Re: FBI denies involvement in 'Real IRA' informer case

Date: 30th April '01

Name: Gerry McMahon

Country: Ireland

John Walsh, whether deliberately or not, does indeed seem to greet the activities of the state in the so-called Real IRA informer case with a degree of smugness quite unbecoming of a republican activist/supporter. While Joe Neale, in explaining why supporters of the republican movement have no right to be cocky regarding this development, seeks to remind interested readers that all republican groups have been penetrated by military intelligence to some degree or other - remember the supergrass saga in the 1980s - I would like to highlight what this penetration has often entailed for republicans and thus explain why John should wipe that grin of his face.

The activities of military intelligence during the conflict recently ended ranged across a wide range of issues, from the surveillance of known republicans, to the shooting dead of unarmed IRA volunteers, to the directing of loyalist terror groups in their sectarian murder campaign. The presence of unattributed organisations within the forces of the state such as the Force Researh Unit and Fourteenth Intelligence Company has meant for Irish republicanism a catalogue of brutal injustices ranging across the spectrum I have just outlined. Informers, of course, played a crucial role in gathering the information necessary for such units to strike. The strike inevitably meant an SAS ambush and more dead IRA volunteers.

Whether it was simply a case of daily harassment from the RUC and British army because of your political sympathies, or your house getting torn apart by those same organisations for the same reason; whether it was a case of getting a beating by the security forces on your way home from town just because they know you're a republican; or whether it was a case that a member of your family was murdered by the state in retaliation for the actions of the IRA - such as the shooting dead of three IRA volunteers in an SAS ambush at Drumnakilly Co. Tyrone in 1988 in revenge for the Ballygawley bus bomb - somewhere along the line information has been passed to the relevant organisations responsible for such activities by informers. Informers bear a high degree of responsibility for the murderous campaign the British establishment initiated against the republican movement in Tyrone and Armagh in the 1980s and 1990s. Without, them to paraphrase Mao and throw in a bit of reverse psychology, the fish would have been unable to swim - informers were the oxygen of British military intelligence in its not so secret war against the IRA.

For John Walsh to greet the presence of a high level informant within the ranks of the Real IRA as a welcome development smacks of hypocrisy. Regardless of their political persuasion I would not like to see fellow Irishmen go through this same process again. Smug comments on the issue of informers is a dangerous game to play and I reiterate is unbecoming of republican activists/supporters.

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