Covert History Ireland & UK Magazine. [Home]

See also: https://coverthistory.ie/2024/11/15/no-such-thing-as-a-comfortable-free-lunch/

The letter was marked in block capital letters: “SECRET & PERSONAL”.

THE PLOT AGAINST HAROLD WILSON.

Lord John Hunt, who served as Cabinet Secretary from 1973 to 1979, conducted an investigation into claims that rogue elements within MI5 had disseminated damaging stories about Harold Wilson’s government. He established that the claims were true.

Wilson himself first made the assertion about the campaign in the mid-1970s.

Peter Wright, one of the conspirators, wrote about the smear campaign in his book ‘Spycatcher’.

Hugh Peter Mooney died on 12 December 2017. Although he had worked for The Irish Times in the 1960s, the ‘paper of record’ failed to record his passing.

Mooney had probably appeared on MI6’s radar by the time he was working for the BBC, if not long before. Some astute talent scout probably earmarked him as an ideal recruit for the IRD, which worked hand in glove with MI6.

Like MI6, the IRD was attached to the Foreign & Commonwealth Department (FCO).

The IRD was based in a ramshackle 12-story block in Millbank, London, called Riverwalk House. The IRD did not so much operate on the front line of the intelligence community’s wars as behind the bike shed.

1969 – FEBRUARY 1971: MOONEY JOINS THE IRD. BY 1971 HIS UNDERCOVER ROLE  ‘RISKS DAMAGING THE CREDIBILITY OF ARMY PR’ IN NI

The IRD was a sinister black propaganda unit which was complicit all sorts of criminality. Its worst crimes involved incitement to mass murder in Indonesia and the overthrow of the only democratically elected and secular government in Iran, another operation that involved incitement to murder, though not on the scale of Indonesia.

Mooney was hurled into this abyss of deceit when he joined the FCO in April 1969 and was assigned to the IRD. He cut his teeth in Jamacia here he portrayed Britain’s opponents as communists

In preparation for his role, he visited Ireland on 21 June 1971 for four days. According to a file in the possession of Covert History magazine, he reported that the ‘aim’ of his visit

‘was to see how and what kind of IRD operations might be mounted. In the North I talked with the UK Representative [Howard Smith] and the commander Land Forces, Major General Farrar-Hockley, I visited the Irish Republic June, 22-23 and met with the UK information officer, Mr Peter Evans’.

‘Before leaving Belfast,’ Mooney added:

‘I looked into a possible useful story. The Special Branch arranged an interview for me with the head of the Drug Squad, Inspector Scully. While not having the sort of proof that would lead to convictions, he knows the Provisional IRA is making a profit out of the drug trade and distributes pep pills to youngsters rioting against the security forces in the Ardoyne. He is prepared to offer names dates and places to a trusted contact’.

That same month, Mooney was posted to Belfast, given a large house and placed under the command of Howard Smith.

Those who remember Mooney at this time describe him as around 5′ 9″ tall and of medium build.  His hair and beard were prematurely grey, and he wore gold-framed spectacles.  He was difficult to get to know and appeared to be ‘intense and insecure’.  One observer said that it ‘could be that he felt uncomfortable working in an Army-controlled environment’. 

In Belfast, Mooney worked closely with Cliff Hill, an FCO official, who was referred to by journalists as ‘Cliff the Spy’. 

The tendrils controlling Mooney’s appointment reached all the way down from the top of the British Intelligence community. On 15 July, 1971, Sir Stewart Crawford of the FCO, and Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, sent a ‘directive’ outlining Mooney’s assignment to Philip Woodfield of the Home Office (Woodfield later became the Head of the Northern Ireland Office).

In a nutshell, Mooney’s task was to blur the frontier between fact and fiction. According to the directive, the ‘IRD officer in Belfast’ was to ‘apply the IRD techniques of indirect, and where necessary covert, propaganda designed to counter hostile threats, in support of HMG’s policy objectives in Northern Ireland and the operations of HM Forces there’. As part of this, he was to:

•  ‘Exploit any tendencies to disagreement and rivalry among the extremist groups;

• ‘Expose the extremists, discredit their methods, and isolate them, and to counter their efforts by dampening down intra-communal tension;

•  ‘Improve the image of British soldiers in Northern Ireland;

• ‘Counter inaccurate and tendentious newspaper reports, and to obtain publicity for moderate Irish opinion, both Catholic and Protestant’.

THE ‘COLD FISH’ WHO MANAGED MOONEY

Mooney was also directed to ‘clear major projects’ with his superior, Howard Smith, and keep him ‘informed of what has been done’. As cover, Mooney was designated as the ‘Information Adviser’ to the General Office in Command (GOC) of the British Army.

Smith had become the UK Representative [UKREP] in April 1971, a few months before Mooney arrived in Belfast. He was the only UKREP appointed by Ted Heath, who knew him from Heath’s time at the FCO when he – Smith – had circulated Heath and others with a proposal to murder the PM of Congo, an operation that culminated in the brutal murder of Lumumba.

Views on Smith differed: some people described him as a ‘cold fish’ while others said he inspired ‘loyalty and affection’. Born in October 1919, he began his career as a code breaker at Bletchley Park during World War II. He joined the FCO in 1945 and went on to serve in Oslo, Washington, Caracas, Moscow and Czechoslovakia. He later became Ambassador to Moscow and, in 1978, Director-General of MI5. Smith oversaw all British political and intelligence affairs in NI in 1971 and 1972.

The directive outlining Mooney’s role in Ireland noted that while he

‘will be responsible through the UK Representative to the Home Office, he will be in day-to-day working correspondence with IRD. He will also work in close liaison with the Directorate of Intelligence, the Psyops staff [of the British Army], [RUC] Special Branch, the Director of Information to the Stormont Government’.

Ustimenko was the first to arrive and had fallen under Garda Special Branch surveillance, the fruits of which were reported to the British Ambassador to Dublin, John Peck, who was able to inform the Western European Department of the FCO on 23 April 1971 that the Russian was

‘widely referred to as the KGB man or “the Spy” and the fact that he appears to do none of the things expected of a correspondence has virtually destroyed his cover”. (Craig p137)

Ambassador Peck was no stranger to the IRD. He had been in charge of it in the 1950s. Indeed, the influence of the IRD over the greater intelligence community may have peaked at this time, as the Chief of MI6, Sir John Rennie, was another former Head of the IRD.

DECEMBER 1971:  THE SULPHURIC LIES TOLD ABOUT THE BOMBING OF McGURK’S BAR

On 4 December 1971, the UVF bombed McGurk’s bar. There was never any doubt at British Army HQ that the UVF was behind the bombing. Nonetheless, the IRD circulated the claim that the explosion was the result of an IRA’s ‘own goal’; that the bomb had exploded accidentally. Years later, a UVF member was convicted for the atrocity during which 15 people, including two children, were killed. To this day, the British Government refuses to declassify its file on the atrocity.

The international press mauled the British Army after the Bloody Sunday massacre of 13 unarmed civilians in Derry on 30 January 1970 by the Parachute Regiment. Mooney’s dark skills were called in to deal with the bloody aftermath. He arranged for Colonel Maurice Tugwell, another propaganda expert, to talk to the press. Mooney and Tugwell didn’t merely embroider the truth; they concocted an atrocious smear that some of the victims had been on the Army’s wanted list, thereby implying they were IRA members and probably armed. Not a word of this was accurate.

The implication here is that the British Government would underwrite the publication’s costs.

Utley was what was known in the intelligence community as an ‘agent of influence’. According to the letter, he was ‘obviously’ going to ‘need a certain amount of help from Army PR, particularly on the propaganda aspect’.

The letter was also circulated to Howard Smith.

In the event, Utley failed to produce the book. However, in 1975, he published the grandiosely titled Lessons of Ulster, which took a broader look at Northern Ireland and included a section on Bloody Sunday. Hardly a word of what he wrote was accurate – a few facts adorned with semi-plausible lies  – which might now be fairly categorised as a ‘hate crime’. His overall thesis was that the massacre was the result of an IRA ‘trap’ into which the British Army had fallen. Utley described how parts of Catholic Derry had become ‘veritable IRA fortresses’. (p.83) According to him, the anti-internment march that preceded the massacre had been organised by the IRA. This was a shabby lie: it been organised by the civil rights movement.

According to Utley, the IRA fired the first shots at the soldiers who had pursued some rioters.

‘IRA gunmen fired on the “invading” force, and the soldiers returned fire. The result was a gun battle fought in the midst of a milling crowd. In the course of it, 13 civilians were admitted by the Army to have been killed, a figure which Republicans claimed to be an underestimate’. (p83)

It would take until 2010 for the British Government to finally acknowledge that none of the victims had fired on the British Army; on the contrary, British soldiers had fired first, and that the massacre had not been sparked by gunfire from any IRA shooters. British PM David Cameron apologised to the families of the victims after the publication of the Savile Report, which demolished the pyramid of lies built by the Lord Widgery brick by brick until all the hidden compartments containing the truth saw the light of day.

See also: The Judicial Fixer.

Yet back in 1975, Utley dipped into his vat of poisonous lies and urged his readers to believe that a

‘successful arrest operation [on 30 January in Derry] in the heart of Republican Londonderry would have been a tonic to the spirits of all law-abiding Ulsterman and a crippling blow to IRA morale. In the event, however, the Army proved to have walked straight into an IRA trap set to capture, at the expense of civilian demonstrators, the British and Stormont governments. The most familiar of terrorist techniques – the use of an apparently innocent protest demonstration as a shield for a gun attack on security forces, designed not primarily to injure them but to tempt them to action which could be misrepresented as the deliberate slaughter of the innocent – had worked to perfection. The Widgery Commission totally repudiated the suggestion that the Army had run amok, although it criticised some soldiers for behaviour bordering on the reckless; and it failed to find conclusive evidence that any of the 13 were actually carrying guns or bombs at the time of their deaths.’

At best, Utley was guilty of self-deception; at worst, downright dishonesty. The damage occasioned by the gallons of snake oil Utley fed his credulous readers should not be underestimated: Margaret Thatcher would later describe Utley as ‘the most distinguished Tory thinker of our time’.

By far the most unforgivable part of Utley’s rant was where he argued some of those killed were ‘fresh-faced boys who might otherwise have lived to swell the ranks of patriotic militancy’ i.e. they were all potential Provos.

At least Utley failed make it into Parliament. He ran in the same constituency as Ian Paisley in the February 1974 general election, without success in the House of Commons, and was spared the slippery, self-serving sophistry that was his signature dish.

THE MAN FROM DOWN UNDER.

Mooney and the IRD did not wait around for Utley to produce his thesis about Bloody Sunday. Time was pressing, and they required something to show the world, especially the politicians in Washington, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, where there were large, angry anti-British expatriate Irish communities. The void left by Utley’s tardiness was filled by an Anglophile Australian named Brian Crozier, who published a book titled “Ulster Debate” in 1972 for the IRD.

Like Mooney, who had worked for the BBC’s External Services, Crozier was formerly of the BBC. He had delivered international commentaries for the BBC’s overseas broadcast service, mainly in French and later in Spanish.  Crozier also worked for the Economist, which he left at the end of February 1964. According to Crozier’s autobiography, Free Agent, he was then approached by

‘a long-time IRD friend, H. H. (“Tommy”) Tucker. I had already turned down a full-time job proposal from him, but he now made me an offer which I accepted immediately: a part-time consultancy for the IRD’. (p 51)

Later again, Crozier was asked to head up the Institute for the Study of Conflict (ISC), which pumped out black propaganda on behalf of the CIA and MI6.

Crozier, Mooney and their partners at the IRD had managed to pump out some astonishing bilge about Ireland for a year or more before Bloody Sunday. Mooney and Cliff Hill were undoubtedly part of this process, if not in overall charge of it. In early 1972, Crozier published the Annual of Power and Conflict 1971, A Survey of Political Violence and International Influence. It was a flimsy cover for IRD-MI6 propaganda. It alleged that the IRA enjoyed safe havens in the Republic and implied links between Fianna Fail (or ‘Fionna Fial’ as Crozier spelt it) and the IRA. ‘The IRA has sanctuaries and unofficial support from Eire which claims sovereignty over the whole island.’ (p17)

More pointedly, it was alleged that Jack Lynch was ultimately responsible for the success of the IRA who enjoyed the sanctuary in the Republic. The 1971 Annual alleged that the ‘support given by the Irish Republic to the IRA was much more serious. …The supervision by the Irish Army of their side of the border was perfunctory. The Prime Minister of the Republic, Mr Jack Lynch, whose own position is precarious and his party Fionna Fial [sic], has historic links with the IRA….’

Perhaps the most risible claim was that Catholics at the Harland & Wolff shipyard had marched to demand internment, thereby implying that Harland & Wolff was a bastion of intercommunal harmony and that internment had been introduced in part at least due to a clamour for it by ordinary Catholics. (18) While this will strike Irish readers as absurd, it is worth recalling that the allegation was aimed at a more gullible international audience.

There was no depth to which Crozier, Mooney and the IRD would not sink. The torture of the ‘Hooded Men’ and the more widespread body of internees was dismissed thus:

‘Persistent reports that the security forces in Ulster were using brutal methods in the interrogation of internees led to a commission of enquiry headed by Sir Edmund Compton, the British Ombudsman. The Compton Report published in November [1971] acquitted the security forces of brutality, but stated that “physical ill-treatment” had occurred during some interrogation of suspects.’ (p19)

DR GARRET FITZGERALD AND THE ISC STUDY GROUP.

Arguably, the most outstanding performance by the men conducting this ballet of lies was to inveigle Dr Garret Fitzgerald to become a member of the ISC Study Group (ISCSG) on Ireland. This led to Fitzgerald’s contribution to a book published in 1972 entitled Ulster Debate, which formed part of Mooney’s campaign to exculpate the Parachute Regiment after its Bloody Sunday rampage.

As an ISC member, FitzGerald must have received the Annual of Power & Conflict 1971 and have become aware of its content.

Unfortunately, we do not have FitzGerald’s account of how he became involved with the ISC. Before his election to the Seanad in 1965, FitzGerald had worked for a string of British publications, including the BBC, the Financial Times, and the Economist. Crozier might have known him from the Economist; perhaps Mooney knew him from his time in Dublin at Trinity and the Irish Times. While Fitzgerald was happy to disclose his involvement with the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission, British-Irish Association and his support for Irish membership of NATO in both of his autobiographies, there is no mention of Crozier, Mooney, the IRD or the ISC anywhere in either of them; nor indeed in any of his writings.

Ulster Debate contained five essays. FitzGerald was described in a short profile of the members of the ISCSG in the book as a “Barrister-at-Law, Lecturer in Economics and shadow Finance minister in Dail Eireann’.

‘THE GUIDING PRINCIPLE OF THE STUDY GROUP WAS REALISM.’

The introduction to Ulster Debate, written by Crozier, described the history and purported purpose of the publication. He pointed out that the ISC had published a private paper on NI in 1971, after which there had allegedly been a ‘continuing demand’ for it. After this the

‘Council and Director of the ISC felt, however, that there was a need for a further study of this crucially important subject, aimed at a wider readership than can be reached by the Conflict Studies series, which is not on sale to the general public and is available only to subscribers or on special request. The need became more urgent with the announcement, in March 1972, of the British government’s new “initiative”, involving direct rule from Westminster over the troubled province’.

‘To this end’, he explained

‘the Institute commissioned four of the five studies that appear in this book, and convened a Study Group with the object of considering each of the papers and producing constructive suggestions. In the fifth paper, Robert Moss, as rapporteur of the Study Group, summarises the discussion, presents the findings and contributes his own views.’

Like all good propagandist, Crozier spun a good yarn:

‘The guiding principle of the Study Group was realism. The outcome is a guide to the Irish problem and proposals that respect the facts and possibilities of a dangerous and delicate situation. Each paper is a separate contribution. It does not necessarily reflect the view of the other members of the Study Group.’

THE IRD MUPPET SHOW

Unfortunately, the ‘guiding principle of the Study Group was’ not  ‘realism’, nor was attention to detail a hallmark of its members. The group which had assembled ‘with the object of considering each of the papers’ must have been collectively asleep at the wheel. It is not clear if they had an opportunity to review the chronology, which appeared at the end of the book. Some of its allegations stand out:-

• On 13 December 1971 the IRA ‘hi-jacked a Canadian aircraft but were apprehended’. (p140);

• It repeated the bizarre assertion that Catholics in Belfast had marched in favour of internment on 13 March 1971. (129);

• Cathal Goulding led the Official IRA after the IRA split between what became known as the Officials and Provisional wings. Yet at page 136, Goulding was described as the Leader of the Provisional IRA;

• On 10 March 1971 a ‘feud between the Officials and the Provisionals broke out into open violence. There were murderous street battles in which it was estimated that 40 to 50 members lost lives’. (p129) However, no one died on 10 March. Six people in total died during March 1971 of whom four were British soldiers.

• Lord Chalfont, a former FCO minister, referred to the Mini-Manual of the Irish Guerrilla, which contained ‘a characteristic attack on the Catholic priesthood’ by the IRA, which described the Church as ‘the enemy in our mists, the vipers nourished by the fruits of our sweat, the black beetles eating away at our very sustenance’. This was unlikely to endear the IRA to Irish-Americans.

• The allegation already raised in the 1971 ISC Annual Report about safe havens in the Republic was reheated in the Ulster Debate (60);

Dr FitzGerald was not the only high-profile dignitary to extend his reputation and prestige to the publication. As the introduction noted – and no doubt impressed international readers:

‘Professor J.C. Beckett [of Queens University] deals with the historical origins of the Northern Ireland problem; Prof F. S. L. Lyons [of Trinity College] dissects the alternatives open to the governments concerned; Lord Chalfont [former FCO minister] analyses the security aspects of the situation, excluding, as far as possible, the political aspects, and Dr. Garret FitzGerald considers Ireland in the European context. In the supplementary paper, Sir Frederick Catherwood [of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students who was knighted in 1971] presents some proposals for a long-term solution of the Irish problem as a whole. Appendices and diagrams complete the background.’

The real purpose of the book, however, was to portray Britain in the best light possible in America and elsewhere. It was distributed worldwide by the British Embassy and consular staff.

THE EXEMPLARY BEHAVIOUR OF THE PARACHUTE REGIMENT IN NORTHERN IRELAND.

One group that emerges well out of Ulster Debate was the Paratrooper Regiment who had received an international press mauling after Bloody Sunday despite Mooney and the IRD’s best efforts to vilify the men who had been killed. In contrast, according to Ulster Debate, on 2 October 1971 a ‘paratrooper gave his life in an effort to save some children’. (p135) No one in fact died on 2 October 1971, let alone a paratrooper, although a soldier did save a child in similar circumstances on another occasion.

An allegedly ‘clear’ account of Bloody Sunday; one that could be relied upon ‘beyond doubt’, was tendered by Lord Chalfont: the IRA had been responsible for starting the violence of that day. This, of course, was a lie which the Saville Inquiry has since demolished. Yet Chalfont opined that:

‘When the IRA used the mobs as shelter for ambushes and snipers, sooner or later a tragedy of that sort is inevitable. When this happens another weapon in the armoury of terrorism comes into its own – the weapon of propaganda. The action of the security forces in London was the subject of unceasing IRA propaganda both before and after the Widgery Report was published, and much of it was swallowed whole in sections of the British press’.

THE IRD PROMOTES GARRET FITZGERALD’S ASSERTION THAT  BLOODY SUNDAY WAS AN ‘ABERRATION’ WHICH LED TO AN “ASTONISHING AND INDEED DEEPLY WORRYING” BREACH IN THE “BASICALLY FRIENDLY” RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN IRELAND AND THE UK

FitzGerald’s comment on Bloody Sunday was that it was an ‘aberration’ that caused an ‘astonishing’ rift between the UK and Ireland, which had traditionally been ‘basically friendly‘.

FitzGerald argued that

against this long-term background the present unhappy state of Anglo-Irish relations can be seen as an aberration. An almost total – and unprecedented – failure of communications between the two countries, especially after the Derry shootings, created a momentary mutual hostility that is uncharacteristic of their normal complex but basically friendly relationship with each other. That this could have happened in the face of the means of mass communications now available is astonishing and indeed deeply worrying. Past experience suggests, however, that in time the misunderstandings caused by such communications blockages will be dissipated’. (p73)

Unfortunately, FitzGerald did not make it clear what ‘misunderstandings’ had taken place.

FitzGerald opined that relations could be repaired through the EEC:

‘The only overt indication of the [European Economic] Community’s attitude towards the problem of Northern Ireland has, however, been the reply given by Prof Ralf Dahrendorf Commissioner for External Relations, in the course of an interview with Europaische Gemeinschaft in April 1972, to a question as to whether history does not pose many obstacles to European unification, as exemplified by the events of Londonderry (sic). Prof Dahrendorf replied that the example of Londonderry (sic) was an important one; the participation of Great Britain and Ireland in the Community would not solve the Irish problem, but it will diminish the intensity. In progressively adopting a common position on many problems not directly connected with the questions of Northern Ireland, the differences between Great Britain and Ireland would come to be seen in a new perspective, and this would help them to resolve their specific differences over Northern Ireland. He added that friendly relations between France and Germany would have been much more difficult to preserve if they had not been members of the Community.’ (p78)

It is curious to note that on page 73 FitzGerald referred to the events as having taken place in ‘Derry’ whereas at page 78 of the same article the city is described as ‘Londonderry’. Did someone edit his work? Did he ever complain? Unfortunately, the only certainty is that he used neither of his autobiographies to clarify any of this.

FitzGerald also used Ulster Debate to attack the Republic’s failure to contribute to the defence of Western Europe by failing to join NATO.

MOONEY AND CROZIER’S LIES METASTASISE

Various authors sympathetic to the Parachute Regiment, including Charles Allen, who wrote The Savage Wars of Peace (1990), and Peter Harclerode, Para! (1992) sought to exculpate the Regiment for its actions on Bloody Sunday. Harclerode argued that Support Company had inflicted a heavy blow on the Provisionals. His account claimed the troops had come under heavy fire from the Creggan Estate (290)

Harclerode reported that there had been

“unconfirmed reports that the total of those killed was between 20 and 30, and that the missing bodies had been spirited away across the border, where they were buried. If this was indeed the case, the motive for their concealment can only have been that forensic examination would have revealed that the individuals concerned had been handling and firing weapons.’ (p.290)

John Parker published “The Paras: The Inside Story of Britain’s Toughest Regiment in 2000. On page 251, he supported this claim by stating that there

‘was little doubt that the IRA themselves “doctored” the scene by whisking away incriminating materials and, it was speculated, several other bodies or wounded personnel.‘

AUGUST 1972: MOONEY PORTRAYS JOHN HUME AS A CRIMINAL

In the early 1970s, John Hume made many trips to Washington, where he forged strong relationships with Tip O’Neill, Ted Kennedy, and other influential Irish Americans. According to Hume’s biographer, ‘the British watched from a distance, wary that he might try to prise the US State Department away from its pro-London, anti-interventionist line. Indeed, it was partly to break the State Department’s hold on policy that Hume concentrated on the politicians, who in America wield real power.’ Worse still from a British perspective, in 1971, he smuggled details about the maltreatment of internees out to the Sunday Times in his shoe after a visit to internees, something that caused an international uproar. (Barry White 115.) He was also one of the most vociferous critics of the British Army after Bloody Sunday.

Mooney tried to assassinate John Hume’s character.

Some of Hume’s US visits were as Chairman of the Northern Ireland Resurgence Fund, a charity which raised funds to encourage employment and self-help projects in Belfast. One of its early initiatives had been to raise money to rebuild Bombay Street, which rampaging Loyalist mobs had torched in 1969.

Mooney and the IPU struck in August 1972, claiming some of the money raised by the Fund had been diverted to the IRA while Hume had carved off a slice for himself. A forged bank account was created to appear to show a theft from various US charities. A briefing paper was shown to a select group of American reporters. It (a) linked Hume with IRA fundraisers, and (b) hinted that he had stolen money which had been donated by the American Ancient Order of Hibernians. According to it, ‘Hume received $10,000’ on one occasion. Alongside this scribbled in red ink was ‘see [Hume’s] bank account’.

The smear wound its way into the Christian Science Monitor, an international publication which, while it was available on subscription, was also distributed free to influential political figures throughout the world. The story festered and spread until Hume was obliged to denounce it.

In April 1987, Barry Penrose of the Sunday Times confronted Mooney with the briefing paper. At first, he denied having written it or seen the forged bank account. Later, he conceded the handwriting on the documents ‘could be’ his.

Hume was also attacked by Ulster Debate. An entry in the chronology section for 16 February 1972 contains a reference to an arrest warrant issued for Hume. The entry is silent on what it might have been for. It claimed that a ‘summons was served on Mr. John Hume in the Bogside, by police escorted scored by armoured cars.’(145)

Hence by 1972 British diplomats could hawk Ulster Debate around Washington, Canberra and Toronto pointing out that Catholics actually favoured internment; Bloody Sunday was an aberration; Paratroopers gave up their lives to save children; and that the Republic was a safe haven for an IRA backed by the KGB and Fianna Fail; and all of this in a book supported by Garret FitzGerald who bemoaned the fact the Republic was not a member of NATO.  Moreover, John Hume had the whiff of criminality about him. Suffice it to say, if the IRD forged bank account in Hume’s name with Mooney’s scribbles on it was also produced, there would be little doubt about Hume’s criminality.

For more on the smear campaigns against John Hume see: MI6 smeared John Hume. He was also placed under MI5 surveillance in Dublin with the assistance of the Gardaí. [WebBook]

See also: Whitehall sought dirt on John Hume.

SMEARING THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT.

Mooney and the IRD had another swipe at Hume by attempting to portray the civil rights movement, of which he was a leading light, as a violent communist conspiracy.

Mooney generated press briefings, which were shown and/or given to journalists. They were also shown to politicians by British diplomats in places such as Washington. Some of them linked the civil rights movement to the Soviet Union and the IRA as part of a Soviet conspiracy. According to it, the civil rights movement was part of a: 

‘murder and sabotage plan, fronted by the IRA, which basically seeks to create in Ireland a socialist republic on Cuban lines. This achieved, the next step would be the drive for a British Workers’ republic.‘

The ‘Civil Rights movement’ was described as being ‘IRA and Communist controlled’.

Mooney also claimed that:

‘Communist involvement in Irish political violence has been slow to reach the firm control it now exercises, but it was always there…. Soon it was staging militant demonstrations, using the front of demands for civil rights, and when the demonstrations led to street disorders the IRA came into the picture as escort for their parades.‘

The overall picture depicted by Mooney was that:

‘militant students, the civil rights bodies, the IRA, and the various Citizens Defence Committees which came into existence in Catholic areas, all had the same objective. In the words of one of their leaders ‘We don’t want reform of Northern Ireland-we want a revolution in Ireland.‘

VILIFYING CHARLES HAUGHEY.

SMEARING BRITISH LABOUR PARTY LUMINARIES.

In 1973, the Foreign Office was reducing the role of the IRD. Mooney and his colleagues saw the conflict in Northern Ireland and the industrial unrest in the UK as an opportunity to avoid those cutbacks. His document, ‘Soviets gain control over British Communists’, was an attack on the British Labour Party led by Harold Wilson in the run-up to the General elections in 1974. In IRD’s view, the Miners’ Strike and the ‘Three Day Week’ crisis were Communist inspired.

Mooney and others would go on to smear an array of British Labour MPs, union officials and other left-wing groups. The victims included PM Harold Wilson, Deputy PM Ed Short, Denis Healey and Tony Benn.

Insofar as Ireland was concerned, Mooney’s primary strategy was to demonstrate that the conflict in the North was Communist inspired. One of the smear tactics was to place an annotation on the front of a Sinn Féin Ard Fheis document which linked Sinn Féin to the British Labour Party.

The IRD also forged a Bloody Sunday commemoration leaflet designed to show that certain British Labour politicians were ‘sympathetic with the IRA’.

A colleague of Colin Wallace revealed in 1990 that he had read forged documents purporting to show that Merlyn Rees ‘had made financial contributions to the IRA cause’. Rees subsequently became NI Secretary and, later again, Home Secretary. Needless to say, the allegation was malicious.

Edward Short was Deputy Leader of the Labour Party. A similar attack to that on Hume was launched against him, namely, the forgery of a bank account showing the receipt of dubious funds.

The IRD also forged a document purportedly ‘signed’ by Denis Healey, who served as Secretary of State for Defence under Harold Wilson. It was a forgery designed to make him appear to be serving the interests of the Soviet Union. Healey also served as Chancellor of the Exchequer under Wilson.

Conway also played a role in exposing the torture of internees. He discovered what had happened to the Hooded Men (hooding, death threats, white noise, beatings, stress positioning, etc.) and flew to Downing Street, where he confronted Heath. Heath then had to take steps to halt the abuse.

SMEARING IAN PAISLEY.

Ian Paisley was another victim of smears. The IRD forged share certificates and a Swiss bank account in his name. The forgeries indicated the substantial purchase of shares in Canadian companies with mis­appropriated funds. ‘I’ve got no shares anywhere’, Paisley thundered in April 1987. ‘But I mean it’s common knowledge put out by the dirty tricks department that I have ranches in Canada and ranches in Australia’, he added sarcastically. ‘That has been common parlance for years’.

In 1990, Mike Taylor stated:

‘I can support everything Colin Wallace says and can confirm that the Clockwork Orange operation did include the smearing of British politicians. There were two Clockwork Orange files which were always in use during my period… I saw forged documents, for instance that the Reverend Ian Paisley had a bank account in Canada’.

The forgeries were shown to gullible, lazy or compliant journalists.

SMEARING WILLIAM CRAIG.

Another target was William Craig MP, Leader of the Ulster Vanguard Party. It was alleged he had organised the kidnap of the Grundig executive, Thomas Niedermayer, in 1973, because he – Craig – was having an affair with Niedermayer’s wife, Ingeborg. In reality, Niedermayer was kidnapped by the IRA, who murdered him in December 1973. His decomposed remains were discovered in March 1980. One of the conduits for the Craig smear was a British Army major based at Lis­burn, but he was not acting on behalf of the IPU.

The smear reached the German newspaper Bild and prompted a headline which asked: ‘Did the consul die because of a romance?’ Craig and his wife sued Bild and received £8,000 in damages.

Colin Wallace had no hand, act or part in the Craig smear.

VILIFYING THE VICTIMS AND SURVIVORS OF THE McGURK’S BAR BOMBING

Mooney was also responsible for the smear campaign against the victims of the McGurk’s bar bomb atrocity.

15 innocent people were murdered when the UVF attacked McGurk’s bar in Belfast in December 1971.

The black propagandists issued a statement insinuating that at least some of the victims of the attack were responsible for their own demise. The propagandists alleged that the bomb had been brought inside the pub by an IRA unit and had exploded prematurely – a so-called ‘own goal’. Politicians’ statements furthered the campaign. 

See also: An appalling vista: disturbing indications of Kitson’s foreknowledge of a third massacre of innocent civilians.Tragedy took fifteen lives including two children. By David Burke.

AT LEAST MOONEY WAS PREPARED TO TELL THE TRUTH ABOUT KINCORA BUT NO ONE – ESPECIALLY JUDGE HART – WAS INTERESTED

To his credit, Hugh Mooney had the courage to half-admit his complicity in the Hume smear, a refreshing alternative to the usual wholehearted dedication to dishonesty observed by his colleagues.

Also on the semi-positive side, Mooney was prepared to tell the truth about the Kincora Boys child sex abuse scandal. Judge Hart, who investigated it and reported in 2017, ignored this crucial opportunity despite the fact he had been supplied with a copy of an interview with Mooney which had been published in The Sunday Correspondent on 18 March 1990.  In it Mooney stated unambiguously that Colin Wallace, who worked at the British Army’s HQ at Lisburn as a PSYOPS officer, had told him about the abuse at Kincora.  

‘I do know he mentioned it.  He was dropping it in and feeling his way.  He kept pushing it.  But I could never understand why.  I thought it was totally irrelevant to our concerns.  I did get the feeling he was pushing this’.

Mooney was only in his mid-50s when he made this statement and could have suffered for it. Hence, he should be credited with some courage, especially as Colin Wallace had lost his job, been framed for manslaughter, and sent to prison for trying to expose the Kincora scandal, and had refused to engage in a series of MI5-inspired, treacherous, dirty tricks overseen by Ian Cameron of MI5. Over time, Wallace’s conviction was overturned, and he was compensated for the deceitful way Cameron had ousted him from his post in Belfast.

Mooney’s handwriting also appears on propaganda documents which refer to William McGrath, the Housefather at Kincora and the paramilitary organisation he ran, Tara.

YET ANOTHER HART FAILURE

Mooney left NI in December 1973. Hence, Wallace must have had many discussions with him about the Kincora scandal before that date.   Mooney was not invited to appear before the Hart Inquiry.  Yet at page 88 of his report, Hart alleged that:

‘We are satisfied that it was not until 1980 [after the media exposed the Kincora scandal] that MI5, SIS, the MoD and the RUC Special Branch became aware that [William] McGrath [of Kincora] had been sexually abusing residents of Kincora when that became a public allegation.’

In addition, Hart made this finding despite knowing that the MoD had destroyed all the PSYOPS files at Army HQ in Lisburn in 1981, or at least alleged that it had.  Wallace is clear in his memory that a number of the missing files concerned McGrath, his paramilitary organisation Tara and Kincora.

THE STATE’S SEWER PIPE

The IRD came unstuck after Carl Bernstein (of Watergate fame) exposed a vast network of interlocking media publications and bodies, including the ISC, which were jointly controlled by the CIA and MI6. After this, Crozier came under scrutiny in the media. Ultimately, Bernstein’s expose led to the downfall of the IRD in 1978.

David Burke is the author of four books published by Mercier Press.

These books can be purchased here:

https://www.mercierpress.ie/?s=Puppet

https://www.mercierpress.ie/?s=Kitson

https://www.mercierpress.ie/irish-books/an-enemy-of-the-crown

https://www.mercierpress.ie/irish-books/deception-and-lies