Lisburn drew two important lessons from the compromise of the MRF. First, the trial of Sergeant Williams had shown the danger that sensitive intelligence-gathering operations might be revealed in court: the Army knew it would have to show greater ingenuity in preventing similar mistakes happening again. Officers of the Army Legal Service were told to be on hand to prepare the soldiers’ statements and senior officers sometimes tried to use their influence with the RUC to prevent prosecutions. Second, the MRF had told the RUC and commanders of normal Army patrols on the streets virtually nothing about its operations. This presented several dangers, not least that the security forces might open fire on one of these undercover units. It also denied the plain-clothes soldiers the possible back-up of uniformed units in a critical situation like the attack on the laundry van and thereby created bad feeling in the RUC because of the lack of co-ordination.
The MRF was disbanded early in 1973. Within a year the new surveillance unit had emerged – later known as 14 Intelligence Company – a group which was to set far higher standards, and to maintain its cover for many years. This unit, like the SAS, was formed from soldiers who had volunteered from other units and passed a rigorous selection course.
The surveillance unit did not consist predominantly of SAS members, although some soldiers with SAS experience were part of it. Neither was the unit part of the SAS in an organizational sense. A few SAS soldiers did help to set up the surveillance unit, but the flow of expertise was frequently in the opposite direction – some of the 14 Intelligence Company’s operators then went on to serve in SAS squadrons bound for Ulster, where their experience was valued. Selection for the surveillance unit, which takes place twice a year at a training area normally used by 22 SAS, emphasizes the need for resourcefulness and psychological strength, rather than the physical stamina needed for the Special Air Service. It is designed to find people, usually bright officers and NCOs in their mid to late twenties, who are able to bear the strain of long-term surveillance, sometimes only a few feet from people whom they know to be dangerous terrorists. An unusual physical characteristic, for example a scar or prominent tattoo, can be enough for a candidate to be rejected since its members must be as unobtrusive as possible. 14 Intelligence Company recruits from the Royal Marines as well as the Army.
By 1975 the unit’s structure had solidified, remaining the same to this day. The unit has one detachment with each of the three brigades in Ulster. Each detachment or ‘det’, in Army parlance, is normally commanded by a captain and consists of about twenty soldiers. Like the SAS it is often short of soldiers, a consequence of the high standards set during the selection course. When they are available, a second officer is appointed to each det, usually a lieutenant or another captain who is known either as the liaison officer (LO) or the operations (Ops) officer.
The surveillance unit has used a variety of cover names. Each is chosen to sound like another army unit which carries out work of a more mundane kind. The screen of secrecy was erected in part to prevent it being compromised as quickly as the MRF was and perhaps, given Lord Carver’s insight into its origins, to prevent the RUC intelligence-gathering agencies from fully understanding its activities. It is also undoubtedly true that the shady identity of the force has prevented the republican movement from demonizing it in the way that it did with the SAS.
In its early days, people posted to the Company were often listed as going to NITAT or NITAT (NI). NITAT stands for Northern Ireland Training Advisory Team. The real NITAT sends soldiers with recent experience of Ulster to train other regiments in Germany or Britain, which are about to go there, in the arts of normal soldiering: for example, how to mount patrols or how not to be caught out by the latest design of booby trap. In fact the people going to ‘NITAT’ in Northern Ireland itself were involved in very different work.
Suspicions at HQNI that the name NITAT was becoming too widely known prompted a change to another cover name by 1978 to 1979 – Intelligence and Security Group (NI) or Int and Sy Group. There is an Int and Sy Group in England and another in Germany, comprising large bodies of Intelligence Corps soldiers grouped into companies and commanded by a lieutenant colonel. Their daily business in the 1970s and 1980s consisted mainly of disseminating to fighting units the latest information about the Soviet Army and watching out for attempts by Warsaw Pact spies to suborn British soldiers. But Int and Sy Group, like NITAT, meant something very different in Northern Ireland.
In the early 1980s another name was introduced – 14 Intelligence and Security Company. This name, usually contracted in speech to 14 Intelligence Company, 14 Company or simply 14 Int, became widely used within the Army. Indeed most people who have worked with the Army in Northern Ireland know it as such and that is why I will use this name, even to describe activities in the mid 1970s before the Army adopted it. This cover name suggested an analogy with 12 Intelligence and Security Company, a unit of report writers, index keepers and computer programmers rather than an organized force of undercover surveillance specialists.
Research in Army regimental magazines has allowed me to trace the postings of many individuals who have been identified by contacts as members of the unit and through this to chart the development of its cover names. Picking one’s way through this labyrinth requires patience, but is necessary because the unit became involved
