Covert History Ireland & UK Magazine. [Home]

Introduction:

Shadowy intelligence agencies — MI5 and MI6 — loom large across both.

A third strand is the media’s shameful failure to investigate these outrages in a timely fashion with the all the rigour and courage the public and victims deserve.

A fourth part of the connective tissue runs deeper: the British Establishment’s recognition that while D‑Notices and honours can help shape press coverage within the UK, the media in the Republic of Ireland has always been harder to muzzle. The Irish Independent in Dublin first exposed the truth about Kincora; NOW magazine, also based in Dublin, was the first to link Lord Mountbatten to the scandal.

The last decade of Donaldson’s career as an MP was surrounded by the eruption of one sex scandal after another, albeit involving other MPs. Did he feel threatened, lucky or immune that he escaped attention at this time?

1. All those rumours – and more – were true.

Donaldson knew that many of his party colleagues and several journalists knew about his double life. Journalist Sam McBride asked him questions about it in 2010.

He must have realised that Dublin and London were aware too.

2. A turbulent political career.

The ramifications of this are immense, as Donaldson was involved in all of the momentous Anglo-Irish events of the last thirty years. Indeed, he became a more significant political figure with each passing year, until his arrest in 2024. Even now, his downfall threatens the electoral prospects of his former party, the DUP.

He was, without a doubt, the most successful and important Unionist politician of the post Troubles era.

He was first returned as an Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) MP in 1997, and stood opposed to what became the Good Friday Agreement. Key figures in MI5, the RUC Special Branch and British military intelligence were opposed to the peace process too, believing they could defeat the Provisional IRA. They also felt the IRA would not decommission its arsenal.

Donaldson’s opposition to David Trimble, leader of the UUP, who supported the Good Friday Agreement, weakened their mutual party. Donaldson acted as one of the UUP’s negotiation team during those negotiations. He walked out of Stormont Castle Buildings on 10 April, 1998, the morning the agreement was concluded.

Donaldson was one of the determinative group of ten DUP MPs at Westminster who saw to the re-election of Theresa May as Prime Minister in 2017. May’s opponent, Jeremy Corbyn of the Labour Party, was a critic of MI5, an organisation he saw as a threat to democracy. On the other hand, Theresa May was one of MI5’s greatest admirers at Westminster.

After his installation as DUP leader, Donaldson and his party continued to develop a tougher line against the protocol.

In July 2021, Donaldson set out the DUP’s ‘seven tests’ by which to judge any changes the UK and EU would make to the arrangements.

With no progress in sight, in February 2022, the DUP collapsed Stormont’s power-sharing executive in protest.

After further talks with the British government, Donaldson softened his opposition, claiming the sea border had, in effect, been removed. Stormont was reinstated in early 2024.

The British government was delighted.

Jim Allister MP, leader of a rival Unionist party, the Traditional Ulster Voice (TUV), claims Donaldson has lied and betrayed Unionism.

Did Donaldson cooperate with London to any extent out of fear of exposure, stated or unstated?

Donaldson’s demise has sent shock waves through Unionism as a ‘border poll’ on Irish unity, under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, looms on the horizon. Whitehall has long since come around to favouring Irish reunification – once defence arrangements can be put in place with Dublin. The Irish government has already stated its intention to align with the Joint Expeditionary Force+, a NATO proxy organisation. Meanwhile, Unionism is split into three major parties, the DUP, UUP and TUV. They are bickering with each other, convulsed by the Donaldson affair and fixated on issues such as the ‘sea border’ and the pursuit of legal actions against Irish language rights, while London and Dublin plot against them.

Many in the DUP knew that Donaldson was a bad penny, yet let him rule the roost until his arrest. They are likely to pay a high price for that in forthcoming stormy NI elections. The TUV must be set for a windfall.

Meanwhile, Loyalist communities are being swamped by drugs sold by criminal and paramilitary gangs.

The image of Northern Irish Unionism in Britain may have struck an all-time low.

The union between Northern Ireland and Britain is truly in peril.

3. Donaldson was the cheerleader for homophobia. The media didn’t call out his hypocrisy.

Powerful figures in the Irish and British media let Donaldson lead a double life despite his hypocritical opposition to gay rights such as same sex marriage.

Why, for example, did The Irish Times, a champion of gay rights, let Donaldson – the arch hypocrite – demean, endanger and bait the gay community?

The DUP has a long history of opposition to gay rights. Ian Paisley led a campaign to ‘Save Ulster from Sodomy’ in the 1980s.

This fact alone establishes that his colleagues knew he was a sex pest.

Edwin Poots, who led the DUP for a brief period before Donaldson took over and is now Stormont Speaker, has admitted knowing that Donaldson had been texting a young woman. ‘There’s quite a number of people within the DUP who knew about this,’ he told ITV.

Jim Allister MP, leader of the Traditional Ulster Voice (TUV), told The Irish News that rumours that Donaldson had abused children were in the ‘ether’ from March 2023, a full year before the former DUP leader was arrested.

As further victims emerge to reveal abuse at the hands of Donaldson, the media can hang its head even deeper in shame. They could have taken steps to investigate Donaldson years ago. How much trouble would it have taken to employ a private detective to follow him for a few days?

Why did they look the other way?

5. The Curse of Kincora.

One thing is certain: investigating Donaldson risked drawing attention to the Kincora child abuse scandal.

MI5 (which is attached to the Home Office) and MI6 (attached to the Foreign Office) were aware of the sexual abuse of the residents at Kincora but chose to cover it up to exploit the perpetrators for intelligence purposes. MI5 and MI6 used the abuse to blackmail influential Loyalists involved in the paedophile ring.

Instead, the media (except for Village and The Phoenix in Dublin) went along with the egregious error-strewn and dishonest Hart Report of 2017, which dismissed the notion that MI5 and MI6 had exploited the paedophile ring that swirled around Kincora.

The media in Ireland is slowly waking up to the fact that the spooks, ghouls and ghosts of Kincora still haunt Irish politics.

The media in Britain is ignoring the issue.

Also being ignored is the link between Anglo-Irish paedophilia and abuse networks run by Roy Cohn and, later, by Jeffrey Epstein. Roy Cohn was Donald Trump’s lawyer. See: https://coverthistory.ie/2024/01/07/cohn/

6. Smearing the victim of child sex abuse.

On 3 July 2026: Newton Emerson of The Irish Times confirmed that his paper had been aware of the reports in Village magazine about Jeffrey Donaldson and Enoch Powell. He claimed ‘they were just worthless repetition of familiar innuendo’. This is both defamatory and misleading.

The Village story broke new ground: that Donaldson’s mentor, Enoch Powell MP, had abused Richard Kerr, a former resident of Kincora. Kerr himself was the source of the story about Powell having abused him. Kerr has just settled his case against the Crown for £100,000.

There was nothing ‘worthless’ about Kerr’s account.

Richard Kerr is not a liar.

Kerr’s story was based on his first-hand experiences, not ‘innuendo’.

If Richard Kerr is a ‘worthless’ liar, why did Mark Hennessy of The Irish Times want to interview him?

Richard Kerr had agreed to be interviewed by Hennessy on 7 July 2026, but changed his mind. He no longer wants to talk to anyone from The Irish Times.

Kerr is critical that the paper never attempted to speak to him before his legal victory and never conducted a proper investigation into the Kincora scandal.

It will be interesting to see if Newton Emerson apologises to Richard Kerr.

7. The crucial importance of the Dublin media in thwarting child abuse perpetrated by VIPs in Northern Ireland.

In October 1985, at the age of 22, Donaldson was elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly to represent South Down in a by-election following the death of  Raymond McCullough.

After the scandal erupted, a number of members of the vice ring fled over the border into Donegal, where they stayed at a castle, until they learned that they had nothing to fear from the RUC. Who among this number were known to Donaldson? Why did he think they had fled to the Republic?

He may very well have known the ugly inside story about Powell and Molyneaux.

All three of the Kincora staff were found guilty in December 1981. After that, a number of journalists began probing the clandestine roles of MI5, MI6 and the RUC in the affair. Donaldson – like all Unionists – must have followed the story.

Chris Moore of BBC NI featured prominently in the campaign to establish the truth. He had a number of top-notch sources. One of them was an RUC officer who told him that the police and MI5 were afraid that the true depth of the scandal – which extended to Britain – would unravel. The source must have had Lord Mountbatten in mind.

Moore also learned that the Northern Ireland Office, MI5 and the RUC were not unduly concerned about the press in Northern Ireland and Britain, as they could control them. Their leverage soon became apparent. In his most recent book, Moore describes how one of his key RUC sources was betrayed by one of his managers at the BBC to the RUC. The manager is still alive and enjoying his retirement in England. Potentially hundreds of children were raped because of his actions. This is because he thwarted Moore’s investigation, which had the potential to expose tens – if not hundreds – of additional perpetrators. A single perpetrator can abuse ten, twenty or more children a year.

MI5 and the RUC had an Achilles’ heel: the Dublin media. The Kincora scandal had been exposed by The Irish Independent in Dublin, not by a Northern Irish paper. NOW magazine, also in Dublin, first exposed Lord Louis Mountbatten’s link to Kincora.

Chris Moore discovered that the RUC and MI5 were afraid that key elements of the story might slip out via the media in Dublin, where they had much less sway over reporters. Hence, the opportunity to expose the historical – and ongoing – abuse of children fell at the feet of the Southern Irish media.

For a while, The Irish Times ran with the story, led by Ed Moloney. Incredibly, an attempt was made to murder Moloney later that year. (This disturbing event is described elsewhere in this story.) The hamstringing of Moloney, who left the paper, ended its only real attempt to expose the true depth of the scandal.

The lives of an unknown number of children, who fell into the clutches of the network after the Kincora scandal had been exposed, were destroyed because of the failure of the media to do its job, i.e., expose the fact that Kincora was merely a cog in a larger machine which was still in operation.

The media would also fail to expose the deceit and corruption involved in a string of RUC inquiries into Kincora and the Terry (1982), Hughes (1984) and Hart (2017) inquiries into the scandal.

History repeated itself over the Jeffrey Donaldson scandal. The Northern Ireland and British press were never likely to expose Donaldson for all the wrong reasons: an overstated fear of libel (usually on the part of lawyers) and circumspection about angering those who might be protecting Donaldson from public scrutiny while blackmailing him, namely the NIO and MI5. Knighthoods and other baubles for the senior management at the papers and for their owners were potentially in jeopardy if the Establishment was angered. Time may yet reveal that the Northern Ireland Office and/or MI5 and/or Downing Street protected Donaldson.

Would Whitehall have permitted the UK media to have exposed Donaldson while he and his nine DUP colleagues were propping up a precarious Conservative party government in the throes of Brexit? (This issue will be analysed in more detail below.)

This is why it behoved the Dublin media to step up to the plate but it didn’t. It seems that the inability of the UK government to muzzle the Dublin media in the 1980s – when Ed Moloney was exposing Kincora – was rectified in the meantime. (See, e g., the Peter Mandelson section of this story.)

The Phoenix and NOW magazines in Dublin and Private Eye in London pursued the Kincora story but hardly anyone else. See Mountbatten exposed, 1990. Of these publications, only Private Eye is still in existence.

Private Eye no longer covers Kincora.

In the world of the print media, nowadays only Village magazine of Dublin pursues these issues. As described above, it broke the Enoch Powell story.

8. The Irish Times failed to investigate Donaldson, one of the most important Anglo-Irish scandals of this century. 53 years ago, it let the Kincora scandal slip through its fingers.

[The substance of this section was written before Newton Emerson of The Irish Times assailed the reports about Enoch Powell MP and Jeffrey Donaldson in Village magazine.]

Unlike smaller regional newspapers, The Irish Times had all the necessary resources to carry out investigations into Kincora and Donaldson thanks, inter alia, to the massive injections of funds from an array of commercial interests which it owns. It now also receives funding from the Irish government. Its sales and advertising do not keep the paper afloat on their own.

The paper holds itself out as insightful, courageous and skilled. It is none of these things.

It sneers at the rest of the media, believing that it alone has the wit to tell the public what is going on in the world.

It is filled with opinion pieces and glorified press releases. It has little interest in real investigative journalism. By way of comparison, RTE television has an impressive track record at exposing hidden scandals.

Unfortunately, The Irish Times is viewed by large swathes of the country – or at least by the well-heeled of South County Dublin and D4 – as the filter of what is and isn’t credible.

It should now – but won’t – give the 30,000 or so old age pensioners who purchase its print edition (and whatever number it alleges have digital subscriptions) a truthful explanation as to why it failed to investigate Donaldson, a key player in all of the most significant Anglo-Irish events of the last few decades. Donaldson made his mark from the outset, including:

• Vocal opposition to David Trimble, leader of the UUP, due to the latter’s support of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement;
• Donaldson’s concerns about the implications of the agreement for Unionism;
• Donaldson’s fears about the lack of guarantees regarding IRA disarmament;
• the desertion by Donaldson, Arlene Foster and others from the comparatively moderate UUP to the more hardline DUP;
• the chaos over Brexit and the Irish border; and
• the precarious existence of the NI Assembly at Stormont;
• Donaldson’s response to the Windsor Framework.

Donaldson was no bit player. He was the man who represented Loyalism during the Brexit process. He negotiated on behalf of the DUP with Dublin.

He was also one of the handful of DUP MPs who held the balance of power in the UK after the 2017 general election. Theresa May had to go cap in hand to buy their support.

The Irish Times and others did not pause to consider the possibility that some of the positions Donaldson adopted in response to these events may have been influenced by people who knew about his sexual transgressions.

May was a former Home Secretary, the department to which MI5 is attached. MI5 reported to her both as Home Secretary and as Prime Minister.

Surely, MI5 warned her that Donaldson – the second most important of the ten DUP MPs – was susceptible to blackmail and control by any organisation that knew about his private life. MI5 would have been in gross dereliction of its duty had it not warned her that Donaldson might be manipulated by Russia, possibly even pulling the plug on her government at a future date.

These types of warnings by MI5 and MI6 are standard practice where a doubt hangs over a politician in a position to influence events. MI5 and MI6 expressed concerns about Boris Johnson’s ability to handle sensitive information and his connections to Russian oligarchs, suggesting a lack of trust in his capacity to maintain confidentiality. These warnings were part of broader apprehensions regarding Russian influence in the UK, which MI5 has been raising for years. Johnson became Foreign Secretary but was excluded from certain intelligence briefings.

Since Donaldson projectile vomited over the Mayor of Beijing, it follows that the Chinese were aware – at a minimum – that he was a heavy drinker, contrary to his image as a teetotaller at home.

And what if the Provisional IRA or INLA knew about Donaldson’s double life? They have placed countless Loyalist and British VIPs under surveillance for decades. The IRA knew that Lord Louis Mountbatten was a child abuser and that Sir Maurice Oldfield, Chief of MI6, abused ‘rent boys’ in London. The IRA killed Mountbatten in 1979 by blowing up his boat. They placed a bomb outside Oldfield’s apartment in London in the mid-1970s. The INLA assassinated Airey Neave MP by placing a mercury tilt bomb in his car while it was parked at Westminster in 1979. Ian Gow MP was killed by an IRA car bomb in East Sussex in 1990. Without a shadow of a doubt, the IRA and INLA had the resources to place someone like Donaldson under surveillance in London.

It is an indisputable fact that Theresa May knew about the multifarious allegations that British intelligence had manipulated the Kincora scandal to control certain Loyalist politicians. As Home Secretary, she ruled out extending the Goddard inquiry to include Kincora. Her excuse was that child protection was a devolved matter, meaning it was under the jurisdiction of the Northern Ireland government rather than the UK government. This decision was met with criticism from some child sexual abuse campaigners who wanted a broader investigation into the scandal.

The Goddard Inquiry became the Jay Inquiry and was also known as the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA). It was a lamentable farce which ignored VIP sex abuse even though this was the very thing which had triggered the inquiry in the first place. The even more egregious Hart Inquiry investigated Kincora.

Before the opening of face-to-face negotiations with the DUP, Theresa May and her colleagues obviously studied their opponents closely. It would have been perfectly normal for MI5 to have furnished her with its files on Donaldson. Is it conceivable that they gutted them, thereby allowing Prime Minister Theresa May to form a wholly inaccurate assessment of Donaldson? Did she think she was dealing with a sincere Christian or a decidedly gamey hypocrite?

I believe Theresa May – at the very least – suspected that MI5 and MI6 had exploited Kincora and that she helped them cover up their wrongdoing when Richard Kerr went public in 2014, during her tenure at the Home Office. Further, that she became aware that MI5 had ‘kompromat’ about Donaldson while she was negotiating with the DUP.

It should not be forgotten in any assessment of May’s character (or lack thereof) that she appointed Willie McCrea to the House of Lords so that she could cling on to power. McCrea is now ‘Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown’.

McCrea, a former DUP MP and gospel crooner, was not always so esteemed. He was convicted in 1971 for riotous behaviour in Dungiven. On that occasion, he was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment.    

McCrea was also an admirer of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) and other Loyalist groups. In 1972, McCrea issued a press release, saying:

‘We call on all Loyalists to give their continued support to the Ulster Defence Association as it seeks to ensure the safety of all law-abiding citizens against the bombs and bullets of the IRA. As the Catholic population have given their support to the IRA throughout this campaign of terror, so must Loyalists grant unswerving support to those engaged in the cause of truth.‘

McCrea advocated the bombing of Dublin.

In April 1986, McCrea called for the RAF to bomb the Republic of Ireland. He wanted ‘Libyan-type strikes’ against Dundalk, Drogheda, Crossmaglen and Carrickmore.

To date, no one has asked May what information MI5, or any government department or employee, furnished to her about Donaldson at the time she was seeking his support, along with that of his colleagues, to retain her position as prime minister.

At some stage, Donaldson probably realised that MI5 knew all about his secret life and hence didn’t feel there was much point in being discreet anymore. This would explain why he openly visited gay clubs and watched pornographic movies in hotels (which automatically recorded his viewing record for billing purposes) while in London. Furthermore, he was a knight of the realm, a status which bestows privileges and protection for the holder, due to the knee-bending and obsequious nature of life in Britain. He was knighted in June 2016 as part of the Queen’s Birthday Honours list. He was apparently recognized for his services in politics. He has since been stripped of this honour.

MI5 must have been hugely relieved that May was able to cling on to power, as the alternative was Jeremy Corbyn, who had a very low opinion of them. Worst still, Corbyn’s right-hand man was Seumas Milne, who had written a book on MI5’s interference with the Miners’ Strike of the 1980s. Between them, Corbyn and Milne would have relished a root-and-branch examination of MI5. All sorts of embarrassing skeletons would have been dragged out of the organisation’s vaults.

As it transpired, the DUP soon became of less relevance at Westminster. Theresa May lost the support of many in her own party due to her handling of Brexit, leading to numerous resignations from her government and ultimately her own resignation on July 24, 2019.

10. Another Prime Minister falls – this time due to lying about a drunken sex pest in the Tory ranks.

Boris Johnson succeeded May as PM. His tenure at No 10 was – to put it mildly – turbulent.

Donaldson sailed through this turmoil unscathed becoming Leader of the DUP on 30 June 2021.

Boris Johnson fell as prime minister on 6 September 2022 due to a sexual misconduct scandal. Sir Simon McDonald, the top civil servant at the Foreign Office during Johnson’s spell as Foreign Secretary, revealed that Johnson had lied about his knowledge of the Chris Pincher sex scandal.

Pincher had attended the Carlton Club, the Conservative Party members’ club in St James’s, central London where he had groped a then-employee of the House of Lords on his arm and neck, before groping his bottom.

He also groped a civil servant’s bottom and then his testicles.

Pincher later apologised and said he accepted his behaviour had damaged his reputation and that of the government.

Witnesses told the BBC that Pincher was seen ‘extremely drunk’ at the time.

Johnson had known about Pincher’s behaviour, yet appointed him as a Tory whip. When the Pincher scandal emerged, Johnson lied about his knowledge of it. McDonald then exposed Johnson’s lies. It proved the final nail in Johnson’s coffin and he resigned as prime minister.

11. That story in Private Eye magazine.

Another sex scandal was bubbling beneath the surface while all this was happening.

On 29 June, 2022, Private Eye magazine published a report that Johnson was caught having oral sex with Carrie Symonds (his future third wife) in his office while he was Foreign Secretary in 2018. 

Private Eye maintained The Times of London had pulled the story.

One can only imagine what Jeffrey Donaldson made of all this. Did he feel threatened that the facade around him could collapse?

Did he feel immune?

Equally, one wonders what Donaldson made of the wave of sex scandals that engulfed Westminster at this time. (See the next section.)

12. A Nest of Vipers inhabiting the Westminster cesspit: the Conservatives who negotiated with the DUP in 2017 were not people who played by the rules.

Read this section and ask yourself: are we really supposed to believe that the Conservatives were paragons of virtue who would not have exploited Donaldson’s secrets?

One of those who negotiated face-to-face with the DUP was Damian Green MP. Under Theresa May, he rose to First Secretary of State—the de facto deputy prime minister—and his turbulent career offers a revealing window into the hardball politics and loucheness embraced by the Conservatives.

A former journalist for the BBC, Channel 4 and The Times, Green entered parliament at the 1997 general election, winning the Kent seat of Ashford.

The Labour Party governed the UK between 1997 and 2010.

On 27 November 2008, while Labour was still in power, Green was arrested at his constituency home by the Metropolitan Police on suspicion of ‘aiding and abetting misconduct in public office’ and ‘conspiring to commit misconduct in a public office’. The documents at the centre of the investigation were reported to contain politically embarrassing information for the then-Labour government. Green was later released on bail.

The inquiry found that a junior Home Office civil servant, Christopher Galley, had leaked four ‘embarrassing’ documents to Green; Galley was dismissed, but on 16 April 2009 the Crown Prosecution Service announced it would not bring charges against either man, citing ‘insufficient evidence’.

Controversy returned during the UK parliamentary expenses scandal, when The Daily Telegraph revealed that although Green’s constituency lay just a 45-minute commute from Westminster, he had designated a second home in Acton, west London, and claimed expenses against it. He regularly claimed the maximum £400 allowance for food, plus mortgage interest, council tax and phone bills.

In October 2017, a series of allegations about sexual harrassment perpetrated by MPs began to unfold at Westminster, triggered by the Harvey Weinstein scandal in America.

On 30 October 2017, Guido Fawkes published a redacted spreadsheet alleging various sexual improprieties by Conservative MPs, listing both consensual acts and complaints.

Damian Green was listed at the top of the spreadsheet.

The document detailed allegations against 36 MPs, reportedly compiled by aides working for the affected parliamentarians. BBC’s then-political editor, Laura Kuenssberg, noted that the list included ‘a mixture of unsavoury allegations, reports of well-known relationships, and some claims that are furiously denied,’ adding that it was impossible to determine how much of the information was accurate.

Katie Perrior, who served as Theresa May’s Head of Communications, stated that the type of information in it was ‘deployed by whips to enforce party discipline’.

One veteran Tory backbencher was accused of being ‘perpetually intoxicated and very inappropriate with women’. 

A prominent female MP was described as having had extramarital sex with young male researchers. 

Two MPs impregnated their mistresses.

Other MPs were noted to have visited prostitutes.

A male MP asked his male researcher to clean his kitchen in his underwear following a boozy night at the House of Commons.

Perhaps the most salacious entry was about an MP who appeared in a video with ‘three males urinating on him’.

This genie was one that not even MI5 could return to its bottle.

A Cabinet Office inquiry was opened into claims that Green had sent suggestive text messages and ‘fleetingly’ touched the knee of a young Conservative activist, Kate Maltby. Greene denied this, stating: ‘It’s absolutely and completely untrue that I’ve ever made any sexual advances on Ms Maltby’. Both Baroness Kennedy and journalist Rosamund Urwin confirmed that Maltby had shared a Facebook account with them more than a year before the scandal became public. Urwin later published Facebook messages and timestamps showing Maltby had detailed her experience within four minutes of receiving what she described as an ‘inappropriate’ text from Green in 2016.

As that inquiry got underway, separate allegations emerged: that pornography had been found on Green’s work computer during the 2008 leak investigation. He dismissed this as a ‘political smear’. But the police forensics expert who had examined the machine at the time rebutted the claim in early December 2017, saying: ‘The computer was in Mr Green’s office, on his desk, logged in, his account, his name … it was ridiculous to suggest anybody else could have done it’. Days later, it emerged the same expert was under investigation by Scotland Yard for retaining and disclosing confidential material unrelated to the case. Green continued to deny downloading or viewing such images, and described claims from retired officer Bob Quick as ‘political smears’. Metropolitan Police Commissioner Paul Stephenson confirmed he had been told of the matter at the time, but regarded it as a ‘side issue’.

On 20 December 2017, a few months after securing a deal with the DUP, Green was removed from his post as First Secretary of State. The inquiry concluded he had lied to colleagues about the material found on his computer. While noting his work had generally been ‘professional and proper’, and that the private nature of his meetings with Maltby made a definitive ruling impossible, the report found her account ‘plausible’. In his resignation letter, Green acknowledged he had ‘clearly made her feel uncomfortable’ and apologised for doing so.

Theresa May accepted his resignation, saying she had ‘greatly appreciated’ his hard work and contribution, and that it was ‘right’ he had apologised to Maltby.

Within days, fresh pressure mounted: calls for Green to stand down as an MP followed the exposure of what appeared to be a coordinated ‘dirty tricks’ campaign against his accuser. Text messages passed to the Mail on Sunday —allegedly exchanged between Maltby and Green before her complaint — had been edited and rewritten to imply Maltby, not Green, had encouraged a closer relationship and sought further meetings. After contacting Maltby before publication, the paper corrected one set of messages; it later issued a second correction, confirming it had published a forged message falsely attributed to her. The faked text and accompanying article claimed she had flirtatiously messaged Green to say she regretted his absence from an event, because one of his aides had ‘been smooching the room on your behalf x’.

One of Green’s former allies, Anna Soubry MP, told the Sunday Times the attempts to smear Maltby were ‘wrong and shameful’. Another Conservative MP observed: ‘It appears that Green’s allies barely paused for breath after he apologised for the distress caused to Kate Maltby before launching an attack. It smacks of a dirty tricks campaign and is unhelpful to the government when it is still dealing with the fallout of the Westminster harassment scandal.’

Maltby and her supporters also alleged Green’s team had orchestrated an anonymous, critical briefing against her by Daily Mail journalist Andrew Pierce. Her parents issued a statement angrily rejecting Pierce’s suggestion that they disapproved of her actions, and condemning ‘the attempted campaign in certain sections of the media to denigrate and intimidate her and other witnesses’.

Writing in the Sunday Times, Maltby claimed the Daily Mail piece had been coordinated by Green’s team as part of a wider strategy to intimidate witnesses. She alleged two other women had been preparing to come forward with claims against him, but ‘as a result’ of the coverage of her own complaint, ‘immediately backed out’. In May 2018, the Daily Mail agreed to pay £11,000 towards Maltby’s legal costs after she threatened legal action over Pierce’s article; the piece was removed from its website without any admission of fault.

Following his defeat at the 2024 general election, Green was appointed Chair of the Social Care Foundation.

Jeffrey Donaldson’s name did not appear on the Westminster dossier because he was not a Conservative MP.

The dossier was probably compiled by Tory whips.

What are the chances that neither MI5, the Tory whips, nor the gossips at Westminster, knew nothing of Donaldson’s double life?

While Donaldson was not a Tory, he must have been terrified of exposure as he watched what was going on around him at Westminster.

As usual, the media paid his double life no attention.

13. The Irish Times’ spooky links to British Intelligence

Perhaps the people who work for The Irish Times are innocents abroad who have no inkling of the dark forces who manipulate events from behind the scenes.

Take your pick as to why they have failed to do their job.

Seven indications that MI6 has gained – at various stages – a degree of influence over The Irish Times now follow:

1. THE PORN COLLECTOR: One of the paper’s most important political reporters – now working elsewhere – was a collector of pornographic images of young boys. [This is not a reference to a sports journalist at the paper who was convicted over his interaction with an underage girl; nor is it a reference to the dinner party boor.] The Provisional IRA became aware of his perverted nature during the Troubles. It is likely that MI5 and MI6 did too.

It is probable that this rotund individual, and other equally compromised reporters, feared to tread on the toes of the British government.

There are additional strong pointers which demonstrate that this individual acted as an instrument of MI5.

2. THE MEMBER OF THE SECRET ORGANISATION: There was another key Irish Times staff member who was central to the reporting of Anglo-Irish events and who had an astonishing connection to a secret group run by MI5. He is no longer at the paper.

3. GETTING INTO BED WITH MI6: A reporter with the paper had a sexual relationship with a press officer from the British embassy.

4. THE BRAZEN ATTEMPT TO RECRUIT THE DEPUTY EDITOR. An attempt was made to recruit Dennis Kennedy, the deputy editor of the paper between 1982 and 1985, as an MI6 asset.

Kennedy has described what happened. The recruitment pitch was launched, ‘One day in the late 1970s’ when he ‘received a phone call in the office from a well-spoken Englishman, asking me if he could meet me for lunch, as he was coming to Dublin in connection with a research project on Northern Ireland. …. He named a research institute in the English Midlands as the base for the programme, and hinted that the proposed lunch might be the first of several.‘

The man from MI6 met Kennedy a few times. The encounters included a trip to Bloom’s Hotel restaurant. After a short while, the MI6 man said to Kennedy: ‘Dennis, I am sure you realise by now what this is all about’. Kennedy describes how he ‘almost choked on’ his ‘smoked eel’ as he ‘cast desperately around for solid ground‘.

The ‘academic’ then revealed that he worked for the Foreign Office and that the ‘research project was just a front, and they used the institute as a useful contact point. They would like me to work for them. They needed first-hand information on individuals [such as Charles Haughey], what they were thinking, what they were doing. I sat in a daze..‘.

Afterwards, Kennedy ‘began to wonder if my experience was unique; how many of my colleagues had similarly been approached, and how had they reacted? I never found out, but I could not help noticing how some of them spoke highly of the food in the restaurant at Bloom’s Hotel.‘

The astonishing aspect of this affair was the brazen manner in which MI6 approached the journalist. This might have been because MI6 had found it easy to recruit assets in the paper on prior occasions.

5. THE SMEARMEISTER: The man British intelligence appointed to lead its black propaganda operations in Ireland was a former employee of The Irish Times. His name was Hugh Mooney, and he was an operative of the Information Research Department (IRD).

7. MY ENEMY’S ENEMY IS MY FRIEND: There are other – far more subtle and complex – indications of the presence of covert British intelligence influence at the paper, during the Troubles. They involve the Marxist Official IRA. The late Dick Walsh, the paper’s political editor during the Troubles, wrote speeches for Cathal Goulding, chief-of-staff of the Marxist Official IRA. Walsh provided other services for Goulding, including taking part in ceasefire negotiations with the Provisional IRA.

The Provisionals maintain that the Officials entered into arrangements with British intelligence to undermine their movement. This claim is less implausible than it may initially appear. Throughout the first decade of the Troubles, these two factions of the IRA engaged in a deadly feud. The Officials split again in the mid-1970s with the emergence of the INLA, which drew away much of their military strength. The Provisionals believe the Officials were ultimately willing to forge a limited alliance with the UDA. These ostensible enemies reportedly divided territories in Belfast and elsewhere between themselves like mafia clans, to extort the construction industry. The Officials were also involved in a wide range of criminal activity including armed robbery and currency counterfeiting.

The RUC signally failed to dismantle these racketeering operations. The Provisionals contend that this inaction formed part of an understanding between the Officials and British intelligence. In return for allowing Official IRA protection rackets, the Officials supplied MI5 and RUC Special Branch with intelligence on Provisional IRA activities. If these assertions are well‑founded, it follows that figures close to Goulding, who wrote for The Irish Times, were drawn into this world of intrigue. The Officials at the paper would have had an organic hostility towards the Provisionals in any event. This was a vivid case of ‘My enemy’s enemy’ is my friend. But developments went well beyond giving the Provos a bad press. The experience of Ed Moloney – described shortly – highlights this latter assertion.

Eugene Reavey’s autobiography (2025) describes the prevalence of building site rackets in Northern Ireland in chilling detail.

If Donaldson, or any of his colleagues, was/were being manipulated by the Home Office, the Foreign Office or the Northern Ireland Office, or factions within those departments with access to ‘kompromat’, the readership of The Irish Times was left blissfully unaware that this was even a remote possibility. (Meanwhile, readers of Village, The Phoenix and Covert History were bombarded with all sorts of evidence and theories about MI5 and MI6 wrongdoing.)

14. The British Embassy and NI Secretary of State, Peter Mandelson, instructs The Irish Times and other Irish media outlets about what they can and cannot print.

In the latest edition of Village, Frank Connolly describes how, in 2000, the British Embassy dictated to the Dublin media what it could and could not report on one particular occasion at a press conference in Dublin hosted by Peter Mandelson while he was Britain’s Northern Ireland Secretary. The conference concerned Mandelson’s intention to collapse the NI Assembly.

The Irish Times would have considered itself the most prestigious organ present at the gathering. Yet, its representative did not object. Like the other outlets in attendance, The Irish Times did exactly as Mandelson ordained. There was one naughty boy in the class who didn’t do what he was told, Frank Connolly, who described the event in detail in The Sunday Business Post.

The British Embassy in Dublin is in reality a nest of spies. MI6 runs its press office, which disseminates white, grey and black propaganda. What was it that gave MI6 the confidence to brief Mandelson that he could treat the Dublin media as vassals of Her Britannic Majesty’s government? What does this incident tell us about the wider state of the Dublin media?

15. Links to the Kincora vice ring.

I reported the link between Donaldson and Enoch Powell MP in the context of the abuse Richard Kerr had suffered. The article was published in Village, in 2021, and later, in an expanded format, on this website.

See: Sir Jeffrey Donaldson’s mentor.

Powell was besotted by Donaldson. He even tried to talk the younger man out of getting married.

The implication of the 2021 Village article – for those adept at reading between the lines – was that Donaldson was probably one of Powell’s victims and had been ensnared by the paedophile ring run by MI5, which swirled around Kincora.

The vice ring consisted of scores of men, only three of whom were arrested. The network survived the eruption of the Kincora scandal.

It is a fact, well recognised by medical experts in the field of psychiatry, that abuse victims can sometimes end up abusing as adults.

If Donaldson had engaged in sex with Powell, MI5 probably knew of it through people like William McGrath and Joe Mains of Kincora who were collecting ‘kompromat’ about senior Loyalist figures for them. Worse still, it rendered Donaldson susceptible to blackmail from any quarter, not merely the Northern Ireland Office and its attack dogs in MI5. UUP and DUP voters in Lagan Valley do not readily vote for those who have engaged in homosexual acts, no matter that a young and impressionable Donaldson may have been a victim of a violent, sadistic and overpowering Powell.

All homosexual and heterosexual extra-marital transgressions enjoyed by Donaldson increased the likelihood that MI5, the UVF or possibly even the IRA, could manipulate him.

Enoch Powell was a paedophile who liked to beat up boys with a belt. One of his victims was Richard Kerr. He struck him with the metal buckle of his strap while abusing him. No one at The Irish Times approached Kerr before Donaldson’s conviction in 2026, despite his revelations about Powell in Village in 2021 and on this website. Kerr had appeared on the BBC and Channel 4 by this stage too.

The revelations about the sordid Epstein vice ring, which trafficked minors to Prince Andrew, didn’t disturb The Irish Times from its slumber or inspire it to look at the existence of paedophile networks in Ireland.

The wider Epstein files saga didn’t distract the paper’s staff from their boozy lunches, junkets and frappuccino sojourns in Dublin’s coffee shops, either.

For years, Donaldson’s website stated how much he admired Powell.

It was obvious that Donaldson’s relationship with Powell was the tip of a sinister iceberg, one that is now drifting into focus.

16. An enduring loyalty to the Crown.

Time after time, The Irish Times ignores stories which MI5, MI6 and the British embassy find embarrassing. Compare the coverage of British intelligence activities in The Phoenix during its 43-year existence with that of The Irish Times. There is none.

At the same time, the paper promotes an anti-neutrality stance, which fits hand in glove with the British government’s openly stated policy about Ireland’s duty to protect Britain’s western flank. Those who favour neutrality are sometimes abused as ‘freeloaders’ or people who have turned Ireland into a joke. See Psyop.

17. The reporter who tried to put a stop to child abuse in Northern Ireland and became the target of a murder plot.

There was a time in the 1980s, while Douglas Gageby edited The Irish Times, when Britain’s allies in the paper were unable to control the narrative about Kincora. Gageby was an independent minded editor who was pushed out of his position by Major Thomas McDowell and his cronies for a while in the 1970s. McDowell once described Gageby to his contacts at Britain’s Foreign Office as a ‘white nigger’. The sales of the paper plummeted after the departure of Gageby, who was brought back to save it.

Gageby was also guilty of the mortal sin of not wanting to drum Charles Haughey out of front-line politics. But for Gageby and others at the paper, it might have become entirely birdlimed by London.

Ed Moloney of The Irish Times was one of those responsible for digging up dirt about the Kincora scandal in the early 1980s. He had sources at the top of the UDA who disclosed a lot of what they knew to him about Kincora.

What happened to Moloney next defies belief. He tried to print an expose of the Official IRA in 1982, the same year he began exposing state complicity in Kincora. The Official IRA had a cell inside the paper. The story was spiked, passed to Sean Garland of the Official IRA, and an attempt was made to kill Moloney. Two Official IRA officers told the UDA that Moloney was in the INLA. This was a lie designed to get Davy Payne of the UDA to kill Moloney. Payne knew Moloney and didn’t believe the lies the Officials were peddling. Payne revealed all this to Moloney at the time.

What the Officials had not counted on was that Moloney had developed a solid working relationship with the upper tier of the UDA. Key leaders were supplying him with information about Kincora. The UDA leadership was especially keen to expose Ian Paisley’s knowledge of the scandal.

Davy Payne was one of those who knew a lot about the scandal. The UDA had placed Kincora under surveillance. Payne knew one of the key conspirators in the scandal, William McGrath. In the 1970s, McGrath, the housefather at Kincora, asked Payne to murder Roy Garland, who had left his paramilitary group, Tara, after he discovered McGrath was a paedophile. Fortunately, Garland survived the request (and has written extensively about McGrath for Covert History; he also contributed to Moloney’s Broken Elbow blog). Payne was once a member of Tara himself.

All of these factors combined to preserve Moloney’s life.

The Provisional IRA believed that the Official IRA began working with MI6 in the 1970s to undermine the Provisional IRA. In other words, allies of MI6 were involved in the plot to murder Ed Moloney after he began reporting on Kincora and the Official IRA.

It was no secret that Moloney had joined the Officials for a while as a young man. He admitted as much to me once over a Zoom from the US where he lived, joking that it had served as an ‘inoculation’ to the organisation. I suspect his former association with them added to the animus the Officials displayed towards him. It also reinforced the credibility of the smear that he may have gone over to the INLA, which had splintered from the Officials.

I helped Ed Moloney find a lawyer a few years ago to correspond with his former employers at The Irish Times in an effort to get it to investigate the spiking of his story and the plot against his life. They refused to lift a finger. Members of the Official IRA cell at the paper are presumably in receipt of pensions from the paper, and might have been prepared to disclose what they knew. It is unthinkable that Dick Walsh and his cronies would have betrayed Moloney if they had had any inkling that Goulding and Garland would try to have Moloney murdered by Davy Payne. Hence, the surviving members of the cabal with knowledge of this scandal might have been prepared to clear their consciences.

Maybe, maybe not.

It was worth a try.

The existence of this plot was common knowledge in Irish journalistic circles. Neither Walsh nor any other supporter or associate of the Official IRA at the paper ever contacted Moloney to apologise or offer support.

For a fuller account, see Ed Moloney murder plot.

As described earlier, MI5 also obliterated Chris Moore’s attempts to expose the truth about Kincora at BBC NI. An article with additional material about that travesty can be found by clicking on the next line entitled ‘BBC’.

See: BBC.

18. The full extent of Donaldson’s depravity cannot be reported.

The British media is prohibited from reporting certain ghastly aspects of Donaldson’s depravity (for good reason).

His behaviour in respect of these events is so rakehellish that it raises the likelihood that Donaldson was viciously sexually abused in his youth, extinguishing all empathy, balance and self-control.

I suspect Enoch Powell is the man who derailed Donaldson, but there are other candidates, e.g. William McGrath. McGrath was a friend of Jim Molyneaux MP, leader of the UUP, 1979-1995. Donaldson and Molyneaux were close friends so it is entirely possible that McGrath met Donaldson.

McGrath, a vicious child rapist, was known to the RUC as the ‘Beast of Kincora’.

McGrath was a senior member of the Orange Order and commander of Tara, a Loyalist paramilitary group. He was also a branch member of the UUP and, for a while, a delegate to the party.

The 1973 British Army press release, cited elsewhere in this article, described McGrath as ‘a prominent figure in Unionist Party politics and in the Orange Order’.

Molyneaux was also sexually interested in young men. When one young member left Tara, Molyneaux, who fancied him, made inquiries to find out why he had departed from it. Chris Moore published an account of this incident in his first book on Kincora, in 1996, while Molyneaux was a Westminster MP. He did not contest the report.

McGrath was not only a sadist, but he also liked to abuse very young boys. One of his Kincora victims, James Miller, has described how he had an appetite for boys ‘with no hair between their legs’. Miller told the Hart Inquiry how the staff at Kincora

‘each had their favourites, and they kept those boys for themselves. However, McGrath wasn’t that fussy about who he abused. He said himself he “liked” all boys as long as they weren’t too old’.

Miller also stated that the abuse he suffered at Kincora.

‘started within the first week. It continued over the entire two years I was there. I have thought about it, and I would say McGrath abused me on 325 occasions, ranging from getting into bed with me to buggery. He used to bring me downstairs behind Mains’ office and down to where the freezers were. It was quieter for him down there. The things he used to do to me were sick. He would try to get me to have an erection, but I wasn’t old enough. I wasn’t even developed, which was the way McGrath preferred it. He used to say he liked boys with no hair between the legs.’

Another possible abuser was John McKeague, the sadistic leader of the Red Hand Commando.

In what must rank as one of the sickest and most disturbing contortions yet in the Donaldson scandal, Allison Morris discovered that Donaldson sent this Snapchat-filtered picture of himself to a woman after he sexually assaulted her in the DUP’s office in Westminster. (Surely a room bugged by MI5?) Donaldson originally assaulted her in 2016, putting his hand up her skirt and attempting to kiss her on the mouth and ply her with vodka.

19. Donaldson’s Evangelical Christian values.

Sir Jeffrey Donaldson was originally a member of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP).

The UUP was led by James Molyneaux, MP, 1979-95.

Between them, Molyneaux, Powell and Paisley dominated Unionist politics during these years. Donaldson became one of those who dominated the Loyalist arena after them.

Donaldson inherited Molyneaux’s Westminster seat when the older man resigned in 1997.

Many of Donaldson’s colleagues came to despise him. David Trimble MP, leader of the UUP, felt he was a manipulative backstabber.

Donaldson switched to the DUP at the invitation of Peter Robinson.

Donaldson was relentless in presenting himself as one of God’s most ardent, sincere and pious front-line soldiers. He highlighted his religious beliefs during multiple TV and press interviews and public appearances.

He prayed with victims of sex abuse.

He gave sex education lessons to teenagers at his church’s Sunday School, warning them to avoid sin.

He opposed gay marriage.

Why did The Irish Times and other organs of the media not expose any aspect of this ocean of hypocrisy, particularly after he opposed gay marriage?

Below is an interview clip from GB News during which Donaldson extols his Christian beliefs. The broadcast was hosted by an appreciative Arlene Foster, who led the DUP from December 2015 to May 2021. He spoke of the positive impact of a ‘faith approach to politics’, and why the Church should not be afraid to ‘raise its voice’ on political issues. ‘I find increasingly the Christian Church is reluctant to get involved in debate in the public square’, he bemoaned.

He was also a drunkard who projectile vomited over the Mayor of Beijing during a trade trip to China, and over a taxi driver in Washington.

As outlined earlier, during a trip to Washington, a drunk Donaldson sat on top of a female Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA). Ian Paisley Jnr told BBC NI’s Spotlight that he had witnessed Donaldson, blind drunk, trying to kiss her in a restaurant in a hotel. She was disgusted and slipped his clutches.

As stressed earlier, this fact alone establishes that his colleagues knew he was a sex pest.

Ian Paisley Jnr was also aware of Donaldson’s exploitation of a young woman (not one of those who testified against him during his trial)

Jim Allister MP, formerly of the DUP and currently leader of Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV), has spoken of rumours about Donaldson’s ‘proclivities’ and ‘risky lifestyle’ which predated his arrest in 2024. Again, if he knew, how could The Irish Times not have known?

Publicly, Donaldson described homosexuality as ‘sinful’. Yet he frequented at least one gay sauna, called Chariots Roman Spa, in London.

Two PSNI officers watched him enter the premises: Tim Hanley, former head of the PSNI’s Serious Crime Branch and a colleague, a detective inspector. Both were in London working with MI5, whose HQ was close to Chariots Roman Spa.  Hanley disclosed this incident to Mandy McAuley of Spotlight.

Chariots was a sex club. 300 naked or semi-naked men would attend at peak hours. Customers went seeking sexual encounters. Sexual acts took place in open spaces and semi-private rooms.

Chariots was located close to Westminster. It is the type of establishment that MI5 monitored to find out if MPs, high-ranking civil servants, and military figures attended it. They need to know who these people are lest overseas governments or business interests blackmail them. Key staff members at Chariots could have been reporting to MI5.

If other rumours are true, Donaldson also availed of the services of male and female prostitutes in London.

In what must be one of the most two-faced incidents in his career, he booted another DUP paedophile out of the party.

23. Comparing a gay couple to the Shankill Butchers.

To the public, he was a zealous Christian gay basher, one who defended the right of a bakery shop in Belfast to refuse to provide a cake to a gay couple. He likened the couple to the Shankill Butchers. See the next video clip. The media let him get away with this blatant and cruel act of hypocrisy, too.

24. There was no secret about the allegations that Donaldson watched porn in his hotel in London.

Donaldson is an extremely grasping and ‘stingy’ individual, cheating fellow diners when totting up the bill for a meal.

He featured in the 2009 Westminster expenses scandal. He had to apologise for seeking and receiving £660 in reimbursement for pay-per-view movies on his parliamentary expense account. He repaid the money.

Details of Donaldson’s expense claims were published in The  Daily Telegraph. It cited sources at several hotels who said the movies included adult films.

In a statement to The Daily Telegraph, Donaldson said he had not watched anything adult or pornographic. ‘Such material was not viewed on the date alleged, or at all,’ he insisted.

One hotel bill referenced ‘room service 2’. Asked by  The Daily Telegraph  what the reference meant, Donaldson’s solicitor said: ‘Clearly, it is impossible to be precise in relation to each and every item.’

There was one article – written by Davy McAuley of People Before Profit in 2009 – that came very close to the bone. See below

Again, none of this prompted The Irish Times to consider the broader possibility that Donaldson – the leader of Unionism – might be a compromised figure.

Donaldson proclaimed his high regard for Enoch Powell and Jim Molyneaux throughout his career.

Donaldson was Molyneaux’s electoral agent. Molyneaux was interested in young males and was a friend of William McGrath, the housefather of Kincora Boys’ Home. McGrath and others ran Kincora as a ‘honey pot’ for Loyalist paedophiles for MI5 and MI6.

Donaldson probably knows some of the sordid secrets of Kincora. He was 17 when the scandal about it erupted. Three of the staff at the home were arrested, charged and convicted while most members of the wider circle walked away without even being questioned by the police.

The PsyOp arm of the British Army was aware of Molyneaux’s connection to William McGrath of Kincora (see below for more details).

See also        Donaldson and Molyneaux.

26. A Clockwork Orangeman.

Donaldson was also a member of the Orange Order before he was expelled following his conviction.

The Rev. Martin Smyth was Grand Master of the Orange Order from 1972 to 1998. According to a 1973 press release circulated by Colin Wallace, a PsyOp officer at Lisburn British Army HQ, to several key journalists, concerning William McGrath, certain Orangemen were aware of what McGrath was doing. They included Rev. Smyth and James Molyneaux. (This is the same document from 1973 mentioned earlier in this article.)

MI5 destroyed Wallace’s career after he persisted in attempting to expose the abuse at Kincora. See our Operation Clockwork Orange series starting here:        Operation Clockwork Orange Vol 1 [WebBook.]

In what must amount to one of the most important statements made about the reality of politics in Northern Ireland, Norman Baxter, the former Operational Director of Intelligence of the PSNI Special Branch, told Mandy McAuley of BBC NI’s Spotlight that the government, i.e. MI5, guided figures like Donaldson, who had compromised backgrounds, in the direction they wished politics to travel. Baxter told Spotlight:

‘Well, I’d be convinced that the Northern Ireland Office or an element of the government would have known of that behaviour [Donaldson’s sexual activities] because it’s their role to know. Part of managing the peace process is to understand the political actors – to profile and to understand where there is political leverage, and then you apply mechanisms to guide them to where you want the political position to be. I mean, the government would have been failing in their responsibility not to deep-dive into the activities of MPs or other politicians.‘ (Broadcast by Spotlight 26 June 2026.)

Baxter also told Spotlight that in mid-July 2000, he observed Donaldson drunk, carrying two bottles of wine in Westminster and that he moved out to the Westminster Terrace, where he had his arms wrapped around two ladies. He believes the women were in their early twenties.

Jim Allister, leader of the TUV, raised the possibility that the state blackmailed Donaldson during an interview on Spotlight. Allister has been at the coal face of Loyalist politics for decades. If anyone knows how the game is really played, it is this man. Even his most implacable opponents would agree that he has never compromised his Loyalist principles.

What is his take? I’ll return to that in a moment.

28. The police and MI5 do the right thing.

Donaldson’s actions eventually caught up with him.

There has been some criticism that the PSNI might have searched four properties to which Donaldson had access for further evidence, but didn’t. Nonetheless, the core point remains: Donaldson was arrested, prosecuted, and successfully convicted.

The current Director‑General of MI5 also did not intervene to stop the PSNI investigation into Donaldson. It would be reassuring to attribute this solely to a fundamental shift in MI5’s approach – yet that may be too optimistic an assumption. While ethical considerations may have played a part, perhaps even a significant one, other pressures were almost certainly decisive. Most likely, MI5 lacked the appetite to confront Jon Boutcher over the Donaldson affair, particularly after spending decades concealing the truth about a string of other major controversies in Northern Ireland. These include the Stakeknife/Scappaticci case, the murder of Patrick Finucane, systemic collusion, the 1974 Dublin‑Monaghan bombings, and the Kincora abuse scandal. MI5 must recognise that such scandals do not fade away: they have repeatedly triggered official examinations, and above all the outcome the service most fears: a full statutory public inquiry. It is now facing exactly that in the form of the inquiry into its role in the assassination of Patrick Finucane.

MI5 faced significant embarrassment when it emerged that it had discovered files on Freddie Scappaticci which it had not handed over to Operation Kenova. Nonetheless, they were provided before the inquiry published its findings. This stands as one instance where MI5 took the wise and correct course of action: it would have been straightforward to suppress the additional materials.

It can now focus more than it might otherwise have been able to, on its core responsibilities — disrupting bomb plots and other deadly threats across the UK. This is self-evidently an area where it excels. Its successes in this field rarely receive public attention. Separately, Scappaticci’s victims remain free to pursue civil claims for compensation against the Crown.

On 22 June 2026, Donaldson was found guilty of eighteen historical sexual offences, including one count of rape and thirteen counts of indecent assault against two women when they were children.  The abuse spanned twenty-three years.

His wife, Lady Eleanor Donaldson, was found guilty of aiding and abetting him in connection with five of these offences.

The abuse included kissing ‘Complainant A’ and forcing his tongue into her mouth when she was in primary school. He also put his hands up her top to grope her.

His second victim,  Complainant B, was also in primary school when he raped her. He indecently assaulted her on nine occasions, including once in front of Lady Eleanor.

Instead of intervening, Lady Eleanor turned, walked away and pulled the door behind her.

On another occasion, he shone a light on the genitalia of one of the children.

30. The call for inquiries.

The worst-case scenario for the DUP is that Donaldson was the victim of blackmail, or so afraid that MI5 knew of his sordid activities, that he did what the British government wanted him to do anyway.

Jim Allister MP of the TUV told The Irish News that information about Donaldson’s paedophilia and his known ‘risky lifestyle’ in London may have been used as leverage during negotiations ahead of the signing of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

As described earlier in this article, Allister has revealed that allegations that Donaldson abused children were in the ‘ether’ from March 2023, a full year before the former DUP leader was arrested.

Allister suggested that the intelligence services at ‘the very top of government would have been aware of that’.

‘And when you set that along the timeline of how Sir Jeffrey somersaulted from his opposition to the Protocol to implementation of the Protocol, then it does beg questions,’ the TUV leader insists.

Allister argues that Donaldson has lied and betrayed Unionism.

Bizarrely, Donaldson sent all sorts of contradictory signals to London and Dublin during the Northern Ireland Protocol negotiations. He even asked Jamie Bryson, a man with connections to the UVF, to act as one of his intermediaries. Listen to what Jamie Bryson revealed to Stephen Nolan of BBC Radio NI.

32. Seeking leniency and possibly a pardon?

Something caused Donaldson to become a paedophile. I believe the most likely explanation is that he was the victim of abuse at a tender age. People like Powell and Molyneaux surrounded him. The latter had friends like William McGrath.

Had Donaldson broken free of these depraved people and received counselling, he may have managed to control his urges.

Instead, he appears to have self-medicated with alcohol and taken a deep dive into Christianity, albeit a guilt-laden cultish version of Evangelical Christianity.

Perhaps he will seek help in the form of counselling in jail.

Perhaps he may one day disclose what drove him over the brink.

He will have a lot of time to reflect behind bars.

He may appeal to someone like Chris Bryant, the new Northern Ireland Secretary, hoping he might lend a sympathetic ear. Bryant is an openly gay former Anglican priest, anti-hacking crusader, and survivor of sexual abuse.

How might Bryant respond if Donaldson were to appeal to him for some form of leniency on the basis that abusers derailed his life while he was underage or a very young man?

Bryant was sexually abused as a teenager by Michael Croft, the then head of the National Youth Theatre.

One evening, having returned to Croft’s house, he came back from the toilet to find his host naked except for a silk robe.

Croft then asked him for sex, which Bryant felt he had no option but to go through with, leaving him feeling like he was ‘a 16-year-old whore‘.

Croft, he highlights, ‘behaved absolutely appallingly, it’s despicable’. He believes,

Speaking about abuse he suffered at Westminster, Bryant has explained that he did not report it at the time.

‘There was no system for doing so and I was frightened it would make me look bad’, adding he felt homophobia in parliament had declined during his decades as an MP.

33. Blackmailing the blackmailers.

What will happen if Donaldson takes a different approach altogether and threatens to reveal what he knows about Kincora, Powell, Molyneaux and others unless he is sent to a goal with a lenient regime and promised early release?

34. A sense of fear and trepidation.

Jeffrey Donaldson is not the only Loyalist with secrets to hide, albeit in his case, many of them have already spilt out.

Another influential DUP figure is a wife-beater. On one occasion, the police were called out to the couple’s house, where they found blood all over the lady’s mouth. Ian Paisley Snr was furious when he was told about the assault.

The man has a conviction for violent and thuggish misbehaviour and once teetered on the brink of going to prison, albeit not in Northern Ireland.

He was also involved with Ulster Resistance, an organisation that smuggled guns into Ireland. MI5 agents penetrated Ulster Resistance, so it can be presumed the NIO’s files on DUP participants such as him are comprehensive.

See also: The Resistance Men.

Another well-known DUP figure is a serial adulterer who has slept with the spouse of at least one of his equally high-profile colleagues. This information has been a staple of PSNI gossip for well over a decade.

Any DUP, UUP or TUV figure of substance who has visited pornographic websites or arranged trysts with prostitutes online can rest assured that their digital fingerprint is there for others with hacking capabilities to find.

Have other Loyalist dignitaries visited establishments such as Chariots, or its heterosexual equivalent? Who may have seen them enter? Leave? Who might have observed their gyrations inside? The potential observers could include literally anyone from police touts to Republicans.

With momentum building behind a border poll on Irish unity, Donaldson’s exposure is a development some Loyalists may have observed with trepidation.

Who knows what about whom?

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/far-right-fanatic-jim-dowson-denies-identifying-donaldsons-victims-during-social-media-rant/a/158332374.html?utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=share

Sam McBride’s coverage of the Donaldson scandal has been masterful. He has made a strong case that a small regional newspaper such as his did not have the capacity to break the story before now. His argument has much merit. The same defence is not, however, available to The Irish Times, which had the resources to break the story. McBride’s account – which is full of fascinating detail – can be read by clicking on the next link:

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/comment/i-put-rumours-of-marriage-split-and-gay-lover-to-donaldson-16-years-ago…-he-sounded-very-nervous-and-i-sensed-there-was-something-he-feared/a/158383599.html?utm_campaign=share&utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=referral&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=x

McBride’s piece also establishes that he had his editor’s support in trying to get Donaldson to admit to at least some of his hypocritical double life.

See: The DUP, God’s Soldiers. [WebBook]

See: The Mountbatten Dossier. [WebBook]

See: Kincora’s darkest secret.

Prince Philip’s illicit sex life was monitored by Soviet spies. [WebBook]

The ABC sex scandal. Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge were used as pawns in the cover-up of a transatlantic paedophile network.

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