of Sinn Fein/PIRA rapists have actually appeared before the courts, their victims remain silenced in the Ghettos and the leafy lanes of suburbia by the threat of death, as suffered by Paul Quinn in Monaghan or Kevin McGuigan in Belfast in recent times.
Of the initial list of 41 Sinn Fein/PIRA members drawn up by The Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership to receive Comfort Letters from MI6, 27 on that list were Sinn Fein/PIRA sex criminals such as Seamus Marley. Seamus Marley is the son of leading Sinn Fein/PIRA member Laurence Marley who was shot dead by loyalist paramilitaries. Seamus Marley had been moved out of Belfast after admitting to the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership that he had engaged in sex crimes.
The Secretary of State for the north was told in 1999 that 27 of the 41 OTRs on the list were sex criminals and not on-the-run for Terrorist activity, however, like many Secretaries of State he was simply an MI6 appointee, following The Oatley and McGuinness script.
Marley was moved to a Sinn Fein/PIRA safe-house in Louth where he raped two young boys, he is now serving 7 years for those rapes but is under investigation for other crimes. In Dundalk in the 1990s Liam Adams was describing himself on the front page of the regional paper, Argos, as a Pedophile Hunter, in fact, he was the pedophile but had been protected by the leadership of Sinn Fein/PIRA, he has since died while serving 15 years for raping a 4-year-old-child. The majority of Sinn Fein/PIRA rapists in the north, were and continue to be, Ghosted into The Republic when their victims cannot be silenced. The numbers involved are overwhelming.
This article by Ed Moloney in The Sunday Tribune shook the leadership of Sinn Fein/PIRA as people were beginning to break silence.
Sinn Fein/PIRA member Michael Marron pleads guilty to raping a female child after that child's family had to move out of the area to seek justice. Michael Marron is also the person who continuously ran a smear campaign against Eamon Collins before Eamon was murdered in 1999. Marron had often written on the walls of Barcroft estate that Eamon Collins was a Peadophile.
This article in The Sunday Herald September 1999, highlights how the rape of women and children is being used by Sinn Fein/PIRA as a weapon of torture, The Rape Crisis Centre, Belfast is quoted, "One in every Four clients that we deal with, women and children have been raped by Sinn Fein/PIRA members. In some instances Mothers have been warned at gun point to take their raped child to England for an abortion so that the Sinn Fein/PIRA rapists cannot be identified at a latter point by DNA from the baby.
This article that appeared in The Newsletter Sept 2000 explains how a male child was shot by Sinn Fein/PIRA because he told social worker that he had been sexually abused by a senior member of Sinn Fein/PIRA.
Sinn Fein/PIRA kept very detailed records of the Human Rights abuses they engaged in, they also kept a very clear record of certain loyalist groups that were engaging in similar activity against their own community. I downloaded this database from a Sinn Fein/PIRA computer in Belfast, when I still had a wee key.
Sinn Fein/PIRA mouth-pieces such as Gerry Adams stood at the graveside of PIRA volunteers and lied through their teeth, all of the above and much more is why The PIRA should have been surrendered, The PIRA had become and remain The Black and Tans of the latter 20th Century and now the 21st Century and no number of apologists will remove that stain. Sinn Fein when they break FREE from The PIRA Army Council and their Handlers, will be entitled to engage in normal politics, but until then they must remain in political self-isolation.
The Provisional IRA are proxies for their Handlers, they should disband and decommission their MI6 supplied Glocks. The PIRA Army Council should apologise to the Catholic/Nationalist community in the north for the crimes it has committed against them these past 50 years.
Loughgall Martyrs 35 Anniversary Background
On Tuesday 21 October, 1986, Martin McGuinness arrived in Smithborough in County Monaghan to meet with Provisional IRA Chief of Staff, Kevin McKenna, at that time Kevin McKenna was living with his family on a small holding that was owned by a Sinn Fein/PIRA supporter, Sheila O’Neill. McGuinness had arrived to deliver a message from Sinn Fein/PIRA Headquarters in Belfast, that message was that GHQ had sanctioned a proposed plan to introduce a policy of ‘Ethnic Cleansing’. The plan had been developed by Jim Lynagh while he was in Portlaoise Prison, contrary to the nonsense I have often read, Kevin McKenna was enthusiastic about the plan, I should know I spoke to him regularly.
This article was penned by Liam Clarke in March 1998, it is an interview with Vincent McKenna, within days Sinn Fein/PIRA rumors would begin that Vincent McKenna was a child molester.
Kevin McKenna could trace his heritage back to Niall McKenna of 1641, who had massacred over 2,000 Protestants in the Monaghan/Tyrone region while stripping thousands more Protestants of their belongings and driving them from their homes. While Kevin McKenna was happy to kill British military personnel, he derived his greatest pleasure from purely sectarian operations such as Kingsmill (10 Protestants), Enniskillen (12 Protestants), Teebane (8 Protestants) Shankill (10 Protestants dead, 57 Protestants injured). Kevin McKenna never tired of targeting Protestants in his native Aughnacloy, County Tyrone and while he had murdered a number of Protestants in Aughnacloy and Monaghan in the 1970s, McKenna failed to carryout any successful operations in Aughnacloy from 1980 onwards.
When Martin McGuinness left the meeting with Kevin McKenna, McGuinness was arrested by members of An Garda Siochana. Soon after McGuinness was arrested Garda Headquarters received a call from an MI6 Officer known as Michael Oatley CMG, OBE (The Mountain Climber), Oatley requested that McGuinness be released without charge and Oatley’s request was granted without question. The order to release McGuinness was a surprise to even the most seasoned Garda Detectives in Monaghan including Colm Brown and John McCoy. This intervention by MI6 makes a nonsense of the Sinn Fein/PIRA assertion that there was no MI6 contact during this period, or perhaps, the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership did not know about the true nature of the relationship between MI6 Officer Oatley and Martin McGuinness. Below McGuinness hiding like a scared rat as Michael Stone opens fire on mourners.
Loughgall Martyrs Used
In 1987 Gerry Adams gave the oration at the funeral of Loughgall Martyr, Jim Lynagh, at Latlurcan Cemetery in Monaghan Town, and I quote from that oration:
“Anyone who does business with The British, The Freestate establishment or The SDLP are fools because they have all sold out on the Irish People”.
We now know, for reasons that I will explain in a moment, that in 1987 the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership were already in bed with all of the above and in particular The British. At Jim Lynagh’s graveside in 1987 many young men and women that were gathered, were inspired by the Gerry Adams oration, many went on to kill and some were themselves killed. We now know that Gerry Adams was speaking out both sides of his mouth, however, I have never found any evidence that Adams was an Agent of any State, his political ambition was enough for the Brits to work with.
Martin McGuinness is a very different kettle of fish; McGuinness had been groomed by MI6 from those early days in the 1970s when the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership meet with British Officials. According to Sean O’Callaghan (a Garda and MI5 Agent) who was in regular phone contact with McGuinness in the 1990s, McGuinness was formerly recruited by MI6 in the mid-1980s. O’Callaghan claimed that he witnessed many meetings between McGuinness and MI6 Officer Oatley during a period that the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership claim there was no contact between the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership and The British. O’Callaghan also claimed that when Oatley used Irish in his communications to McGuinness, it was O’Callaghan who provided the Irish, anyone who knew McGuinness, will know that his IQ was not overwhelming.
In 2017, David Trimble, who had become friendly with McGuinness admitted that he was with Sean O’Callaghan when Sean O’Callaghan received a long and detailed phone call from Martin McGuinness in the 1990s. However, the greatest indictment against McGuinness is the communication below, the provenance of which the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership continue to deny, to accept its provenance as set out here is to accept that McGuinness, ‘the republican hero’, was in fact an MI6 Agent who had a free hand from his Handlers to engage in and direct murder, nothing new there when we look at all the other British Agents/informers/touts who did and continue to sit at the top of Sinn Fein/PIRA.
Catholics Not Included
It is also worth noting that the terms and conditions of the Sinn Fein/PIRA cease-fire (Articles of Surrender) as presented to their MI6 Handlers, specifically excluded Catholics in the six-occupied-counties and also excluded every fibre of the fabric of The Irish Freestate (Republic), including members of An Garda Siochana. The General Election in 2020 showed many members of An Garda Siochana voting for Sinn Fein/PIRA which is the equivalent of a turkey voting for Christmas. The Electoral Act 1960, Section 8A allows for all members of An Garda Siochana and the Irish Defense Forces to be entered on the postal-vote-list and while not all Gardai and Defense Force members may realise it, these votes are opened and counted in the same manner as any other vote.
Between 1992 and The PIRA Convention in October 1997, I was a runner between Kevin McKenna (PIRA Chief of Staff) and Martin McGuinness (Army Council). On 10th October 1997 a Provisional IRA General Army Convention was held in Falcarragh, County Donegal, and was attended by Kevin McKenna, Thomas ‘Slab’ Murphy, Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness, Pat Doherty, Michael McKevitt, Bernadette McKevitt Sands and so forth.
Back in the 1980s Google did not exist so records had to be kept in a written form, here is a copy of the records kept for Kevin McKenna in relation to all deaths, weapons seizures and so forth in 1986.
Kevin McKenna was also using another member of Sinn Fein/PIRA as a runner with Northern Command; however, McKenna was concerned that the second runner may have been compromised. As I had a genuine reason for visiting Monaghan each week and a genuine reason for visiting Derry each week, the security forces were less likely to take me under their notice, or so Kevin McKenna believed. I meet with McGuinness at a safe-house on The Culmore Road in Derry on a regular basis.Interestingly, I only parted company with Martin McGuinness following the Sinn Fein/Provisional IRA General Army Convention which was held in Falcarragh, County Donegal, On 10 October 1997. I parted company with McGuinness as I was advised by members of my extended paternal family in Dundalk and south Armagh, that Michael McKevitt and others were being allowed, by The Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership, including Kevin McKenna, Martin McGuinness and Thomas ‘Slab’ Murphy, to empty PIRA arms dumps as they prepared to set-up The Real IRA.
I travelled from Belfast to Monaghan at the end of 1997 to ask Kevin McKenna (Thomas ‘Slab’ Murphy had just been appointed Chief of Staff of the PIRA – Murphy was no less ruthless than Kevin McKenna but he was easily bought as he was promised by MI6 that his criminal empire would remain untouched by the security forces in the north) why the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership were allowing McKevitt to take explosives, weapons, ammunition and personnel without sanction.
Kevin McKenna said that, “The odd bomb going off here and there would help keep Unionists focused on working with the ‘Doves’”. Normally anyone who misused or misappropriated as much a bullet belonging to The PIRA was court-martialled and punishment administered, two of the disappeared had allegedly misused a single gun belonging to the PIRA.
I was devastated by Kevin’s answer as I had put a lot of work into the peace-process and I had convinced a lot of people to give Sinn Fein a chance to move away from violence. Kevin McKenna and the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership had decided to use The Real IRA as proxies to do their dirty work, just as they had done with many proxy groups over the years.
This tactic would back-fire with the Omagh Bomb, and only then did the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership condemn the so called ‘Dissidents’. Recently Sinn Fein/PIRA MEP, Martina Anderson has been lobbying The Irish Government not to extradite Omagh Bomber, Liam Campbell, yet again exposing the lie of so called ‘Dissidents’.
At this point I changed tactic, in March 1998, I gave an exclusive front-page story to The Sunday Times in which I described my time in Sinn Fein/PIRA in Monaghan and the Ethnic Cleansing strategy developed and operationalised by Jim Lynagh and the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership in the mid-1980s.
While on the 31st of August 1994 The PIRA Army Council issued a general press statement through P.O’Neil, This press statement did not contain any meat on the bones of the Terms and Conditions of the PIRA cease-fire, the detailed Terms and Conditions which have never been altered to this day were delivered by McGuinness to MI6. There was in fact a twin-track approach, The Good Friday Agreement did not mirror the Terms and Conditions of The PIRA cease-fire.
The Good Friday Agreement did not contain any detail about ‘Comfort Letters’, it did not contain any detail about Sinn Fein/PIRA being allowed to continue Human Rights abuses against the Catholic community (including murder and rape) and so forth. The latter is why, The British Secretary of State, Mo Mowlam, stated in 1999 that the murder of Charles Bennett by The PIRA was not viewed as a breach of The PIRA cease-fire but was viewed by the British as “Internal-House-keeping”.British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, offered a false sense of security to those who has suffered at the hands of Sinn Fein/PIRA and Loyalist terrorists for decades when on, Wednesday 20th May 1998, Blair delivered a speech at the Coleraine campus of the University of Ulster in which he unveiled a hand-written set of pledges to the people of Ireland in advance of the Referendum on 22nd May 1998.
The text of the pledges was as follows:
“I pledge to the people of Northern Ireland:
1. No change in the status of Northern Ireland without the express consent of the people of Northern Ireland.
2. Power to take decisions returned to a Northern Ireland Assembly, with accountable North/South co-operation.
3. Fairness and equality guaranteed for all.
4. Those who use or threaten violence excluded from the Government of Northern Ireland.
5. Prisoners kept in unless violence is given up for good”.
The Provisional IRA Army Council: Wednesday 31 August 1994
The Terms and Conditions of this cease-fire exclude in totality the Catholic community of the occupied 6 counties. We retain the right and capacity to suppress all and any opposition to our stated position from within the Catholic community, without political interference from The British Government, including its armed forces.
The Provisional IRA Army Council: Wednesday 31 August 1994
The Terms and Conditions of this cease-fire excludes in totality the Irish Freestate, its armed forces including members of An Garda Siochana. We retain the right and capacity to bring about the destruction of the Irish Freestate by whatever means at our disposal, without foreign interference.Comfort Letters for On The Run Terrorists
While many showed surprise when the trial of John Downey collapsed in relation to The Hyde Park Bombing, many who showed surprise were liars as they had been warned about the Comfort Letters in 1999. Over 240 Sinn Fein/PIRA murderers and rapists would receive Comfort Letters and be able to come and go as they pleased.
Letter from Minister of State, Adam Ingram in May 2000, stating that all OTRs would be arrested if they returned to Northern Ireland. Liar.
Secret Talks between The British Government and Sinn Fein/PIRA
Following Sir Patrick Mayhew’s speech at Queens University in Belfast in 1993, there was a question and answer session, this author asked Sir Patrick openly in front of the media, academics and students gathered if The British Government was talking to The PIRA, Sir Patrick denied the charge. Shortly after Sir Patrick spoke at Queens, a document that was sent from Michael Oatley MI6 Officer to MI6 Agent Martin McGuinness was shown to certain trusted journalists by this author, so that they may push on with questions about secret talks between The PIRA and The British Government.
When Sinn Fein/PIRA heard of the document between MI6 Agent Oatley and McGuinness, there was panic, as the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership with the exception of McGuinness did not recognise the described document. The fact was that the document appeared to show that McGuinness was a British Agent rather than a negotiator on behalf of the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership, although he was also led on the latter.
The leaks led to the breaking of the story on 8 November 1993, by Belfast journalist, Eamon Mallie. Eventually both the British and Sinn Fein/PIRA admitted that there was contact and each side gave their own account of such contact to minimise outrage from various quarters on both sides. Sinn Fein/PIRA persistently denied the document that was produced at that time by this author (see, below), and purported to be a communication between MI6 Agent Michael Oatley and Martin McGuinness, the communication, when subjected to discourse analysis, appeared to show that McGuinness was in fact an MI6 Agent, not a James Bond type Agent, simply a puppet on a string.
The Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership continued to state that only Sinn Fein had spoken to the British, however, in 1994, PIRA Chief of Staff, Kevin McKenna gave a rare interview to Eamon Mallie on Downtown Radio, in which he said, “As long as the boys with the balaclavas are at the table I am happy”, McKenna was referring to Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, yet at all times, including in 2020 on their official website, Sinn Fein/PIRA claimed/claim that it was Sinn Fein who was negotiating with The British and the document below was a communication between British ‘Officials’ and the Sinn Fein negotiators, this is a lie, the original handwritten version of the communication had Martin McGuinness written at the top and was signed off with, Is Mise, Michael Oatley. A blind donkey reading this document can see that it was a personal communication between MI6 Officer, Michael Oatley and MI6 Agent, Martin McGuinness and was probably included in disclosed documents by Sir Patrick Mayhew by accident.
In February 1994 I had an article published in The Irish News (this can be checked in their archive) and The Irish Press (no longer in circulation) in which I stated the following, in the hope of encouraging Sinn Fein/PIRA personnel to stand down as they were involved in a phony war:
“And I ask you Irish men and women within the ranks of The PIRA to check the motivation of your leadership before checking the timer on your bomb”.
Martin McGuinness MI6 Agent
There is no contradiction in the claims that Martin McGuinness was an MI6 Agent from the mid-1980s and his direct involvement in directing acts of violence including the mass murder of civilians. A communication from MI6 Agent Michael Oatley on 3rd June, 1993 (see, below) to Martin McGuinness highlights this Moral Quagmire, when Oatley says:
“Your unfortunate headline events of April have made acceptance of your offer much more risky for him. You and I may think this should not matter, but the fact is that it does and it is that which is holding things up – if you like, human characteristics rather than anything more sinister”.
When MI6 Agent Oakley says, “Your unfortunate headline events of April…” he is talking about April 24th, 1993, when The PIRA bombed Bishopsgate and devastated the heart of the City of London, one person was killed, 44 were injured and £350 million of damage was caused.
When Oatley says, “much more risky for him”, he is referring to The British Prime Minister, John Major, the same John Major who told Parliament in 1993 that it would make his stomach sick to even think that any British official would be talking to The PIRA.
Shortly before the headline events of April 1993, Tim Parry (aged 12) and three-year-old Johnathan Ball died and 54 others were injured after the Provisional IRA detonated bombs that had been hidden inside high street litter bins in Warrington in England on the eve of Mother's Day that year. In 1999 loyalist terrorists, Orange Volunteers, were preparing to copy-cat the Warrington attack in Dublin but these attacks were thwarted.
The most significant component of this communication, between McGuinness and what many believe to be his Handler, MI6 Officer Oatley, is when he says;
“You and I may think this should not matter, but the fact is that it does and it is that which is holding things up – if you like, human characteristics rather than anything more sinister”.
Oatley suggests that while he and McGuinness cannot understand why the murder of women and children should delay negotiations, it is the human characteristics of Prime Minister, John Major that is preoccupying him with concern about the murder of women and children.
On the official Sinn Fein/PIRA website in 2020, Sinn Fein/PIRA claim that they received a communication from a British government representative on June 3, 1993, and that the said communication was initialed and they have removed the initials for security reasons. However, the communication was not from a British Government official and it was not for the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership, but was a personal communication from MI6 Officer Michael Oatley to Martin McGuinness. The PIRA Army Council fear the implications of anyone establishing the ‘true’ provenance of the communication, however, here it is.
The communication had been sent by Oatley to the MI6 Officer (Robert) who had replaced him on the British negotiating team, Robert had Oatley’s handwritten communication typed so that he could remove McGuinness’s name from the top of the communication, and Robert completed the typed version with R. (handwritten), to show that this was a very personal communication, from Oatley to McGuinness. R. is the initial that Sinn Fein/PIRA have removed from the bottom of the document below as it appears on their website.
Setting the Record Straight 2015, https://www.sinnfein.ie/contents/15216.
It is believed that The British included this communication by ‘mistake’ when Sir Patrick Mayhew, on Monday, 29 November, 1993, the British Minister with Chief responsibility for the Six Counties, lodged in the Library and Vote office at Westminster, what he claimed to be all messages "received and dispatched" in the course of the British government's protracted contact and dialogue with Sinn Fein/PIRA. His 'record' covered the period of 22nd February 1993 - 5th November 1993. He claimed this to be the totality of the period involved.
It is this combination of Martin McGuinness as an MI6 Agent (and an array of British Agents/informers/touts) at leadership level and the political ambitions of Gerry Adams that brings the British Security Services to focus their attentions on undermining the position of PIRA Chief of Staff, Kevin McKenna, who, while loyal to Adams post-Loughgall, was a militarist, who would not surrender easily.
It is for these reasons that 28 PIRA volunteers were killed by The SAS in East Tyrone between 1987 and 1992, these volunteers under the direct and personal leadership of Kevin McKenna. By 1992 Kevin McKenna was ineffective and that is exactly the way McGuinness and his Handlers wanted him. Intelligent strategists such as Jim Lynagh were replaced by donkeys.
Loughgall Informer
The leadership of Sinn Fein/PIRA in Monaghan have serious questions to answer as to why they allowed a fully-fledged RUC Informer back into the ranks of Sinn Fein/PIRA when he had served only a few months in Long Kesh for PIRA membership when he had admitted his role in two high profile murders. Owen Smyth (AKA Eoin Smyth) from Monaghan Town had been told in 1981 by PIRA Commander Jim Lynagh not to travel into the north, after members of The PIRA who had shot pensioner Norman Strong and his son James at Tynan Abbey were found by Gardai hiding in the basement of The Round House Bar in Monaghan Town which was owned by Owen Smyth’s Uncle Robert Loane but which was run and operated by Owen Smyth.
When Owen Smyth was arrested by The RUC Smyth began to talk immediately and named every member of Sinn Fein/PIRA in Monaghan and anything else that he could tell the RUC about Sinn Fein/PIRA in Monaghan. Owen Smyth would also tell a 17-year-old Vincent McKenna in Crumlin Road Jail that he had turned informer as he did not want to go to jail for the two killings, Owen Smyth also boasted that he and Jim Lynagh had planned the killings of Norman Strong and his son James.
Seamus Shannon would be extradited in 1984 based on information provided to The RUC by Owen Smyth. Why did the Command Staff of The PIRA in Monaghan allow Owen Smyth to return to a position within Sinn Fein/PIRA that gave him access to details of PIRA operations including Loughgall? In 1990 Owen Smyth again turned informer when arrested by Gardai in relation to a Human Bomb attack in Fermanagh, again, Smyth had the charges against him mysteriously dropped and he returned to the Sinn Fein/PIRA fold.
![]()
Owen Smyth also has questions to answer in relation to his close association with two sisters from Monaghan Town who were bringing UDR members into Monaghan Town periodically between 1994-1997. These two sisters would be seen drinking with the said UDR members in loyalist pubs in places such as Caledon in County Tyrone. On one occasion the two women and the UDR members were followed from Caledon to Monaghan Town.
These UDR members were being brought into Monaghan Town by the two women and the UDR men were using these visits as scouting missions for a UVF death squad who would later target Caoimhghín Ó’Caoláin in a bomb attack. Another UDR man would be found shot dead on the out skirts of Monaghan after the gun he was carrying went of as he was preparing to target a member of The PIRA.
All of these questions remain unanswered, and various suggestions have been put forward as to why The PIRA in Monaghan failed to establish the truth in these matters, one theory being that Smyth was being protected by a high-ranking informer on The PIRA Command Staff in Monaghan.
Loughgall Martyrs 35 Anniversary Ambush 1987
Loughgall is a picture-postcard village on the borders of Tyrone and County Armagh that with its neatly arranged window boxes and hanging baskets you would expect to win the best kept village competition year after year. Tourists come for the antique shops and cosy tea rooms that line its narrow main street. 31 years ago in 1987, other visitors came to Loughgall.
The quiet of a May evening on 8 May 1987 was shattered by the thunder of SAS guns as the Regiment (as it is known) ambushed and wiped out one of the most heavily armed and experienced Active Service Units (ASU) the Provisional IRA had ever assembled. It was known as the ‘A’ Team. Eight bodies in boiler suits, some with balaclavas, lay bloody and dead on the ground and in the back of the van in which they had been travelling.
The SAS had been lying in wait and had opened up with a barrage of over 200 rounds blasted from General Purpose Machine guns (GPMGs) and high-powered Heckler and Koch rifles. The SAS outnumbered and outgunned the IRA by three to one. The van was riddled like a sieve and its IRA passengers cut to pieces. It was the biggest loss the IRA had suffered since 1921 when a dozen of its men were wiped out by the notorious ‘Black and Tans’. Loughgall police station, a few hundred yards outside the village and the target of the IRA’s attack, was reduced to a twisted pile of concrete and rubble. The IRA just managed to detonate its 200lb bomb before the SAS opened up.
A few miles away in the ops room that was the nerve centre of the security forces’ Tasking and Co-Ordinating Group (TCG) from which the ambush had been directed, an SAS Commander, a Senior M15 Officer and two senior RUC Officers (both shot dead 1989, see, Smithwick Tribunal) anxiously gathered to hear the result of one of the most carefully planned M15, RUC and Army operations of the northern conflict. They gathered around an SAS officer who was in radio contact with the SAS commander on the ground, when the news came through, the SAS Officer turned to those gathered (TCG) and declared, “Total Wipe-out”.
To the British, the SAS had given the IRA a taste of its own medicine and to Ulster Unionists clambering for the army to take the gloves off, not before time. There was celebration in the TCG at the unprecedented spectacular and quiet contentment in the Northern Ireland Office. Its Permanent Under-Secretary at the time, Sir Robert Andrew, later said how he felt on hearing the news. ‘My personal reaction was really one of some satisfaction that we had ‘won one’ as it were. I think it demonstrated to the IRA that the other side could play it rough. I hope it sent a message that the British government was resolute and was going to fight them.’
Certainly the IRA had been playing it very rough. Only a fortnight earlier, it had assassinated Northern Ireland’s second most senior judge, Lord Justice Gibson and his wife with a 500lb bomb as they drove back across the border after a holiday away. The explosives had come from Libya. The judge had been a prime target ever since he had acquitted the police officers who shot dead Gervaise McKerr (whose case was also ruled on at Strasbourg) and two other IRA men during a car chase in 1982. He commended them for bringing the deceased to ‘the final court of justice’. None of them was armed at the time. The then Northern Ireland Secretary, Tom King said;
"We were conscious we were facing an enhanced threat and we took enhanced measures to meet it. The SAS was the cutting edge".
At the time of Loughgall, the IRA was brimful of confidence. It had recently had its bunkers filled almost to bursting with over 130 tons of heavy weaponry and high explosives smuggled into Ireland in four shipments courtesy of Mrs Thatcher’s sworn enemy, Colonel Gaddafi (murdered 2011) of Libya.
The depleted ranks of its leadership had also been strengthened by the IRA’s mass break-out from the Maze prison in 1983, many of whose senior gunmen were still on the run. One of them was Patrick McKearney (32) and shot dead at Loughgall.
Loughgall Martyr Jim Lynagh
It was known that IRA Commander, Jim Lynagh, had developed a new Maoist strategy of liberating Green Zones, zones that would be cleared of the British and their collaborators. The IRA began its new strategy in 1985 with a devastating mortar attack on the RUC station in the border town of Newry in which nine police officers died. It followed it up with a bomb and gun attack on Ballygawley police station that left two RUC men dead. In 1986, it launched a bomb attack on another police station, unmanned at the time, in the tiny village of the Birches along the shores of Lough Neagh in County Tyrone. Now a new delivery system had been used, a JCB digger with a 200lb bomb in the bucket. The digger smashed through the security fence, the bomb exploded and reduced the station to rubble. The attack on Loughgall was designed to be a carbon copy of the attack on the Birches. But this time British and Irish intelligence knew the IRA was coming and was across its plans.
The first indicator about the Loughgall operation came three weeks earlier from an RUC agent based in Monaghan Town, Patrick Kelly had travelled to Monaghan to meet Jim Lynagh, however, as often happened, Lynagh was not about, Patrick Kelly made the fatal mistake of making inquiries about Lynagh with Owen/Eoin Smyth, the Round House Bar, Church Square, Monaghan Town. Barely three weeks before Loughgall, five of the East Tyrone IRA had shot dead Harold Henry (52), a member of the Henry Brothers construction business that carried out repairs on security force bases. Just before midnight, the IRA took Mr Henry from his home, put him up against a wall and shot him dead with two rifles and a shotgun. He left a widow and six children. To the IRA he was a ‘legitimate target’, the first of more than twenty ‘collaborators’ to be ‘executed’ by the IRA for ‘assisting the British war machine.’ One of the weapons believed to have been used in the Henry killing was later retrieved at Loughgall.
On the basis of the information passed to the Garda Siochana (Irish Police) and RUC Special Branch by the IRA informer in Monaghan Town, a major security operation was put into action. Extra SAS Teams were brought into the north, within hours of arriving in the north, the SAS Teams were brought to the firing range beneath the RUC Forensic Lab in Belfast, were they test fired similar weapons to those that would be used by the IRA Team at Loughgall.
The SAS Team was briefed by Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and RUC Superintendent Robert Buchanan. This test firing would allow the SAS to distinguish between friendly and enemy fire on the night of the Loughgall executions. While the Monaghan Informer had given an indicator that a major operation was about to take place, the actual target was not immediately known, this would take a detailed mapping of a myriad of intelligence sources. The Monaghan Informer would contact his handler a couple of days before Loughgall to say that Jim Lynagh had moved to a safe house in Coalisland, County Tyrone.
There was other vital intelligence too from M15′s listening devices planted inside the homes of IRA suspects, usually put in place when they were away, or even when the homes of the more prominent ones were being built. As long as the batteries held out, these technical devices – or ‘bugs’ – could be monitored many miles away or their content down-loaded by helicopters flying over the premises where they were hidden. It’s likely too that the location where the explosives were stored for the Loughgall bomb were also under M15 technical surveillance. They were probably also under human ‘eyes-on’ observation by operators of the army’s top-secret undercover unit, 14 Intelligence Company (known colloquially as the ‘Det’) and the RUC’s equivalent covert unit, E4A. ‘E’ is the code for the RUC’s Special Branch.
The security force operation was put in place on Thursday 7 May, the day before the IRA’s planned assault. Three Special Branch officers from the RUC’s specialist anti-terrorist unit volunteered to remain inside the normally sleepy station as decoys to give the appearance of normality whilst the IRA did its ‘recce’. ‘Matt’, a veteran of such covert operations, was one of them. They entered the station with some of the SAS troopers as darkness fell on the Thursday night. They made sandwiches and cracked jokes to lighten the tedium of waiting and perhaps to calm the nerves.
The joint leaders of the ASU was Patrick Kelly (30), an experienced IRA commander whose sister, supported by the other relatives, was a prime mover in bringing the Loughgall cases before the European Court. Kelly had been arrested in 1982 and charged with terrorist offences on the word of a ‘Super-grass’ but was subsequently released as the testimony lacked corroboration. Jim Lynagh was the second Commander and was the man most sought after by the British and Irish security services. Among the younger members of the ASU were four young friends from the village of Cappagh who had joined the IRA after the death of one of their village friend, Martin Hurson, on hunger strike in 1981. One of them, Declan Arthurs (21), was to drive the JCB with a 200lb bomb in the bucket – just like the Birches.
Throughout the long hours of Friday, the maze of country lanes around Loughgall police station were watched and patrolled by ‘Det’ operators on the look-out for the ‘A Team’. One of them was a young women called ‘Anna’ who was driving around the area with her ‘Det’ partner as part of the surveillance cordon. Suddenly they spotted a blue Toyota Hiace van. At first they thought it was simply stuck behind a slow-moving vehicle but when they realised it was a JCB, they immediately put Ballygawley and the Birches together. ‘You suddenly realize it’s the MO (modus operandi) used by the East Tyrone Brigade,’ she said. ‘It was like a replay. But this time we were on top of it and we knew what was happening. So we passed on the information to the TCG and pulled off.’ The Chief Constable of the time, Sir John Hermon, said the IRA ASU could not have been arrested. He said it was never a realistic option since the IRA would be unlikely to come out with their hands up and police officers lives would therefore be at grave risk.
At 7.15 pm as dusk gathered, the JCB with Declan Arthurs at the wheel and the bomb raised high in the bucket, trundled past the police station with the blue Toyota van in attendance. Both then turned and headed back in the direction whence they had come. Suddenly, the JCB roared into life, headed for the perimeter fence and crashed through it. Almost simultaneously, the van drew up outside, disgorging Patrick Kelly and other members of the ASU who sprayed the station with their assault rifles. The SAS almost certainly opened up the moment Kelly started firing. Everything seemed to happen at once in a deafening crescendo of noise. Inside the station, ‘Matt’ (Special Branch), who was by the front window, was only about ten metres from the JCB when it came to a halt right before his eyes. He turned and ran to the back with one word on his mind. Bomb! ‘I thought of the Birches and Ballygawley and the next minute there was an almighty bang. I was hit in the face, knocked to the ground and buried. I thought “I’m dead”, simple as that!’ Miraculously ‘Matt’ survived although buried in the rubble ‘inhaling dust and darkness.’ The ‘A’ Team did not. ‘Declan was mowed down. He could have been taken prisoner,’ his mother, Amelia Arthurs, said. ‘The SAS never gave them a chance.’ The photographs taken at the scene are gruesome. The van in which the IRA volunteers had travelled was ripped open by part of the shrapnel from the digger bucket when it exploded, this is new information.
‘Matt’ felt no sympathy for the bullet-riddled bodies on the ground outside the station and in the back of the van. ‘They were there to kill us,’ he said. ‘These guys were responsible for lots and lots of deaths in that area and other parts of the province. Dead terrorists are better than dead policemen.’ Forensic tests carried out on the IRA weapons retrieved at the scene were linked to eight killings and thirty-three shootings.
The area around the police station had not been cordoned off since to have done so would have risked making the IRA suspicious and wary of the carefully laid ambush. As a result, two brothers returning home from work, were shot by the SAS. The security personnel who lay on the outer core of the ambush had been ordered to kill everyone within the kill zone. Perhaps the soldiers thought they were part of the ASU or mistook their white Citroen for an IRA ‘scout’ car, maybe because one of the occupants was wearing a boiler suit. The brothers had been working on a car. The SAS fired forty rounds at the vehicle, killing Anthony Hughes (36) and seriously wounding his brother Oliver who was scarred for life. He said no warning was given. The RUC’s Chief Constable, Sir Jack Herman, described the attack on the two innocent men as ‘an unspeakable tragedy’ and blamed the IRA, not planning and operational shortcomings, for his death.
When ‘Anna’, her ‘Det’ colleagues and the SAS returned to base, there were great celebrations. ‘There was a huge party and it probably went on for 24 hours,’ she said. ‘A lot of beer was drunk. We were jubilant. We thought it was a job well done. It sent shock waves through the terrorist world that we were back on top.’ She said of the dead IRA men. ‘They’re all volunteers and actively engaged against the British army. They’re ‘at war’ as they would describe it. My attitude is that if you live by the sword, you die by the sword. We were just happy at the end of the day to be alive ourselves.’
Some new information is contained in this article, it is certain that the first indicator for the Loughgall operation came from an RUC Special Branch Informer in Monaghan Town. This informer also contacted the RUC to let them know that Jim Lynagh had moved to a safe house in Coalisland just before the Loughgall operation. Once the security services had their first indicator of a major IRA operation, M15 and the RUC had to simply correlate their myriad of intelligence to match the A Team with their target. At the same time that M15 and the SAS were focused on the East Tyrone IRA, M16 were working closely with Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams and had adopted a hands-off approach to the IRA in Derry and Belfast.
There is no question that the relationship between Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and The British Secret Service lead to the SAS executions at Loughgall, the British wanted to undermine PIRA Chief of Staff, Kevin McKenna, McKenna wanted to take the war to the British and their collaborators and he viewed politics as nothing more than a public relations exercise that could provide cover for the real business of The PIRA, which was to drive the British apparatus out of Ireland. Adams and McGuinness had already sold out, and even at the graveside of Jim Lynagh, Adams would spout his lies when he said, “Anyone who does business with The British, The Freestate establishment or The SDLP are fools for they have all sold out on the Irish people”, Adams said these weasel words while he was already in bed with all of the above.
Sinn Fein/PIRA can get as many illiterates fools as they like to make videos for YouTube stating that Lynagh and Kelly would have supported Sinn Fein/PIRA’s British inspired ‘peace-strategy’, however, anyone one who was on the same intellectual level as Jim Lynagh would know well that Adams, McGuinness and their ‘peace strategy’ is nothing more than a British inspired surrender of Irish Republicanism.
Enniskillen Bomb 1987
The Enniskillen Bomb on Remembrance Day/Poppy Day 8th November, 1987, has been well covered by journalists, and the grievous stories of those families who lost loved ones, and the dozens of people injured. I thank God that some years later I had the privilege to meet Gordon Wilson, whose daughter Marie was murdered on that grievous day.
I was a member of Sinn Fein/PIRA in Monaghan Town in 1987 and I would like to offer a view from within Sinn Fein/PIRA at that time.
Jim Lynagh and I
I had many roles within Sinn Fein/PIRA, and that probably explains the great lengths that some have went to over decades to try and silence me. Two days before Jim Lynagh was shot dead by The SAS at Loughgall, I spoke to him at Dublin Street in Monaghan Town. Our meeting was being observed by two Garda Special Branch Officers sitting outside Jim Lynagh’s flat at the bottom of Dublin Street, a flat Jim shared with fellow Sinn Fein/PIRA operative John ‘Dinger’ Bell.
Christmas Card from Jim Lynagh 1985 to this writer
At this point in 1987 my job was gathering and corelating intelligence for Sinn Fein/PIRA, however, Lynagh wanted me to start planting under-car booby traps. Not only did he want me to plant them, but he wanted me to construct them. I was to construct the booby-trap bombs by getting the component parts across the border, assembling them, and then, on Command planting them.
As Jim and I stood chatting on Dublin Street in May 1987, Jim explained that the Semtex that had been supplied to Sinn Fein/PIRA by Libya smelled like marzipan, I think that was the first time I had heard about marzipan. Jim said that I would be taking a couple of ounces of Semtex into Tyrone at any given time. The Semtex would be wrapped in cling-film, and I would place it in my under-pants (that is a diplomatic description of what he said) and simply walk through the British Army Check-point.
As implausible as this might sound, I was already in position, by training with a local GAA Team in Tyrone and walking in and out through the British Army check-point with regularity. To the point that the British Army did not bother searching me, I was polite to the Soldiers at the check-point and they simply let me go through without any problem.
A couple of days later Lynagh was dead, and while I remained within Sinn Fein/PIRA, I never heard another word about booby-traps, I was then under the command of another member of East Tyrone PIRA and Intelligence was my core role. In fact, my new PIRA commander said:
“We have enough killers, we need good intelligence”.
Semtex from Libya
Libya had resumed its aid to the Provisional IRA and had provided $2 million to Sinn Fein in the Irish Republic (Irish Times, 18 and 19 June 1986).
In an interview on RTE TV on 28 October, Colonel Qadhafi said that Libya should be thanked for its position on Ireland: "If I was leader of the south of Ireland, I would consider that the north was colonised and fight to liberate that part of the country".
British Press reported that two senior Sinn Fein officials (Ted and Joe) had visited Libya in April for a ceremony to mark the American raids on Libya which was addressed by Colonel Qadhafi's teenage son, Sadi, and that Colonel Qadhafi had supplied the IRA with large quantities of plastic explosives.
Mr Collins, told the Dail on 10 November that the Irish police were urgently examining reports that two landings of arms had been made in 1985 and two in 1986, all arranged by the IRA. He said later on RTE that there was "reason to worry" (Irish Press, 11 November 1987).
Anonymous letter claimed British knew of Enniskillen bomb plans?
In the 1987, General Election, held on 17th February, in the Irish Republic, Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin was the candidate in the Cavan/Monaghan constituency. Owen Smyth was in charge of Public Relations for Sinn Fein/PIRA in the Monaghan Electoral area, as he had been for the 1985 Local Government Elections, in which he was also a candidate.
In the aftermath of the Enniskillen Bombing, it was Owen Smyth who wrote an anonymous letter to then Minister for Foreign Affairs, Brian Lenihan TD, claiming that he was an MI5 Officer who had prior knowledge of the Enniskillen Bomb. Smyth never made any secret of the under-hand things that he engaged in. Smyth had sent the letter to Muddy the Waters.
It is highly unlikely that the British had any prior knowledge of Enniskillen, as the operation was planned in Monaghan by a very tight circle of people and the operational detail would not have been known, even to some of those who offered support services. There would have been no need for anyone to change the timing on the bomb, as it was always meant to Murder civilians.
State papers: Self-proclaimed operative sent Brian Lenihan letter six days after IRA bomb killed 12
An anonymous letter-writer to the Irish government 30 years ago claimed that British intelligence knew in advance about the Enniskillen bombing but chose to do nothing about it as they believed it would create a “massive backlash”.
The Enniskillen bombing on Remembrance Sunday, November 8th, 1987, was one of the worst atrocities of the Troubles. Twelve people were killed when an IRA bomb blew out the walls of a building beside the cenotaph in the town, burying dozens of spectators in rubble.
Six days after the bombing, an anonymous, typed letter was sent to then Tánaiste and minister for foreign affairs, Brian Lenihan. It has now been released as part of the 1988 State papers.
The letter was sent by a man who claimed that he was so scared that he drove across the Border to post it.
He claimed that he was an MI5 agent operating in Northern Ireland for 18 months and that he worked in the special section which was set up to infiltrate paramilitary organisations.
Remembrance Day parade
He listed ways in which British intelligence sought to target republican paramilitaries including the manipulation of Dessie “The Border Fox” O’Hare, “a psychopath”, through his wife.
He went on to state that his section of MI5 knew in advance of plans to bomb the Remembrance Day parade in Enniskillen.
British intelligence knew when and where the IRA gang were going to plant the bomb, its size and technical make-up, he claimed.
“Our section decided to change the timing device and let the explosion take place so that the IRA would score an own goal and create a massive backlash against itself,” he wrote.
“Our section also calculated that in the climate of a backlash against the IRA all kinds of security measures could be implemented including extradition.”
The self-proclaimed operative also suggested that MI6’s involvement in the Dublin and Monaghan bombings had been “well-established” in MI5.
“If I had more courage, I would come out openly and prove with more what I am now saying,” he wrote.
The anonymous letter generated only one piece of correspondence in the files. It was from an official in the Department of Foreign Affairs to an official in the Department of Justice.
It noted that the letter was sent in an envelope to the Tánaiste but was addressed to “Dear sir or madam”. The official suggested that perhaps the letter was meant for a wider circulation including the press.
Other Top Stories
The Enniskillen Bomb Why and Who
The Enniskillen Bomb was planned in Monaghan Town and the Commanding Officer of The PIRA Unit that carried out that attack was from Monaghan Town.
Sir Jeffrey Donaldson MP, told The House of Commons that he was satisfied that Charlie Caufield was the PIRA member responsible for the Enniskillen Bomb.
Seamus McElwaine's funeral 1986. Front left, Charlie Caufield, front right Sean Tierney (arrested by RUC with this author 1986), Gerry Adams (Army Council) far right, Jim Lynagh (balaclava rolled up as monkey hat).
Following the shooting dead of Seamus McElwaine in Fermanagh in 1986, Charlie Caufield from Monaghan Town was appointed OC South Fermanagh, to replace Seamus McElwaine who had been OC (Officer Commanding) of South Fermanagh Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army. Sean Lynch who was with McElwaine on the night that he was killed survived.
To be fair to Charlie Caulfield, I found him to be a sober, intelligent and committed member of The PIRA. Charlie was a close friend of Seamus McElwaine who was shot dead in Fermanagh in 1986, Seamus McElwaine would have sought no apology from The SAS for the manner in which he died.
On the 8th May 1987, Charlie Caufield lost another life long friend Jim Lynagh, who was the Commanding Officer of the 8-man PIRA Unit wiped out by The SAS at Loughgall, again Lynagh would have sought no apology from The SAS for the manner in which he was killed. Lynagh was ruthless and had emptied 6 rounds into a Protestant man in Tynan in 1980 while that man lay injured on the ground. In 1981 Lynagh would murder Sir Norman Stronge in cold blood. Lynagh had many sectarian kills under his belt.
Loughgall Martyrs and the Pressure to Retaliate
Following the killing of 8 PIRA operatives at Loughgall on the 8th May 1987, by The SAS, the PIRA leadership in Monaghan was under pressure, not personnel pressure as the recruits just kept coming, but leadership pressure. Kevin McKenna who was PIRA Chief of Staff from 1983-1997, was constantly watching over his shoulder as Martin McGuinness tried to get his old job back as Chief of Staff.
History now tells us that McGuinness was an MI6 Agent from 1986 and his enthusiasm at this point in 1986 to retake his title as Chief of Staff is probably explained by the fact that MI6 wanted him back at the top.
As we waited at the County Monaghan side of the Moy Bridge near Aughnacloy, County Tyrone, in 1987, for Jim Lynagh’s body to be returned by The RUC, there was real anger in the crowd gathered.
Senior members of Sinn Fein/PIRA had gathered at the Moy Bridge and there was already talk about retaliation for Loughgall. Senior members of Sinn Fein/PIRA such as J.B. O’Hagan (OTR Lurgan) and John Joe McGirl (Leitrim) talked in quiet whispers, that what ever was going to happen it had to send shock waves through the Protestant population of Northern Ireland.
Choosing the target that would be Enniskillen
The PIRA in Monaghan under the leadership of Kevin McKenna talked more often about “Orange Bastards” (slang term for Protestants) and “Black Bastards” (slang term for Protestants) than they ever did about “Brits” and so forth. By the mid-1980s the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership were satisfied that The British Government would do business with Sinn Fein/PIRA and it was Protestants that were the obstacle to their demands for British withdrawal.
In 1986 Martin McGuinness had delivered a message to Kevin McKenna from Northern Command in Belfast, sanctioning a campaign of ‘Ethnic Cleansing’. Retaliation for Loughgall would be sectarian, yet it would have to be given ‘Political camouflage’. This meant that just as The British Army followed ‘The Yellow Card Rule’, Sinn Fein/PIRA would follow The Green Book Rule:
“Get your defensive right, before your offensive”.
What this Green Book Rule means is that you have a cover story for your actions, for example, many victims of Sinn Fein/PIRA rapists were subject to various Human Rights abuses to ensure their silence, in some cases murder. Sinn Fein/PIRA would let it be known in the community that such a young person was ‘anti-social’ or whatever before shooting, beating or on occasion murdering them.
Retaliation for Loughgall was going to be sectarian, but there had to be a political cover story. Remember back in 1987 there was no Google, all Intelligence had to be gathered manually. In 1987, newspapers from previous years and from a number of areas were sourced, including Enniskillen, to establish who would normally be standing where, on Remembrance Day. These newspaper photographs would be the core sources of information to determine where to plant the bombs. There was no eyes-on intelligence as neither civilian Catholics nor Sinn Fein/PIRA would be out and about when Remembrance Day was held in Enniskillen.
Enniskillen was chosen as it was an historic town that had been used as a garrison by the English and was viewed in 1987 by Sinn Fein/PIRA as a Protestant town. An attack on the Protestants of Enniskillen would fit in well with the newly sanctioned campaign of ‘Ethnic Cleansing’.
Sinn Fein/PIRA would offer up many lies to a sometimes too willing to write media in relation to the Enniskillen atrocity and other atrocities. Sinn Fein/PIRA would whisper that Enniskillen was retaliation for The RUC attacking Sinn Fein/PIRA memorials, for example, a week before the bombing, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) clashed with mourners at the funeral of IRA volunteers Eddie McSheffrey and Paddy Deery. However, nobody with any credible understanding of the logistics for bombing Enniskillen would believe that the operation was thrown together in a week.
While many would argue that Sinn Fein/PIRA had operated a campaign of ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ from their foundation in 1969-70 and evidence could be found to support this view, an actual plan for ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ was not sanctioned until 1986. This newly sanctioned plan would mean targeting non-military targets such as Enniskillen, while ensuring that there was a political cover story. Sinn Fein/PIRA had political ambitions and that meant keeping the campaign presented as one of David (Sinn Fein/PIRA) facing up to Goliath (The British).
The PIRA would murder a Protestant and Sinn Fein/PIRA would issue a statement of apology through P. O’Neil saying that they believed the Protestant murdered was a member of the security forces, when they knew that he/she was not. This was psychological as well as physical terrorism, especially in remote rural locations. Kevin McKenna and those around him wanted to do what McKenna's ancestors had done to Protestants in 1641, kill them in large numbers and drive them out.
Kevin McKenna making the final decision
The final decision to bomb Enniskillen was with Kevin McKenna, although many wanted in on the attack. Kevin McKenna, J.B. O’Hagan, Thomas ‘Slab’ Murphy, Michael McKevitt, Brendan McKenna, John Joe McGirl, were all at Command level that took the final decision to bomb Enniskillen.
Charlie Caulfield would be OC for the operation although there would be many PIRA members involved in the two-bomb plan.
John Joe McGirl had trusted PIRA men under him in Ballinamore, County Leitrim and they would prepare the bombs to be used under the supervision of Charlie Caufield, who was himself a bomb maker. The Enniskillen bomb, 40lb of explosives, planted close to the cenotaph would be left on the night of the 7th November, 1987. The bomb was planted at the gable wall inside Enniskillen’s Reading Rooms and set to explode at 10.43am just as the largest number of people would be in the vicinity of the bomb.
The bomb was intended to kill Protestant civilians in large numbers anyone who thinks differently did not know Sinn Fein/PIRA in Monaghan and they certainly did not know Kevin McKenna. This intention to maximise the number of Protestants to be murdered was best summed up by, RUC Detective Chief Superintendent Norman Baxter when he said:
"Their intention was to inflict casualties. The only mistake in the operation was that the bomb went off before the parade arrived".
If military personnel were killed, they would be the collateral damage not the civilians. The second bomb in the joint operation, a 150-pound (68 kg) bomb in Tullyhommon failed to explode and would again have killed many innocent civilians.
As news broke about The Enniskillen Bomb on the morning of the 8th of November, 1987, I made my way to 21 Dublin Street in Monaghan Town which was/is the Sinn Fein/PIRA Office and shop. I meet with one of the most senior members of Sinn Fein/PIRA, who was the messenger between Kevin McKenna and Northern Command at that time. This senior Sinn Fein/PIRA member was distressed about the Enniskillen Bomb, not because of the numbers of casualties that grew with every news report, but in his words:
“Charlie has not reported back”
This author, “Charlie Caufield?”
“Yes, he has not reported back, he could be one of the casualties, we don’t know”.
Remember back then there was no mobile phones, and the majority of contact in such circumstances was person to person. Whatever about the political fall-out for Sinn Fein/PIRA in the weeks and months following, there was celebration in Sinn Fein/PIRA pubs in Monaghan that day, both pubs belonging to members of Sinn Fein/PIRA.
There is a strong possibility that Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness did not have prior warning about the Enniskillen attack and only reluctantly came on board in the aftermath in order to keep Kevin McKenna on board. For Kevin McKenna and many others, it was a glorious kill and the campaign of ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ would continue.
Although it was never officially admitted, Gardai did detect suspicious activity and arrested a number of suspected IRA men in Monaghan on the morning the IRA bombed the Remembrance Day ceremony in Enniskillen.
Three Co Tyrone men on the run from the RUC and living in Monaghan were stopped in a car in Monaghan hours before the explosion.
The woman believed to be the joint-leader of the South Fermanagh Brigade of the IRA was also understood to have arrived in Monaghan that morning. Gardai regarded the activity as suspicious but thought little more of it until later in the morning when the reports of the Enniskillen bombing arrived.
The men detained in the car and a number of others were questioned and forensic tests taken but no evidence of any kind was found to connect them with the bombing, according to officers.
However, intelligence reports later indicated that it was almost certain that the eight IRA suspects whose movements were detected in Monaghan that morning were involved in the bombing.
Gardai and RUC believe the bombing operation was led by the woman, and that she was in the group that had driven west from Enniskillen after they had finished planting the bomb in the building owned by the Catholic Church beside the Cenotaph at around 10.43 a.m. on Remembrance Sunday.
The woman, although still only in her 20s, was known as an extremely hard-line figure who had risen rapidly through the local IRA ranks. She was said by officers to have engaged in the torture of at least one IRA man suspected of passing information to Gardai in Monaghan.
Importantly, she and the man, Charlie Caufield, her co-leader of the bombing operation were close to the IRA's Chief-of-Staff, Kevin McKenna, a County Tyrone man living in Smithborough.
Intelligence appraisals of the Remembrance Sunday bombing put it in the context of a decade and-a-half of assassinations of Protestants/security personnel along the Border by the IRA's Border brigades. In the late 1980s IRA tactics had grown to include coordinated "spectaculars", such as double or treble bomb attacks in different locations.
At the same time as the Enniskillen bomb was detonated, the west Fermanagh IRA was unsuccessfully trying to detonate at second 400lb landmine at the site of the Remembrance Day ceremony in the village of Tullyhomond, just across the Border from Pettigo in Co Donegal. This event was attended by more than 100 members of the Boys and Girls Brigade, the Protestant equivalents of the Catholic scouts and girl guides.
If this bomb had exploded it would have caused even worse carnage than the one at Enniskillen. Forensic examination of the device showed that it was wrongly wired. It was never ascertained if this was done intentionally or accidentally by the west Fermanagh bombers, who must have been aware of the likely outcome of their bomb.
The Tullyhomond bomb was connected to a command wire running across the Border into Donegal. However, the Enniskillen bomb was detonated by a timer. This meant that the Enniskillen bombers knew they would have no sight of the likely target and could only surmise what the impact of the bomb would be.
A report in The Irish Times about a week after the Enniskillen bombing, that the device was detonated by a timer, was denied privately to other journalists by a senior Sinn Fein figure who acted as an unofficial IRA source to the media. However, British army ordnance officers were able to reconstruct part of the timer, a device commonly used in IRA bombs.
In its only official comment about the bombing, the IRA said it had been a "mistake". The truth was that it had been a success in Provisional IRA terms, it had struck back at the Protestant community for the deaths of eight SF/PIRA members at Loughgall, and was celebrated as such in two pubs in Monaghan Town owned by two members of SF/PIRA. The Enniskillen Massacre brought much needed cohesion within the ranks of the ‘Border’ IRA Brigades.
The event drew international opprobrium down on the IRA and the visit to the injured by Diana, Princess of Wales, and Prince Charles drew international media attention to the event. Privately, republican sources admitted that it had virtually reversed the positive international image the organisation had built up at the time of the hunger-strikes.
The woman who led the bombing team with Charlie Caufield is in the US, where she has raised a family.
The Impact of SAS Operations on the PIRA Leadership 1988
While The PIRA in Monaghan/East Tyrone were able to continue to carryout operations and new recruits filled the ranks following each attack by The SAS, the psychological impact on The PIRA could not be underestimated.
Following Loughgall, few members of The PIRA were putting themselves forward for operations, by 1991, this demoralisation had reached breaking point, and is highlighted by the fact that Pete Ryan and Laurence McNally had to ask a civilian to drive them to their final destination, where they were picked up by Tony Doris, and then all three meet with their deaths at the hands of The SAS.
In 1986 when Seamus McElwaine was shot dead by the SAS, we within the ranks of Sinn Fein/PIRA in Monaghan were told that it was bad luck, nothing more, no need to take it beyond that, bad luck.
Jim Lynagh with back to camera, OC at McElwaine's funeral 1986, John 'Dinger' Bell with poorly fitted balaclava.
In 1987 when the most senior member of The PIRA ever killed by British Security forces, Jim Lynagh was shot dead at Loughgall (Operation Judy) with seven other members of The PIRA, those who set them up, had their story ready for the fools within the ranks of Sinn Fein/PIRA in Monaghan Town.
The morning after Loughgall I walked into Monaghan Town with a member of East Tyrone PIRA who was On-The-Run and living in Monaghan.
Jim Lynagh's funeral passing through Emyvale, John 'Dinger' Bell acting OC, balaclava fitting better.
Normally when an operation appeared to have gone wrong, we would gather at The Sinn Fein/PIRA Office, 21 Dublin Street, Monaghan Town, to try and get the most up to date news. As I walked down Dublin Street with my East Tyrone PIRA associate, we decided to go into The Shamrock Bar that was owned by another member of East Tyrone PIRA and who was On-the-Run.
When we entered the bar, the story had already been told:
“The SAS were lying around all the remote RUC stations; it was just bad luck”
This explanation for the wipe-out of a PIRA Unit that included Jim Lynagh and Paddy Kelly, was not credible, but I said nothing, that was always the smart thing to do, let the smart boys think you believed them. The person who offered this explanation for the slaughter at Loughgall was simply a messenger, feed a line by an Informer.
Following Loughgall, there was anger in Monaghan, Jim Lynagh had been a Sinn Fein Councilor and was popular among the most fearsome killers and young people alike. Jim had made enemies among older members of Sinn Fein/PIRA, Jim wanted to push boundaries, challenge the established protocols, bring the war to the British and the Protestants who supported them.
Kevin McKenna was The PIRA Chief of Staff and had been based in Monaghan from the early 1970s, Kevin was a sectarian bigot who simply enjoyed Murdering Protestants, but he was smart enough to know, that American money would dry up very quickly if the Sinn Fein/PIRA campaign was viewed as being purely sectarian.
Following Loughgall, Kevin McKenna was under extreme pressure to reassert his authority, Kevin knew that Martin McGuinness was breathing down his neck as McGuinness tried to retake his position as Chief of Staff. Kevin McKenna had meet McGuinness while both were imprisoned in The Irish Republic in the 1970s, McKenna while initially fond of McGuinness, eventually became suspicious of McGuinness.
This suspicion of McGuinness was heightened in 1986, McGuinness had arrived in Smithborough in County Monaghan, where Kevin McKenna lived and was On-the-Run. McGuinness had brought welcome news, an Official Policy of Ethnic Cleansing had been sanctioned by Provisional IRA Northern Command.
When Martin McGuinness left this meeting with Kevin McKenna, McGuiness was arrested by Garda Special Branch Officers in Monaghan. However, much to the disappointment of Gardai in Monaghan word was sent down from Garda Headquarters that McGuinness was to be released without charge. MI6 Officer, Michael Oatley had contacted the Head of Garda Special Brach in Dublin to ask that McGuinness be relased.
Neither, An Garda Siochana nor Garda Special Branch would have been aware at that time that Kevin McKenna had a small number of Garda Officers providing him with information. However, Kevin McKenna could simply take the information provided with a cautionary, as there was always the possibility that Special Branch did know McKenna would be told about MI6, be it true or not.
McGuinness’s claim to have quit the PIRA in 1974 was “disingenuous”. Brendan Duddy who was a Derry based businessman and the UK Government’s ‘secret liaison’ with the PIRA, who also died in 2017, believed McGuinness to be an “aggressive militarist” and a “Little Hitler”, who wanted supreme, island-wide control.
Rumors began in Monaghan/East Tyrone that Gerry Adams had set up the PIRA at Loughgall, however, anyone with any knowledge of how The PIRA operated in Monaghan/East Tyrone at that time, would know that Adams would not have had any prior-operational knowledge of Loughgall.
In November 1987, Enniskillen was chosen as a deliberate act of sectarian retaliation for Loughgall, Kevin McKenna wanted to send a very clear message to Protestants that they would not dance on the graves of PIRA Volunteers.
After Loughgall, Monaghan/East Tyrone PIRA were in disarray, the lie about ‘bad luck’ had run out, and a search was launched within Sinn Fein/PIRA for a well-placed Informer.
That internal investigation was assisted by Gerard Harte who spoke to some of those associated with The Loughgall operation. However, the internal Loughgall investigation came to a halt when Gerard and Martin Harte died along with Brian Mullin when the SAS ambushed them near Drumnakilly in 1988.
Once the Harte Brothers and Brian Mullin were shot dead by the SAS, Loughgall was basically written into history, it was time to move on. While it has been stated by Dark-Forces that Tony Gormally was an RUC Informer, he was not, in later years, and by pure chance I meet RUC men from that area, and they told me clearly that nobody who died at Loughgall was an informer. Furthermore, Sir John Hermon told me personally that no informer died at Loughgall.
Kevin McKenna was on thin ice and he knew it, the continued deaths of PIRA Volunteers under his command, the growing number of compromised operations was not going unquestioned in Belfast and Derry.
Before Jim Lynagh was killed at Loughgall, information had been brought to Monaghan identifying Buses carrying British Troops in the Ballygawley area of Tyrone, the SF/PIRA member who brought this information to Lynagh was an elected Sinn Fein member, in the aftermath of Enniskillen this information about British soldiers was an opportunity to bury the memory of the sectarian murder in Enniskillen.
In August, 1988, eight soldiers died near Ballygawley when the Provisional IRA detonated a large roadside Semtex bomb.
Kevin McKenna was now hungry to keep the slaughter going, Kevin wanted a spectacular, a big kill, that would finally stamp his authority on The PIRA Leadership. The kill was going to have to out do Martin McGuinness who had murdered 19 British soldiers in 1979 when he was Chief of Staff.
Kevin McKenna decided to hit a target close to home, a place he knew well, the Spectacular, that PIRA Chief of Staff, Kevin McKenna, had planned to hit, was expected to result in the Murder of 40-60 British Military personnel.
The target was to be the British Army/UDR base in Aughnacloy, County Tyrone. The key problem for such an attack was that the base was set in the middle of an exclusively Protestant area. No Sinn Fein/PIRA member could be seen close to the base or suspicions would have been raised and arrests made.
C-Bty 3rd Royal Horse Artillery Regiment
Kevin McKenna, had one person he believed he could trust with the task of measuring up the base for a mortar attack, and the same person would keep his mouth shut if arrested. Kevin McKenna did not ask his cousin directly; he sent another member of East Tyrone PIRA to ask his cousin to set-up the British Army base for an attack.
Kevin McKenna’s cousin agreed to set-up the British Army base for a Mortar attack. Kevin McKenna’s cousin arrived in Aughnacloy with the task of going into a Protestant area to measure the British Army base. As so often happened, solutions presented themselves.
Kevin McKenna’s cousin was walking down Moore Street in Aughnacloy when a young relative mentioned the Wilfred Clarke who owned the min-market on Moore Street was building a new house on the Benburb Road. Kevin’s’ inquisitive cousin asked his young relative if she would show him the house as he would like to see it. This would be the cover story if stopped by The RUC.
Kevin’s cousin and his young relative walked down past the front of the British Army base, across the Dungannon Road and up the Benburb Road. All the time, Kevin McKenna’s cousin was counting his steps, the number of steps from the front gate of the British Army base to a good firing point on the Benburb Road.
This process of measuring was repeated on the return walk back to Sydney Lane. The inside of the British Army base was known to Kevin McKenna’s cousin, as he had played inside the base when he was a child, often being allowed to climb into the helicopters that had landed.
Kevin McKenna’s cousin continued to work on the plan to set-up the British Army base as he visited his native Aughnacloy on several more occasions. Only three members of Sinn Fein/PIRA knew about the developing plan to carryout a Mortar attack on the British Army base, Kevin McKenna who was Chief of Staff, his cousin and another member of East Tyrone PIRA who was On-the-Run in Monaghan at that time.
If information leaked about this operation, at this planning stage, it would not be difficult to find the leak. Any PIRA who was arrested were always debriefed by Sinn Fein/PIRA after their release, so ears were listening for anything that could indicate that the British had any idea about the plan to target the British Army base in Aughnacloy.
When Kevin McKenna’s cousin finally delivered his plans for the mortar attack on the British Army base to his East Tyrone PIRA contact, that contact was amazed at the amount of time and detail that had been put into the plans.
The plans had not simply been drawn out in detail on the back of a roll of wall paper, but Kevin McKenna’s cousin had created a 3-D type model of the plan using various items including the houses and hotels from the board game Monopoly.
However, with all of the careful planning, Kevin McKenna’s cousin said he had a problem with the measurements that he had stepped out, he was unsure if the steps were accurate enough. The East Tyrone member said he would report back the concerns raised and see.
The plan was simple, if the measurements could be confirmed. The Mortars would come towards Aughnacloy from Blackwater Town, a PIRA Unit directed by a well-known PIRA member. The Mortars would be parked in front of a house on the Benburb Road belonging to a family called McMasters.
The Mortars were to be directed to the top of a tree that stood to the back of a small red tin house on the Dungannon Road, that was directly in front of the radio mast within the base, the mortars would be fired and expected to land to the base of the radio mast and in that general area, and take out the accommodation blocks which accommodated large numbers of soldiers.
C-Bty 3rd Royal Horse Artillery Regiment
Similar attacks had been successful in Newry and so forth over previous years, resulting in large numbers of deaths.
Kevin McKenna had previously sent a Human Bomb into The British Army base in Aughnacloy. Kevin McKenna had led a PIRA Unit across the River Blackwater armed with rifles and a 500LB bomb, packed into creamery cans. The PIRA gang made their way to the home of Mrs Norman Wilson, an elderly widowed lady who lived on the family pig farm outside Aughnacloy on the Caledon Road.
When the PIRA gang arrived in the yard of Wilsons pig farm, they held everyone in the house hostage, including Robert John McCready who owned a furniture factory in Emyvale, County Monaghan and who employed a Catholic workforce. Mrs Wilson was held at gun-point and her son Norman Wilson was ordered to drive the 500LB bomb to the British Army base.
The 500LB bomb exploded and caused wide-spread damage to the British Army base but also dozens of houses which were mainly occupied by Protestants, a fact that would not have escaped Kevin McKenna. Norman Wilson and the British Army on duty survived.
The accommodation Blocks inside British Army base Aughnacloy
Had this planned attack on Aughnacloy succeeded, it would certainly have placed Kevin McKenna in a very strong position, and it is unlikely that any talk of a 'cease-fire' or 'peace-talks' would have been entertained for at least another decade.
By 1992, Kevin McKenna's Leadership was finished in real terms, he was simply stumbling along, and so in 1992, Kevin McKenna went for another purely sectarian Mass Murder which resulted in the Murder of eight Protestant workmen at Teebane in County Tyrone. This slaughter fitted in with the Official Policy of Ethnic Cleansing sanctioned by McGuinness and Northern Command in 1986.
The Compromise
The East Tyrone member, to whom Kevin McKenna’s cousin was answerable, was keen to prove that he could do as good a job as Jim Lynagh, and so he involved another person in the planned Mortar attack.
The East Tyrone PIRA member asked a person based in Tyrone to source old maps of The Clogher Valley Railway Line, as the British Army Base was built where the old Railway Station was located.
Using the maps, the East Tyrone PIRA member, was able to confirm to Kevin McKenna’s cousin that his measurements were in fact very accurate
It was this search for the old Railway Maps that alerted the RUC to the plan to Mortar the British Army/UDR base, when the PIRA mortar team arrived the area was saturated with British Military and RUC, and they had to abandon the operation.
Photos: 5-8 Courtesy of C-Bty 3rd Royal Horse Artillery Regiment in Northern Ireland
Foot Note: Martin McGuinness
On the 14 January, 2021, The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, added Martin McGuinness to its listing, and in that McGuinness is well summed up.
He became “increasingly brutal” as time wore on, leading to such atrocities as Bloody Friday in 1972 when the IRA in Belfast detonated 22 bombs within an hour and a quarter, killing nine people, followed by the triple bombing of Claudy village 10 days later, also killing nine people.
It describes his claim to have quit the IRA in 1974 as “disingenuous” and quotes Brendan Duddy – the UK government’s secret liaison with the IRA, who also died in 2017 – as believing him to be an “aggressive militarist” and a “Little Hitler”, who wanted supreme, island-wide control.
“Over time, as some of his ‘trusties’ were found to have betrayed him, he drew an ever-tighter clique around himself and showed absolute ruthlessness in having informers tortured and murdered,” the biography reads.
“According to other IRA members, McGuinness often conducted the actual shooting himself, ‘to show he was still prepared to do so’.”
It also states he personally went to New York to purchase guns on “at least” one occasion.
It goes on to add: “McGuinness faced such a tsunami of criticism after the ill-judged murder of a female census enumerator in Derry, Joanne Mathers, in April 1981 that he was panic-stricken.
“He tried to assuage his critics by glibly claiming the census was an intelligence-gathering exercise by the government and stressing that the IRA did not set out to kill civilians.
“Not for the first time, his straight-faced explanations were widely derided.”
The publication of the biography comes a week after a documentary on Mr McGuinness aired on TG4 (funded by about £120,000 of public money), which described him as a “fighter, negotiator, politician” and was criticised for its lack of focus on IRA victims.
Telephone Exchange Dundalk 1988
Because of this level of trust, Kevin McKenna asked me if we had anyone in Dundalk who could get us access to the telephone exchange in Dundalk. Kevin as asking specifically about my extended family in Dundalk who would be closer to me than to Kevin, Seamus McKenna and so forth.
I quickly established that my Brother-in-Law, xxxxxx (not SF/PIRA) was working for a company that was subcontracted by Eircom, and as such xxx had access to the telephone exchange in Dundalk. I told xxx that The Provisional IRA needed access to the telephone exchange and he said no problem.
The technical unit (I believe secured in America by Vincent Conlon) that was delivered to Dundalk telephone exchange, was approx. 2 ft square, stainless steel, very heavy, like a big cassette and full of diodes and so forth like the back of a radio, once it was delivered into the building, an Eircom engineer would install it, its success would only be known to Michael McKevitt and his team back then.
Eugene Crowley absolutely knew about this and he also knew about the surveillance operations in Monaghan, Dundalk and Middletown, County Armagh.
Margaret Thatcher A Plan to Murder 1989
When I was a child, Kevin McKenna who was much older than I, would cycle into our small town and give me a lift on the cross-bar of his bike to my Grandparents house. Kevin McKenna was simply known to me as a cousin and he would in later years become a notorious sectarian serial killer.
Kevin McKenna speaking Carrickmore early 1970s
In 1989, Provisional IRA, Chief of Staff, Kevin McKenna, who was based in Monaghan, was under extreme pressure, the SAS were wiping out units under his command with regularity, serious questions were being asked about his ability to continue to hold his position as Chief of Staff.
Kevin McKenna needed a spectacular to put him back on the map, McKenna knew only too well that Martin McGuinness wanted his old job as Chief of Staff back. McGuinness was an MI6 Agent, a puppet, rather than a caricature of James Bond, and his bosses were unhappy that the position of Chief of Staff remained outside of their reach.
Martin McGuinness's handler, MI6 Officer, Michael Oatley
In 1989, I was viewed as extremely trustworthy within Kevin McKenna’s tight circle, this trust came from a decade of service to Sinn Fein/PIRA, a significant attempt by the RUC to recruit me in 1988, and the discovery by the PIRA that the Gardai were paying a lad to watch my house. All of the above, in the eyes of the PIRA, added up to someone who had not been compromised.
Christmas Card from Provisional IRA Commander, Jim Lynagh, most senior PIRA killed by the British.
In 1989, the PIRA in Monaghan had literally died the death, following Loughgall very few were putting themselves forward for active service. Michael ‘Pete’ Ryan and a handful of others were murdering a few Protestants along the border, but beyond that it was all very hit and miss.
I was once asked to describe Kevin McKenna’s leadership at this time, and I said, he was like a small child standing in the middle of a frozen lake, that lake covered in thin ice. If McKenna, the small child, moved even one step in the wrong direction, the ice would crack and break open and consume him.
Targeting Thatcher 1989
In 1989, I was extremely busy, I was in the running club, I was working full-time in Monaghan Mushrooms and a host of other activities. Kevin McKenna approached me, Kevin asked me if I would be prepared to go to London on active service. I was surprised by Kevin’s request, as the dogs on the street knew that the PIRA were finished. However, I kept my thoughts to myself.
Kevin McKenna told me to take some time to think about his request and get back to him. I knew that if I did not take up the request, then someone else would probably be sent to England. I went back to Kevin and told him I would go. Kevin McKenna explained what he wanted me to do, he wanted me to target British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher.
Interestingly, State Papers released in 2020, show that Gerry Adams warned John Hume that the PIRA might murder Thatcher. Adams surely knew that Hume would pass this information onto his contacts in both the British and Irish Governments.
Gerry Adams with Provisional IRA, Chief of Staff, Kevin McKenna.
“In relation to the Gow death, Adams rather oddly said that he was worried that ‘they will kill Thatcher’,” Hume told Gallagher, according to the Memo, just released into the National Archives under the 30-year rule in 2020. State Papers 2020
I find this action by Adams in 1990 quite extraordinary as it clearly placed the lives of PIRA Volunteers at risk, particularly as the SAS were wiping out PIRA Units with regularity. Interestingly, it was Gerry Adams who had sanctioned the plan to Murder Mrs Thatcher at Brighton in 1984 and Adams had personally travelled to Monaghan Town to have the plan ratified by PIRA Chief of Staff, Kevin McKenna.
Brighton Bomb 1984
In the summer of 1984, I was Managing the Sinn Fein/Provisional IRA Advice Centre and Shop at 21 Dublin Street, Monaghan Town, this can be confirmed with any member of An Garda Siochana who was serving in Monaghan at that time. The European Elections were due to be held on the 14 June, 1984 and we were running Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin.
In early June, 1984, Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin told me that three senior members of Provisional IRA Northern Command, including Gerry Adams would be arriving later that day. I ensured the place was clean and tidy, that chairs were arranged upstairs and that there was tea/coffee, milk and digestive biscuits.
When Gerry Adams arrived his two colleagues were wearing black leather jackets, all a bit urban I thought, I was introduced to Gerry Adams by Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin and I then positioned myself downstairs at the front door to alert the meeting upstairs if there was any Garda activity on Dublin Street.
The Sinn Fein/Provisional IRA Office at 21 Dublin Street is very small, it was initially a small domestic dwelling. There was one room upstairs that was positioned exactly above the one room shop downstairs. There was a small staircase that led upstairs and every word spoken upstairs echoed downstairs. The only time I could not fully understand what was being said upstairs was when Gerry Adams and Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin spoke Irish, although I had a good idea what they were saying, as I was attending Irish Classes at that time.
![]()
While Gerry Adams and his two comrades used the cover of the European Elections for their visit to Monaghan and they had some interest in the elections. Gerry Adams had arrived to personally advice Provisional IRA, Chief of Staff, Kevin McKenna, that the Conservative Party Conference was going to be targeted later in 1984, in the hope of killing British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. The British Security Services were on high alert for the conference, however, as the plastic explosive was wrapped in cling-film, which was normal, the sniffer dogs did not detect the bomb.
Gerry Adams and Provisional IRA Northern Command had an obligation to notify both The Chief of Staff and Southern Command of any planned activity in England as such activity fell under the Jurisdiction of Southern Command. The bomb exploded at Brighton, 12 October, 1984, at the Grand Brighton Hotel. Patrick McGee would later be convicted of the bombing as he had left his finger-print while staying in the hotel under a pseudonym, Roy Walsh, in September, 1984.
Kevin McKenna was desperate to up stage Martin McGuinness, he had not trusted McGuinness from at least 1986, when McGuinness was arrested after leaving Kevin’s house in Smithborough, County Monaghan, but released a short time later. It would later transpire that MI6 Officer; Michael Oatley had sought McGuinness’s release in 1986. Kevin McKenna had Gardai reporting to him, but I have no idea if he knew about MI6 intervention at that point.
Kevin McKenna, believed that if he could succeed where Adams and McGuinness had failed, the failed murder attempt on Thatcher in 1984 at Brighton, then McKenna would remain unchallenged as Chief of Staff.
Targeting Mrs Thatcher
Kevin McKenna wanted me to go to London, find work, keep my head down and establish a means by which Thatcher could be targeted. I was also to look at other potential targets such as the Channel Tunnel that was under construction at that time, House of Commons and so forth, but my key focus was to be Thatcher.
I was to spend as long as it took to put together a plan that had a realistic chance of success. I arrived in London, having told my wife I was simply going to seek work on the Channel Tunnel that was well paid, this was not an easy decision, but I had a job to do.
I arrived in London in 1989, I secured work in Kingston Upon Thames on the construction of the new John Lewis department store. I initially lived on a light-weight fibre-glass house boat on the Thames close to the site on which I was working. I piloted the boat into central London on three occasions, I wanted to get up close pictures of The House of Commons, and to establish if there were any storm drains or sewer pipes coming from the House of Commons into the Thames, pipes into which a high-explosive bomb or mortar might be placed.
On my first scouting mission into central London with the boat, I thought I was being pursued by the River Police when they came up behind me with siren blazing and blue light flashing, however, they went straight past me as a Disco Boat called the Marchioness had been sunk by a dredger and 51 people had been killed. The Marchioness had taken only thirty-seconds to sink.
The summer of 1989 was a scorcher, and in normal circumstances this was a very beautiful part of the world, however, my task was to plan murder.
The boat, orange and white, that I lived on belonged to the main building contractors Mowlam's, it can be seen here harbored beside the John Lewis site.
John Lewis Department Store, Kingston Upon Thames, London
On the building site I worked as a labourer under my own name, although most simply called me Paddy, which I had no problem with, most Irish were called Paddy by non-Irish. The two main foremen were from Glasgow and so we got on well together, they were called 'Jock', they placed me with an English man and his two sons, all three of them were brick-layers. I would labour to them and if there was some block work to be done, I would lay some blocks.
I got on very well with Colin and his two sons, we all worked hard, and at lunch time we would have some lunch and a glass of beer at the Cutters Wharf, we could take our lunch out to the picnic tables that sat along the Thames. We talked about work and the site we were working on, this was a new build, but during initial excavation, an eight-hundred-year-old Kingston Bridge, dating back to 1150, had been discovered and preserved.
I got to know some of the other people working on what was a very large building site, some of the English brick-layers and labourers were Territorial SAS, which meant they were weekend soldier’s, but it reminded me that I was no so far dispatched from the sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland.
I knew that I would be subject to at least some surveillance by the security services if they were aware of my presence in London, before leaving Ireland I had been arrested under anti-terrorist legislation on many occasions. With this security issue to the fore of my mind I engaged in a number of simple anti-surveillance techniques.
At night I secured work in Burger King, this meant that I could hop on and off buses without drawing too much attention. I also befriended a gay couple who were from Glasgow, they were cleaners at various locations all over London, they had a car and knew London extremely well. One of the premises that they cleaned was British Aerospace, to which I had unfettered access.
I travelled to the Channel Tunnel once, simply so I could take pictures and have train receipts to prove to Kevin McKenna that I had actually visited the site. The site in Kent was massive, they had effectively built a town at the tunnel entrance.
I simply had to say to Jimmy and John, that I would love to see Downing Street or the Tower of London and they would simply ask when. On evenings that I was not working or scouting into central London, I would enjoy a beer in The Royal Oak Pub. I always expected to be approached by the security services, but they never did.
The British economy was booming in the summer of 1989, sports cars lined the streets and Rolex watches hung off the wrists of quite ordinary people.
On Friday, 22 September, 1989, I arrived early on the building site, my brick-layers wanted to get away early as they were doing a nixer for one of the foremen, I got the bricks set-out and the site prepared for a day’s work. I was working hard with my Brick-layers, we had the radio on and were building large decorative brick flower-beds on the road outside the John Lewis site.
It was a beautiful Friday morning, house boats and pleasure boats were passing by on the Thames, the sun was shining and all appeared well. However, the early morning sun was about to be eclipsed by the breaking news on the radio, a short distance away at Deal in Kent the PIRA had exploded a bomb killing a number of Royal Marine Bandsmen. I could see that my fellow workers, the Englishmen, looked at me almost accusingly, not that they knew anything about me, but simply because I was Irish. There was no Google back then.
PIRA Bombing in Deal in 1989
The news of the bomb in Deal and the carnage and death caused, left me in a precarious position, however, I would simply have to continue as normal. When we returned to work on Monday, 25 September, 1989, the massacre at Deal was old news, we continued to work as normal.
The John Lewis department store was an incredible piece of architecture, a four-lane slip road was constructed straight through the main site, it was simply an incredible fete of engineering. I remember one day a convoy of black cars led by a siren blaring police vehicle went through the tunnel, the sound was electrifying, the convoy was simply carrying Princess Margaret to a local Church service.
By the end of 1989 the British economy was in difficulty, and my reconnaissance work was almost done. I would continue to work on the site into 1990, however, the British economy was going into a deep recession that would last for five quarters and was the deepest UK recession since the Second World War.
While the recession did not impact on my decision to return to Ireland, it was sad to see so many people lose their jobs in a very short period of time. My English brick-layers had plenty of work for me, but I had to leave and we had a farewell drink.
I returned to Ireland in 1990 and gave Kevin McKenna a detailed outlay of my reconnaissance work in London. Kevin McKenna was again impressed by the level of detail that I provided, and he told me to continue to work with another member of East Tyrone PIRA.
Part of a comprehensive Intelligence Report that I presented to Kevin McKenna
When I returned to Ireland in 1990, it was clear that The PIRA was finished, the truth be told, the PIRA were finished after Loughgall. While the PIRA could set bombs of in London and murder people, the question had to be asked, who was in control, it was my view that the security services were controlling a lot of people.
I was lucky to get my job back in Monaghan Mushrooms, where I was promoted to Foreman by Mr Lesley Buckley who would later work with Ireland’s leading businessman, Mr Dennis O’Brien.
Writing to Mrs Thatcher
Having lived in London 1989-90, and seeing the British economy go from boom to bust, I felt that I might write to Thatcher and ask her to reconsider her approach to Northern Ireland. When writing to Thatcher, I was well aware that her tenure as Prime Minister was going to come to an end one way or another very shortly. However, if Thatcher did survive all of her enemies, she would still be a powerful force in relation to British policy relating to Northern Ireland.
Original letter sent to Mrs Thatcher 1990
In 1991, the fatal blow was struck against the PIRA in Monaghan when the SAS shot dead Michael ‘Pete’ Ryan, Laurence McNally and Tony Doris. This unit led by Ryan had been involved in a series of sectarian murders and human bomb attacks and this was the dying throws of the PIRA in Monaghan. Pete Ryan and Laurence McNally had to ask a civilian to drive them to their final destination, that is how desperate The PIRA were in Monaghan.
In 1992, I left Monaghan Town and moved to Armagh City. I was quickly introduced to John Hume and I began to work on what would become known as the ‘peace process’ and the Good Friday Agreement. Kevin McKenna knew about my work with John Hume and he had no issue with the talks between Adams and Hume, however, he simply did not trust Martin McGuinness.
Meeting Mrs Thatcher
In 1999, I was in London to brief MPs on continued Human Rights abuses by Sinn Fein/PIRA. I was invited to meet with a member of the House of Lords, to which I agreed.
As I was walking into the private rooms at the Lords, I meet Mrs Thatcher on the corridor, I was star struck, I was introduced to Mrs Thatcher and she was as I had expected, pleasant but stern. I blurted out that I had written to her in 1990 about Northern Ireland, she said she still had the letter, and that my letter had helped her to reconsider her position in relation to Northern Ireland.
O Maggie©
Verse from Song I wrote in 1981: My cell is icy cold, I am alone, my body it has turned almost to bone, but to the end, I know I must fight, for I know now, I will died before the night…(Tune: Snipers Promise)
Chorus from Song I wrote in 1981: O Maggie, O Maggie, can’t you see, don’t you know, these awful things they don’t have to be, and if you take these H-Blocks cells away, I promise you I will have no more to say (Tune: Snipers Promise)
1998: A Criminal Conspiracy in A Banana Republic, by Vincent McKenna MSc
On the 4th of July 1998, I received a phone call from my cousin Seamus McKenna, in 1998, Seamus McKenna was working within a tight circle of Real IRA and Continuity IRA members who were mainly based in County Louth and to be found socialising in the Emerald Bar in Dundalk owned by Colm Murphy.
Seamus McKenna had extreme loyalty to me, as I took care of his brother, Provisional IRA Hunger-striker,Sean McKenna when Sean was released from Long Kesh. Seamus would often talk about his Father, Sean McKenna Snr who had died as a result of the torture he had been subjected to during Internment.
Seamus always wanted me to know that he was still fighting in order to punish the Brits for what they had done to his Father. Seamus always spoke openly to me about what he was doing.
Seamus told me on the 4th July 1998 that the Real IRA were going to bomb Banbridge and Omagh. I passed over what Seamus said and did not draw too much attention to it, because if Seamus thought I was trying to get information, rather than him giving information, he would simply say “Fuck Off”. I reminded Seamus about a time was I was placed in a cell in Omagh Court House and there was no back wall in the cell as PIRA had blown it up a short time before.
As soon as I finished my phone call with Seamus 4th July 1998, I immediately phoned a Garda Special Branch Officer in Monaghan Town, whom I had known for some years. I told my contact what Seamus had said, and he said he would pass it on and get back to me.
On Monday 6th July 1998, my Garda contact phoned me and asked if I would meet with someone from Dublin who wanted a face to face. It just so happened that I had been invited to a function at Áras an Uachtaráin, the home of The Irish President, Mary McAleese, 11th July 1998. I told my Garda contact that I would meet his contact at Áras an Uachtaráin on the 11th July.
When I arrived at Áras an Uachtaráin on the 11th July 1998 in the company of three others, who did not know my mission, we were welcomed by Mary McAleese and her husband Martin.
When I received a call on my mobile phone, I excused myself from my company, and went to a side room of the main room where the function was taking place.
I repeated what my cousin Seamus McKenna told me about Banbridge and Omagh, and I made it absolutely clear that I wanted Michael McKevitt, Bernadette McKevitt Sands, Seamus McGrane, Liam Campbell, Colm Murphy, Seamus Daly and Seamus McKenna arrested and taken out of circulation.
When I left Áras an Uachtaráin on the 11th July 1998, I was satisfied that both the Banbridge and Omagh bombs would be stopped.
When the Banbridge Bomb exploded at the beginning of August, I phoned my Garda contact and asked him why Michael McKevitt and the bombers had not been arrested, he had no explanation other than the decision was taken in Dublin. I told him that I might have been better going to the media, and he said, “Jesus don’t do that”.
Following the Banbridge Bomb my cousin Seamus McKenna phoned me again and sounded disturbed about the fact that so many civilians had been injured. Seamus talked about the on-going plan to bomb Omagh, Seamus said that there had been a meeting between Michael McKevitt, Bernadette McKevitt Sands and Irish Government officials before Banbridge.
I am satisfied that the meeting between Irish Government officials and the Real IRA before Banbridge was as a direct result of my meeting at Áras an Uachtaráin 11th July 1998 and my insistence that the Real IRA Leadership be arrested.
Seamus said the Court House in Omagh was going to be bombed on Saturday the 15th of August, he was not happy about it, but what could he do.
I phoned my Garda contact in Monaghan and updated him on what Seamus had said about the plan to bomb Omagh Court House on the 15th August 1998. My Garda contact assured me that the bomb would be stopped and to say nothing to anyone else.
On Saturday 15th August 1998 I was in Portrush in a mobile home and listening to the radio expecting to hear that the bomb had been stopped on its way to Omagh, when news of the bomb exploding came on the radio, it put me to my knees. I could not believe that the bomb had not been intercepted. I phoned my Garda contact, he had no explanation other than the decision was taken in Dublin, and he sounded like he was under pressure.
I then phoned renowned journalist Barrie Penrose with whom I was working on a different matter at that time and I put on record with Barrie everything that had happened over the previous weeks including the names I had given to the Irish authorities. I also got a bus to Belfast, left my partner and children in Portrush, and briefed a couple of trusted journalists as I believed the truth about Omagh would never be told.
Reasons Why The Omagh Bomb was Allowed to Run?
There are three possible reasons why The Omagh Bomb was allowed to run:
1. To protect an Agent who was being embedded into The Real IRA in 1998. David Rupert was an FBI/MI5 Agent and was paid $10,000,000 for infiltrating The Real IRA.
Sean O’Driscoll has written a book, The Accidental Spy, about David Rupert’s infiltration of both Continuity IRA and later The Real IRA. I have not read the book, but I have read a pre-view of the book published in The Belfast Telegraph, 12th January, 2019, and in that pre-view, there is an interesting passage:
“After the Omagh Bomb in 1998, his mission became all the more urgent. By now, the FBI had contacted MI5, who needed someone in the larger and deadlier Real IRA”.
This passage if taken at face value, could rule out the Omagh Bomb being allowed to run to facilitate Rupert’s infiltration of The Real IRA (see, also Note at bottom of Blog Post, Paddy Dixon).
2. To undermine the Sinn Fein/PIRA Leadership as the majority of ordinary citizens and international observers would not be able to morally distinguish between Sinn Fein/PIRA and The Real IRA.
3. To use the Real IRA bombing campaign as leverage to force Unionists into a power-sharing Executive with the Sinn Fein/PIRA ‘Doves’.
The third option is the easiest to sustain, and is the option that is easily supported by the evidence.
The third option is the easiest to sustain, and is the option that is easily supported by the evidence. Berty Ahern was in 1998 already at the centre of a Political Corruption Scandal that would be proven by The Mahon Tribunal. Berty Ahern needed the cloak of delivering 'peace' in Northern Ireland to regain some political value within Fianna Fail and the population in general.
Berty Ahern was taking his advice about Northern Ireland from former Sinn Fein/Provisional IRA Vice-President, Phil Flynn, Phil had resigned as Vice-President of Sinn Fein/PIRA at the Sinn Fein/PIRA, Ard Fheis in 1984, but as he delivered his resignation speech at the Ard Fheis he swore publicly, in blood, to always remain available to Sinn Fein/PIRA. Phil Flynn would be named as being key to the money-laundering operation that followed the Northern Bank Robbery in 2004.
It would not be until December, 2019, that I would get an opportunity to ask Berty Ahern why he had directed Garda Commissioner, Pat Byrne, NOT to arrest Michael McKevitt and the Omagh Bomb Team before the Banbridge and Omagh Bombs in 1998, and rather chose to send his advisor Martin Mansergh for tea and biscuits with Michael McKevitt and the Omagh Bomb Team.
In December, 2019, I meet Berty Ahern in north Dublin, I asked Berty why he had Directed Garda Commissioner, Pat Byrne, NOT to arrest Michael McKevitt and the Omagh Bomb Team before Banbridge and Omagh. Berty said, Phil Flynn, Martin McGuinness, Gerry Adams and Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Runner for PIRA Chief of Staff, Kevin McKenna) advised him not to arrest McKevitt and the would-be Bombers.
If Berty Ahern had directed Garda Commissioner, Pat Byrne to arrest Michael McKevitt and his bomb team prior to Omagh, this could have been done on the 'Belief' evidence of a Garda Superintendent. If McKevitt and his bomb team had been taken out of circulation neither the Banbridge nor Omagh Bomb would have happened.
Berty Ahern Lied to The Dail about his knowledge of The Real IRA pre-Omagh:
Further into this Blog-post you will read how I was arrested in relation to the Omagh Bomb and on a second occasion kidnapped. As a result of both these perversions of our criminal justice system, Bertie Ahern came under intense pressure from Enda Kenny TD to tell the Truth about his role in the chronology of events that led to the slaughter of thirty-one innocent men, women and children at Omagh.
Nov 2002 - https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-30075592.html
Oct 2003 - https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/ahern-admits-real-ira-talks-25926350.html
Notes: In 1991, the Fianna Fáil–Progressive Democrats programme for government was reviewed. Berty Ahern was a key player in these talks yet again. His involvement prompted Gun-runner, Charles Haughey to remark of Ahern:
“He's the most skillful, the most devious, the most cunning of them all”.
During 1993, while he was Finance Minister, Ahern accepted payments of IR £39,000 from various businessmen, these were corrupt payments and confirmed as such for this author by Paddy the Plaster, who would appear before The Mahon Tribunal.
In July, 1997, Charles Haughey gave evidence to the McCracken Tribunal on corruption confirming that he had received IR£1.3 million (€1.7 million) in gifts from businessman Ben Dunne, which he had previously denied. This damaged Haughey's reputation beyond repair.
Earlier allegations resurfaced about Ahern's Foreign Minister, Ray Burke. Burke eventually admitted to receiving IR£30,000 (€38,000) in a corrupt payment and chose to resign. Arising from those two matters, the government established the Moriarty Tribunal and the Flood Tribunal.
Speaking at the 1916 Easter Rising commemoration at Arbour Hill in Dublin, in 1998, Ahern said:
“The British Government are effectively out of the equation and neither the British parliament nor people have any legal right under this agreement to impede the achievement of Irish unity if it had the consent of the people North and South...Our nation is and always will be a 32-county nation. Antrim and Down are, and will remain, as much a part of Ireland as any southern county”.
Background
Every aspect of this blog post has been known to the authorities for years, much of it taken from Court Transcripts or 'evidence' presented or submitted for consideration. There are those who want the Truth buried, as they must live a lie each day to justify their pathetic existence. However, if anyone has any issue with anything posted here they may DM on my Twitter Account and I will adjust if warranted.
Sinn Fein/PIRA stated publicly in 2000 that Vincent McKenna was never a member of, or involved with Sinn Fein/PIRA. The truth which is often elusive to Sinn Fein/PIRA Murderers, Rapists, Paedophiles and Informers, is somewhat different as you would expect.
Such statements about Vincent McKenna were usually issued by RUC Informers such as Owen Smyth in Monaghan Town, Dennis Donaldson in Belfast and indeed Liam Adams who would later die in prison while serving 15 years for raping his 4-year-old daughter. Liam Adams had been protected by Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness after Liam admitted raping 4-year-old Aine.
Martin McGuinness was on a TV panel with Robert McCartney QC, McGuinness believed that a member of the audience was going to ask him about allegations of child abuse. McGuinness was pro-active and admitted abusing a female child, he explained the abuse away by saying that such matters were not viewed in the same light back then as in the 1990s.
In 2000, one of Ireland's most prolific paedophiles, Michael Feeney, was before Monaghan Circuit Court charged with the sexual assault, including bondage, of twelve children, Feeney was armed with a Character Reference from Northern Ireland's Education Minister, Martin McGuinness. Michael Feeney was Headmaster of Ballybay National School where he raped the children. One victim told the Court, it would be easier to count the children Feeney did not sexually assault, than the ones he did. McGuinness and Feeney knew each other through the GAA.
Martin McGuinness with Liam Adams opening new Sinn Fein Office in Dundalk when Martin knows that Liam has Raped 4-year-old Aine Also worth noting that a Sinn Fein/PIRA member (JD) who ran a high profile campaign against Vincent McKenna, upon Vincent McKenna's release from prison, would a short time later be sentenced to 11 years in prison for Raping his children, making videos of those rapes and sharing them on Paedophile websites. The Sunday World, Irish Star and The Sun, who had given (JD) a platform against Vincent McKenna, had nothing to say when their hero (JD) was convicted of child rape.
However, it must be remembered that Paedophiles are as prevalent within Journalism as they are any other walk of life, Irish Times, Journalist, Tom Humphreys was an out-spoken critic of the Catholic Church and Paedophile Priests, until Tom himself pleaded guilty to Raping children.
Vincent McKenna, 17 years old, front-left carrying coffin to commemorate Death of PIRA hunger-striker, Kieran Doherty TD, 1981, Cavan Town.Vincent McKenna's Diary from 1986, while Vincent McKenna worked in several roles within Sinn Fein/Provisional IRA, Vincent McKenna was at all times answerable to his cousin PIRA Chief of Staff, Kevin McKenna. Vincent McKenna kept a detail record of all Murders, bombs, weapons finds and so forth for Kevin McKenna. In 1986, there was no Google, and so this diary was the only record available to Kevin McKenna as he directed hundreds of PIRA operations.
Vincent McKenna with John Hume 1994, many who now claim ownership of the 'peace-process' tried very hard to frustrate that process, and set out to undermine those of us who were trying to create a conversation around peace.
Vincent McKenna began the public conversation about Political Prisoners when most were afraid to touch the subject, yet it was a subject that would be at the core of making a 'peace-process' that would have some chance of success. Vincent McKenna, William Smyth UVF and Barry McElduff PIRA.
The key focus of Vincent McKenna's work up until the end of 1997 was pushing the public conversation about a 'peace-process', without preparing the public with this discourse it would have been virtually impossible to thrust upon the public a Referendum on any agreement.
It is worth noting that many who joined with Vincent McKenna in his work are now in key positions across the Island of Ireland and beyond.
Letter: 2nd October 1997, from Secretary of State, Mo Mowlam to Vincent McKenna: This letter is 8 Days before PIRA Army Convention in Falcarragh, County Donegal:
“Thank you for all your hard work, an agreement is much closer now due to your efforts, I wish you, Gerry and Martin well for the 10th”. NIO Ref: McKenna/BB
I was not a delegate for the 1997 PIRA Convention in Donegal, I was a driver for a senior member of The PIRA. While we waited for others, I asked him to explain how The Convention would work and the possible outcomes.
It should be noted that Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and I, had very different reasons for wanting to surrender the PIRA.
Gerry Adams wanted The PIRA to stand down as he could see a political opportunity that would not come again. Gerry knew that if The PIRA continued then they would be subject to an intensified effort by The SAS and would be reduced to dust.
Martin McGuinness wanted to surrender The PIRA as he wanted to please his MI6 Masters, who had groomed him over decades, the evidence that I have gathered show McGuinness being an Agent for MI6 since 1986, however, others have suggested he was an Agent from the 1970s.
I wanted The PIRA surrendered, because I had believed for a very long time that they were nothing more than criminals masquerading as Freedom Fighters. I believed that if we could surrender The PIRA, then Sinn Fein could play a role in the democratic processes of the Island of Ireland.
Following the PIRA Convention in Oct 1997, which was attended by Kevin McKenna, Hennessy McKenna (south Derry), Brendan McKenna (south Derry) Thomas ‘Slab’ Murphy, Michael McKevitt, Bernadette McKevitt, Martin McGuinness, Gerry Adams, Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin, Pat Doherty, Martin Ferris, Pat Treanor, Joe Cahill and so forth, Michael McKevitt, Seamus McGrane and a handful of others founded The Real IRA in a shed outside Oldcastle in County Meath.
We now know, with the exposure of Martin McGuinness, Dennis Donaldson, Freddie Scappaticci, Roy McShane, Owen Smyth and many others, that The PIRA Army Convention was attended by more British Agents and Informers than it was by actual PIRA members. The level of infiltration was better understood following the raid on Castlereagh RUC station by Bobby Storey.
On the 5th of November 1997, I meet with leading members of The PIRA in Belfast and Mid-Ulster to establish how much support there was for Michael McKevitt and what would become The Real IRA. It was clear that Mid-Ulster was going to be a problem. I was still the runner between Martin McGuinness and PIRA Chief of Staff, Kevin McKenna.
It is fair to say that by November 1997, I had a very clear view of where The Real IRA were going to draw their support. My cousin Seamus McKenna, who was based in County Louth, and who had extreme loyalty to me as I had taken care of his Brother Sean, when Sean was released from Long Kesh, told me that The PIRA were allowing McKevitt to empty PIRA arms dumps.
When Seamus McKenna told me that The PIRA leadership, namely Thomas ‘Slab’ Murphy, Kevin McKenna and Martin McGuinness were allowing McKevitt to empty PIRA Arms Dumps, I went immediately to Monaghan and asked Kevin McKenna if he was allowing McKevitt to empty PIRA Arms Dumps, to which he replied:
“The odd bomb going off here and there will keep Unionists focused on working with the ‘Doves’”.
Following this admission by Kevin McKenna, which was confirmed by Martin McGuinness, I went to war against Sinn Fein/Provisional IRA due to their duplicity, and this war is set out below.
The War on Duplicity
I decided to take Sinn Fein/Provisional IRA to task on their adopted tactic of manufacturing opposition to Loyal Order parades. I carried out a Survey on the Ormeau Road, February, 1998, to establish the true feelings of local residents in relation to Loyal Order parades.
This extensive survey found that 80% of Nationalists would accept Loyal Order parades if certain minimal conditions were in place. The survey also exposed the fact that Sinn Fein/PIRA did not represent the views of the local population in relation to Loyal Order parades.
Following the widely publicised findings of the survey, Sinn Fein/Provisional IRA were fully exposed for manufacturing sectarian tensions that were resulting in extreme violence and murder. I immediately came under sustained attack by Sinn Fein/PIRA personnel, with whom, only a few weeks earlier, I was sharing the same pot of tea.
I had absolutely no contact, at this time, with the Labour Party and Conservative Party MPs who raised the threats against me in Westminster, the threat against me was based on RUC Intelligence received from their Agents and Informers within the PIRA in Belfast. Threats Raised at Westminister 1998
![]()
In February, 1998, absolutely no allegation of a sexual nature had ever been made against me, I was talking to my ex-wife and children every day. Following the high profile campaign against me by Sinn Fein/PIRA for exposing their duplicity, my ex-wife told me that she was being put under pressure by her employer, Dr Marian Smyth, who had a child to PIRA serial killer Michael 'Pete' Ryan. My ex-wife was a cleaner and part-time secretary for Dr Smyth, and was in a precarious position.
I told my ex-wife that I had a job to do and I could not stop as people were going to die, I apologised for the fact that she was being put under pressure, but I told her it would blow over. My ex-wife had previously been harassed in 1994 by a member of Sinn Fein/PIRA in Monaghan (that member being an Informer, wife beater and Paedophile) however, I had contacted Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin in 1994 and that threat had been addressed.
This threat in 1994, had come about after my 'peace run' from Belfast to the Sinn Fein/PIRA Ard Fheis in Dublin, which was part of the process of creating a public conversation about peace, this would not have been understood by Sinn Fein/PIRA foot-soldiers who had no clue that the PIRA were about to surrender.
In 1995, Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin contacted me to ask if I would vote for him as my name was still on the electoral register in Monaghan. I travelled to Monaghan at my own expense and voted for Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin and I acknowledged his brother Fintan when I came out of the Polling Station at Saint Louis Convent. In 1998, I was not going to ask Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin to intervene as it would have simply compromised my position, Caoimhghín would have wanted me to stand down.
As Sinn Fein/PIRA continued with their campaign against me, I gave an exclusive front-page interview to Liam Clarke, Sunday Times, in which I explained the Policy of Ethnic Cleansing being pursued by Sinn Fein/PIRA since 1986. At this point in 1998, the newly elected PIRA Chief of Staff, Thomas 'Slab' Murphy had brought a Civil Action against The Sunday Times for describing him as Chief of Staff.
My interview with The Sunday Times, simply covered information that was already in the public domain, however, as I had been associated with the most senior members of Sinn Fein/PIRA including Kevin McKenna, Martin McGuinness, Joe Cahill, Jim Lynagh, Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin and so forth, my interview with Liam Clarke was viewed as treachery.
Following my interview with The Sunday Times, conversations with my ex-wife became strained, she said she was being put under extreme pressure by Dr Marian Smyth and Owen Smyth. I continued to travel to Monaghan Town each week to collect my children, and I told my ex-wife that I had to do my work or people would die.
On the 17th April 1998, I arrived at the car park of The Four Seasons Hotel in Monaghan Town, I had been invited to a wedding, it was very late in the evening. I seen my-ex-wife outside the front door of the hotel, she was very drunk.
Fiona McCleary, 17th April, 1998, Four Seasons Hotel
I spoke to my ex-wife, she told me she was being put under extreme pressure to do me harm, she said that Owen Smyth and Marian Smyth were putting her under pressure to help them to do something to discredit me. My ex-wife was not making much sense so I got back in the car and went back to Belfast.
We know that on the 18th of April, 1998, my ex-wife continued on her drunken binge and teamed up with Blackmailer, Carmel Mulhall (nee, Gallagher) who had been threatened with imprisonment by Mr Justice Paul Carney, at The Central Criminal Court, when Mulhall had tried to Blackmail an innocent man for £10,000 by falsely accusing him of Rape. Judge Carney said he would have sent Carmel Mulhall to prison if it were not for the number of children that she had to several different men.
This collaboration between my ex-wife and Blackmailer, Carmel Mulhall, would be the planned catalyst to force the alleged complainant in DPP v Vincent McKenna to make a non-descript complaint of abuse. This non-descript complaint would then be used in a Blackmail attempt.
On Thursday 23, April, 1998, I received a phone call to inform me that my 22-year-old cousin Jimmy had just been found dead in north Belfast, I was devastated. At exactly the same time as I took the call relating to Jimmy's death, the postman dropped a letter in the post-box.
When I opened the letter it was from The North Eastern Health Board in Monaghan Town, the letter was one-line, "Can you contact us at your earliest convenience". I simply assumed the letter was related to my petition for Divorce, against my ex-wife, that was before The High Court in Belfast the following Monday. I had never went through the process of divorce before and I simply thought the letter related to formal arrangements for the children.
At my trial in 2000, my ex-wife would swear on Oath that she had Divorced me, that, like all else, was a comprehensive lie, but deliberately used to paint a dark caricature of my person.
I immediately phoned my ex-wife, 23 April, 1998, and told her about my cousin Jimmy and asked her about the letter from The NEHB. My ex-wife had no explanation for the letter from The NEHB and so I thought it was not important. At this time I recorded all of my phone calls as I was receiving death threats on a regular basis.
I was also at this time involved in significant matters, those significant matters when concluded ensured that many lives were saved and the 'peace-process' prevailed.
When my cousin Jimmy was buried, I went before The High Court in Belfast on 27 April, 1998, to deal with my petition for Divorce. While my ex-wife and I had agreed to everything in the Divorce petition, including arrangements for the children and to keep the house in both our names so that we could borrow against it in the future for the children's education, my ex-wife had sent a letter to the High Court asking for the house. The Judge said he would ignore the letter as it appeared to be malicious.
When I returned home from The High Court, I immediately phoned my ex-wife to tell her that the Divorce had been granted to me. I asked my ex-wife about the letter she had sent to The High Court, only now did I realise that my ex-wife was angry about the Divorce and the fact that according to her I was, "Playing Happy Families". Which was bizarre, as my ex-wife and I had attended marriage guidance classes in Armagh in 1992, and without being indiscreet she had chosen a different path.
Eventually, my ex-wife disclosed that the letter from The NEHB related to an allegation of sexual abuse made against me by my eldest daughter who was 17 years-old at that time. My ex-wife told me that if I tried to contact the complainant I would be arrested for harassment and that I needed to speak to The NEHB. Interestingly, no actual allegation had been made at this time, but we do know that the alleged victim had been drugged with an unlicensed mind-altering drug by Dr Marian Smyth, who had a child outside her marriage with PIRA serial killer, Michael 'Pete' Ryan.
At this point the allegations were already in the public domain and being used to discredit my work in Belfast, the language being used on the internet by Sinn Fein/PIRA in relation to the complainant was perverse, they simply used her as they had used thousands of women and children before.
I made dozens of calls to The NEHB over the following days, but the Social Worker who was in charge of the case refused to speak with me or arrange a meeting which was protocol, of course I learned terms like protocol much later. It would later transpire that the Social Worker was socialising with my ex-wife. The Social Worker was removed from the case, but it was too late.
The only saving grace was that on the 7 May, 1998, my ex-wife phoned my house in Belfast and told my Fiancée that, "All that has been said is lies, but it has all gone too far". It was on 7 May, 1998, that I had sought advice from my Solicitor as nobody would meet with me. My only concern was the complainant, who had stayed with me on her own only a few weeks earlier for two weeks.
Bizarrely, while the complainant had stayed with me on dozens of occasions on her own in Northern Ireland, she made no allegations in relation to Northern Ireland. When asked under Oath why she had stayed with me on her own between 1992-95, she said to protect children that I had in another relationship, in fact there were no other children 1992-1995.
Sinn Fein/PIRA offered me the opportunity to walk away from the allegations if I would stand down, however, I declined their offer. PIRA Chief of Staff, Kevin McKenna, was anxious that I stand down, he had known me from when I was a child, he said:
"We know you have the character to stand up to The IRA, but you also have to have the wisdom to stand down".
Eventually, I would learn that the complainant had been drugged with an unlicensed mind altering drug by Dr Marian Smyth, who had a child to PIRA Serial Killer, Michael Pete Ryan.
This case is in 2021 back before The Court of Criminal Appeal and is simply being delayed due to Covid 19.
Why Sinn Fein/Provisional IRA manufactured opposition to Loyal Order Parades
Following The PIRA ‘cease-fire’ of August, 1994, The Sinn Fein/PIRA Leadership needed to adopt various tactics to occupy their rank and file members, or those rank and file members might start to ask what it was they had achieved.
The tactics adopted such re-opening border roads, release of prisoners and de-militarisation, happened or begun to happen, at a much faster pace than anticipated. This fast pace of change meant that the Sinn Fein/PIRA Leadership needed a tactic with some longevity, and one that would fit with the long-term Policy of Ethnic Cleansing.
Fergie O'Neil leads the campaign to open border roads in Monaghan
The decision was taken to manufacture opposition to Loyal Order Parades across Northern Ireland, this tactic would serve several purposes, it would be a tactic with longevity, it would occupy the rank and file and it could be used in various areas to drive out remaining Protestant communities. In places such as the Ormeau Road, the last vestiges of Protestantism such as the Cricket Club would be burned down by Sinn Fein/PIRA.
As early as 1995 I had argued, within Sinn Fein/PIRA, against adopting this tactic, as I believed that it would simply cause opposition to the ‘peace-process’ and fill the ranks of those who may wish to undermine the push for ‘peace’. I even argued that such a tactic with such longevity would play into the British narrative that Northern Ireland was simply a conflict between two sectarian tribes, a narrative that Sinn Fein/PIRA had rejected for decades.
The tactic was adopted, Sinn Fein/PIRA personnel, mainly former PIRA prisoners, were selected to lead the campaign in various geographical locations. Gerry Adams championed the tactic in a speech in 1996 in Athboy in County Meath, a speech that was heard by only Sinn Fein/PIRA supporters and their proxies in the media.
Even when it was clear that opposition to Loyal Order parades was being manufactured and was not organic, journalists who knew that it was a Sinn Fein/PIRA tactic, pointed at the alleged intransigence of the Loyal Orders.
The Loyal Orders were an easy target for propaganda, the parades issue was quickly high-jacked by extremists such as The Loyalist Volunteer Force, and moderate voices within the Loyal Orders were drowned out. Sinn Fein/PIRA once again presented themselves as the victims in a modern conflict, that they had again manufactured.
As Gerry Adams and the Leaders of Sinn Fein/PIRA sat comfortably behind the bulletproof glass in their homes, which was provided for them by The British Government, innocent Catholics such as Michael McGoldrick were murdered as they done an honest day’s work.
Michael had been a friend and fellow mature student at Queens and we had often had a cup of tea together, he simply wanted a better life for his family and he had no time for any violent group.
In 1998, I published a list of 100 Sinn Fein/Provisional IRA Rapists who were being protected by the Sinn Fein/Provisional IRA Leadership, Sinn Fein/Provisional IRA Denied my Claims, in 2014 GerryAdams exonerated my claims, too late for thousands of Rape Victims.
The Omagh Bomb
As The Real IRA became organised and structures were put in place, plans emerged for a bombing campaign, the core function of that bombing campaign was to undermine Gerry Adams and his apparent enthusiasm to surrender The Provisional IRA.
While I had gone to war against Sinn Fein/PIRA because of their duplicity, I also wanted to do everything possible to keep the 'peace process' moving forward, in the hope that those within that process could eventually achieve the surrender of The Provisional IRA.
In July 1998, my cousin Seamus McKenna made me aware of The Real IRA plan to bomb Banbridge and Omagh, these disclosures were made in general conversation, rather than any attempt by Seamus to Inform on his comrades.
These disclosures by Seamus, were passed onto a Garda Detective in Monaghan and lead to a high level security meeting at Aras an Uachtarain (home of The Irish President) on the weekend of 10th July 1998, or to be more precise, on the night that the three Quinn Children were Murdered in Ballymoney.
On the night of the 11th July, 1998, Mary and Martin McAleese were holding an evening of Multi-cultural entertainment, which included instruments and music from both Irish and Ulster-Scots traditions. Mary McAleese is personally known to me since my time at Queens University when she attended events that I organised.
On the night of the 11th July, 1998, I was personally welcomed by Mary McAleese. The security meeting that I facilitated and participated in on that night, was a side-bar to the evening of entertainment provided by Mary McAleese, the entertainment was used as cover for the security meeting.
NOTE: On the 18th July, 1998, I was attacked on the Ormeau Road by six members of Sinn Fein/PIRA, led by Sinn Fein/PIRA Killer, Sean Clinton, one of the Sinn Fein/PIRA attackers later pleaded Guilty in Court to assaulting me. The RUC did not want to prosecute any of those who attacked me. Later that night The PIRA in Belfast murdered Andrew Kearney, those who murdered Andrew were informers and rapists.
Following my attendance at Aras an Uachtarain on the 11th night 1998, I was confident that both the Banbridge and Omagh Bombs could be stopped. In the immediate aftermath of The Omagh Bomb I publicly named the Bombers, I done this as I believed the Truth would never be told about Omagh and so that the public could see that The Real IRA were simply Sinn Fein/PIRA Proxies.
Following the two bomb attacks certain Gardai became hostile towards me, this included the Garda Detective to whom I had disclosed Real IRA plans to bomb Banbridge and Omagh. I was angry, the wife, daughter and unborn twins of my school friend Michael Monaghan had been Murdered in Omagh.
Berty Ahern mislead Dail Eireann, when asked if he had directed his Special Advisor, Dr Martin Mansergh to meet with The Real IRA prior to the Omagh Bomb in 1998, this meeting was directed after the Government had been advised of an imminent bombing campaign, Bandbridge and Omagh.
One-year, 14th October, 2003, after misleading Dail Eireann, The Taoiseach, Berty Ahern, said that his then special adviser Dr Mansergh:
"Did have contact with the 32-County Sovereignty Movement in 1998, some weeks before the Omagh atrocity and with a view to persuading the Real IRA to cease their activities".
"Regrettably the Real IRA did not heed this message and, indeed, subsequently resumed their activities," he said. He reiterated that there was "no 'deal' done by the Government either directly or indirectly" with the Real IRA in return for a ceasefire or in seeking their disbandment.
This attitude, to the Truth, by Berty Ahern, is in stark contrast to the findings of The Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission (GSOC), in relation to dealing other Real IRA actions.
Mr Ronan, MacLochlainn, a member of The Real IRA, was killed during an attempted armed robbery of a Securicor van in Ashford, Co Wicklow in May 1998.
"This would have encouraged recognition by its members of the need for accountability and real independence in an investigation," the report says, in addition to possibly prompting better records and systems being maintained, which "ensured that full and appropriate disclosure was made by the organisation and thereby minimised the potential for theories of wrongdoing to fester".
"These measures could have saved the family of Mr MacLochlainn the long ordeal of seeking answers that this process became," the report said.
Michael McKevitt was very clear about what had transpired between Berty Ahern and The Real IRA Leadership, post-Omagh, McKevitt said that an Amnesty had been offered to The Omagh Bombers and those who directed them in return for a cease-fire.
The Real IRA called a ‘cease-fire’ in September 1998 to consider Ahern’s offer, but concluded that the offer had only been made as the security forces and members of The Irish Government had prior knowledge of The Real IRA plan to bomb Omagh.
NOTE: Berty Ahern does not say that no deal was offered, simply that no 'deal' was done.
In 1999, when Sinn Fein/Provisional IRA in Belfast, Murdered a young man who had been Raped by a senior member of Sinn Fein/PIRA, Berty Ahern said:
"Until there is an acceptable police force in Northern Ireland these things will continue to happen".
Sinn Fein/Provisional IRA admitted after the Omagh Bomb, that is was only in the aftermath of the Omagh atrocity that they visited the homes of Real IRA members and directed them not to take any further explosives and weapons from their arms dumps, the dumps were already empty. This post-Omagh act proving beyond doubt that Sinn Fein/PIRA were happy to use The Real IRA as Proxies, until that tactic literally blew-up in their face with the Omagh atrocity.
Sinn Féin is holding to its position that it will not encourage republicans to provide information to either An Garda Siochána or the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) on who was responsible for the Omagh bombing four years ago (Gerry Moriarty, Irish Times, Fri, Aug 16, 2002).
In 1998, I was asked to meet with a Senior Civil Servant from The Northern Ireland Office, at The Europa Hotel in Belfast. The Senior Civil Servant offered me £200,000 to end my high-profile campaign against Sinn Fein/Provisional IRA. I declined the offer, although at that time, I could not pay my Electric Bill, I could not be bought.
On 12 January, 1999, I was arrested in Monaghan on the basis that allegations of sexual abuse had been made against me on the 8th January, 1999, worth noting that on the 8th January 1999 a leading member of The UFF told Hugh Jordon of The Sunday World he had just been offered £5,000 to murder me and use UFF Code-word to claim the murder, story published 10th January, 1999.
NOTE: The Murder Plot: Sources independent of me, show the following: On the 8th of January, 1999, the alleged victim made a complaint to Gardai in Monaghan, we also know that there was communication between Sinn Fein/PIRA and corrupt Gardai. We know that two members of Sinn Fein/PIRA offered a senior member of The UFF £5,000 on the same day to murder me and use UFF code-word to claim responsibility.
We know that Sinn Fein/PIRA knew that I was going to be arrested on the 12th January, 1999, when I was making an application before The Family Court in Monaghan in relation to my children. Even before my arrest, Sinn Fein/PIRA in Belfast had begun to paint wall murals describing me as a Pedophile and MI6 Agent, we now know that those directing this activity were Paedophiles and Informers. Before I entered The Family Court in Monaghan, I was told by a member of Sinn Fein/PIRA that I was going to be arrested after the hearing.
In the full glare of my high-profile arrest, and in the shadow of fifty wall murals across Belfast, I was to be murdered by The UFF and a UFF code word would be used to claim my murder. However, this murder bid was thwarted when a leading member of The UFF spoke to Hugh Jordon and I was consequently informed by The RUC.
My detention on 12/13 January, 1999, was not recorded, although it was a statutory requirement, no notes were taken and I was released without terms or conditions after 20 Hours. The Garda Detective who had prior warning of The Banbridge and Omagh Bombs facilitated and participated in my detention.
The Garda Detective to whom I had provided information about the impending Banbridge and Omagh bomb attacks in 1998, told me during my detention in Monaghan 12th January, 1999, that the allegations made against me were not worth the paper they were written on. The same Garda Detective also said that RUC Informer, Owen Smyth, had offered them guns in exchange for my high-profile arrest.
Irish Independent, 16th January, 1999: “Gardai believe the heavy machineguns found in a field in Monaghan on Thursday are part of the same Provisional IRA arsenal discovered last October”.
Bizarrely, while detained in Monaghan in January 1999, Gardai tried to recruit me as an Agent to work on their behalf in Northern Ireland, here is the name and address where I was supposed to send reports about Unionists/Loyalists, Sinn Fein/PIRA and 'Dissident Republicans'. This is not the Detective who had prior knowledge of Omagh.
When I returned to Belfast after my detention in Monaghan in January, 1999, I exposed the attempt by An Garda Siochana to recruit me, I gave all the details including the contact name and address to Journalist Nell McCafferty. Nell McCafferty phoned the Garda Detective and he admitted that he had given me his phone number, name and address to send him reports. It is no secret that certain Gardai based in Monaghan Town could not be trusted, and this was summed up at The Smithwick Tribunal by Chief Supt, Tom Curran when he said he would not disclose the name of an Informant to the Garda Intelligence Collator in Monaghan.
It is worth noting, that the car used for the Omagh Bomb, seen here in the picture, was stolen a few yards from the home of this Garda Detective, now, I know we live on a small island, but this is something of note.
When I returned to Belfast, 13 January, 1999, over fifty wall murals had been painted by Sinn Fein/PIRA across the city, describing me as a Pedophile and MI6 Agent, bizarrely those Sinn Fein/PIRA members who directed this activity against me, have all since been exposed as Pedophiles and British Agents/Informers.
NOTE: The alleged victim in the case against me would allege that I had sent a relative to her with pictures of the wall murals and asking her to withdraw her allegations, at no time did I have any knowledge of anyone approaching her in such a fashion, if I had wanted the allegations withdrawn, I would simply have taken up the offer from Sinn Fein/PIRA, including Martin McGuinness.
Having been arrested by Gardai on the 12th January, 1999, and released without charge or condition on the 13th January, 1999, I exposed the attempt by Gardai to recruit me. Gardai in Monaghan were now desperate to get something against me.
Gardai were further disappointed when a Medical Report based on an examination of the alleged victim arrived and stated categorically that the alleged victim was Virgo Intacta, not only did this information contradict the allegations made, but also placed the alleged victim in a very special category, as 60% of girls are not Virgo Intacta by the age of 12-years due to normal activity such as cycling.
The Gardai were now desperate, they had no record of my detention and now they had a Medical Report that contradicted the allegations being made. In a desperate bid to get The DPP to bring charges, the Gardai in Monaghan called the alleged victim back into the Garda station and got her to change her original statement materially. The DPP now under political and media pressure brought charges. After my release from Garda custody, I was now determined to expose the Truth about the Omagh Bomb, and it was with this intention that I attended The UKUP Conference in February, 1999 and named those responsible for the Banbridge and Omagh Bombs in the full glare of the cameras. This high profile exposure of The Omagh Bombers forced Gardai to arrest and charge Colm Murphy on the 21st February, 1999.
However, the case against Murphy collapsed and a retrial was ordered, again the second trial collapsed. At the core of the failure of Murphy's two trials, was the Garda Detective who had prior knowledge of Omagh, the same Garda Detective who facilitated and participated in my detention 12 January, 1999.
A Garda Inspector in Monaghan, acting as a proxy for dark-forces, began to issue negative press briefings about me to pro-Sinn Fein/PIRA Journalists, while I had never been questioned about sexual abuse allegations in Monaghan during my detention in January 1999 on the basis of such allegations, those allegations now took on new meaning for rogue Garda Officers.
I was not the only person to be subject to to the activities of dark-forces who often worked to their own narrow agenda rather than seeing the bigger picture. Michael Gallagher, who has lead the campaign for Justice for the Omagh Victims and their Families was also the subject of a smear campaign.
Following my exposure of The Omagh Bombers and my critique of the failure of The Irish authorities to take decisive action, Garda Inspector Joseph Sullivan (later promoted to Superintendent) continued to brief the media negatively about me, in order to ensure that if charges were brought against me for alleged sexual assault I could not get a fair hearing and would be silenced by the negative publicity he was generating.
"Asked if the Garda investigators expect formal charges to be directed by the DPP, Inspector Sullivan told the Irish Voice, 'we are confident that there will be a prosecution and we are confident that we will secure convictions against this suspect'." (https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/1999/10/vmk-o20.html)
If these abuses being directed against me by corrupt Gardai, were directed against a member of Sinn Fein/Provisional IRA, the case would never see the inside of a court room. Sinn Fein/Provisional IRA did offer me the opportunity to walk away from this case, in return for my silence, however, I declined those offers.
Garda Inspector, Joseph Sullivan, nicknamed, 'Provo Cop' by PIRA Chief of Staff, Kevin McKenna, would continue to work for dark-forces when he perjured himself and perverted the course of Justice when he lied on Oath in the case of DPP v Vincent McKenna. Those lies now fully exposed in a tape recording, in which Garda Inspector, Simon O'Connor of The Garda Press Office, states that Sullivan admitted to him, what Sullivan had denied under Oath.
While rogue Gardai in Monaghan continued to abuse my Legal and Constitutional Rights, I continued to do the job that they were failing to do. I continued to work with members of An Garda Siochana who were prepared to place the public and national interest before any selfish or corrupt motivation. My work was saving lives, while the actions of corrupt Gardai in Monaghan was placing many lives at risk.
One of the reasons that Omagh Bomber, Colm Murphy walked away from the charges was that his presumption of innocence had been taken away by media commentary pre-trial. This was due to a Spotlight Documentary, however, the over-riding reason was the actions of at least two Gardai.Following the attempt by The NIO to buy me off with £200K, the Gardai attempt to recruit me and a relentless campaign of abuse by Sinn Fein/PIRA and their Proxies in the media, I worked with CBS 60 Minutes to produce a documentary that would impact seriously on Sinn Fein/PIRA and their cheer-leaders in America.
On Sunday 14th March, 1999, the CBS 60 Minute Documentary presented by world renowned broadcaster and journalist Mike Wallace was watched by 80,000,000 Viewers, due to the fallout from the CBS 60 Minutes exposure of Sinn Fein/PIRA many Sinn Fein/PIRA fund raising functions in America on Saint Patrick's Day were cancelled.
It is estimated by The FBI that the CBS 60 Minutes Documentary and its repeats cost Sinn Fein/PIRA Millions of Dollars. As an added bonus, American President, Bill Clinton had to quickly change his St Patrick's Day speech 1999 to include a heavy condemnation of on going Sinn Fein/PIRA Human Rights violations.
It was at this time that I gave an interview to Toby Harnden for his book, Bandit Country (Hodder, 1999) in which I explained that Sinn Fein/PIRA had small numbers of Gardai working for them. I explained how certain Gardai in Dundalk had colluded in the Murders of Chief Supt Harry Breen and Supt Bob Buchanan.
My disclosures about minimal Garda collusion with Sinn Fein/PIRA in the border counties lead to denials of such collusion by Minister for Justice, John O’Donoghue TD and Sinn Fein/PIRA. My assertions about collusion were exonerated by The Smithwick Tribunal.
It is worth noting, that even as The Smithwick Tribunal was making finds of collusion, Minister for Justice, John O’Donoghue remained in denial of such collusion. Bizarrely, one of the people John O’Donoghue had meet with in relation to the campaign against me, was the person who gave Sinn Fein/PIRA access to the Telephone Exchange in Dundalk so that Sinn Fein/PIRA could monitor phone calls.
The more pressure I was put under by
various groupings, the more determined I became, by June 1999, I was viewed as someone who could be useful in helping to promote the MI6 view of what a 'peace-process' should look like. In June 1999, I had travelled to Westminster to update politicians on continued Human Rights abuses by Sinn Fein/Provisional IRA and their proxies, it was during this visit that I was approached by MI6 Officers associated with Martin McGuinness.
I rejected the advances of MI6, even though they had proven to me that Martin McGuinness did not pose a threat to the 'peace-process'. However, the 'peace-process' proposed by MI6 included abandoning the Catholic community, including women and children who had been raped by Sinn Fein/PIRA, to the dictate of Sinn Fein/PIRA.
In 1999, I pushed on in my campaign to expose the duplicity of Sinn Fein/PIRA. I assisted two German academics to produce a book on Sinn Fein/PIRA's campaign of Ethnic Cleansing, I arranged interviews for them with key players in Northern Ireland and so forth. The book, 'From Myth to Mafia' went on to become a best seller in Germany and played a significant role in reducing German support for Sinn Fein/PIRA and their proxies.
By mid-1999 it was clear that the British Government and elements of the Irish Government, namely corrupt and self-serving politicians such as Berty Ahern and John O'Donoghue were prepared to turn a blind eye to on going Murders and Rapes being committed by Sinn Fein/PIRA. Blair and Ahern had created a 'peace' narrative that existed in their heads only, and had not materialised for the long suffering people of Northern Ireland.
The majority of political commentators had adopted a, hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil, policy. Investigative journalism had become redundant in the 'new' political dispensation. However, as so often happens in Northern Ireland, an opportunity to expose the rot presented itself, in a cowardly murder.
On the 30 July, 1999, a 22 year-old Catholic lad was kidnapped, tortured and murdered by a Sinn Fein/PIRA gang which was lead by an RUC Informer, this individual along with other members of the gang were also known rapists within Sinn Fein/PIRA.
Following the murder of Charles Bennett, word quickly spread that it was Sinn Fein/PIRA who had murdered Charles. Due to the number of high level Agents and Informers within Sinn Fein/PIRA right across Belfast it did not take The RUC long to identify the murderers.
Speculation now mounted as to whether Secretary of State, Mo Mowlam, who referred to Martin McGuinness as "Babe" would declare the murder of Charles Bennett as a breach of The PIRA 'cease-fire'. Mowlam tried to avoid the question of the 'status' of the PIRA 'cease-fire' by stating that it was a matter for her Chief Security Advisor, Sir Ronnie Flanaghan to determine who murdered Charles Bennett.
It so happened that Sir Ronnie Flanaghan was going to be on a Television program with a group of students, and those students would be allowed to ask Sir Ronnie about policing in the 'new' political dispensation.
I received a call from a young friend, whom I had known at Queens University, he said he was placing some students on the Television show that Sir Ronnie was going to appear on. My friend asked me if I had any particular question I wanted to ask Sir Ronnie. I told him, to get one of the students to ask Sir Ronnie, who murdered Charles Bennett.
Sir Ronnie Flanaghan answered the question very clearly, The PIRA murdered Charles Bennett, no question about it. The reason why Sir Ronnie was so certain about the identity of the murderers would become much clearer when Bobby Storey raided Castlereagh RUC Station in 2002 and stole files containing the names of dozens of Sinn Fein/PIRA Agents and Informers.
On a Friday afternoon, I received a call from a journalist, who said that NIO had just told him off the record that the murder of Charles Bennett was being viewed as "Internal House-keeping" and not a breach of The PIRA 'cease-fire'.
I phoned The NIO and recorded the call, below, a record of the call and transcript. The tape recording was given to BBC Newsnight who flew over from England specifically to record the story. The BBC Newsnight exposure effectively finished Mo Mowlam's position as Secretary of State, a severe body blow for Sinn Fein/PIRA.
While Tony Blair, Sinn Fein/PIRA and other duplicitist mud-larks rallied around Mowlam, I quickly drove the final nail into Mowlam's political coffin.
Following my exposure of Mowlam's flawed "Internal House-keeping thesis", Mowlam was hanging by a thread, while I was at war with Sinn Fein/PIRA, I still had many contacts within Sinn Fein/PIRA. I was told by a senior member of Sinn Fein/PIRA that a list of On-The-Run Sinn Fein/PIRA members had been drawn up and they were to receive Comfort Letters, Amnesties and Royal Pardons.
The senior Sinn Fein/PIRA member was providing me with this information, because he knew that twenty-seven of the initial list of forty-one OTRs drawn up, had actually been moved out of Northern Ireland after they had admitted to Sinn Fein/PIRA that they had Raped women and children.
I press released the list of forty-one Sinn Fein/PIRA Murderers and Rapists who were to be given Comfort Letters/Amnesties/Royal Pardons, this caused a political storm around Mo Mowlam and the Northern Ireland Office, with everyone running for cover.
In October, 1999, Mo Mowlam was replaced by Peter Mandelson, Mowlam had signed her own political death warrant by going native with Sinn Fein/PIRA.
David Rupert’s decision to become the Prosecution’s star witness against Michael McKevitt, followed his final trip to Ireland as an undercover agent in October 2000.
Conspiracy to Silence
In November 2000, I went voluntarily to Monaghan to face charges of sexual assault, this is covered in more detail below, and the case has returned to The Court of Criminal Appeal in 2021. I was convicted on 10th November 2000 and sentenced 21 November 2000. Following my sentencing every tramp and his dog was given a platform against me, many of whom would later be exposed as rapists and child abusers.
Following sentencing in Cavan Circuit Court, I was in handcuffs and shackles and I was attacked by a number of Sinn Fein/PIRA members, two of whom had been moved out of Monaghan Town by The Provisional IRA as they had admitted Raping Children, such was the perverse nature of the campaign against me.
The Director of Public Prosecutions Directed a charge of assault against one individual, however, a corrupt Garda Inspector ensured that this individual was never brought before the Court. The letter below from Superintendent O'Connor explains that The DPP has directed assault charges against one person in relation to the assault at Cavan Circuit Court.
Before my 'trial' in November 2000, the Garda Detective who had prior knowledge of Omagh, warned me that the safety of my children could not be guaranteed if I raised anything at my trial that would embarrass An Garda Siochana in Monaghan. My children continued to live in Kieran Doherty Park, where 80% of active Sinn Fein/PIRA members in Monaghan lived.The then Minister for Justice, John O'Donoghue TD who had publicly criticised my high profile campaign against Sinn Fein/PIRA's continued Murder and Rape, had become involved in the case against me both publicly and privately in order to ensure that I was buried and silenced. The Irish Government did not want continued Sinn Fein/PIRA Murders and Rapes highlighted.
O'Donoghue had no interest in the allegations against me, he wanted to bury me as he also knew about the meeting at Aras an Uachtarain on the 11th July, 1998.
O'Donoghue instructed the DPP, Mr James Hamilton, by Letter to bury me. I discovered this letter under a Freedom of Information request and O'Donoghue moved quickly to change the FOI legislation, which was passed without question by Dail Eireann.
O'Donoghue visited me in prison and apologised for interfering in the Judicial process, I rejected his apology and he continued to do me harm, to the point that he meet with The Judge who would preside over my Appeal.O'Donoghue's continued commentary about me in the media resulted in my person being subject in prison to violent assault including being stabbed in the head and arm. O'Donoghue was aware of the harm being done to me but he continued.
I then issued Criminal proceedings against Minister for Justice, John O'Donoghue TD in The District Court in Dublin, I sought to have O'Donoghue charged with Perverting the Course of Justice, due to his Criminal interference in my case. I was representing myself in the District Court, O'Donoghue was represented by senior Counsel who are now High Court Judges.
While I was able to show The District Court the Freedom of Information documents disclosed, including the draft letter from O'Donoghue to The DPP, The District Court Judge refused to issue an Order of Disclosure in relation to the actual letter received by The DPP, and he ruled that without the letter received by The DPP, he would not issue a summons.
The DPP had admitted that they had received the unlawful letter but they would not disclose it, the Judge would not order disclosure of the letter, and he then ruled that without the letter received by The DPP, he would not issue the summons against O'Donoghue. This bizarre case highlighting yet again the dangerous relationship between corrupt Politicians and some within the Judiciary.
O'Donoghue signed Transfer orders for members of The Real IRA to be moved to the non-political prison in which I was being held. Those Real IRA prisoners told me that 'Gardai' involved in their transfer had reminded them that I had named The Real IRA, Omagh Bombers. Dissident republicans transferred to the prison in which I was being held realised that they were being used and did not engage in violence against me, in fact we all trained together in the prison gym.
Eventually, it became clear that I would not be silenced or go on lock-up due to the vitriol and violence being directed at me and so dark-forces (facilitated by same Garda Detective in Monaghan) made their boldest move so far, I was arrested from prison in relation to The Omagh Bomb. I was returned to prison after being questioned at Lucan Garda Station for several hours, the basic tenant of that questioning was to keep my mouth shut.
Bizarrely, I would on a second occasion be taken from prison, allegedly arrested in relation to The Omagh Bomb, this according to Gardai many years later was not a lawful arrest, no record exists and appears to have been a kidnapping to warn me to keep my mouth shut.
While I will not disclose the full details here, something significant happened before my kidnapping, that proved beyond doubt that I was in a position to have prior knowledge of Real IRA Bomb attacks, and this supported my position in relation to Omagh.
Plan to Murder
Following my kidnapping from prison by rogue Gardai, it was clear that I was not going to be silent, and as my release date came ever closer, corrupt Politicians and Gardai were anxious. Three weeks before my release, there was a final attempt on my life. This was an organised attempt and one that took some planning and co-operation.
I was returning from a visit, everything appeared normal, I was escorted from the visiting area by a prison officer that I did not know. Prison officers were constantly transferring between prisons and so it was not unusual to see new faces.
When I stepped through the final security gate on the long corridor that led to my landing, I heard the gate close behind me, normally the prison officer closes the gate and walks in front of the prisoner to his landing. When the security gate had been closed, I simply looked ahead and waited for the prison officer to walk past me.
When I looked around, the prison officer was gone. I had probably one-hundred feet to walk to my landing and so I proceeded alone. This all felt very eery, simply not right, as I walked along the corridor, I could see that the main security door to another landing was open, but no sign of any prison officer.
Then five prisoners, clearly armed with brand new Stanley blades lined out across the corridor to block my path. I knew that if my assailants got me down on the ground I would be sliced and probably murdered.
I decided to take out the biggest lad, I ran straight at the biggest lad, I hit him so hard that my fist deflected off his face and hit the rough plaster wall behind him, I lost the knuckle on my index finger on my right hand. The prisoner that I had punched was half unconscious, I held him up and used his as a shield, there was blood everywhere, I kept kicking and punching until prison officers eventually arrived.
While the majority of prison officers were professional, there were always prison officers for hire, and if a handful of rogue officers landed the same shift together prisoners could die and sometimes did. Contracts on individuals is as common in prison as it is on the street. Before I was released, one of the five prisoners who had attacked me, told me they had been paid in heroin to attack me.
Background and Key Milestones
The most important thing to remember about The Omagh Bomb is that, there were a great many agendas at play, the victims were of little concern to those agendas, as had been the case from 1969. However, the people of Ireland were told exactly what was happening before, during and after Omagh, but nobody wanted to listen.
The people were told loudly and clearly that the Sinn Fein/PIRA Leadership had armed The Real IRA in order to use them as proxies, to do their dirty-work while the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership presented themselves to the world as ‘peace-makers’. This was a tactic used many times, for example, following The Good Friday Agreement, Sinn Fein/PIRA used Direct Action Against Drugs, to murder those drug dealers who were refusing to pay protection money to Sinn Fein/PIRA. The Good Friday Agreement
Following The Good Friday Agreement Sinn Fein/PIRA used shootings, beatings and murder to silence those who offered any challenge to their authority, this included Sinn Fein/PIRA Rape victims. This violence by Sinn Fein/PIRA post-Good Friday Agreement was described by British Secretary of State, Mo Mowlam as “Internal House-keeping” and was not viewed as a breach of the agreed Sinn Fein/PIRA cease-fire.
This determination by Mowlam, while an outrage against civil society, God and man, was technically correct, as Sinn Fein/PIRA had deliberately excluded Catholics from the Terms and Conditions of their agreed cease-fire, The Irish Republic including its Armed Forces were also excluded from the Sinn Fein/PIRA Terms and Conditions.
Effectively, Sinn Fein/PIRA had been given a license to murder, as long as those murders were within the Catholic community. If State sponsored collusion ever existed in Northern Ireland, then this is its greatest example, fully exposed in the light of day, yet those who should have known better turned a blind eye.
Between 1992-1997 this Author was a runner between, his cousin, PIRA Chief of Staff, Kevin McKenna and Martin McGuinness, PIRA Army Council.
Kevin McKenna was also using another member of Sinn Fein/PIRA as a runner with Northern Command; however, McKenna was concerned that the second runner may have been compromised. As I had a genuine reason for visiting Monaghan each week and a genuine reason for visiting Derry each week, the security forces were less likely to take me under their notice, or so Kevin McKenna believed. I meet with McGuinness at a safe-house on The Culmore Road in Derry on a regular basis.
Kevin McKenna could trace his heritage back to Niall McKenna of 1641, who had massacred over 2,000 Protestants in the Monaghan/Tyrone region while stripping thousands more Protestants of their belongings and driving them from their homes. While Kevin McKenna was happy to kill British military personnel, he derived his greatest pleasure from purely sectarian operations such as Kingsmill (10 Protestants), Enniskillen (12 Protestants), Teebane (8 Protestants) Shankill (10 Protestants dead, 57 Protestants injured).
Kevin McKenna never tired of targeting Protestants in his native Aughnacloy, County Tyrone and while he had murdered a number of Protestants in Aughnacloy and Monaghan in the 1970s, McKenna failed to carry-out any successful operations in Aughnacloy from 1980 onwards.
Martin McGuinness is a very different kettle of fish; McGuinness had been groomed by MI6 from those early days in the 1970s when the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership meet with British Officials. According to Sean O’Callaghan (a Garda and MI5 Agent) who was in regular phone contact with McGuinness in the 1990s, McGuinness was formerly recruited by MI6 in the mid-1980s.
O’Callaghan claimed that he witnessed many meetings between McGuinness and MI6 Officer Oatley during a period that the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership claim there was no contact between the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership and The British. O’Callaghan also claimed that when Oatley used Irish in his communications to McGuinness, it was O’Callaghan who provided the Irish, anyone who knew McGuinness, will know that his IQ was not overwhelming.
This is the actual Communication from MI6 Officer Oatley to MI6 Agent Martin McGuinness in 1993, it was initially hand-written by Oatley and then typed up by MI6 Officer Robert, so that Guinness's name could be removed from the top and Oatley's name removed from the bottom. Read the content and see the total disregard for those who had just been murdered by Sinn Fein/PIRA in England and Northern Ireland.
In 2017, David Trimble, who had become friendly with McGuinness admitted that he was with Sean O’Callaghan when Sean O’Callaghan received a long and detailed phone call from Martin McGuinness in the 1990s. However, the greatest indictment against McGuinness is the communication below, the provenance of which the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership continue to deny, to accept its provenance as set out here is to accept that McGuinness, ‘the republican hero’, was in fact an MI6 Agent who had a free hand from his Handlers to engage in and direct murder, nothing new there when we look at all the other British Agents/informers/touts who did and continue to sit at the top of Sinn Fein/PIRA.
PIRA Cease-fire, August 1994
In August, 1994, The PIRA Army Council declared a cease-fire, the Terms and Conditions of that cease-fire have never been seen by anyone other than members of The PIRA Army Council and MI6 Officers reporting to The British Prime Minister. This author had sight of several communications between Kevin McKenna and Martin McGuinness.
On Friday, 9th February, 1996: one hour after a statement ending their ceasefire, the Provisional IRA detonated a large lorry bomb near South Quay DLR station in the London Docklands, killing two people, injuring 40, and causing £150 million worth of damage. The IRA ceasefire had lasted 17 months and 9 days. It is not too much of a stretch to imagine that those running McGuinness, where happy to allow this bombing to go ahead and force Unionists into Government with Sinn Fein/PIRA. The tone of the communication from MI6 Officer Oatley, supports this view.
On the 20th July, 1997, The PIRA Army Council restored their 1994 cease-fire, stating:
“We have ordered the unequivocal restoration of the ceasefire of August 1994. All units have been instructed accordingly”.
This “Restoration” of the 1994 cease-fire means that there was only one cease-fire, it broke down and was restored. This means that the Terms and Conditions agreed between Martin McGuinness and MI6 Officer, Michael Oatley, in 1994 never changed.
So, while Sinn Fein/PIRA would sign up to The Mitchel Principles in 1997, those Principles had no effect on the Terms and Conditions of the 1994 cease-fire. The 1994 Terms and Conditions excluded Catholics and The Irish Republic, including members of An Garda Siochana.
On 10th October 1997 a Provisional IRA General Army Convention was held in Falcarragh, County Donegal, and was attended by Kevin McKenna, Thomas ‘Slab’ Murphy, Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness, Pat Doherty, Michael McKevitt, Bernadette McKevitt Sands and so forth.
By the time the Sinn Fein/PIRA Army Convention was held in Donegal in October 1997, the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership were infiltrated to the point that Agents, Informers and Touts outnumbered actual Sinn Fein/PIRA members. This level of infiltration was fully exposed when Bobby Storey, raided Castlereagh RUC Holding Centre, in 2002, however, no action could be taken as several levels of the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership would have had to be wiped out.
The Real IRA
Following, the Sinn Fein/PIRA Convention in Donegal in October 1997, Michael McKevitt who had been Quarter-Master General on The PIRA Army Council, created The Real IRA at a shed in Oldcastle, County Meath. McKevitt was surrounded by members of The PIRA who wanted to continue with a campaign of violence against the British presence in Ireland.
Interestingly, I only parted company with Martin McGuinness following the Sinn Fein/Provisional IRA General Army Convention which was held in Falcarragh, County Donegal, On 10th October 1997. I parted company with McGuinness as I was advised by members of my extended paternal family in Dundalk and south Armagh, that Michael McKevitt and others were being allowed, by The Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership, including Kevin McKenna, Martin McGuinness and Thomas ‘Slab’ Murphy, to empty PIRA arms dumps as they prepared to set-up The Real IRA.
I travelled from Belfast to Monaghan at the end of 1997 to ask Kevin McKenna (Thomas ‘Slab’ Murphy had just been appointed Chief of Staff of the PIRA – Murphy was no less ruthless than Kevin McKenna but he was easily bought as he was promised by MI6 that his criminal empire would remain untouched by the security forces in the north) why the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership were allowing McKevitt to take explosives, weapons, ammunition and personnel without sanction. Kevin McKenna said that;
“The odd bomb going off here and there would help keep Unionists focused on working with the ‘Doves’”.
Kevin McKenna, PIRA Chief of Staff, 1983-1997/98
Normally anyone who misused or misappropriated as much a bullet belonging to The PIRA was court-martialed and punishment administered, two of the disappeared had allegedly mis-used a single gun belonging to the PIRA.
I was devastated by Kevin’s answer as I had put a lot of work into the peace-process and I had convinced a lot of people to give Sinn Fein a chance to move away from violence. Kevin McKenna and the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership had decided to use The Real IRA as proxies to do their dirty-work, just as they had done with many proxy groups over the years. This tactic would back-fire with the Omagh Bomb, and only then did the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership condemn the so called ‘Dissidents’.
Martina Anderson MLA used her position as MEP to lobby The Irish Government not to extradite Omagh Bomber, Liam Campbell, yet again exposing the lie of so called ‘Dissidents’. Sinn Fein members on Fermanagh and Omagh District Council supported a call by Republican Sinn Fein/CIRA not to extradite Omagh Bomber, Liam Campbell. While there are many examples of the hand in glove relationship between Sinn Fein/PIRA and so called ‘dissidents’, the examples above, are good recent examples, that expose the Truth about The Omagh Bomb in 1998.
When Kevin McKenna told me that Sinn Fein/PIRA were arming The Real IRA to use them as proxies, I changed tactic, in March 1998, I gave an exclusive front-page story to The Sunday Times in which I described my time in Sinn Fein/PIRA in Monaghan and the Ethnic Cleansing strategy developed and operationalised by Jim Lynagh and the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership in 1986.
In March 1998, I went to war with Sinn Fein/PIRA on the parades issue, I had known from 1996 that Sinn Fein/PIRA had manufactured opposition to Loyal Order parades and I had tried to convince them that this was wrong on all levels. I had initially engaged with all parties involved in the parades issue and some good work was done, however, Sinn Fein/PIRA were not reciprocating the bold moves being made by the Loyal Orders.
Over the following months and years, I would be subject to many attacks for the stand I had taken, as it was not simply a stand against Sinn Fein/PIRA but also a stand against the See, Hear and Speak no Evil Brigade.
Real IRA as Proxie
While on the 31st of August 1994 The PIRA Army Council issued a general press statement declaring their cease-fire, through P.O’Neil, This press statement did not contain any meat on the bones of the Terms and Conditions of the PIRA cease-fire, the detailed Terms and Conditions which have never been altered to this day were delivered by Martin McGuinness to MI6.
There was in fact a twin-track approach, The Good Friday Agreement did not mirror the Terms and Conditions of The PIRA cease-fire. The Good Friday Agreement did not contain any detail about ‘Comfort Letters’, it did not contain any detail about Sinn Fein/PIRA being allowed to continue Human Rights abuses against the Catholic community (including murder and rape) and so forth. The latter is why, The British Secretary of State, Mo Mowlam, stated in 1999 that the murder of Charles Bennett by The PIRA was not viewed as a breach of The PIRA cease-fire but was viewed by the British as “Internal-House-keeping”.
![]()
British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, tried to under-mine my efforts and the efforts of others, by offering a false sense of security to those who has suffered at the hands of Sinn Fein/PIRA and Loyalist terrorists for decades when on, Wednesday 20th May 1998, Blair delivered a speech at the Coleraine campus of the University of Ulster in which he unveiled a hand-written set of pledges to the people of Ireland in advance of the Referendum on 22nd May 1998.
The text of the pledges was as follows:
“I pledge to the people of Northern Ireland:
1. No change in the status of Northern Ireland without the express consent of the people of Northern Ireland.
2. Power to take decisions returned to a Northern Ireland Assembly, with accountable North/South co-operation.
3. Fairness and equality guaranteed for all.
4. Those who use or threaten violence excluded from the Government of Northern Ireland.
5. Prisoners kept in unless violence is given up for good”.
The Omagh Bomb
On the 15th August 1998, 29 people were murdered and over 200 injured in Omagh, County Tyrone, by a Real IRA Bomb that had the DNA of three organisations.
The Leadership of Sinn Fein/PIRA would reinstate their agreed cease-fire with MI6, and while Sinn Fein/PIRA would no longer attack British Military, their Racist campaign against the Protestant community would continue, although by means of different tactics.
Sinn Fein/PIRA would also use their now redundant murders to take iron fist control of those communities in which Sinn Fein/PIRA engaged in whole sale criminality including murder and rape.
The Omagh bombing was a car bombing on 15 August 1998 in the town of Omagh, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. It was carried out by a group calling themselves the Real Irish Republican Army, a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) splinter group who opposed the IRA's ceasefire and the Good Friday Agreement. The bombing killed 29 people (including a woman pregnant with twins) and injured some 220 others, making it the deadliest single incident of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Telephoned warnings had been sent almost 40 minutes beforehand but were inaccurate, and police had inadvertently moved people toward the bomb.
The bombing caused outrage both locally and internationally, and in that outrage the Truth was lost, and political spin directed from Whitehall won the day. The Real IRA denied that the bomb was intended to kill civilians and apologised, shortly after, the group declared a ceasefire. The victims included people of many backgrounds and ages, Protestants, Catholics, six teenagers, six children, a woman pregnant with twins, two Spanish tourists and others on a day trip from the Republic of Ireland. Both unionists and Irish nationalists were killed and injured. As a result of the bombing, new anti-terrorism laws were swiftly enacted by both the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland.
The Sinn Fein/PIRA tactic of using The Real IRA as proxies to force unionists into a power-sharing Assembly had back-fired, although the political spin did present Sinn Fein/PIRA as The 'Doves', in the 'republican' menagerie of murder.
It has been alleged that the British, Irish and US intelligence agencies had information which could have prevented the bombing, most of which came from double agents inside the Real IRA, but this information was not given to the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). In 2008, the BBC reported that British intelligence agency GCHQ was monitoring conversations between the bombers as the bomb was being driven into Omagh.
A 2001 report by the Police Ombudsman said that the RUC Special Branch failed to act on prior warnings and criticised the RUC's investigation of the bombing. Police reportedly obtained circumstantial and coincidental evidence against some suspects, but they were unable to convict anyone of the bombing. Colm Murphy was tried, and convicted. He was released on appeal after it was revealed that Garda Special Branch Detectives, Donnelly and Fahy based in Monaghan Town, forged interview notes used in the case.
Murphy's nephew Sean Hoey, was also tried but was acquitted. In June 2009, the victims' families won a £1.6 million civil action settlement against four defendants, who were found liable for the bombing. In 2014, Seamus Daly was charged with the murder of 29 people; however, the case against him was withdrawn in 2016. All of the above had been named by this Author in 1998.
The Real IRA's tactics were the same as those of the IRA before it. It targeted the British security forces and also carried out bombings of symbolic or economic targets. The goal was to damage the economy and cause severe disruption, to put pressure on the British government to withdraw. Warnings were sent before such bombings, along with a code-word so that the authorities would know it was genuine. The Real IRA began its paramilitary campaign with an attempted car bombing in Banbridge, County Down on 7th January 1998.
The 300 pounds (140 kg) explosive was defused by security forces. Over the following months, it mounted several car bomb and mortar attacks. There were attacks or attempted attacks in Moira, Portadown, Armagh, Newry, Lisburn, Belfast, and Belleek, as well as another car bombing in Banbridge on 1st August, 1998, which caused thirty-five injuries but no deaths. Banbridge was not condemned by Sinn Fein/PIRA.
The Omagh bombing took place 13 weeks after the Good Friday Agreement of April 1998 was signed. Intended to be a comprehensive solution to the Troubles, it had broad support both in Ireland and internationally. While The Good Friday Agreement offered a blue-print for an agreed settlement, it was the Dirty-Deal done between the Sinn Fein/PIRA Leadership and MI6 that would and continues to under-mine confidence in The Good Friday Agreement.
On 13th August, a maroon Vauxhall Cavalier was stolen from outside a block of flats in Carrickmacross, County Monaghan, Republic of Ireland, by Paddy Dixon, a Garda informer, who was being handled by Garda Sgt John White. At that time, it bore the County Donegal registration number of 91 DL 2554. The bombers replaced its Republic of Ireland number plates with fake Northern Ireland plates (MDZ 5211), and loaded the car with about 500 pounds (230 kg) of fertiliser-based explosives. The boaster pack was filled with Provisional IRA commercial explosives.
On Saturday 15th August, the bomb car was driven from County Monaghan, by Seamus McKenna, across the Irish border to Omagh, travelling north and west. A 'scout car' drove ahead of the bomb car to warn it of any checkpoints, and the two cars were in constant contact by mobile phone. At 14:19, the bomb car was parked outside S.D. Kells' clothes shop on Omagh's Market Street, at the eastern edge of the town centre, near the crossroads with Dublin Road. The driver, Seamus McKenna, could not find a parking space near the intended target, Omagh Courthouse, the scene of previous Provisional IRA attacks.
Seamus McKenna and his young Real IRA apprentice, armed the bomb and set the timer to detonate it in 40 minutes. They left the car and walked east down-Market Street towards Campsie Road, before leaving Omagh in the scout car. A family of Spanish tourists happened to take photos by the car. The photographer died in the bombing, but the man and child in the photograph survived.
The car with false registration plates had been stolen by Garda Informer, Paddy Dixon. Paddy Dixon was injured in a Real IRA bomb attack in Navan in County Meath in 2011. Paddy Dixon's Address had been provided to The Real IRA by a member of Sinn Fein/PIRA, as part of a deal to ensure that Gerry Adams would not be opposed in Louth during his campaign to get elected to Dail Eireann.
Gerry Adams also meet with members of The Real IRA Army Council before he ran for election in 2011, in which he gave undertakings in relation to ensuring better conditions for Real IRA prisoners.
At around 14:30, three phone calls were made warning of a bomb in Omagh, using the same codeword that had been used in the Real IRA's bombing in Banbridge two weeks earlier: "Martha Pope”, it is believed that this code-word was chosen by a female member of The Real IRA Leadership. The calls were made from telephone boxes many miles away in south County Armagh.
The first warning was telephoned to Ulster Television saying, "There's a bomb, courthouse, Omagh, main street, 500lb, explosion 30 minutes". One minute later, the office received a second warning saying, "Bomb, Omagh town, 15 minutes". The caller claimed the warning on behalf of "Óglaigh na hÉireann". The next minute, the Coleraine office of the Samaritans received a call stating that a bomb would go off on the "main street" of Omagh "about 200 yards" (180 m) from the courthouse. The recipients passed on the information to the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC).
The BBC News stated that police "were clearing an area near the local courthouse, 40 minutes after receiving a telephone warning, when the bomb detonated. But the warning was unclear and the wrong area was evacuated". The warnings mentioned "main street" when there was no street by that name in Omagh, although Market Street–High Street was the town's main shopping street. It runs for hundreds of yards east–west from the site of the bomb to the courthouse.
Given the warnings, police believed the bomb was near the courthouse, so they evacuated the surrounding buildings and streets. As it happened, they moved people away from the courthouse and towards the site of the bomb, placing a cordon at Scarffe's Entry. The courthouse is roughly 365 yards (334 m) from the spot where the car bomb was parked. During the later Special Criminal Court trial of Real IRA Director Michael McKevitt, witnesses for the prosecution said that the inaccurate warnings were accidental.
Conclusion
On the 23rd Anniversary of Omagh, this article is as close as anyone will ever get to the truth, the information in this article was made fully available in 1998, but the Truth was buried for political expediency. I am well aware, that certain operations were allowed to run over the years to protect informants, my key concern with Banbridge and Omagh is the bizarre and criminal efforts that have been made to silence at least one of the messengers.
In 1998 great efforts were made to silence this author, this author told you, that the Sinn Fein/PIRA Leadership had armed The Real IRA to use them as proxies, this author publicly named those involved in The Omagh Bomb including those at Leadership level in Sinn Fein/PIRA who had taken the decision to arm The Real IRA, this author also told you publicly that nobody would ever be convicted of The Omagh Bomb, 23 years later, who is the liar now?
You can continue to be believe the Liars, the Spin Doctors, those who have much to hide and those who are simply ashamed that they allowed the Truth to be buried for political expediency.
NOTE: On an RTÉ radio show Morning Ireland in February 2008, Dr Martin Mansergh reassured listeners that Berty Ahern's difficulties were no more than a spot of "inflight turbulence" with a safe landing in sight. When Fine Gael's, Tribunal Expert, Senator Eugene Regan dissented, Mansergh became quite agitated, questioning why Regan wanted to question Berty Ahern's finances declaring to Regan that: "You should have respect for your betters!"
NOTE: Paddy Dixon Garda Informer:
Initially, I had not included Monaghan based Garda Informer, Paddy Dixon in this post, mainly because I find much of what has been said about him to be difficult to comprehend. Articles written in the early 2000s said he had been placed on the Witness Protection Program and living on the Continent.
Yet, Paddy was to be found living openly in Navan in County Meath in 2011, a long-established Sinn Fein/PIRA base, built up over many years by Joe O’Reilly, with many Real IRA living within a stone’s throw of Navan.
In fact, Paddy could have continued to live quietly in Navan if his location had not been traded by members of Sinn Fein/PIRA with the Real IRA so that Gerry Adams could have a bump free run for Arthur Morgan’s seat in County Louth, where Gerry had been parachuted in for the 2011 General Election. There was never any threat against Gerry from his old comrade Bernadette McKevitt-Sands, however, any type of unpleasantness could cost much needed votes.
Paddy Dixon was a car thief, who we are told began working as an informer for An Garda Siochana in 1992 when he would steal cars to order for The PIRA.
We are then told that Paddy Dixon graduated to The Real IRA in 1998, and was the most important police informer inside the Real IRA in the crucial months leading up to the 1998 Omagh bombing, in which 29 innocent men, women and children were murdered as were unborn twins.
It is alleged by various sources, including Paddy Dixon, that senior Garda Officers allowed the Omagh Bomb to run in order to protect Dixon’s position in The Real IRA. Yet, a tape recording produced to support these assertions has Dixon telling his Garda Handler:
"The Omagh investigation is going to blow up in their faces".
This reference to the ‘Omagh Investigation’ shows that this recording is made after the Omagh Bomb. Paddy Dixon also claims that:
“Every (PIRA) terrorist operation he knew about was compromised”
It is stated by Garda Detective Sgt John White who died in 2020, that he had warned senior Garda Officers about the Omagh Bomb a few days before it exploded. However, Garda Detective John White was found wanting by both The Morris Tribunal (Garda Corruption in Donegal) and The Nally Report, which investigated John White’s claims that he had warned senior officers about The Omagh Bomb.
John White was Paddy Dixon’s Handler when Dixon was stealing cars for the PIRA. In early 1998, Garda Detective Sergeant, John White, returned to Paddy Dixon and recruited Dixon again so that he could infiltrate The Real IRA.
When it became apparent in the third week of January, 1998 that the Real IRA was about to launch a major terror offensive, Sgt John White asked Paddy Dixon to offer his services to the Real IRA. Dixon had a long-standing connection with a republican in south County Dublin known as 'the Long Fellow'.
Sgt White suggested, under orders from senior Garda command, that his old agent reactivate his relationship with 'The Long Fellow' who owned a breaker's yard in south Dublin where Dixon's stolen cars were re-plated and huge explosive devices were secreted inside the vehicles.
Over the next seven months the Dixon/White axis would give the Garda vital insight into the Real IRA terror machine. Between February and August 1998 Dixon gave the force inside information on at least nine separate Real IRA attacks culminating in the bomb at Omagh.
In total, five Real IRA bombing missions were thwarted, thanks to Dixon's intelligence and White's diligence. But in order to give Dixon credibility within the terrorist organisation, White's superiors in the Garda ordered that a number of attacks be allowed through. They included a massive bomb attack that devastated Moira in February, 1998. No one died in the blast, but the next bombs to be allowed through, however, would have far more serious consequences.
On 2 July, 1998, Dixon rang White to say he had another phone call from 'The Long Fellow'. He told Dixon that he wanted another car for a bombing, warning that this was to be a big one, a real spectacular.
Dixon rang White again on 10 August, 1998. He said he was to arrange a car theft for the following day. White then met two senior Garda officers hours later at a pub in west Dublin. His description of the fateful meeting was vividly conveyed to detectives from Northern Ireland several months later.
White's superior said that Dixon was now under severe pressure from the Real IRA in South Armagh. The officer then supped his pint and said to White:
“John, we are going to let this one go through”
When Garda Detective Sergeant, John White asked his superior:
“What if anyone is killed?”
The senior officer dismissed White’s concerns pointing to the Real IRA's inability to inflict casualties on the security forces north of the border.
As late as 14 August, 1998, the day before the Omagh bombing, Dixon was in constant contact with White. 'The Long Fellow' said it would take place within 24 hours. Dixon said that a car, a Vauxhall, had been stolen. With hours to go before that car (it later emerged it was a Vauxhall Cavalier) was eventually driven over the frontier and into Omagh, White implored his superiors to act. But he was simply told again that it had to go through.
White's testimony to both the Police Service of Northern Ireland and Nuala O'Loan, the Police Ombudsman in the Province, was devastating. The Garda should have run a check on all stolen cars on 14 August, 1998, especially those that had gone missing near the border. Moreover, Dixon had said the car was for a bomb and the breaker's yard where all Real IRA devices were mixed and put into vehicles had been under round-the-clock surveillance since White reactivated his agent in early 1998.
Both Nuala O'Loan and Superintendent Norman Baxter of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, the officer in charge of the Omagh inquiry, were convinced that White was telling the truth. Baxter's team spent three days in July 2002 debriefing White.
Dixon was never been questioned either by O'Loan's officers or, more crucially, the PSNI's Omagh Inquiry team.
Michael Gallagher, whose son was killed at Omagh and a spokesman for some of the victims' families, said:
“The puzzle remains - why won't the Garda let Paddy Dixon talk to the PSNI?”
2005-2006 Political Corruption Ireland
The insider
In 2005 there was concern that certain corrupt politicians were taking bribes from Property Developers, in return for a Guarantee that The National Children’s Hospital would be built on the site of The Mater Hospital in Berty Ahern’s constituency. I volunteered my services to investigate.
Inspired by abolitionist Frederick Douglass, Daniel O’Connell said of Irish-American slave owners:
"How can the generous, the charitable, the humane and the noble emotions of the Irish heart have become extinct within you?"
NOTE: In 2010 when I infiltrated a money-laundering operation in Dublin, two well known names from The Mahon Tribunal raised their head once again.
In 2005, Dublin City was awash with cash, people like Tom McFeely, a former Sinn Fein/PIRA Hunger-striker, had his pockets bulging with cash as he built such infamous developments as Priory Hall, which would later be deemed unsafe. After McFeely left his £15,000,000 Mansion on Ailesbury Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin, over £200,000 cash was found hidden under the bath.
Tom McFeely former PIRA Hunger-Striker
However, this article is not about Sinn Fein/PIRA Bagman, McFeely, it is about a Berty Ahern, Bagman and his associates.
Due to the volume of money being spent on The Mater Hospital site by Berty Ahern’s Government, which would total £40,000,000 including, €24.5 million for the business services team, €3.2 million for project management and €6.1 million for the integrated design team.
Another €6.1 million in administration and other costs were incurred. This sum included €1.6 million in planning expenses, €878,000 in legal expenses, €200,000 spent on communications and €132,000 in board fees.
This £40,000,000 Convincer, as well as placing Property Developers on The Board of The Mater Hospital, ensured that the Property Developers paid large cash sums to corrupt politicians. Berty Ahern was no stranger to The Mater Hospital, he had some years earlier worked in the Accounts Department of the Mater Hospital, Dublin.
Once the Property Developers were satisfied that Berty Ahern could deliver on his promise of The National Children’s Hospital being built on The Mater Hospital site, the Property Developers bought up all land and property in the vicinity of The Mater Hospital.
This property and land grab by the Property Developers would ensure that the thousands of construction site workers, who would later be replaced by thousands of healthcare workers, would have accommodation, food and drink venues on their door-step, and provide a return of millions of Euros for the Property Developers.
Establishing the facts
I secured work with a key Property Developer, who was also one of Berty Ahern’s key sponsors. I was hired as a Project Manager and a Health and Safety Officer for Castle Contracts. My employer, the owner of Castle Contracts, brought me to O’Neill’s pub on the corner of Dorset Street and Eccles Street.
O’Neills had been a favourite drinking place for members of Sinn Fein/Provisional IRA before it had been closed some years earlier. My Boss and other partners had bought O’Neill’s as part of their property portfolio related to the promised siting of The National Children’s Hospital on The Mater Hospital site, a few yards away.
I specifically asked my Boss why he had bought O’Neills and it was at this point that he boosted about having inside information, as he was actually a close friend of Berty Ahern and he (my Boss) had been appointed as a Director of the Board of The Mater Hospital.
I began a complete refurbishment of O’Neill’s pub; I was working on my own for a good while because in 2005 labour was scarce due to the economic boom. My Boss built up a good relationship with me, as I worked hard and kept within a tight budget. Eventually I got some Polish lads to work with me and the project moved quickly.
As O’Neill’s had previously been a Sinn Fein/PIRA drinking establishment, we were not surprised when thousands of duty-free cigarettes would fall out of carefully constructed hides as we demolished walls and ceilings.
My Boss was a partner with others in the ownership of several properties and businesses, however, he was also a Property Developer, this meant that he was actually charging his partners for the supply of labour and materials. By the end of each project, his partners were heavily indebted and would be at his mercy, as he could call in outstanding debt.
The Corruption
On one occasion I was standing in the front room of one of my Boss’s Hotels, he was shoving a large amount of cash into a standard envelope, however, he could not get enough cash in and so he asked the receptionist to bring him a big A4 envelope, into which he stuffed the cash.
My Boss then asked me to drive him to his house in Drumcondra, the journey took us past Saint Luke’s, which was the name of the Fianna Fail Office in Drumcondra. My Boss told me to pull in to the left-hand side of the road across from Saint Luke’s, he got out of the car and walked over to Saint Luke’s, where he handed the envelope full of cash to a well-known politician.
On another occasion my Boss asked me to drive him from one of his hotels on the north side of Dublin to another one of his hotels on Stephen’s Green. On the way back from Stephens Green my Boss had the radio in the car turned on, and when the news came on, he turned the radio up.
The news reported that Mary Harney was considering moving the site for The National Children’s Hospital to a green field site. Upon hearing Mary Harney’s intentions, my Boss took his mobile phone from his pocket and initially tried to phone Berty Ahern, when he could not reach Berty Ahern, he phoned and got through to Martin Cullen, who was a Minister.
My Boss was very clear with Martin Cullen that there would be repercussions, if The National Children’s Hospital was moved from the promised Mater Hospital site, after the massive investment my Boss and his partners had made.
Before the phone call between my Boss and Martin Cullen had finished Martin Cullen assured my Boss that Harney would not get her way. My Boss then reminded Minister Cullen that he must enjoy a holiday at my Boss’s Hotel and golf resort in Scotland. I have no evidence against Martin Cullen for corruption, I am simply stating that he was on speed-dial for my Boss.
The corruption also included some Directors of The Mater Hospital Board enjoying free Holidays at my Boss’s hotels and having free maintenance carried out at their own private homes by myself and other employees of Castle Contracts.
Conclusion
There is absolutely no question that the political corruption set out above lead to many Millions of Euros being spent on a site that was never going to accommodate The National Children’s Hospital.
The estimated £40,000,000 spend has at this point been written off, however, the real cost of this political corruption has yet to be fully realised.
The years of unnecessary delays have now driven up costs to astronomical levels. A project that was estimated to cost approximately £650,000,000 is now estimated to cost at least £3 Billion.
Had the political corruption not delayed The National Children’s Hospital, it can be said that the hospital could have been built at a much-reduced cost to the Tax Payer and Children could have been prioritised over corruption and self-serving by the few.
Berty Ahern and John O’Donoghue represented grievous excesses, greed and self-serving. The legacy of Berty Ahern and O’Donogue is not as ‘peace-makers’ for Northern Ireland, for they simply used Northern Ireland as a distraction, a slight of hand.
Their true legacy is vulnerable children denied basic fundamental human rights, while O’Donoghue used Tax Payers money to go to the races and enjoy Gondola rides in Venice.
The Mahon Tribunal
On 2 April, 2008, then-Taoiseach Bertie Ahern resigned due to continuing controversy over allegations relating to corrupt payments.
In all, The Mahon Tribunal said that he did not truthfully account for payments of £165,000 made to accounts connected to him.
This included the Manchester dinner with Irish businessmen, where The Mahon Tribunal rejected the assertion that two-thirds of the £24,838 figure mentioned was in punts. The Mahon Tribunal said it was solely a Sterling payment of £25,000, and suggesting that Ahern had not been truthful in his evidence.
Note: The Taoiseach did describe receiving a sum of money from a number of rich businessmen after speaking at a Manchester hotel, and also winning money through gambling on horses.
The Tribunal of Inquiry into Certain Planning Matters and Payments, commonly known as the Mahon Tribunal after the name of its last chairman, was a public inquiry in Ireland established by Dáil Éireann in 1997 to investigate allegations of corrupt payments to politicians regarding political decisions.
It mostly investigated planning permissions and land rezoning issues in the 1990s in the Dublin County Council area. Judge Alan Mahon was the final chair of the tribunal and its other members were Judge Mary Faherty and Judge Gerald Keys. The original Chairman, who was the sole member until just before his retirement, was Judge Feargus Flood, giving rise to the original common name of the Flood Tribunal.
The Mahon Tribunal used investigations to collect evidence and public hearings with witnesses, it investigated allegations made in the media prior to its establishment and allegations subsequently made to the tribunal itself. The tribunal ran from November 1997 to March 2012 and was the longest running and most expensive public inquiry held in the Republic of Ireland, with costs forecast to reach between €250 million and €300 million.
Public hearings concluded in September 2008, and following several delays due to legal challenges, the tribunal began preparing its final report. It published four interim reports, and the final report was published on 22 March, 2012.
Berty Ahern Only Wanted to Talk about Good Friday Agreement
Over six-years after it delivered its report on Bertie Ahern, the Mahon Tribunal is being talked about again since the former Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, walked out of a German TV interview after being questioned over it.
Appearing uncomfortable at the line of questioning following earlier discussions about the Good Friday Agreement, Ahern said he was quite happy that he has cleared his name and that he was very happy with his evidence to the Tribunal.
When pressed, he maintained: “I’ve dealt with that issue and I am not saying any more about that issue.”
Shortly afterwards, he cut the interview short, saying he was there to talk about the Good Friday Agreement and had done so.
Department of Foreign Affairs 2006
As the initial investigation into corrupt payments to Bertie Ahern in relation to The National Children’s Hospital continued, I was asked to move across the city to Stephens Green. I would Project Manage a fourteen-bedroom extension to Staunton’s on The Green, and when that project was complete, I would landscape the building site left following that construction work.
The Department of Foreign Affairs, next door to Staunton’s, was at this time being directed by Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dermot Ahern, who was being viewed with suspicion, not simply because he was personally and politically close to Bertie Ahern, but also because, Dermot Ahern had made representations to Michael McDowell TD in relation to Real IRA Leader, Michael McKevitt.I was instructed by An Garda Siochana to remove listening devices from the Department of Foreign Affairs, that had been monitoring activity and conversations within Dermot Ahern’s Department. All of the devices that I removed were on the exterior of the Department of Foreign Affairs building, the devices were small and had been used in similar covert operations, for example, the arrest of Eamon ‘Captain’ Cooke.
William Hampton Sinn Fein/PIRA Millions
11th December 2019
FAO
Director General RTE
Donnybrook
Dublin 4
Ref: Complaint: William E. Hampton - RTE Prime Time Programme – 10th December 2019 - 9.35pm
Dear Sir/Madam
On Tuesday night I had watched the RTE News at 9pm and at the end of the News there was an advertisement for the Prime Time Programme to follow, on the advertisement I seen two people that I recognised, although the advertisement did not name either, the men I recognised from the advertisement were Owen Smyth AKA Eoin Smyth and William E. Hampton AKA Billy, I decided to watch the Prime Time Programme to see what was being said.
Background
Towards the end of 2006 I received a phone call from Kevin McKenna asking if I could do him a favour. I was working very hard in 2006 and did not really have time to get involved in anything, however, I agreed to meet with Kevin McKenna in Smithborough in Monaghan. Kevin McKenna told me that a man by the name of William Hampton AKA Billy, had left Sinn Fein a large amount of money in his Will in 1997, but now wanted to change his Will and leave his money to The Irish Labour Party as he had become aware of the fact that Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams, Joe Cahill and the leadership in Belfast had covered up the rape of children and protected the rapists.
Kevin McKenna asked me if I would go to the UK and meet with William Hampton and try to convince him that giving his money to Sinn Fein would help with the peace-process. Kevin did not want to send any member of Sinn Fein/PIRA to meet with William Hampton.
In March 2007 Kevin McKenna had set-up a meeting between William Hampton and I, that meeting was to take place at The Black Boy Inn in Caernarfon, Wales. At my own expense I travelled to Wales by Ferry and booked into The Black Boy Inn in Caernarfon. The day after I booked into the Black Boy Inn, William Hampton arrived and asked for xxxxxxx at the Reception.
William Hampton, who insisted that I call him Billy was a strange wee man, but who was well educated about the ways of the world. Billy told me that he had left most of his estate to Sinn Fein/PIRA in a Will that he had made in 1997, but he now wanted to change his mind as he had learned about the numbers of children who had been raped by Sinn Fein/PIRA and that Gerry Adams, Joe Cahill and the leadership had protected the rapists while silencing the children, Billy said that he now wanted to leave his money to the Irish Labour Party as he believed that Pat Rabbitte, Eamon Gilmore and the Labour Party were better able to represent Irish interests.
William Hampton told me that when he had initially spoken to Kevin McKenna on the phone in 2006 about his plans to change his Will, Kevin McKenna became very aggressive and said that Billy would make him (Kevin) look like a fool to the leadership, Billy said that Kevin McKenna had told Billy in no uncertain terms that if he changed his Will, he (Kevin McKenna) would get a couple of young lads in Cootehill to say that Billy had molested them when he (Billy) had lived in Cootehill and Sinn Fein would get their money that way, Billy said that Kevin McKenna had told him that his (Billy’s legacy would be that of Paedophile and not Patriot and Sinn Fein had a media machine that could deliver that message to every corner of the world). William Hampton also said that when he had contacted the solicitor in Cootehill in 2006 with whom he had made his Will in 1997, and told him that he wanted to leave his money to the Labour Party, that solicitor had warned him that the PIRA would not take such a change of heart lightly.
I told Billy that Kevin McKenna should not have threatened him, I told Billy that I could not speak for Kevin McKenna or Sinn Fein/PIRA, and my only mission was to try and convince Billy to leave the money to Sinn Fein as it would help with the ‘peace-process’, Billy kept going back to the threats made against him by Kevin McKenna and it appeared that Billy was taking those threats very seriously and he did not want to be remembered a paedophile as such a legacy would play into the hands of people he had despised all his life, Billy did not name any individual or group that he so despised. I did not inform Billy, and I do not think he knew, that Pat Rabbitte and Eamon Gilmore were original Official Sinn Fein (Sticky’s) and hate figures for Kevin McKenna and the Sinn Fein/PIRA leadership in general.
This threat by Kevin McKenna against Billy in 2006, may be why in the Prime Time programme Owen Smyth states, that, “Billy’s money is better than the Northern Bank money as it is legitimate “if” they handle it right”, this suggests that Smyth might have known about the threat and the possibility that the discovery of such a threat could show that the money was left to Sinn Fein/PIRA under duress and is in fact the proceeds of crime, coercion.
I asked Billy how much he had left Sinn Fein in his Will and he said it was substantial and in many bank accounts around the world, he did not give a definitive figure and I am not sure that he knew, I asked him why his money was so widely distributed around the world and he simply said to hide it from the tax man.
After Billy and I enjoyed meal together in The Black Boy Inn he left and I never seen him again, I stayed in the Black Boy Inn until the Monday and I returned home to Ireland by Ferry. I reported to Kevin McKenna about the meeting with Billy, I told Kevin McKenna that while I understood why he had threatened Billy, I thought it was despicable, however, I felt that because of that threat Billy would not change his Will even if he wanted to.
Inaccuracies in The Prime-Time Programme
Prime Time presented as almost inconsequential the conviction of Owen Smyth for IRA membership in the 1970s, in fact Owen Smyth was convicted in 1982, and the murder charges relating to his self-admitted role in the murders of 86 year-old Norman Strong and his 57 year old son James at Tynan Abbey in January 1981 were left on the books, as Smyth had effectively turned super-grass, but retracted his State’s evidence when he was remined by The PIRA that his family lived in Monaghan. Eamon Collins, Robert Lean, Bow Scally, Rab McAllister and many others had gone through the same process, turning informer and then retracting.
I was 17 years old when I was in The Republican A Wing of Crumlin Road Jail with Owen Smyth in 1981, Owen Smyth told me that he had ‘filled the books’ when arrested by The RUC as he did not want to go to jail for the murders of Norman Strong and James Strong.
Owen Smyth told me that he and Jim Lynagh had planned the Strong murders.
The Prime Time programme stated that charges in relation to the human bomb attack in 1990 were dropped as Owen Smyth had an alibi, in fact in the programme Owen Smyth states that if there were 20 people in his pub it would be full, yet his alibi was that there were 26 people in his pub on the night he was accused of being involved in the human bomb in 1990 and his alibi only materialised after he was charged. He was charged based on his own admissions and eye witness testimony.
Smyth states that in 1997 he spoke to Kevin McKenna about William Hampton, as, “for want of a better word Kevin McKenna was my Boss”, this at a time when Kevin McKenna was Chief of Staff, so Smyth is admitting that he was a member of a terrorist organisation in 1997 a crime for which he has never been prosecuted.
The Prime-Time reporter air-brushed the victims of Owen Smyth’s and Sinn Fein/PIRA crimes from history and presented a very carefully crafted caricature of Owen Smyth who has always been viewed as a dangerous and manipulative individual, who has been going deeper and deeper into a Walter-Mitty existence. It is interesting that the Sinn Fein leadership offer a different view of William Hampton’s contact with the party.
Plan to Bomb American Military Plane at Shannon Airport 2008
In 2006-07, I had assisted my cousin Provisional IRA Chief of Staff (1983-1997) Kevin McKenna with securing the William Hampton money in exchange for a new focus on identifying the location of Columba McVeigh’s body, Kevin wanted me to work with him on another enterprise in 2008.
The enterprise that Kevin wanted me to work on was a joint-enterprise between Sinn Fein/PIRA and the Real IRA to bomb an American Plane at Shannon airport. In 2008, Gerry Adams had been given the cold shoulder by Irish America including Ted Kennedy over the murder of Robert McCartney in Belfast in 2005. The Adams Project was going nowhere in the Irish Republic, with Sinn Fein/PIRA having less TDs than the Official IRA had in the 1980s.
Background and Thinking
In 1992, the American administration under George Bush was not entertaining approaches by the Sinn Fein/Provisional IRA Leadership. The Sinn Fein/Provisional IRA Leadership were already begging the British and Irish Governments to give them a way out of the conflict without losing face. The Sinn Fein/Provisional IRA Leadership particularly Gerry Adams was feeling smarted by the British and American administrations.
While the Sinn Fein/Provisional IRA Leadership could send a short sharp shock to the heart of London, their dependency on Irish American support, both politically and financially, meant Sinn Fein/Provisional IRA felt impudent when it came to punishing an unmoving American Administration.
London was given a short sharp shock with the detonation of a massive bomb at the Baltic Exchange in 1992, and in a desperate bid to move the American administration to a more accommodating position, Gerry Adams himself prepared a Global call-out to international extremists to hit America in the aftermath of the Sinn Fein/Provisional IRA spectacular at Baltic Exchange:
"Let's face it, if someone was to bring down the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre in Manhattan it would be a severe blow to American prestige." (PIRA Army Council, AKA, Gerry Adams, 1992).
The call-out from the Sinn Fein/Provisional IRA Leadership would be answered on 11 September 2001 when Al-Qaeda intentionally crashed three hijacked commercial airplanes with their passengers into the World Trade Center in New York.
According to a confidential record of a conversation in October 1994 between Irish Ambassador to Britain, Joseph Small, and Paul Lever, a senior official in the British Foreign Office, the UK Government believed that the Sinn Fein President, Gerry Adams, sat on the PIRA Army Council. (Official State Papers, released under 30-year-rule in The Irish Republic, 28 December 2021)
2008 The Plan
Bombing an American plane at Shannon Airport would help build relationships with Arab Terrorists such as Hamas, bringing weapons to the Real IRA and much needed funding to Sinn Fein/PIRA for the Adams Project in the Republic. The American administration would learn a valuable lesson. Kevin McKenna, Bobby Storey and leading Real IRA members based in Louth, would lead the plan to bomb an American plane at Shannon in 2008.
Upon request from Kevin McKenna to get involved in the plan to bomb an American Plane at Shannon Airport, I phoned my Garda contact, meet with him and explained what I had been asked to get involved in. My Garda contact got back to me a couple of days later and told me to get on the inside of the operation and update him regularly.
It was established that the Cabin Crews on the rendition or normal military flights are actually Civilian Contractors and therefore the weakest link.
The Dry Runs, one of which I am absolutely 100% certain of, was to establish where the civilian Cabin Crew members stayed while on a stop-over at Shannon, this was not difficult, a local hotel in Ennis, County Clare.
The next phase was to establish how security conscious the Cabin Crews were, not difficult. Befriend a Cabin Crew member in the hotel bar, and see if they could be bedded, not difficult.
The Plan, if sanctioned, was to bed one of the Cabin Crew, and place a small explosive device in their luggage before leaving their room the next morning. The Hindawi Affair in 1986 was the example being used to explain how the operation could succeed or fail.
To conclude, the Plan was real, Dry Runs were carried out, and it was established that such an attack would be very easy. However, due to my on-going fears following the Omagh Bomb being allowed to run, as well as keeping my Garda contact up to date, I also sent a letter to the American Ambassador in Dublin, advising them that the security of their planes at Shannon was weak, and particularly their cabin crew were vulnerable.
In 2008, I was told by my Garda contact and the FBI that it was in the national interest to keep the plans to bomb an American Plane at Shannon Airport quiet as American multi-nationals could pull out of Ireland in retaliation.
In 2020, the New IRA began to enact the exact same plan as 2008, however, their leadership were arrested in an MI5/PSNI operation in Northern Ireland.
2011 Plan to Murder Queen Elizabeth during Dublin Visit
In 2011, I was working with a number of businesses in Gardiner Street, Dublin. I was fully and comprehensively aware of PIRA and Real IRA activity in north Dublin.
An Garda Siochana knew that there were serious threats against Queen Elizabeth, as they prepared for The Queen’s visit to Dublin, and those threats were made more real as The PIRA had provided both personnel and Commercial explosives for an attack on The Queen when she visited Dublin.
It is worth remembering that The DUP had been duped in 2006 when Sinn Fein/PIRA said that The PIRA was gone for good and full decommissioning had taken place, yet 5 years later the same Sinn Fein/PIRA were preparing to Murder Queen Elizabeth with Semtex.
Following the St Andrews Agreement in 2006, the DUP agreed to enter into power-sharing devolved government in Northern Ireland with Sinn Féin/PIRA. Despite reports of divisions within The DUP, a majority of the party executive voted in favor of power-sharing in 2007.
This picture was taken by this Author a few seconds before Queen Elizabeth was supposed to die if An Garda Siochana had not compromised the operation.
Thousands of Gardai were on high alert for the Queens Visit to Dublin. Every premises along the route that the Queen would take in Dublin had been visited.
While a pipe bomb was stopped on a bus on its way into Dublin, this made the situation even more serious as threats now became a reality. Nobody wanted to believe that The PIRA were involved, but they were, no politician would say publicly that it was The PIRA.
As security concerns heightened, Gardai found another bomb in Dorset Street a short distance from The Garden of Remembrance where the Queen was to visit.
While An Garda Siochana had pulled out all the stops, there was still a lingering doubt as to whether something had been missed, could The Queen still be in danger.
Even during the Queen's flight from London, doubts arose about whether it was safe for her to land in Ireland, and British Prime Minister, David Cameron, held an urgent meeting in the situation room in Downing Street in response, while Queen Elizabeth was airborne.
A senior Garda Officer called in a long serving security operative, and that operative walked every inch of the route to be taken by the Queen, and he then took up position in an area that he believed an attack would be most likely.
Sleeping rough on the back streets of north Dublin, the security operative finally got a break when he spotted Real IRA Leader, Alan Ryan, enter the rear of a building on Gardiner Street. The steel door that Alan Ryan entered lead to an unknown tunnel that ran/runs under Mabbot Lane which runs parallel to Gardiner Street.
As a result of this indicator Alan Ryan and others were arrested, but later released. The plan had been to assemble a bomb in the concealed tunnel and attach it with a magnet to the steel Railway bridge that runs over the bottom of Gardiner Street.
The PIRA had learned from operations in Northern Ireland that security vehicles were normally not fitted with blast proof roofs, so the intention was that the bomb would blow downwards and using shrapnel, kill The Queen inside her vehicle.
The Queen came within a hairs-breath of dying in Dublin, had it not been for the initiative of senior Gardai then The Queen would have died in 2011.
It would not be until 2014 that Garda Commissioner, Martin Callinan, would admit publicly for the first time that The PIRA were involved in the 2011 plot to Murder Queen Elizabeth.
Kevin McKenna 2019
June, 2019, In Cavan Hospital, I held the hand of a frail old man, my cousin, Kevin McKenna, had been Chief of Staff of the Provisional IRA 1983-97, Kevin’s eyes filled with tears as I reminded him of the many innocent people he had Murdered, including school boy Columba McVeigh.
