Part 1.

British Agents in Ireland.

The PPS in Northern Ireland will not charge an unnamed agent who worked undercover in Northern Ireland for UK intelligence services. This is despite the fact he admitted to carrying out murders in the course of working undercover. The agent’s admission was made while instructing intelligence officers in spycraft. Operation Kenova submitted files to the PPS relating to the incident.

The agent is believed to be Peter Keeley who also goes by the name ‘Kevin Fulton’.

 Civil actions, involving allegations of murder and other serious crimes, have been being taken against the British Army, PSNI and NIO over the activities of the former British Army, police and MI5 agent and informer Keeley in the High Court in Belfast.

Those cases have been settled with no admission of liability.

Neither MI5 nor the British Army Intelligence Corps have acknowledged Keeley as an agent, but his victims have been paid off after both organisations were joined to civil actions. They have effectively “owned” Keeley, though they cling to the policy of “Neither Confirm Nor Deny”, to avoid being implicated in his actions as an agent or informer.

MI5 have revealed they have a substantial number of files relating to Freddie Scappaticci which were not given to Operation Kenova before a first report was published. Peter Keeley was also a valuable asset for the Security Service and still works covertly for military intelligence.

Jon Boutcher, former head of Operation Kenova, now the Chief Constable of Northern challenged the British Government’s “totemic” practice of using a formula of words to “neither confirm nor deny” that particular individuals, who may have participated in serious crimes including murder, while acting as agents on behalf of the British State.

 At a meeting of the House of Commons Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, Mr Boutcher made clear his views on the British Government’s reflexive use of NCND as a blocking device during inquests, civil and criminal cases.

Boutcher acknowledged that there was no legal framework to deal with agent handling during the “Troubles”.

“There is a policy for NCND and it is owned by the Cabinet Office..

My frustrations come from the post Good Friday Agreement and our approach to the scrutiny that we would expect in a democracy and how we as State actors responded to those events.. There was a guidance document issued by the Home Office in 1969 that was inherently unsuitable for dealing with the complexity of the Troubles.

I made the comment earlier that nobody would expect NCND to provide protection or immunity to murderers. But the (Stakeknife) report sets out that that is in effect what happened”.

KRWLaw in Belfast are mounting a legal  challenge to the British Government’s use of the “Neither Confirm nor Deny”  formula in relation to agents and informants – which is a policy not a legal precept. They are acting on behalf of their client Sam Rosenfeld who was a Military Intelligence agent in Northern Ireland. His lawyers say Rosenfeld:

 “.. was and continues to be, the target of threats of unlawful violence by Peter Keeley/Kevin Fulton. This individual is, or at least was, an agent of the Ministry of Defence and/or the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC)”.

 They are challenging the use of the NCND formula in relation to Keeley in a future civil action against him.

They centre their arguments around the the refusal of the PSNI and Security Service  to resile from the policy of neither confirming nor denying that Keeley was an agent and CHIS or covert source:

The Killing Zone

Peter Keeley was a former FRU, Special Branch, MI5, CID agent and informer, operating undercover in Northern Ireland and in the Republic of Ireland for over 20 years. He is also known by the pseudonym Kevin Fulton.

He was recruited in Berlin by the British Army Intelligence Corps in 1979 while serving in the Royal Irish Rangers. A Catholic from Newry and a prime target for the Corps when penetration of the IRA was the new objective.

He was a central witness at the Smithwick Tribunal which was an inquiry into allegations of Garda collusion in the murders of two senior RUC officers in South Armagh in 1989. The Tribunal ran from 2005 to 2013, sitting in Dublin. Keeley gave evidence for three days in December, 2011.

During that evidence he described the murder of RUC Constable Colleen McMurray in Newry in 1992 in which he took part though he denied direct involvement. The young police Constable was killed after an IRA Unit detonated a mortar concealed in a parked car, using a newly developed ‘flash’ device.

Keeley claimed he told his MI5 and Special Branch handler’s about the plan to kill a police officer using the newly developed flash device.

An investigation in 2003 by the Police Ombudsman of Northern Ireland found that the RUC Special Branch withheld intelligence relating to the murder and that a suspect known as ‘Man A’, believed to be Keeley, should have been interviewed by the RUC after the murder.

A sometime member of the IRA’s so called “nutting squad” – the Internal Security Unit – Keeley acted as a driver and fixer for John Joe Magee and Freddie Scappaticci as they conducted their interrogations around the Cooley Peninsula and other border  locations.

One of their victims was Cooley farmer Tom Oliver. He is believed to have been kidnapped and questioned in a safe house on the border near Omeath in 1991. His body was later found dumped outside  Belleeks in Co Armagh.

Keeley admitted he was involved in Tom Oliver’s ‘abduction’ in 1991, at the Smithwick Tribunal.

He was just one of a number of agents and handlers who featured at the Tribunal which reported in 2013. Keeley received assurances in relation to evidence he gave in Dublin.

Despite the fact that Operation Kenova had sent over 30 files to the Public Prosecution Service of Northern Ireland in relation to MI5/FRU Agent Freddie Scappaticci. Neither Scappaticci or anyone else has been prosecuted on foot of Operations Kenova’s ‘Stakeknife files’.

Operation Kenova’s first report on ‘Stakeknife’ was published by the PSNI in 2023. It excoriated the IRA while heavily criticising MI5’s attitude to intelligence sharing. 

At the Smithwick Tribunal Keeley also gave evidence about the 1998 Omagh Bomb. He claimed to have given crucial information to his handlers at the time. See @coverthistory ‘Running with Wolves’ via the link below:

Running With Wolves. This ebook explains the background to the Omagh Bombing and outlines the questions the former RUC will face over their failure to prevent the massacre. MI5 appears undaunted. By Deirdre Younge.

A public inquiry into  the Omagh bomb is now sitting in Omagh.  The intelligence Keeley gave his handlers in relation to dissident activity in 1998, is cited in the terms of reference. Keeley has been refused Core Participant status at the inquiry.

Keeley now receives an income and has been provided with a  place to live, paid for by the PSNI. He regularly meets his Army contacts. He has recently been in Ukraine and has been an instructor to the Ukrainian army on bomb making and the construction of IEDs.

Part 2

Death on a country road

The Smithwick Tribunal was set up to investigate allegations of collusion in the murders of Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan in South Armagh in March 1989, after a meeting in Dundalk Garda station. One of the weapons used in the ambush in 1989 ( See above: weapon B on a WISREP list) was also used in the massacre at Kingsmills in 1976. The armalite imported from America, has been directly connected to IRA man and ex Para, Paddy O’Kane. It was also used to shoot Eamon Maguire in 1987 and Terence McKeever in 1986 : both murders connected to the Internal Security Unit and Freddie Scappaticci. The difficulty surrounding the naming of O’Kane raises suspicions that O’Kane is a State Agent according to Kevin Winters, KRWLaw, Alan Black’s solicitors.

Keeley was born in Newry, Co Down in 1960. In 1979 after  joining the Royal Irish Rangers he was approached by British Army Intelligence, while serving as a Corporal in Berlin. As a young Catholic from Co Down, Keeley was a potentially  valuable recruit. He joined the newly set up Force Research Unit in 1980 from its inception and continued to work undercover for over 20 years as an informant for FRU/M15, RUC Special Branch, RUC/PSNI and the RUC’s CID Economic Crimes Bureau.

He claims he was given a ‘false discharge’ from the army. It was, he says,  a cover story to allow him to return to Newry to work his way into the Provisional IRA as an undercover agent. He was in fact a CHIS, or undercover informant, tasked with infiltrating the IRA in South Down.

Unlike another FRU Agent, Freddie Scappaticci, one of whose longtime  handlers gave evidence, no witness from the British Army gave evidence to the Smithwick Tribunal to support Keeley’s own account of his Army career. However his statements to the Tribunal had to be cleared before distribution by the PSNI and The British Army. and the British army had to compensate his victims as an undercover IRA man. He was invited to the ceremony in 2008, marking the end of Operation Banner marking his value as an informant and agent. Only 2000 members of the British Army had been invited.

Keeley’s book ‘Double Agent’, is a reprint of ‘Unsung Hero’ first published in 2006. He repeated many of the allegations he made in the book in evidence at the Smithwick Tribunal in 2011. However crucially, the book does not  mention Garda collusion, Dundalk Garda station, or the murder of Tom Oliver which were central to his allegations of Garda collusion at Smithwick.

He also made damning accusations implicating MI5, RUC Special Branch and British Army Intelligence. 

Keeley’s allegations at the Smithwick Tribunal, which he conspicuously did not make in his book, implicated former Garda Special Branch Sergeant Owen Corrigan in colluding with the IRA. Allegations made before judges Cory and Smithwick were entirely false. Crucially  Willie Fraser the late Loyalist campaigner, the only person who accompanied Keeley to meetings with Judge Cory in 2003, revealed that those  allegations were false and were  “written up” for Keeley in 2003. The aim was to persuade Judge Cory to call for an inquiry into the ambush and murder of Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan in Armagh in March 1987. Frazer died in Armagh in June 2019 but in conversations gave full details of his meetings with Cory and Smithwick.

It was clear from Frazer’s detailed accounts that Keeley/Fulton’s allegations  of collusion had changed entirely from those delivered verbally to Cory, by the time he gave evidence at  the Smithwick Tribunal in December 2011. Interestingly, Judge Cory told Frazer at the time that he was under huge pressure not to call for an inquiry or even to publish his reports.

Peter Keeley was called Kevin Fulton in the Cory and Smithwick Reports and gave evidence under that name in public at the Smithwick Tribunal.

Frazer was astounded to hear years later that Keeley had claimed in evidence to the Smithwick Tribunal that the murder of the Louth farmer Tom Oliver in 1991 was the central allegation of Garda collusion he made to Judge Cory in 2003. The allegation was that a Garda in Dundalk had ‘fingered’ Oliver by telling an IRA man that Oliver had given the Garda information about an arms dump in Cooley. Frazer, the only other person in the meeting in Dublin, emphatically denied that had been the case. He said that the only subject of the allegations made to Judge Cory had been concerned the murders of Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan in South Armagh in 1989.

Keeley first engaged with the Smithwick Tribunal in 2006 but his final signed statement was only distributed to legal teams in late 2011 – just before he was due to give evidence.

He had been the pivotal witness that persuaded Cory in 2003 to call for a Public Inquiry into the murders of RUC officers Breen and Buchanan on the Edenappa Road in South Armagh in March 1989. This fact was stated  by the Minister for Justice Michael McDowell in the Dail in 2005 as the Smithwick Tribunal was set up. .

Willie Frazer described how two figures, a senior politician Jeffrey Donaldson, and a lawyer, played a pivotal role in “shaping” Smithwick:

‘The whole scenario was developed by some RUC men.  But Mr X and Mr Y came to us and said “this is the way things are going to be”‘.

As a result of Keeley’s evidence, Freddie Scappaticci was also given full legal representation at the Smithwick Tribunal, in order to rebut Keeley’s allegations that he was involved in the Tom Oliver murder in 1991. Despite having meetings with the Smithwick Tribunal team since 2007, Scappaticci did not give evidence in public, unlike Keeley.

Part 3

Working his way in

Keeley’s handlers had warned him it would take years to work his way into the IRA in South Down when he joined FRU in 1982.  As time went on his credentials needed to be strengthened to gain acceptance by the local unit of the South Down brigade. The IRA was always interested in ‘fundraising’ so Keeley organised the hijacking of a Mitsubishi lorry with a container load of televisions. He implicated the driver Patrick Quinn and some of his relatives in the heist. It went wrong by accident or design.

 Keeley and his accomplices were charged with theft. He was sentenced to two years in prison but when he was released in 1986 he had the fateful encounter with the man who was to become his IRA bombing mentor, Patrick “Mooch” Blair. He had been imprisoned in 1975 for an attack on a police officer and was released in 1984. Blair had the pseudonym “Conor” in Keeley’s book. Keeley acted as a driver for Blair and involved him in casual work. Ironically the money was coming from Keeley’s payment from his FRU handlers.

“He was grateful. He showed his gratitude by involving me in his primary IRA activity – building bombs. By the end of 1987, I was running guns, I was assisting bomb-building and I was getting to know major IRA operatives.” (Double Agent).

Patrick Quinn has recently received compensation as a result of his entrapment by Keeley.

Keeley was “Green booked”, formally inducted into the South Down IRA, in 1987. He now knew the consequences of being discovered as an agent was certain death at the hands of the brutal “nutting squad”. His greatest  fear, as he said in his book, was the inevitability of being asked to take action against his “own side”.

On his handlers advice Keeley had made no secret of his membership of the British Army, a fact that made him as asset for the Newry OC, Leonard “Hardbap” Hardy.

The IRA was now  bringing the war to the British Army on the Continent. In revenge for the killing of three IRA volunteers in Gibraltar by the SAS, three members of the RAF were shot dead on the first of May 1988. A few weeks later in August soldiers also on leave from their unit in Germany were shot dead.

According to Keeley, he was questioned by the South Down OC, Leonard Hardy, about possible British Army targets in Germany.

The leadership in Belfast, according to Hardy, wanted to activate an IRA unit on the continent and he needed suggestions for targeting. Keeley subsequently had a meeting in Dublin with two IRA men – one he described as “dapper in a white suit” the other squat like a farm labourer. They asked him about the  squaddies routine in Berlin and who he believed would make a good target. Keeley suggested the Brigadier in overall command of British forces in Berlin would be the most high profile and, possibly easiest, target. He also pointed out that the squaddies on their r and r breaks in the spa town of Bad Reichenhall were vulnerable. (Double Agent)

The two Belfast IRA men were impressed. A month later in September 1988, he was given £2,000 to travel to Germany on a reconnaissance mission. Keeley claimed  his FRU handlers, Andy and Gerry from Bessbrook Barracks, told him to go ahead.

As soon as he got off the ferry to France it was apparent he iwas being followed by two French intelligence operatives who also appeared as he exited at the Gard du Nord railway station for his onward journey to Berlin. He aborted the trip, jumped into a taxi to make the journey home.

French intelligence had clearly been tipped off but by who ? The only people who knew about his trip, according to Keeley, were “Conor”, Hardy and his handlers.

(Double Agent). Many of the bombings on the Continent were carried out by the North Louth/ South Down unit.

Bomb team

In evidence to the Smithwick Tribunal Keeley  described his part in the IRA’s bomb development team run by the South Armagh IRA  which constantly developed  new bombs, timers and detonators. One of their innovations was the photographic  ‘flash unit’ used to trigger the Mark 12 mortar that killed the 33 year old police woman Colleen McMurray. That was just one of the many  developments in bomb making by the IRA in their “laboratory”,  in a house in Omeath in the late 1980s. The knowledge gained by Keeley while working alongside IRA master bomb makers is still being put to use by the British Army.

RTE News reported on a raid on August  21,1989 in the Omeath safe house where a huge bomb was discovered as well as an arsenal of other explosive devices, similar to those used in attacks on the RUC. Keeley says he escaped before the raid.

Keeley continued to work on increasingly sophisticated devices with the IRA development unit:

“By the early 1990s we were immersed in a technical battle with the British Army’s bomb disposal experts – a battle they were winning, they had made radio-controlled bombs a thing of the past. For a start they were continually improving the protective radio-wave shields they had flung around every police-station, Army base, and military vehicle. in short, we needed to work out a way of detonating a bomb from a distance that didn’t involve a radio signal”. (Double Agent).

The solution was to ingeniously modify  slave flash units normally used by photographers so that they could be used to detonate mortars or bombs. The flash could detonate bombs from a range of 100 metres:

“The more we experimented with the flash in device, the more we realised its devastating potential”.

Victims

The Keeley narrative around the  June 1991 kidnapping of Louth Farmer, Tom Oliver is both graphic and self exculpatory. He described in detail the events that led to the death of Oliver but then claims he was abroad at the time. In fact he was part of the events of the night.

Keeley gave a description of how he drove Oliver to his interrogation, then returned home to Newry through South Armagh. Oliver had been taken to an IRA interrogation house in Cooley, brutally interrogated then shot dead. His body was found  in Belleeks, Co Armagh.

He described the drive back from the scene, and  finding one of Oliver’s Wellingtons in the boot of the car he was driving.

New Handlers

Towards the end of 1991, Keeley found that Army Intelligence had handed him over to MI5. In fact by the end of 1991 FRU had been stood down after the Steven’s Inquiry began scrutinising their operations. FRU was replaced by the Joint Services Group which was integrated into the Army Intelligence Corps unlike FRU. Keeley said he now had two new handlers – one from Army Intelligence, the other from MI5, with RUC Special Branch in Newry acting as his day to day handlers. One of those handlers “Bob” according to Keeley, was Jonathon Evans, a future Director General of MI5. “Bob” had already served as liaison with FRU in Bessbrook barracks in the late 1980’s. He was now promoted to the Irish Terrorism desk. (There are further details on Keeley and his new MI5 handlers later in this article.)

Keeley claimed that he told his new overseers about the development of a photographic flash unit, as a new detonation method for mortars and bombs. However, in his consistent attempts to avoid self incrimination, he has consistently denied he was directly involved in Constable Colleen Murray’s murder in Newry in 1992. He claimed that on the day that  he was in the UK, explaining the workings of the new development, to his handlers in MI5, when she was killed.

That claim is contradicted by other credible witnesses. Journalist Chris Anderson described how Keeley had returned to Northern Ireland hours before the attack. Anderson also detailed two separate warnings from a second informer in the IRA unit who had tipped off his Special Branch handlers. This fact was also contained in a PONI report on the Colleen McMurray case, in 2003.

Sources once close to Keeley say he has privately admitted to being involved in the IRA operation in Newry on the day Colleen McMurray was murdered. They allege that it was Keeley who operated the photographic flash which detonated the mortar concealed in the boot of a car, from the opposite side of the Newry Canal. After it was detonated the Mark 12 mortar directly struck the police patrol vehicle  with the ‘pinpoint accuracy’ for which the device was designed The used flash was then thrown into the Newry canal.

Colleen McMurray was hit directly as the mortar hit the passenger door and she  died some hours later. Constable Paul Slane sustained life changing injuries.

The device was activated in the seconds it took the police to drive out of the RUC station and alongside the bomb car, parked along the Canal quays. How the IRA were able to drive the bomb car into Newry and arm the mortar is a question that has never been answered.

The IRA Unit in South Down included a number of informers besides Keeley, according to Special Branch evidence at Smithwick and PONI reports. Keeley alleged one of the informers in the unit gave the RUC Special Branch a diagram of the flash device.

Dead Soldiers

In his book ‘Double Agent’ he described driving  an IRA Unit to Mayobridge, off the Hilltown Road in Newry, where three members of the paratroop regiment of the British Army  were blown up by a huge bomb which exploded beside their land rover. The bomb was detonated by a command wire running across the road they were travelling on. It was planted by Keeley’s unit, in November, 1989. As usual Keeley distanced himself from the action.

Keeley described how he drove the IRA bomb unit to the location in Mayobridge where they would have spent the night burying the explosives  in a container, digging a channel to lay the command wire, then detonating the bomb. Keeley alleged there were up to four agents involved in the operation. The British Army had managed to block IRA radio signals and having run out of wavebands they reverted to using command wire detonation as used to kill the SAS soldiers.

Human bomb attack

In October 1990 Keeley participated in one of the IRA’s three gruesome proxy or ‘human bomb’ attacks on army checkpoints. A car loaded with explosives driven by a kidnap victim was used to drive towards manned checkpoints in three locations. At the Cloghoge checkpoint a 20 year old British soldier in the Irish Rangers, Corporal Cyril Smith, was killed, and other soldiers were injured. 

In ‘Double Agent’, Keeley described the abduction of a seriously ill man, Colman McEvoy, who was dragged from his bed in Newry and forced into a Hiace van which was driven to a location near Flagstaff mountain.

The small back road just on the border where the IRA has a safe house. It backed onto Flagstaff Mountain.

 A massive bomb was placed in a van which Mr McEvoy was then forced to drive towards the accommodation block at the Cloghogue Army vehicle checkpoint at 2am in the morning. A van carrying the IRA unit had turned off at a side road just as he approached the checkpoint.

Even hardened IRA men were revolted by the operations. According to Keeley one of the IRA unit ‘Johnny’ warned Mr McEvoy to jump out of the van window and not to open the door, so he could escape.

“Johnny was a ruthless IRA operative who would think nothing of planting a bomb that might kill civilians, or of shooting a policeman, a British soldier or an informant in cold blood. Even Johnny couldn’t stand the sight of this sick old man, wheezing, and spluttering, driving to a certain death. Johnny told him to pull up at the checkpoint, unwind the window and exit that way.” (Double Agent).

When he approached the checkpoint, Mr McEvoy survived by scrambling out the window, but Corporal Smith died in the explosion as he ran towards the van in an effort to warn other soldiers. The bomb was triggered by a radar device, fired from nearby.

Parts of a radar gun were discovered after a failed bombing attempt at a VCP in Omagh the same night. Derry man Patsy Gillespie was blown up while trying to warn soldiers at the Coshquin checkpoint in Derry – had been tied into the vehicle. The brother of a senior IRA Commander was said to have driven to a hill above Derry to watch and celebrate  the explosion. Some former members of the Derry IRA believe the bombs were designed as a ‘sickener’ for the IRA.

For the British Army this was a major blow – not only for the loss of life but because the IRA had literally blown through the electronic shield around Army installations – checkpoints – which had made them impregnable to bomb attacks, for a time.

The American Connection

The use of radar as a way of overcoming British Army jamming systems was an innovation developed by one  of the IRA’s biggest assets in America. The IRA’s Engineering Department had the benefit of the ideas of a highly qualified American electronic engineer, Richard Johnson, who had top security clearance while working at companies on the East and West Coast, including NASA and Mitre Corporation. He operated at the cutting edge of military technology in radar design and electronic counter measures. These were exactly the skills needed by the IRA to get one step ahead in their tech war with the British Army.

 Johnson had been working for the IRA since the late ’70s after a visit to Ireland. His driver at the time was an IRA man who brought him to meet the senior IRA command. But Johnson had been under surveillance since 1984 when FX104 switches, which he bought over the counter in the US, had been found in IRA devices in Ireland. Johnson was warned to be forensically aware but there was now a trail leading to him.

His visits to Ireland in the ‘70s were his last. Instead he exchanged detailed letters with Éamon McGuire, born in South Armagh, he was a dedicated volunteer who devoted much of his time abroad to developing new explosive devices for the IRA campaign. His career started as a Air Corps technician in Baldonnel but was spent mostly abroad working for Middle Eastern and African Airlines. The desert was the perfect place to perfect new devices:

“Some of the systems that I produced in the desert in the Middle East were in use since 1972 – although I gave them a life expectancy of six to twelve months, they had lasted for eight years. This seems incredible when one considers that Britain has access to the latest NATO technology.” (Enemy of the Empire).

Johnson’s letters to McGuire were discovered by Gardaí in 1987 during a search of McGuire’s Dublin home. Johnson was now made a priority as a person of interest to the FBI.

By 1989 the RUC were aware that the IRA were using radar technology.

 By the time a radar device was used at the army checkpoint in South Armagh in 1990, Johnson was in a US prison.

An intensive surveillance operation by the FBI in 1988, triggered by an intercepted conversation in a phone box between  Johnson and Martin Quigley from Dundalk, a former member of the South Armagh/Louth technology development team, had finally yielded fruit. 27-year-old Dundalk man Martin Quigley, mentioned in the article above, had been a PhD student in the US for some months when he contacted Johnson by arrangement. They had a mutual contact in Christina Reid, a rocketry scientist who had helped the IRA since the early 1980’s.

Quigley was looking for Johnson’s help on new methods of counteracting the British Army’s electronic ‘shield’ protecting army units and installations. The South Armagh Brigade were particularly interested in new ways of targeting helicopters. British army patrols had been driven off the roads now they wanted to destroy the helicopters which maintained surveillance over the Commanders as well as moving soldiers. Between Bessbrook and Crossmaglen.

Johnson suggested that radar technology was the way to go, as McGuire had suggested some years earlier. .

Two months after the initial call, a bug in Johnson’s house in Nashua, Boston, recorded a conversation between Johnson and Eamon McGuire, on a visit to the US. The discussion was again, about counteracting British Army jamming techniques and the use of radar. Johnson suggested that he could make a radar detecting device from various parts of detectors he had  in his ‘laboratory’ in the basement of his parents home:

“The detectors were designed to be put on vehicle dashboards to warn drivers of the presence of a police radar gun in time for them to slow down. If attached to a detonator, a radar detector could set off a bomb when activated by a signal from a radar gun. “ This weekend I’m gonna rig up the coffee cans and do the final part of the experiment and see how it goes”, said Johnson”.(From Bandit Country, Toby Harnden and FBI transcripts produced at Johnson’s trial).

The FBI mounted an intensive operation to record Johnson and his accomplices including Quigley. Elaborate planning went into recording their conversation outdoors at a pizza restaurant. A few weeks later  Johnson was arrested, sooner than the  FBI intended. Ironically he discovered the FBI attempting to plant a listening device in his car which was parked  in the Mitre Company car park, where he was working.

Johnson was arrested and charged. In 1990 he was sentenced to 12 years in prison and his accomplices Martin Quigley and Christina Reid were also sentenced to terms of imprisonment. Éamon Maguire was put on the wanted list. He was arrested while on a weekend break in South Africa but was subsequently released. He returned to Ireland but in 1993 was extradited to the US and, three years after Johnson was before the courts, he was sentenced to 6 years in Federal prison. He saw Johnson and Quigley once during that time, after a move to Allen wood Pennsylvania:

“Next morning I was hungry and up at 6am for breakfast. As I waited to get into the dining hall I let my eyes drift over the faces of the other people in the line and I was delighted to see one of the “Boston Three”, Richard Johnson, in the group. I had not seen him since the FBI had taped our conversation in his apartment five year previously. I discovered that another of our group Martin Quigley, who had been sentenced with Richard, was also here”. (“Enemy of The Empire”, Éamon McGuire).

A radar device was used in 1990 to bomb at Cloghoge checkpoint. In his book “Bandit Country”, Toby Harnden described what happened:

“At. 4.09am, McEvoy reached the checkpoint, jumped out of the van and shouted out that there was a bomb inside.. Ranger Smith ushered him to safety before returning to the road to warn his colleagues to take cover. As he did so a volunteer standing to the east of the checkpoint set off the bomb by firing a radar gun which sent a high frequency signal to a modified radar detector connected to the bomb’s detonators. The van blew up, killing Smith and injuring nine other soldiers and Mr McEvoy”. (Bandit Country, Harnden).

In an affidavit submitted to Operation Kenova Sam Rosenfeld claims Keeley admitted he had made the car bomb used in the attack.

Borderlands and back roads

If South Armagh was regarded as “Bandit Country “ by the British Army, the area around Cooley and Dundalk provided the South Down unit with cover for their safe houses for bomb making and  interrogation and executions. Scappaticci has been a regular presence in Dundalk since the late ’70s. John Joe Magee lived in Cooley. The border was in touching distance. Roads criss crossing the Cooley mountains led into South Armagh and the Commanders.

Interestingly, the British Army’s irregular units used the narrow country road running along a ridge from Cornamucklagh over the border, in the 1970’s, to cross into the Republic. Two groups of SAS men were arrested on the road in 1976. They were later charged in Dundalk Garda station by Owen Corrigan and brought to the Central Criminal Court in Dublin. They were charged but subsequently released.

Part 4

Acting with impunity?

In 2019 the investigatory Powers Tribunal heard arguments in a challenge  brought by Human Rights lawyers and campaigners, to an M15 policy called the ‘The Third Direction’. This purports to allow agents to commit crimes including murder, torture and sexual assaults in the course of their undercover activities. The policy  existed from the early 1990’s. The Tribunal found the policy was lawful – with two dissenting judgements.

In the course of a BBC Radio 4 interview in October 2019, Lord Jonathon Evans the former M15 Director General said the so called ‘Third Direction’ did not contain any specific rules about what crimes could be committed. As mentioned earler, Keeley has said that he believes the, now Lord Evans, was one of his handlers (called in his book ‘Bob’) when he worked for M15 from the early to mid Nineties.

However, as mentioned earlier, according to the Chief Constable Jon Boutcher, the only formal document relating to the handling of agents and covert informants until 2000 and the passing of the RIPA Act, was a Home Office document from 1969. Boutcher stated recently that murders committed by agents are a crime that cannot be ignored because of their agent status.

The recent interference in the work of Coroners by the outgoing Secretary of State of Northern Ireland, for instance in the Sean Brown inquest, shows the vulnerability of the various intelligence services to legal scrutiny. The ‘Third Direction’ is a policy and has never been tested in a criminal trial. Keeley believes he is a protected species but that belief probably arises more from his ‘insurance policy’ of recording his handlers hence his belief that if he “goes down, they all go down with me”.

Scappaticci

Freddie Scappaticci spent much of his time between Belfast, Dundalk and the border. Garda intelligence in 1982 described him as ‘Operations Coordinator’ between North and South. As a member of the Internal Security Unit of the IRA, he became Deputy to John Joe Magee. It was Keeley’s allegation that Scappaticci was involved in so called ‘kidnapping’ and interrogation which led to the murder of Louth farmer Tom Oliver, in July 1991, that was to ensure that Scappaticci got full legal representation at the Tribunal. The judge awarded him legal representation to enable him to claim he was not Agent Steaknife or Stakeknife and to refute claims he was involved in Tom Oliver’s murder in 1991.

In January 1990 Scappaticci and the Internal Security Unit were tasked to interrogate a suspect Special Branch informer, Sandy Lynch. Lynch had been brought to the safe house in Belfast by two IRA men who collected him by prior arrangement. Lynch, who was in fact a Branch agent, had been warned by his police handlers that he was about to be interrogated and coached him in what to say

As Lynch’s interrogation by Scappaticci  dragged on, he admitted he was an informer and that Special Branch were targeting two IRA men over an operation that resulted in the death of an RUC officer. Lynch named the two IRA men he said the Special Branch were targeting, one of whom was in the house. Special Branch finally raided the safe house and rescued Lynch after Scappaticci and another Special Branch informant had left. Danny Morrison who was just approaching the house to deal with Lynch on behalf of the Army Council was arrested and sentenced to none years in prison.

All was not what it seemed. Notes of a conversation between an official in the Anglo-Irish Secretariat and the experienced Belfast solicitor Paddy McGrory, about the Lynch interrogation, were sent to the Department of Foreign Affairs in December 1990. According to McGrory it  was apparent that the Special Branch had a number of informers in Belfast. That fact emerged after an intervention by the Criminal Cases Review Commission in 2008, that there were at least three informers involved in the interrogation of Lynch.

The memo quoted McGrory:

“it continues to be a mystery to the IRA as to how the RUC were able to pinpoint the house in West Belfast where Lynch was interrogated. It has been apparent over the past year, from the significant number of finds and raids on bomb factories (where a number of people have been caught red handed) that the RUC may have a number of well placed sources within the IRA in Belfast… Lynch named two other senior IRA figures (Kevin Mulgrew and a well known gunman with the unlikely name of Scappotici) (sic) as being responsible for his kidnapping”.

Lynch was finally released when the house was raided. Scappaticci and two other IRA men went on the run to Dundalk and Dublin. One of them was Sean Maguire who has resigned from his job as senior Sinn Féin press officer and advisor to First Minister Michelle O’Neill. Keeley mentioned Maguire in his evidence to the Smithwick Tribunal in 2011.

Scappaticci laid low for a year. He was finally told by the RUC Special Branch at a meeting in Dublin, that it was safe to come back to Belfast. A cover story had been concocted for him. A second agent, on the run in Dundalk after the Lynch affair, also had a meeting with his handlers at Dublin Airport to be told it was also safe for him to return to Belfast. At a meeting in Belfast the GOC John Wilsey and the head of army Intelligence in Northern Ireland Colin Parr met Scappaticci to reassure him of their support. As Wilsey said later, Scappaticci was worried as Jon Stevens had been “sniffing around” the fact that the Army Intelligence Corps were running an agent in the IRA.

Scappaticci’s days in the Internal Security Unit were at an end. Operation Stakeknife was over; in 1990 FRU was in the process of being stood down as a result of the John Stevens Inquiry investigations. In March 1990, Scappaticci’s long term handler returned to the UK. Scappaticci would now be on the fringes of the IRA in Belfast but still protected by the Army Intelligence Corps.

Drew Harris, now the Garda Commissioner, giving evidence at Smithwick in October 2012 as the  ACC Head of Legacy Investigations in the PSNI, in a closed session, named the IRA man who allegedly ordered Tom Oliver’s murder. After he became Garda Commissioner in 2018 Harris said the name had been handed over to the PSNI’s then Chief Constable, George Hamilton, as it was now his responsibility. Tom Oliver’s body had been found in Northern Ireland, so the murder is the responsibility of the PSNI.

FOI releases : details of Scappaticci’s legal costs in link –

Releases

The Cooley Peninsula, just over the border, where Tom Oliver was abducted, interrogated and murdered. His death caused revulsion in the area.

Scappaticci denied that he had any involvement in Tom Oliver’s murder or abduction as Keeley described it. Operation Kenova has investigated the case and reliable sources say they found no intelligence linking Scappaticci to the murder however it remains under investigation.

Keeley described the day he was asked to be a member of the Nutting Squad:

“It took a few seconds for Conor’s words to register. I was driving towards a blazing low early morning sun squinting hard….

You’ve been chosen to become a member of the Security Unit. Conor was the pseudonym for Mooch Blair who operated the local IRA security unit.

The security unit, the IRA’s Internal police, the Nutting Squad charged with rooting out and killing informants and double agents”. (‘Double Agent)

Keeley’s job was to prepare the safe houses for the ISU interrogations but, in fact, he took part in them. He described the interrogation of an IRA man from Co Down in an Omeath safe house in his book:

“I got to the pier and surveyed the breathtaking view of Carlingford Lough. I breathed the air in deeply. Seeing that wretched man hunched up in his seat made me appreciate being alive. I started to wonder if I would ever be in that position, facing a wall, wondering if I would ever see my wife and family again. I comforted myself with the knowledge that Bob and Pete would pull me out before such a scenario came about”. (Double Agent, Kevin Fulton).

Part 5

The Nutting Squad dossier

In 2002 Willie Frazer published a booklet called “Dossier of Death” in which he included details about safe houses used by the IRA’s Internal Security Unit for interrogations and possible killings.

The information in the booklet came from Peter Keeley who had given information to Frazer from their initial meeting in 1999. The ‘dossier’ pinpointed two houses in Omeath on the Cooley Peninsula, which were used to interrogate and shoot  the unfortunate victims of the “Nutting Squad”. The interrogators were John Joe Magee and his ‘deputy’ Scappaticci. Magee lived in Cooley while Scappaticci spent time in Dundalk where he had an address from the early ‘80s.

There is no suggestion the present  owners of these houses were aware of their previous use. One of them was owned by INLA man Nicky O’Hare while the owner of another lived abroad. Frazer also referred to a third house just over the border from South Armagh:

 “We are in no doubt the houses have been used by the IRA for years, a fact borne out by a number of reliable sources which corroborate each other. Each supplied detailed information which made it clear all three locations had been used to interrogate dozens of people. Our sources have said all three locations have been used by the IRA’s Internal Security Unit. They have also identified a number of IRA volunteers who took part in the interrogations. One of them was top Provo John Joe Magee. Another was Freddie Scappaticci, the person now identified as the army agent Stakeknife”. From Willie Frazer’s “Dossier of Death”.

The ISU’s victims were alleged informers, often shot by at least two, if not more, British agents controlled by FRU, M15 or Special Branch. Information about the houses and the activities of the Nutting Squad has been known by the Gardai  since at least the early 2000. No attempt at securing evidence or DNA seems to have been made.

John McAnulty

A cross border haulier John McAnulty was another Scappaticci/ ISU victim, kidnapped by the from a pub car park in Ravensdale near Dundalk. The location was described in police intelligence documents as a likely location for kidnapping and murder. John McAnulty, was an alleged grain smuggler who was an occasional associate of the IRA and an RUC informant. Two RUC officers who met McAnulty regularly in Banbridge and who handled him as an informant, gave evidence at the Smithwick Tribunal.

McAnulty was snatched after midnight on 17 July 1989, his bruised body was found in Culloville, South Armagh. The kidnapping had first been reported to Dromad Garda Station, then reported to Dundalk Garda Station, where Sgt Owen Corrigan was the Special Branch Sergeant on overnight  duty.

Corrigan was asked about his movements that night as Corrigan had not actually  attended the scene of the kidnapping. According to his evidence at the Smithwick Tribunal  ‘he was talking to very, very dangerous men’ while “trying to save a man’s life”. He said the threat to Mc Anulty has been “ongoing for some time against him, you know, and I was expecting developments and feared the worst, Because that was my…that was the tone of the message I had received, that he was going to be executed, you know”.

Corrigan submitted a number of C77s to Garda HQ’s C3, about the McAnulty kidnapping and murder. They outlined the  difficulties Mc Anulty had had with the IRA in South Armagh over payments, and the fact that he had been arrested and released without charge by the RUC in Northern Ireland. This raised suspicions that McAnulty was an informer. According to Corrigan’s intelligence “a named person contacted the IRA and gave information that led to the abduction”. The intelligence reports named the PIRA Commander and the unit responsible for the abductions and the fact that he had first been brought to the Hackballscross area and moved around to different locations.

 McAnulty’s badly injured body was found the next day. He was allegedly interrogated by Scappaticci under the direction of the OC of the South Armagh Brigade who effectively controlled the “Internal Security” operation along the border Paddy O’Callaghan.

 Keeley described in his evidence how, after the interrogations of suspected informers, he drove Patrick ‘Mooch’ Blair, to Patrick O’Callaghan the South Armagh OC in South Armagh – IRA overlord, Tom Slab Murphy’s right hand man. Blair gave O’Callaghan the tape recordings of interrogations for a final decision on the fate of the suspected informers.

According to Corrigan’s C77’s (Garda  Special Branch intelligence forms) about McAnulty’s kidnapping, which were given to the Tribunal:

“Garda information reported that John McNulty had been abducted by the South Armagh PIRA of the IRA and of being held by them…It was believed that a decision  to execute Mr McAnulty had been taken by PIRA. It is  reported that McAnulty had recently been involved in litigation with a named company in the Republic of Ireland. Reported that McAnulty had approached PIRA and asked them to put pressure on the management of the company not to pursue litigation against him. Members of South Armagh PIRA then threatened the senior management of the company.

PIRA was to receive a financial payment in return. Meanwhile, McAnulty was arrested in Northern Ireland and questioned about grain smuggling. He was released from custody without charge and this led PIRA to believe that he may have given information to the authorities.

The information stated that a named person had telephoned PIRA and provided information that assisted the abduction. The document named the PIRA Commander and the PIRA unit who were responsible for the abduction of Mr McAnulty. The same PIRA Unit  was responsible for the earlier threat against the company management and was also responsible for the murders of Breen and Buchanan. The Garda member reported that he was monitoring the situation closely  and may have further information regarding the identity of the culprits and the location of the house where Mr McAnulty was being held”.

John McAnulty, South Down haulier and  RUC informer, murdered by Scappaticci’s  Internal Security Unit in July 1989. His case was raised at the Smithwick Tribunal but only in the context of Garda actions, not  Scappaticci’s  involvement. 

The following August journalist Martin O’Hagan was kidnapped by the same unit. His name had been found in Chief Superintendent Harry Breen’s address book after he was shot dead the previous March on the Edenappa Road. In the pages devoted to Martin O’Hagan’s kidnapping and interrogation there is a photograph of McAnulty’s dead body with evidence of torture. O’Hagan believed he was kidnapped by the same unit, one of  whom described himself as belonging to the IRA ‘Counterintelligence Unit’,  most probably Scappaticci, who referred to agents he had previously interrogated.

SMITHWICK’s SECRET WITNESS

Part 6

Keeley works his way in.

A crucial witness at Smithwick, Keeley aka Fulton is an ambiguous figure. His symbiotic relationship with long-time IRA volunteer Patrick ‘Mooch Blair’ was the central focus of his evidence at Smithwick.

In evidence given over three days in December 2011 in Dublin he described his original  ‘tasking’ as an agent for the Force Research Unit by a senior warrant officer, George Victor Williams, later Lt Colonel in   Army Intelligence. This was in 1982 after his regiment had moved back to the UK. Lt Col Williams died in the Chinook crash on the Mull of Kintyre, in June 1994. In 1982 Keeley was demobbed from the Royal Irish.

Fulton described his induction into FRU:

A – There was another debriefing. Andy and Gerry [his army recruiters from Berlin who were to be his handlers based in Bessbrook Barracks, Co Armagh] met me there. At that time, the Colonel from FRU was from Wrexham…. he is dead now, he was killed in a helicopter crash (Lt. Col George Victor Williams died in the Chinook crash of 1994).

Interestingly FRU regarded Newry and South Down as an entry point in a new strategy to penetrate the IRA. Freddie Scappaticci, also recruited to FRU around 1981/2 had an address near Dundalk at the time. As mentioned earlier Garda Special Branch in Dundalk recorded his movements, and the fact he was trying to take over an IRA Unit from an IRA OC called Montgomery.

Although it took some years to work his way into the IRA unit in South Down Keeley  claimed in evidence to Smithwick that he had some success from the start including locating and retrieving an M60 machine gun from an arms dumps near Dundalk. He brought the M60 to an unnamed location for examination by the British Army. He was driven, he said, by another agent, a woman. They were  waved through the Cloghogue army checkpoint with the gun which was probably jarked and returned to the dump. Driving around the Cooley mountains in a car fitted with a tracker, Keeley was able to pinpoint IRA bunkers. .

After his release from prison in 1986 and   his fateful connection with IRA man Patrick Blair. Keeley’s acceptance into IRA circles was marked in 1987, by his being formally ‘Green booked’ – inducted into the IRA. The disadvantage, as Keeley knew, was that any betrayal would mean almost certain death.

In evidence to Smithwick, Patrick Blair agreed he had been actively involved in the Provisional IRA in the ‘70’s, ‘80’s and ‘90’s. Keeleys QC Mr Rafferty cross examined Blair in November 2011:

Q – …I am suggesting to you that he (Keeley) has been a complete embarrassment to you because you were the person who got him into the IRA ?

A – I don’t believe he was in the IRA so I can’t be embarrassed. I think he said in one of his statements he said he went to the IRA before I got out of jail.

Q – And he tried to get in but you were the person he claims “green-booked” him.

 As mentioned earlier, Blair had been released from prison in the early ‘80s, having been found guilty in 1975 of offences including the attempted murder of a police constable and possession of a rifle and ammunition. He described himself in evidence as a ‘Volunteer’ who was “available” to do what was asked of him by the IRA. When asked at the Tribunal what he was available to do, he replied: “Well, to carry out acts of war”.  As an expert bomb maker, he was believed to be responsible  for many of the killings in South Down, according to evidence given by RUC men from Down and Armagh who gave evidence at Smithwick.

Blair agreed that he had moved from Newry to Dundalk after a mortar bomb had killed nine police officers in Corry Square in Newry after a devastating mortar attack. He was described as ‘one of  the most dangerous men in Northern Ireland’ whose associates were a ‘roll call of terrorism,’ in RUC Special Branch Intelligence reports. Keeley was now his willing helper as he described in “Double Agent”:

“By 1988 I felt I had made it into the inner sanctum of the IRA, albeit in a lowly capacity. I was considered the sorcerer’s apprentice – Conor’s bright new trainee in the art of bomb making… By all accounts, Conor was one of the IRA’s most skilful bomb-makers. They came from all over the six counties for “squibs” – slang for bombs. He wanted me to learn the trade because, according to Conor, the IRA needed more bomb makers…Basically the IRA decided to take the DIY out of the incendiary”.

Besides driving Blair was the  driver for  the “Internal Security Unit”. The head of the squad SBS member John Joe Magee had moved from Belfast and lived on the Cooley Peninsula. 

Keeley sourced cars and vans for the unit  from a garage in the Hilltown Road, outside Newry. He described sourcing a van in which Tom Oliver was carried to his interrogation.

Interestingly and coincidentally Sue Gray, the Labour leader Keir Starmer Chief of Staff, ran a pub called the ‘Cove Inn’ on the Hilltown Road in the late ‘eighties, for a number of years while on sabbatical from the British Civil Service. Ms Gray was asked recently if she had been a spy.

One former Senior RUC officer described Sue Gray as having a highly unusual cv for a civil servant who was to become the deputy head of the Cabinet Office. One with the power to vet senior ministers for sensitive posts. 

Allegations of Garda collusion in 2003

According to Willie Frazer the so-called  ‘Fulton statement’ in the published Cory Report (2003) was in fact, written by Judge Cory himself after a last minute meeting with Fulton/ Keeley and Willie Frazer in the Merrion Hotel in Dublin. Cory had been asked to examine the Breen and Buchanan murders after the Weston Park Agreement in 2001. Shortly before, the judge had told Frazer and others that he didn’t have any evidence to call for an inquiry as he prepared to wrap up his report. They decided to supply him with the ‘evidence’ he needed. 

The late Wille Frazer described on a number of occasions how Keeley was supplied with the ‘script’ that implicated former Garda Sergeant Owen Corrigan. Frazer, like other campaigners, had anticipated  a wide ranging inquiry to be held in Armagh. He was Keeley’s key contact who said the allegations against Corrigan were influenced by RUC men in Armagh who had a grudge against the Gardai in Dundalk and Special Branch Det. Owen Corrigan in particular. But Keeley’s  allegations also had the effect of deflecting any questions about the murder of Breen and Buchanan in South Armagh which happened, Frazer believed, under the noses of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers.

Keeley duly delivered the verbal ‘evidence’ to Cory (pic below) in the Merrion Hotel in Dublin accompanied by Willie Frazer. Cory used the agent name ‘Kevin Fulton’ in a statement published in his report, which he then called  ‘The Fulton Statement’. In its various versions from Cory to Smithwick, the statement  implicated Sergeant Owen Corrigan: first  in the murder of Chief Superintendent and Bob Buchanan Breen, alleging he gave information to the IRA through IRA commander Patrick  ‘Mooch’ Blair, then at the Smithwick Tribunal in his evidence about  the murder of Tom Oliver.

Judge Cory made it clear Keeley/Fulton was the last-minute witness that persuaded him to recommend a public inquiry. This fact was repeated by the Irish Minister for Justice Michael McDowell, in 2005 at the setting up of a Tribunal. Cory did not put the direct allegation which Keeley aka Fulton had made into the statement, nor was Corrigan ever informed. Instead, in a redacted part of the report, Judge Cory recommended that  any investigation into the Breen and Buchanan murders could focus on Corrigan’s activities around 1989.

In 2006, journalist Suzanne Breen, in a story in the Sunday Tribune, outlined an Army agent’s allegations against a Guard in Dundalk which would form part of his evidence to the Smithwick Tribunal. The allegation would be that a Garda had left Dundalk garda station and approached Patrick Blair who was sitting in a car on the road outside, with Keeley as his driver. The Garda, it was alleged, then told Blair  “they are here” – meaning the two RUC officers. This is the allegation that Willie Frazer years later in 2016, insisted Fulton made in front of Judge Cory. But by the time Keeley gave evidence in 2011 Smithwick this version had entirely disappeared never to reappear.

Suzanne Breen in the Sunday Tribune carried an allegation that Willie Frazer insisted reflected what Keeley had said to  Cory. Keeley later claimed the allegation concerned the murder of Tom Oliver. Frazer was astounded to learn of Keeley’s change in allegations from the two senior police officers to that of Tom Oliver –  a murder he knew nothing about.

So – the description of that one alleged incidence of collusion between Corrigan and Blair, changed entirely in location date and content by time Keeley l gave evidence in December 2011 at the Tribunal in Dublin. The Smithwick Tribunal  had no authority or jurisdiction over the RUC or British army and just ‘grace and favour’ access to their intelligence files. Drew Harris, the present Garda Commissioner was, as ACC PSNI, the liaison between the Intelligence services, the PSNI and the Tribunal.

 The new, later, allegation heard at Smithwick alleged that Keeley heard a conversation in a car between Blair and Corrigan parked  incredibly, in front of Fintan Callan’s Road House, a pub near Hackballscross. This was a well-known republican meeting place and a short distance from IRA man Tom Murphy’s farm complex. The pub car park is one of the most public meeting places in Louth.  The idea that a Special Branch member of  AGS would meet a well known IRA man in such a public space was nonsensical.

Now, in Keeley’s new version, Corrigan was alleged to have given IRA man Patrick ‘Mooch’ Blair information about Tom Oliver, which allegedly led to his kidnapping and subsequent murder.

 The central collusion allegations therefore, of one meeting in a car between Garda Owen Corrigan and Blair, remained, but the content location and the year changed between Cory and Smithwick. The allegations swung from the Breen and Buchanan murders in 1989, to the ‘kidnapping’ of Tom Oliver in 1991. Corrigan naturally emphatically denied all the trumped up allegations, as did Patrick Blair. Keeley’s accomplice Willie Frazer, at the time of the Cory / ‘Fulton Statement’ was emphatic that events, as described by Keeley, never happened. Patrick Blair said it was “a complete and utter lie” that if such a meeting had happened both Corrigan and himself would have been shot.

The rebuttal of Keeley’s evidence by PSNI Deputy Chief Constable Drew Harris in October 2012, cleared the ground for the big ‘reveal’ by the then Deputy PSNI Chief about the murder of Breen and Buchanan and Tom Oliver which occurred in the last days of the Tribunal. The existence of an unidentified Garda.

Harris’ evidence was not only to make Keeley’s allegations redundant, it also  exonerated Owen Corrigan by introducing new ‘live and of the moment intelligence’ about  an unknown ‘4th man’, the real Garda colluder who has never been identified.

Corrigan never received an apology from his accusers relying on Keeley’s story. Willie Frazer agreed that Keeley had  never been in a car with Corrigan and Patrick Blair and the allegations given to Keeley to parrot, were false. He was astounded to learn in 2016 that the Fulton aka Keeley story had changed so completely by the end of the Smithwick  Tribunal. Frazer believed that he had been largely excluded from the Tribunal because he raised awkward questions.

Ironically, the one time Willie Frazer got to give evidence at the Tribunal was to answer allegations made by Owen Corrigan that he had been a member of the ‘Red Hand Commandos’ something he hotly denied. He appeared on the same day as Drew Harris in October 2012. Frazer’s involvement in Ulster Resistance was revealed in 2019 years later.

In meetings with me Frazer described three meetings he had with Judge Smithwick, on the Edenappa Road, when he pointed out to the Judge the British army surveillance positions on the day the two RUC officers  Breen and Buchanan were shot dead. When Smithwick continued to insist that  he believed the British army had no case to answer in relation to their actions that day, the meeting ended acrimoniously, with Frazer describing the judge in unflattering terms.

Part 7

Cui Bono?

Keeley’s lies distracted from the murders of RUC officers Breen and Buchanan in South Armagh. Breen was a target after Loughgall when the East Tyrone ASU was wiped out in 1987 after which Breen was forced to take part in a photo op with IRA weapons. He believed this made him a target for the IRA and he was right –  IRA representatives who talked to the Smithwick lawyers said they used these images to help identify him. Breen left instructions that the RUC Chief Constable was not to attend his funeral.

According to William Frazer, Breen had been warned by a Republican source not to travel to Dundalk. Frazer was given information by Sergeant Billy McBride about his final conversation with long time friend Harry Breen on the night before he was shot dead. Breen, said McBride, believed the direction given by the Secretary of State Tom King was wrong and  ‘now is not the time to target Slab Murphy’.

IRA representatives who gave an account of their actions on the Edenappa Road on March 20th, could not explain why Breen and Buchanan were shot dead when the intention had been that they be captured and interrogated. A weapon used in the Breen and Buchanan murders, a 5.56mm armalite, was also used at Kingsmills in 1976.

 The weapon, linked to Paddy O’Kane, an ex Para who received an OTR letter. He was one of the gunmen at Smithwick. Alan Black’s solicitors KRWLaw said the difficulties surrounding the naming of O’Kane raised suspicions he was a State Agent. The weapon was destroyed in 1996 for reasons unknown.

An IRA statement on the deaths of Breen and Buchanan was given to the Tribunal in 2008 but only distributed to other lawyers in 2012. (See below).

 Keeley first engaged with the Smithwick Tribunal in the UK in 2006. He was given  full legal representation by Judge Smithwick. But he was arrested in November 2006 on foot of the publication of his book “Unsung Hero”. He was questioned over the murder of the young soldier Corporal Cyril Smith in 1990 and of Constable Colleen McMurray killed in 1991.

Keeley was brought back to Castlereagh in Belfast to be questioned by the Special Branch. But in 2007 Keeley’s fortunes had changed. He was provided with the “package “ he had been looking for – an apartment and an income. Keeley had now become a useful asset for the various intelligence services. His payments are made through the PSNI.

In 2008 Keeley received one of 2000 coveted  invitations to the ceremony that marked the end of Operation Banner. The gold embossed invitation from the then Prince Charles was an extraordinary recognition by the State.

 The witness liaison between the Smithwick Tribunal, the PSNI and MI5, was the present Garda Commissioner Drew Harris, then Assistant Chief Constable, PSNI.

Part 8

Changing stories

That Keeley’s collusion allegation had changed from the  Breen and Buchanan murders in 1989, to the murder of Louth farmer Tom Oliver in 1990, was only revealed to legal teams in late November  2011 when the so called ‘Fulton statement’ was distributed (and only after the go- ahead was given by the British Army and PSNI to the Tribunal lawyers). This was also just before Patrick ‘Mooch’ Blair, and a few weeks before Keeley himself made his appearance. Incredibly, the Smithwick Tribunal only revealed Keeley’s allegation of collusion five years after he had first engaged with them and shortly before he gave evidence which ‘revealed’ his collusion allegation which had changed completely since Cory in 2003.

(See “Killusion” @VillageMagIRL, www.villagemagazine.ie November 2016, for further details regarding Fulton/ Keeley and  Blair at Smithwick and the twists and turns of his evidence).

 Keeley gave evidence for three days in Dublin  in December  2011. He described how he, Scappaticci and John Joe Magee were part of the group who carried out Tom Oliver’s ‘first’ kidnapping and interrogation:. He also described transporting Oliver to be

“I handed him over to JxxxxxMxxxxx and Scappaticci. He was held for a couple of days . He was released” he said. In fact  Keeley was involved in Tom Oliver’s brutal interrogation in a Cooley safehouse. Oliver was later savagely murdered, his broken body left outside Belleeks, in Co Armagh.

No one has ever been charged with Oliver’s murder.

Keeley was cross examined at the Tribunal by Jim O’Callaghan SC for Corrigan:

Q – I want to state to you and ask for your comment upon it, Mr Keeley, that you were part of the team of thugs that murdered Tom Oliver ?

A – No Sir I was not part of the team of thugs that murdered Tom Oliver.

In his statements and evidence Fulton named the group who kidnapped and interrogated Tom Oliver. Their names were redacted. A recent reinvestigation looked for witnesses in relation to a car through the media:

Keeley is alleged to have been the man with the “mild Northern accent”.

In September 1991 Keeley escaped to Paris to work for a construction company which had a contract to paint Disneyland in Paris. He was there alongside Belfast IRA man Joe Haughey, and other members of the Belfast IRA.

Questioned about Eoin Morley and the punishment squad

As mentioned earlier, in 1990 Keeley  and Patrick Blair formed part of an IRA ‘punishment’ team when they shot and killed Eoin Morley, a member of the IPLO in Newry. Morley was a thorn in the side of the local IRA unit. In his newly (re)published book ‘Double Agent’ Fulton effectively put his hands up to his involvement. He claims he had no choice and was ‘bounced’ into the shooting:

“By 1990, I lived in constant dread of being ‘bounced’ into some sort of murderous terrorist attack. The call could come at any moment…..let me tell you about an incident in which I was allegedly involved…..’You have to go to this number at Iveagh Crescent’ said Conor. ‘We want a man there kneecapped’.

Who’ I asked.

‘Eoin Morley’ said Conor…

I then examined the weapon Conor specified he wanted used for the job. It was a high velocity rifle..”

Fulton went on to describe the shooting in which ‘it was alleged’ he was involved.

Fulton’s QC brought the Morley case into evidence at the Smithwick Tribunal.

Witness 62, a retired member of the RUC, had been a senior Special Branch officer in Gough Barracks, Portadown in the early ‘90s. He was familiar with Keeley as an informant and intelligence source. Like all the Special Branch men who gave evidence about him he had nothing good to say about him. He described him as a fantasist and intelligence nuisance who was prone to inventing intelligence to  ‘remain in the big picture’. However he also agreed that Fulton was a paid agent of the Special Branch in Newry from 1992 to 1994. Keeley himself agreed he became ‘unreliable’ after he believed the Special Branch set him up for murder by Scappaticci in 1994.

Mr Rafferty QC on his behalf questioned witness 62:

Q – Well, Can I suggest that there was certainly a period, 1991-2 where he was reliable and then there was a change to being unreliable?

A – Reliable, or thought to be reliable. Until the penny dropped ..that a lot of this so-called intelligence that he was giving us was actually  fiction. I do recall that before I left the region and went to Belfast that his house was searched…by the RUC and a number of weapons were found but they turned out to be replica weapons.

Q – Was that a follow up to the Eoin Morley murder ?

I don’t know. I can’t recall but it might have been, it might have been.

Q – Do you recall the Eoin Morley murder?

A – Yes indeed. He was shot with an AKA47 in the leg, is that correct, and bled to death?

Q – Yes, that’s correct. Can I suggest to you that Keeley in 1994 was suspected by the ‘nutting squad’ of having been an informant ?

A – ..Yes indeed. Well I don’t know the dates but it may well be the case.

Keeley’s next move

On September 29th 1991 the Sunday Express published a front page “exclusive”  written by Barrie Penrose with the title “IRA Gangs Move into Euro Disney”. Penrose’s story said that the Provisional IRA had infiltrated members onto major construction projects in Europe including the massive Euro Disney resort and that they had visited sensitive UK Ministry of Defence sites in Gibraltar and the Expo site in Seville. M16 alleged that the IRA men were smuggling weapons to the continent and that active service units were travelling disguised as building workers. 

The story went on to name what it described as leading IRA men “Joe Haughey, a ‘high ranking IRA intelligence officer’, James Gillen, “the IRA’s Operations Officer  in Belfast” and Peter Keeley described as a “prominent Provisional from Newry”. Keeley was now moving in the company of senior Belfast IRA men, including Haughey, which gave him the opening for his next move.

After the Sunday Express story was published the construction contracts were withdrawn, Keeley et al returned to Northern Ireland. By now FRU was wound down and a new task was in prospect. Keeley maintained that M15 had leaked the story to get him back for new jobs. Army Intelligence told him to report to M15 and he was debriefed in London by his new Security Service handlers and some RUC Officers, one of whom was Ivan George Sterritt.

His knowledge of the criminal underworld was now to prove valuable as ‘Operation Crystal’ a huge RUC C-13 anti racketeer plan was being  put into effect from 1992. As the IRA were believed to be moving towards a ceasefire, the new ‘front’ was the financial structures supporting the IRA campaign. Keeley’s ability to move between Belfast, Dundalk and Newry and knowledge of IRA dissidents was also to prove valuable. The overlap between criminality and dissident fundraising was becoming his area of ‘expertise’.

Keeley had also by now had become a proficient bomb maker; a sorcerer’s apprentice to “Mooch” Blair. By 1992 the bomb unit had developed a flash unit, one of the lethal refinements that gave the IRA increasing control over the detonation of mortars.

Part 9

Questioned about Colleen McMurray

At Smithwick Keeley gave evidence about the flash unit. He was clear he had told his handlers in MI5 and Special Branch about developments at meetings in the UK.

 During a cross examination by Michael Durack S.C, Keeley referred to this period:

Q – Now, I think that you told us…that you were making bombs in the Republic of Ireland with ‘Mooch’ Blair, and that you were trying out new types of incendiary devices, new mixes in fertilisers, and things like that.

A – Yes Sir, that is correct.

Q – And you told your handlers.. ?

A – Yes Sir.

Q – And to give you a relevant date, I  think it was. .. you’ve said it was shortly before the murder of Colleen McMurray?.

Q – And that was in 1992?

A – Yes, Sir.

Q – So that was the following year. Who would you have given that information to?

A – It would have been to some of the names that  I have just said there now, yes, Sir. It would have been the M15 people and the army personnel, and there were other people unidentified

During his new tasking by the Security Service in late 1991, Keeley kept up his contacts with South Down IRA. In evidence to Smithwick he said that ‘Mooch’ and himself were making bombs in the Republic..

A – ..we made bombs, experimented with new types of incendiary devices, new mixes in fertiliser …and we also started working on flash units, we called the ‘Eye’.

Q- Now, did you advise your handler’s of that?

A – Yes…at that stage just before the murder of Police Officer Colleen McMurray – and I will state now on the record I had nothing to do with that murder – I had already told my handler’s of the development of a new mechanism by the Provisional IRA in Dundalk. It was a photo light sensitive switch. And what it actually does is, if there is a certain frequency of light it triggers. It is just like pressing a button, it will detonate the bomb or rocket, whatever you fire it with. It would be surprising if most of the (IRA) Unit’s bomb making equipment wasn’t marked by the British Army:

But use of flash units to trigger mortars or IEDs was proving dangerous. The British Army were on the lookout for the visual flash which showed the location of the IRA unit. Two IRA men were spotted in South Armagh aiming a mortar at a helicopter. Their hire  was racked with bullets. It was time to work on a more sophisticated method.

Allegations about Colleen Murray’s death caused the RUC Special Branch in Newry huge problems. Keeley was co-handled by Newry Special Branch between 1992-4, for the Security Service. A senior Special Branch Officer who had served in Armagh at the time, described him as an agent.

The bitterness and anger directed at Keeley by ex RUC Special Branch Officers was apparent in the evidence of witnesses. One of those was witness 64 at the  Smithwick Tribunal, a former Special Branch Chief Inspector in Newry who had been responsible for intelligence gathering, and ultimately for handling Fulton/Keeley.

Witness 64 had been interviewed as part of an investigation into Colleen McMurray’s death by the Police Ombudsman Nuala O’Loan in 2003. He said that while Keeley gave the Special Branch in Newry some useful information there much that was inaccurate, false and misleading.

John Mr McAtamney, Keeley’s solicitor asked witness 64 about Colleen McMurray during a cross examination:

Q –  Are you aware of the Colleen McMurray murder?

A – yes

Q – And are you aware that newspaper articles were published whereby Mr Fulton (Keeley) said that he had told the RUC and M15 in advance that ‘Mooch’ Blair was working on a new weapon?

A – Yes

Q – and did you have any input, be it with Sir Ronnie Flanagan or anyone else in response to those articles?

A – I’m not sure what you mean.. by the term ‘input’……

Q – Did you prepare an RUC response to that ?

A – I personally didn’t prepare a response but the department I was working  in at police headquarters at that time supplied some statistical information on intelligence reports, etcetera, that had been supplied.

Q – Now Mr Fulton will say he provided information intelligence on that occasion about ‘Mooch’ Blair to M15 and Special Branch in London. Are you aware of that intelligence ?

A – No because that intelligence was not supplied, to my knowledge.

Q – To your knowledge.

Keeley was asked for his reaction to the former RUC Special Branch officer Witness 64’s evidence and referred to a police Ombudsman’s report produced by Nuala O’Loan which has heavily criticised the police investigation into Colleen McMurray’s death.

Q – In relation to witness 64, did you at any stage make a statement to the Ombudsman which caused an investigation into the murder of Colleen Murray and led to witness 64 being the subject of an Ombudsman’s investigation?.

A – Well I wouldn’t have realised who witness 64 is. I would have told the Ombudsman the things I had told handlers. She would not have consulted me who she was quizzing …the thing is, you have to remember, if 64 was handling the team of Special Branch Officers that were with my own handler, he then becomes responsible for everything I have done and they have done.

Patrick Blair gives evidence at Smithwick in 2011

Patrick Blair was cross examined in November 2011 about a number of murders, including that of Colleen McMurray murder, by Keeley’s QC:

Q – Were you involved in the murder of three policemen in Newry in July 1986, the butcher’s murder; where you dressed as a butcher and shot the officers while they were eating ice cream ?

A – Well, that’s irrelevant to the Inquiry.

Q – Do you want to answer that ?

A – No.

Q – You are not denying it, you just don’t want to answer it ?

A – I am not answering it.

In July 1986 a 19 year old RUC man  Karl Blackbourne was shot dead in a patrol car in Newry as was his colleague Charles Allen. The gun was also used by the same IRA South Down Unit to murder Inspector Ead in Newcastle in 1989.

Q – Right, that’s OK. Did you make the bomb that you gave to redacted that was used to kill Kilkeel businessman Kenneth Graham.

A – That’s a lie.

Q – That’s a lie. Did you make the horizontal murder .. or mortar that killed Constable Murray in Newry in 1992 ?

Blair’s SC interjected at this point and objected to the line of questioning. The Judge ruled that it was relevant.

Q – So did you make the horizontal mortar bomb that was used to kill in Newry in 1992 ?

A – No. I did not.

Q – Again, that is fantasy as well, if Keeley says that, that’s fantasy?.

A – Well if that is what he said, he is telling a lie.

Keeley was then cross examined by Mooch Blair’s Counsel about Blair’s denial he had “Green booked” Keeley. (Above)

Q – Now in relation to evidence you gave you say Mr Blair Green booked you?

A – Yes he was responsible for

He was responsible for ‘Green booking’ me, and also was the witness at the swearing in. We were at Mickey Collins’ house, just across from Mooch’s house, and the person swearing me in was.. Mickey done the words and Mooch stood there as an officer..

Q – I think you have heard evidence throughout this Tribunal that members of the Gardaí, PSNI, have described you as a nuisance and a gofer and I put it to you that Mr Blair never ‘Green booked’ you and he considers you a gofer.

A – Is that you finished ?

Q – Yes.

A – No I wouldn’t agree with that at all. I was there with Patrick Joseph Blair. He instructed me how to make bombs, to do everything else.. Patrick Joseph Blair’s day to day business was the IRA day to day business of planning to kill members of the Security Forces, making bombs, developing bombs, things like that. So it’s a little bit rich to try to think he would have someone around him he didn’t trust.

Blair was also questioned about punishment beatings when he gave evidence to Smithwick in 2011:

Q – Were you in the Unit that handed out punishment to the members who were in breach of the rules?

A – No.

Q – There was one occasion you might explain to me on the 6th of January, 1993, you were arrested  with two others in a car and you had bars and balaclavas and it was suspected that you were going on a mission for a punishment beating of suspected touts in the IRA ?

.A – We weren’t charged.

Q – I am just interested to know what you were doing with bars and balaclavas ?

A – I believe there was one balaclava in the boot ?

Q – As one has ?

A – Well…whose car was it ?

Q – So that would seem…that you were heading off on a mission to…a punishment beating?

A – There was one bar and one balaclava lying in the boot of the car, and that’s why no one was charged…..

Q – And the infamous ‘Nutting Squad’ …were you part of that ?

A – That’s a fantasy made up by Keeley to sell stories to the paper.

Q – Well how did the IRA then deal with people that they believed had broken their rules ?

A – Well the evidence is there of what happened. People were executed.

Q – Were you ever involved in that ?

A – No.

Q – And bomb making, have you ever been involved in bomb making ?

A – I was convicted, in the ‘seventies, of it.

Keeley in evidence described how in the late ’90’s while working with CID, his handlers who had served in Newry were shocked when he passed on his information about IRA activities in Co Down and Louth.

Cross examined by his QC Mr Rafferty Keeley explained –

A – ..But many years later my…CID handler (witness) 70, especially 70, when I had passed on some of the stuff that I had given M15, army and Special Branch, he actually became very agitated and annoyed …he actually said  “I was a policeman in that area and I knew those people”. (Meaning police who were shot by the IRA unit in Sth Down). I think he was on the detective team investigating (and said)  “we never got that information” and it was quite clear from him that that information was never shared with the investigating officers of those crimes. Uniformed officers in Co Down were bitter that the Special Branch did not pass on  advance intelligence of IRA actions, in order to protect their informants and agents.

Witness 70, a Detective Inspector in CID’s Economic Crimes Bureau, C1(6) who was introduced to Keeley by witness 71, a Detective Sergeant and Keeley’s handler from 1996, was indeed shocked by Keeley’s information about Newry. In evidence though he turned the anger on Dundalk Gardai:

A – ..I did take an interest in Fulton (Keeley) when I became aware of where he was from.

Q – which was Newry?.

A – yes.

Q – and why did that pique your interest ?

A – simply because I had …I always had a frustration of all the years of my colleagues and friends that had been murdered and I was always keen to try and learn more about the people who carried out the killings…. .I haven’t mentioned names but other activists that lived in Dundalk and who I knew were personally responsible for killing policemen in Newcastle, Newry, civilians in Kilkeel, involved in Downpatrick, all came from that Dundalk group.

Part 10

MI5 Plays Chess in Belfast

From late 1991 onwards Keeley was being nudged into IRA circles in Belfast. According to Keeley ‘Mooch’ Blair asked him if he wanted to become a fully fledged member of the Internal Security ISU:

“It took a few seconds for Conor’s words to register…

 “You’ve been chosen to become a member of the Security Unit”.

The Security Unit, the IRA’s Internal police, the ‘nutting squad’, charged with rooting out and killing informants and double agents. Christ, I thought to myself, some supernational force is mocking me..

“You’ll be meeting some of the main players from Belfast.

Right I said, I could certainly see the benefits to this. The ORA’s power base was in Belfast. Getting involved with senior IRA men from there would put at the very heart of the IRA” (Double Agent, Kevin Fulton)

It was John Joe Magee and Freddie Scappaticci who had provided the references for Keeley, now an MI5 asset being handled by the Special Branch.

MI5 were gradually taking over intelligence functions from the RUC Special Branch. Their asset Keeley now became a useful ‘Mr Fixit’ for an ASU that included Gerry Bradley and Dominic Adams. Bradley was a dedicated volunteer in a squad that had responsibility for “fundraising” activity carrying out robberies around Belfast. Some years after being released from a prison term Bradley was stunned to learn that Keeley had been recommended to Belfast General Head Quarters (GHQ) by “of all people Freddie Scappaticci and John Joe Magee”.

(Gerry Bradley’s  ‘Life in the IRA’, Bradley and Feeney 2009)

The chess moves were being made with Keeley as a pawn.

During his new tasking by the Security Service from late 1991, Keeley was still  part of the group developing more sophisticated detonation systems.

The use of flash units to trigger mortars or IEDs was proving dangerous. Limited in distance, and needing a line of sight to the target made the trigger man an obvious target. British Army helicopters were on the lookout for the tell tale ‘flash’, which revealed the location of the IRA unit. Two IRA men were spotted in South Armagh using a flash unit to fire a mortar at a helicopter. Their hide was racked with bullets. It was time to work on a more sophisticated method.

In March 1993 Keeley travelled to America, to source infrared transmitters – a more sophisticated method of detonation of mortar bombs and IEDs – along with his MI5  handler and his Special Branch handler George Sterritt. The FBI and INS allegedly agreed to facilitate Keeley’s trip in exchange for his participation in a sting to entrap an IRA man who was on the run from Co Down. Keeley was given access to the Naturalisation Service files as background.

Mathew Teague, writing in ‘The Atlantic’ Magazine, interviewed Keeley in 2006 about his life undercover. Keeley gave details about his 1993 American trip.

The April 2006 edition of the ‘Atlantic Magazine’ (Above) in which Keeley described the March 1993 trip to New York with his MI5 handlers to source infrared transmitters. The quid pro quo for the FBI was that  Keeley would  arrange a meeting with an IRA man who was OTR in the US. He had also, like Keeley, been part of the IRA bomb/technology unit. He was working in New York, though he was an illegal in the US. The object was to  provide an opening for the FBI anti-terrorist section to recruit the IRA man as an informer.  After Keeley’s meeting with him in a bar, the FBI approached the IRA man   to make an generous offer if he would turn informer. He refused and was deported back to Ireland by the INS sometime later. 

The infra red transmitter was later used in Iraq by insurgents. The capacity to detonate bombs and IEDs from almost a mile away without detection was a technological quantum leap.

In his book Double Agent Keeley goes into into detail about Bob his MI5 handler and the flash device:

“After eleven years working for MI5, Bob was sent to Northern Ireland in the late eighties to assist the Force Research Unit (FRU), the Army’s undercover force for infiltrating Irish terror groups. It was Bob who met me in New York when I purchased the infra-red detonation equipment for the IRA. It was Bob who briefed me in March 1992 about the IRA’s use of flash gun technology to detonate bombs – just hours before this very technology was used to murder RUC officer Colleen McMurray. It was Bob who repeatedly promised me a new identity and a new life if my role as a double agent was  ever exposed to the IRA”. (Double Agent Kevin Fulton)

 Keeley was cross examined about his handlers at Smithwick:

Q – Now….it appears.. that you were working for the Special Branch as well in the early ’90s.

A – Well, Sir, I never actually worked for the Special Branch, I was being paid and handled by M15 and one Army member. As things were actually happening, this was even the murder of Colleen Murray

with this new rocket device. They got me to go to London to build it again, the firing mechanism, and basically when we came back, say at teatime, that evening the murder actually happened. … next evening the Belfast Telegraph ran a story and it actually had a photograph of the ‘eye’ trigger device in it, which really panicked me.

Further details of the Ombudsman O’ Loan’s investigations into the Colleen McMurray case were revealed in 2017. The investigation encompassed Keeley’ s trip to New York accompanied by his MI5 and RUC handler. The Irish News in May 2017 carried a story that:

“Kevin Fulton, a former British agent in the IRA claimed last weekend that he tipped off (Jonathon) Evans – then his M15 handler – that an attack was likely. Fulton has also claimed that M15 let the IRA buy bomb-making equipment and that Evans, …helped him organise a trip to New York in 1993 to buy a batch of infrared transmitter for use in IRA bombs. The idea was that M15 would have the equipment sabotaged so that the bombs failed to explode”….

The Security Service denied that Evans was in Northern Ireland at this time. He was in fact in charge of MI5 T2 section dealing with terrorism, the main focus being the IRA.

The Irish News story continued:

“The fact that Fulton travelled to New York was confirmed to Nuala O’Loan (the then Police Ombudsman) by George Ivan Sterritt, a former Special Branch Officer… He said an M15 Officer helped oversee Fulton but was unable to say who the officer was”.

In 2004 an anonymous source put detailed notes relating to Keeley’ s visit to New York on the website Cryptome. The source “A” was most likely Keeley.

The use of infrared transmitters to detonate mortars and IEDs was an exponential leap in the IRA’S capabilities.

The England Department run by South Armagh carried out a mortar attack on 10 Downing Street. Three Mark 10 Mortars were launched from the back of a Ford transit  van landed in the Gardens leading to within 50 feet of the Prime Minister. The trajectory of the mortars had been worked out with military precision with strips of tape on the windscreen lining up with a particular spot. The ability to trigger the bomb at a precise time and safe distance was crucial.

In March 1994 Heathrow Airport came under attack from a series of Mark 6 mortars fired over a number of days.

The 14 mortars were fired from different locations travelling between 650 and 1120 metres landing within the airport. Though they caused massive disruption  none of them exploded. According to Oppeheimer in his book ‘IRA The Bombs and Bullets, A History of Deadly Ingenuity’, the mortars were “rendered harmless”. The explosive mix has been deactivated. This was based on information given to him by an Intelligence source in WERC, the RUC Weapons Intelligence section controlled by RUC Special Branch.

The fact that the IRA could control the timings and operate from unidentifiable locations helped to create what was more a “spectacle” than a lethal attack.

“On the 15th of March RUC Chief Superintendent Terry Houston confirmed that the IRA had developed a new light sensitive detonator by adapting a U.S. made photographer’s “photo flash slave unit”. The small cordless device can be triggered by a flashgun from a maximum range of 800 meters. Some have been used in recent attacks but police in London refused to comment on whether the device had been used to launch the mortars against Heathrow.” [Intelligence Online March 1994]

 It appears Keeley’s American infrared devices were used in the airport attack.

Ceasefire

 It was becoming obvious an IRA ceasefire was in prospect, Keeley had arrived in New York in March 1993 as the Adams-Hume talks were revealed on TV news. Secret and not so secret moves were being made. As one former  senior RUC officer said of the time: “no one knew what was really happening or who was in charge”.

The increasingly fractious relationship between the Special Branch and MI5 over the control of informers and intelligence systems was apparent to senior RUC officers like Ian Phoenix. The watchers were being watched.

But by 1994 Keeley was also falling foul of RUC Special Branch in Newry.

According to witness 64 a former senior Special Branch Officer in Newry, Keeley gave information about an ASU in England and Scotland on foot of which an operation was put in place that took up considerable resources “only for Mr Fulton to subsequently state that it was something he had made up”.

Fulton completely disagreed and went into a convoluted explanation of what happened.

“At that time I was working with GHQ staff in Belfast. At this time the ceasefires were on, weapons were handed over as well. I was asked to go to England to purchase firearms. I was told to dig in two dumps: one outside England and one in Scotland. When an agent goes to England to the Mainland, you are guaranteed you are going to get stopped, it’s going to be finished. You’re gone. At that time, I was to buy guns and put them in two dumps for the GHQ staff in Belfast. My handlers told me I had to do the dumps. (They) said, “no this isn’t about guns, this is about bombs..

Anything that happens in England, the agent is automatically burned”.

As Keeley knew, the reason the agent was automatically  “burned”  was because after MI5 or Special Branch raided an arms dump in the UK, the Internal Security Unit will be looking for an informer. As Bradley ordered, only Keeley was to know where exactly the dumps were located.

In ‘Double Agent’ Keeley described how, in anticipation of the 1994 ceasefire and because Keeley was back and forth to the UK, Gerry Bradley and ‘Liam’ another IRA man, asked him to sink two arms dumps. One outside London and the other in Scotland near Glasgow. Bradley mentioned possible bombs in Canary Wharf and Docklands. Keeley told his MI5 handlers about the IRA plans. They said: “If we stop an atrocity we all look good”.

“‘London is going to be our main target’ said Jimmy, ‘but it’s a bit easier in the North of England. We’ve had some good results there’”. (Double Agent).

Keeley described the trip:

“Jimmy (Bradley) handed my, & £1,500 for the mission. I flew to Prestwick Airport.. and spent the night at the Holiday Inn. The next morning I was met in the hotel reception by Bob from MI5, Pete from the military and a man called George from the Special Branch. I told Bob to drive me to a DIY store.. I had sunk several arms dumps in the Republic before, so I knew exactly what I needed. I bought a large cool box, rubber seals, heavy plastic covering, a spade, a pair of wellington boots and a roll of bin liners. The woman at the till didn’t bat an eyelid as three men in smart suits wheel my shopping out of the store”.

For the next few days, according to Keeley, his handlers drove him to suitable secluded areas and watched him dig the IRA dumps.

But just as Keeley was about to fly back to Belfast, ‘Bob’ decided he wanted a full debrief about the dumps, convinced the IRA were about to use them for a bombing campaign. Keeley now had to find an excuse for his overextended stay in the UK.

On returning to Belfast he convinced Bradley that he had been delayed after being arrested and questioned in Paddington Green Station, before he could board the plane. He was also to produce false documents to ease any of Bradley’s suspicions.

Bradley told him he would have to return to the dumps very soon. A package containing semtex and Kalashnikov rifles were on their way to the UK. However, according to Keeley was pulled from the operation on foot of his (phoney) arrest.

According to Keeley Bob was Jonathon Evans and Georg1998 was the late George Sterratt a Special Branch handler.

Targeting Martindale

 In January 1994 the Belfast IRA were planning to murder RUC Chief Superintendent Derek Martindale who was the very public face of an RUC anti-racketeering squad. He had led a huge operation to raid IRA front businesses in Down and Armagh. This involved hundreds of searches and arrests.

Gerry Bradley was drawn into the plan:

“At the height of the squads success and against his better judgement, Bradley agreed to participate in an operation he did not like the sound of and which turned out to have been compromised from the start”.

The target was Chief Superintendent Derek Martindale:

“ It was a major op. The plan was to whack Martindale as he was driven on his regular route into Belfast”.

Martindale was head of C-13, the RUC anti racketeering unit. He had led a massive operation to raid businesses in Armagh and Co Down that were generating millions for the IRA in counterfeiting and smuggling.

Bradley involved Keeley in the preparations for the attack on the senior officer on his daily journey into work:

He came across as a wheeler-dealer, fly-boy. He was all into sharp suits, flash clothes. He was a ‘del boy’ – gave the impression he could get anything. He hung around, made himself useful, supplied stuff”.(Insider, Bradley and Feeney)

Keeley supplied a mobile phone which he bought in his wife’s name and a getaway car and generally made himself useful. The phone was being monitored.

 The plan was indeed totally compromised. An  RUC E4A unit, armed with Heckler and Koch submachine guns, were waiting for the ASU as they attempted to ambush Martindale’s car. Bradley and Dominic Adams and other members of the ASU were arrested, charged and imprisoned. Keeley was also arrested and held in Castlereagh station for three days. He was later released without charge.

Keeley was asked about the operation by Counsel for the Garda Commissioner at the Smithwick Tribunal:

 Q – And then you went to work for …sorry you were involved in 1994…with the intended attack on the senior policeman?.

A – Yes sir 

Q – That resulted in you being in Castlereagh for a few days being interrogated ?

A – Yes, that was an attack on the Chief Superintendent ( Martindale).

Q- What made you take the phone out in your wife’s name ?

A – at that time those people in Belfast, the guy is dead, it was Gerry Bradley.. he is GHQ staff. And they were doing a job, he says “we need a basher”…..So my handler says ‘get one on contract and we will pay the bill’, so I had no problem. I absolutely believed them…

Q – Because it certainly meant the phones could be listened to ?

A – Yes Sir I know that…..

Q – And therefore easily traced back to your wife, which left yourself in a position where you were going to be suspect ?.

A – No Sir, it doesn’t always work that way …..if every device or every job that an agent was going on was compromised the roads would be littered every weekend with dead people.

Q – But isn’t that what you were doing, you were compromising it by getting it in your wife’s name ?

A – No ..I wasn’t compromising it, because the simple reason is my handlers told me to get it. Usually when handlers said they would cover something, trust me these people did what they said, and if they said nothing is going to happen, trust me nothing would happen. My handler’s ..you know allegedly I have done lots of things with the knowledge of handlers. I have never been brought to book…But since all of this has stopped now, there are police investigations. The Police Ombudsman has done her investigations and found that my handler’s never did things by the book.

Bradley’s IRA career had come to an end:

 “Unfortunately for the Op, Keeley was also a Special Branch informer…..there was no doubt the phone was carefully monitored by the police and its whereabouts tracked at all times”..

Nothing would do ‘Duckster” but he used the mobile to phone about the flat in Belmont. I pointed out a pay phone on the wall ten feet away”. (My life in the IRA Bradley and Feeney)

“Duckster” was the senior IRA man in charge of the Operation who was sourcing a flat to be used as a safe house for the IRA unit while using the Keeley supplied phone..

After he served five years in jail Gerry Bradley learned by accident that Keeley had been in the British Army.

“.. Bradley was thunderstruck to learn that Keeley had been in the British Army. He was so horrified that he ran the half mile from Castle Street to his brother-in-law Joe Haughey’s place in Unity Flats to confront him with this information…Bradley was reeling. Keeley had left the British Army in 1981 and, according to his own account, had spent from about 1986 operating with the IRA in the Newry area. It now became clear why Keeley’s name was not to be mentioned in South Armagh. As he says “what South Armagh man joined the British Army?. Bradley was stunned no one had told him”. (Bradley and Feeney, 2009).

*A PONI report on Omagh showed Fulton had been given participating informant status by the Special Branch in 1994.

The senior police officer who had planned the operation to thwart the IRA assassination of Martindale was Superintendent Ian Phoenix who died in the Chinook crash on the Mull of Kintyre the following June.

Like many RUC Special Branch Officers, Phoenix was vehemently opposed to the Intelligence Services attempt to take  control of RUC intelligence gathering. He was one of the Special Branch Officers who were opposed to the Government’s moves towards negotiation, believing that they had by now thoroughly infiltrated Belfast IRA.

Part 11

Double Crossed

Fulton/Keeley’s  troubles were now to begin in earnest. Ian Phoenix correctly predicted what was about to happen:

“The tout hunt begins and all involved…will be stood down”. 

Keeley knew what was in store. The phone he supplied had led to an arrest and a “debrief” was inevitable. Keeley claimed he was questioned by Scappaticci despite the fact Scappaticci was stood down from the Internal Security Unit.

He was questioned about the interrogation by Counsel for the Gardai:

Q – Was he involved in your investigation?…Mr Scappaticci.

A – One of them yes.. that was after Derek Martindale in Belfast.

A – On a number of occasions I was questioned by the Internal Security Unit myself…but the last occasion after the Derek Martindale thing, you know it wasn’t believed…. It had gone too far and I was going to be murdered. ….I had a big fall out with my handler’s over the Derek Martindale stuff. I mean I was really put in a bad position over that.. my life was in danger.

 According to Keeley, when he  was told to come back for a third time for an interview with Scappaticci he knew his handlers had been prepared to sacrifice him. They came to a safe house in Dromore and tried to persuade him to attend the ‘interview’. He believed he was being set up enough and warmed by one of his handlers, he went on the run.

Keeley was about to enter his wilderness years.

At Smithwick, Scappaticci’s QC Mr O’Rourke accused Fulton of being an attention seeker who named Scappaticci to get publicity.

Q – I am suggesting to you that the inclusion of Mr Scappaticci in the proceedings is for the embarrassment of the State, do you understand ?

A – why would it embarrass the State ?.

Q – You can’t think of any reason ?

A – You tell me.

Q – Can you not think of any reason ?

A – I know Mr Scappaticci said he wasn’t an informant and he is

Scappaticci’s lawyer’s final written submission to the tribunal made on his behalf in 2013, completely denied Fulton/Keeley’s allegations.

Kenova is believed to have found no evidence that Scappaticci was involved in the inquiries after the Martindale operation. Sources say it was in fact conducted by the Intelligence section of the IRA not ‘Internal Security’. However, though Operation Stakeknife ended in 1990 former IRA sources say they believe Scappaticci was still moving in Republican circles in Belfast and elsewhere.

In 1993 the former GOC John Wilsey and the Head of Army Intelligence Colin Parr met Scappaticci as John Stevens was, as Wilsey put it “sniffing around”. In the event Stevens did not continue his investigations at this time. They ultimately resulted in Operation Kenova.

Running on Empty 

By 1994 the IRA campaign was winding down. Keeley was now part of the conflict  flotsam cast adrift in the closing days.  He was caught between the suspicions of his old IRA colleagues and the ruthless disposal of their assets by the various intelligence services. Keeley was out in the cold, his former handlers telephone  numbers were ringing out.

In June 1994 the top echelons of the Intelligence apparatus in Northern Ireland died in the Chinook crash on the Mull of Kintyre. Among the dead was the head of the FRU successor unit the Joint Services, Group Lt Col Victor Williams, who had inducted Keeley into FRU in 1982.

Part 12

The Deniables

In the confused end days of the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’, Keeley was one of the deniable assets now left to shift for themselves, left out in the cold. He began his campaign to be recognised as a soldier who had risked his life serving undercover, entitled to a pension and relocation package. Under his pseudonym name “Kevin Fulton” he put a plangent elegy for the screwed over agent on his “YouTube” channel, some years later.

In 1995 he began working for Customs intelligence selling his knowledge of smuggling, VAT fraud and drug dealing among paramilitaries and the criminal confraternity in the borderlands.  But the money wasn’t enough, so in 1996 he offered himself to an RUC officer who was in the Drug Squad in Belfast. Soon after, Keeley’s handler joined the RUC Economic Crimes Bureau. He was made a participating informant for the Financial Crimes Bureau in 1997. Within a short time he would be working as a participating informant for HMC and MI5.

Thus ended the first phase of Keeley’s career. The undercover soldier proud of his regiment, the Royal Irish Rangers, was decommissioned but without the financial rewards and the recognition he craved. Keeley was to leverage knowledge of the murky underside of the British Army’s campaign to get his package but that was some time in the future when the British Army and MI5 would again find uses for Keeley.

Keeley, like Scappaticci, walked away alive from the “Dirty War” in the mid 1990’s, as did their handlers some of whom now occupy high positions of State. This, unlike their victims, the unvindicated dead and injured – the alleged informers, police officers, British soldiers and innocent civilians.

© Deirdre Younge

Part 2 of this two part series on Keeley and the Omagh Bomb read  “Running with Wolves “ in Covert History Ireland. @CovertHistory