'Undercover War': David John Douglass' review

Undercover War Harry McCallion

Britain’s Special Forces And Their Secret War Against the IRA

9781 78946 285 2 John Blake Publishing

£8-99

HARRY McCallion is in a position to know, seven tours of the occupied counties with the Parachute Regiment and the Intelligence Company together with six years with the SAS he also served with the RUC.

The British Army’s war against the PIRA between 1970 and 1998 and its associated war against the republican community is one of its most bitter and controversial in the history of the British Empire. The fact that this is acknowledged within the first two pages of the book “murderous ill-discipline” and “The British Army’s reputation was damaged for decades” was a refreshing piece of honesty at least. The author lays the blame of the early disasters on Brigadier Frank Kitson, a person well known to many of us on the left at this period an open advocate if push comes to shove of a ‘A very British Coup’.

McCallion describes Kitson’s ‘Military Reaction Force’ as basically a self-acting terrorist organisation under no outside control and revolving almost entirely round Kitson and his anti-guerrilla warfare techniques perfected in Kenya fighting the Mau Mau. We are told SAS, SBU, and other covert sections of the army where banned from operating in Ulster initially, but all these regiments assigned men to MRF. They operated in civilian clothes, they attempted to don the hair styles and clothes,beards and dress common to young males of the period and to all intent and purpose where indeed a state terrorist organisation with no formal connection to the armed forces, this was especially so when they went to murder people. There were no ‘rules of engagement’.

The British state took no responsibility for them and troops assigned to them were instructed of the ‘Deniable missions'. There was something of MO and Organisational rational of the Black and Tans in much of this. Their murders of which there were many, and McCallion exposes this early on with many of the names and circumstances of the murders, were either not reported at all, it being left for the RUC and public at large to conclude these were sectarian murders or para-military executions. Or else where they called it in, they were explained as ‘returning fire’ or ‘caught in an ambush’ the crimes were investigated by the Military Police and the ‘Murder Squad’ version recorded as fact without further enquiry. Their so called ‘intelligence’ was woeful, having been brutalised and tortured out of basically anyone from the community and chosen it seems because of their Non-involvement with the armed struggle, on the twisted logic such innocents would have no loyalty the republican military and point the figure. In fact, the attitude of this unit was that everyone in the community was guilty or potentially guilty, so innocence or ‘guilt’ was not a prime concern.

A consequence of the murder of unarmed catholic civilians in drive-by shootings was that the RUC and more generally the British Army blamed the Loyalist militias which often resulted in counter attacks or worse sectarian attacks on unarmed loyalist civilians. One would be naive indeed to see this as an unintended bonus rather than part of the overall reign of state authorised terror. MRF Sergeant ‘Taff’ Williams machine gunned three Catholic men standing by a car in the same spot where innocent car passenger Jean Smyth had been murdered in an attack on their car just previously. Williams used a Thompson machine, a weapon favoured by the Provisionals. Another man in his own house was injured in the fire that killed the Catholic men. By sheer flook the MSR car was intercepted by a RUC patrol and Williams arrested. He was prosecuted for attempted murder. His cover story that the men had been armed was disproved by forensic evidence and eyewitnesses. He was acquitted and stayed with the unit. Indeed, fellow unit members swore to the author they knew he had killed at least 15 civilians to their knowledge. Concern at the cavalier murder and indiscipline were highly counterproductive and solidarizing the community further to the republican movement set alarms bells ringing among more conventional of the states armed forces. By the time they moved to disband them, had killed at least 40 identifiable innocent civilians, comrades in the republican communities say this is a gross underestimate and put numbers over 100. The author says, “the total number of people killed by MRF will never be known.”

The mantle of conducting Britain’s undercover surveillance and counter insurgency would pass to the SAS. But the problem for the Government would be one of recognising the war in Ireland as just that, when they had throughout claimed the violence was just down to criminal gangs and not a political liberation struggle. B company SAS was consequently ‘disbanded’ or ‘debadged’ half the unit was engaged in recruiting and training a force to replace the MRF, the other half were formally disengaged from SAS but were posted as an operational surveillance team operating armed in plain clothes. ‘Debadged under ongoing deniability‘ and the legitimacy they thought they owned, they were operating officially as the SAS. Far from being a clean replacement for the murderous MRF the new force aspired to be a more efficient version of the old one taking over their old barracks in Hollywood. It is interesting that the Author mentions the briefings given to this new team on republican and loyalist militias were built on MI5 infiltration, sleepers and informers within the respective ranks.

After a period of strenuous operations to break the command chain of the Belfast brigade by regular identification and arrest of Brigade Commanders the debadged unit was disbanded, it was replaced by the other half of what had been ‘B’ Company, now under the new title status 14 Intelligence Company nick-named The Det (officially titled the Special Reconnaissance Unit). From its inception this Unit had the operational strength of a normal Infantry Company. That’s a lot of plain clothes civilian looking assassins, in normal cars with lethal weaponry coming and going without apparent constraint and control. The Author was a leading member of this Unit. Operators were allowed to grow long hair and moustaches fashionable among young men of their age in civilian life. A nice touch was the inclusion of shopping bags, cots or child seats to their civilian cars. Operators were taught to imitate and Ulster accent for at least one sentence replies to questions. CQB (close quarter battle) techniques, close range use of the Browning 9mm pistol “the workhorse of the Det”, “most operators could draw and hit a target in less than a second”. The weapons we are told were frequently ‘customised’ an extended 20 round magazine for example a feature one wouldn’t have normally associated with ‘targeted’ still less ‘low key surveillance operations’. All operators would carry a ‘car weapon’ a machine gun or American MAC-10 . This latter is highly inaccurate rapid firing weapon but sprays large numbers of lethal bullets in the shortest possible time, never mind the accuracy feel the death count. This weapon didn’t fall out of popular usage with Det or the SBS until the 1980s when it was replaced by the Heckler and Kosh MP5. The Author makes no apology that the purpose of the Det was to wage war on the insurgency, although by 1976 the ‘non-political’ game was up, and the SAS was officially sent into Ulster where of course in one hat or another it had been throughout.

McCallan while trying to persuade us his unit were now the good guys admits to the murder of two protestant civilian’s with no political or military affiliations, who they had assumed were members of the PIRA. The two men who had been shooting pigeons, had had the air let out of their tyres while they were at their sport. The passing 14 Unit was laughing loudly as they drove by and the men assumed these were people who had done it and set off in hot pursuit. Only to be shot dead as they confronted the unit. McCallan, with more honesty than most, in his cover for other deaths associated with the Unit, as mistakes, or ‘not us’. Indeed as his story unfolds the number of innocent people they accidently or mistakenly kill is quite breath-taking, we had always previously been accused of making this stuff up, or else it was blamed on republican or loyalist fighters, here we have the horse’s mouth. Additionally, the explanation repeated more than once that captured republicans ‘had attempted to grab weapons and were shot dead’ must be taken with a large pinch of salt, I think. 'The Murder on the Rock’ (Gibraltar) in which three unarmed members of the IRA were shot dead in public because they went for their non-existent guns, or in the case of the women attempted to detonate a car bomb in a car found to have had no explosives in it, are repeated in the teeth of witnesses evidence and agreement from the author that in fact they were unarmed without any bomb. Republicans of course will not be surprised by the events they lived through in their communities, but the British public might well be, suppose this book gets wide distribution as it surely should. In among his whole review of the struggles and chronicles of who shot who and how it happened Bloody Sunday is notable by the absence of any description or analysis. Although “bloody Sunday” is mentioned as just one of the ‘events’ of the war, there is a deafening silence as to justification or explanation for what is acknowledged now by the British state to be cold blooded murder.

One of the most pressing absent analysis on the republican left, is the degree of penetration by states forces into commanding areas of the IRA and through them the political direction of the movement. Some of this has broken the surface following the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, with senior Provisionals breaking deep cover. This book would be unlikely to provide us chapter and verse or any comprehensive revelation even suppose he knew, and he doubtless knows much more than he says as do current Key players in the Provisional movement in my view. The early highly accurate targeting of Commanders of the Belfast Brigade revealed in this book, was not as suggested due to their intelligence work when so much else of it was so wrong. Someone on ‘our side’ was simply tipping them off even to quite sophisticated undercover identities and safe remote house operations. The author tells us that “increasing penetration of their organisation by both MI5 and RUC Special Branch” the Provo’s formed an internal security organisation aimed at discovering and eliminating informers and sleepers. The author happily tells us that the senior officer of the PIRA charged with setting up and operating the Unit was in fact an RUC Special Branch double agent.

It is literally breath-taking how so many respected and trusted ‘leaders’ of the republican movement, in full knowledge of the sacrifice and loss were all the while pissing up our backs. It is hard to credit that even tiny breakaway teams like the Irish Peoples Liberation Organisation (a split from INLA but with some left dissident PIRA members) in one of its few anti state operations had also been penetrated and the RUC knew about the attack before it happened.

It is illustrative the book claims that the major strategy of the undercover units was recruiting informers and having deep plants inside the PIRA together with misdirecting the movements own internal security unit to killing men totally innocent of collaboration. McCallan claims one of the main drives to abandon the armed struggle was the degree of penetration with three out of every four operations known to the army in advance. The heavy penetration of Belfast Brigade meant three of every four actions were notified to the security forces, the Special Branch claiming one in every twenty members of the Brigade was an informer or enemy plant. Their penetration could not have happened without the gross treachery we had long suspected and this book confirms it. It must also be said that the book reluctantly admits they were far from having things all their own way and many daring and skilful engagements by the Provo’s are recounted in which the occupation forces paid the ultimate price. The author conceding that for every operation that ended in capture or the death of a terrorist, there were hundreds that did not.

One of the not well-known facts from SAS operations is that they used American fragmentation grenades without official authorisation, the author confesses that they were deployed with attack units and their use threatened though they were not in fact deployed. We are not told how they were able to have large numbers of unauthorised American weapons present on raids and how they got them.

One very telling line used by McCallion given the subsequent unprovoked mass civilian murders on Bloody Sunday. In a lull in operations on all sides, he tells us, the SAS troop decided to make themselves a target “and invite the PIRA to come out and play”. I have always thought the Parachute Regiment was doing just that when it went into Derry into what the Para’s considered was the Provo’s backyard and certainly the community in which their families lived. It was a come-on meant to draw out an enraged PIRA into a full blown no holds barred shoot out. Republican units had under agreement with the marchers withdrawn from the area, to prevent just such an excuse for murder. As we know no one was there to be drawn out, and the people who were shot down were all unarmed civilians, but that throwaway line has a wider ring of truth to it.

The heavy penetration of the leadership of the PIRA caused the ASU (operational units) to become almost self-acting & self-contained, with only a loose overall control of operations. This was aimed at stopping plants and informers, but the downside was very dubious not to say murderous targets without any clear strategy aimed at the whole purpose of the armed struggle. For the Provisionals, the ostensible overall control tactics and direction were the eight-member Army Council. The overall political and military leadership by the mid 70’s had moved to Adams and McGuiness who had by that time lost any belief in a military victory for the republican movement, though this wasn’t their public face. It had serious implications for the military campaign and the poor sods at the front end of it. Politically it meant moving the movement back to the positions which it marched out of in their formation. It meant steering the whole movement away from military insurgency and toward at first radical politics and then ultimately constitutional politics. Opposition within the military and the political movement by key individuals was put down with the up-front threat of assassination in the case of Ivor Bell. Other less isolated military and political leaders moved into open opposition to the Leadership and its new strategy. Not only that they devised new military tactics which were proved to be the most successful during the whole campaign. From then on in, a well-placed double agent within the IRA and possibly at least one of the eight on the Army Council started to work for the defeat of the revised military campaign. The SAS spent the five years between 85-90 directing its operations against this new military initiative and leadership. From this point on the most meticulous of operations skilfully planned and prepared for, became excuses for mass executions as ‘senior sources with the PIRA’ gave away the full operational details directly to the MI5 to set up ambushes. The Provisionals ‘dissidents’ were being purged with direct help from the SAS. The authenticity of this evidence, quoting who was being set up and what was known of the plans which were supposed to be highly secret, can hardly be in question.

McCallion had earlier in his book expressed Adams and McGuinesses intention to wage war on anyone within or without the organisation in order to be the only game in town and one whose aims would be directed by them. But speaking either for himself or the SAS and their handlers this was seen as mutually beneficial. “Ultimately the crushing of internal dissent and the forging of a largely unified republican policy was to be one of the most decisive factors in bringing the Troubles to an end” (143). The leading opposition faction within the IRA was focused round East Tyrone Brigade, it had become the main focus of the states war in a conscious effort to intervene into the internal political division (not for the first time in republican history) “In the coming decade, the SAS acting on high level source intelligence from the very top pf the PIRA, would further degrade the capabilities of the East Tyrone Brigade. By the time a political compromise was reached between the Republican Movement and the British Government, the Tyrone Brigade would be in no position to challenge its own leadership’s new commitment to peace.” (219) South Armagh and Tyrone Brigades were also the only main units of PIRA which the states forces were totally unable to penetrate or compromise from within. The author claims it wasn’t until the 1994 ceasefire when these units on instruction lower their guard which allows the conditions for penetration of these Brigades as well.

The suggestion from the author is that Gerry Adams himself was the MI5 informer and the Mail ran with a double page inside story focusing solely on the accusation while ignoring the army’s history of murder also revealed in it. For us of course the two are inseparably connected.

This is a valuable book, it is as said ‘from the horse mouth’ it gives credence to the long held suspicions that the Provisional leadership both political and military were both penetrated from without, and from internal political degeneration and treachery. For ordinary members of the British public who have believed at face value the story of brave and principled British soldiers fighting a ruthless enemy by Queensbury Rules this book should be a revelation. For that reason, I doubt it will be given wide publicity and distribution, I can’t for example see any ‘Panorama TV documentary based upon it. The book is of course written by a faithful member of many of the assassination squads he writes about and has doubtless kept to his chest far for than he has revealed. That he has had permission to publish this book, begs a number of questions. But I totally recommend it , the implications of which are shocking and far reaching.

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