With the success of the three Regional Crime and Intelligence Units founded by Kenneth Newman in improving general police work in the mid 1970s, security chiefs decided to extend the system to cover co-operation between the police and Army by establishing a new integrated intelligence centre called a Tasking and Co-ordination Group (TCG). The setting-up of the TCGs was probably the most important of all the steps taken during the late 1970s towards enhanced information-gathering.
Each Group combined CID, SB and Army specialists; but while the CID had been in charge of the Regional Crime and Intelligence Units, the TCGs were commanded by an SB officer. Despite its imposing title, the TCG was not an extensive nerve-centre with ranks of police and soldiers watching screens and poring over maps, but consisted of a much more basic collection of portakabins or rooms. When it was not organizing any operations the TCG was often staffed by just one person, a duty officer sometimes as lowly as a detective constable. When operations were on, as many as twenty to thirty people may have become involved, according to interviewees with experience of such activity.
The first TCG was created in 1978 at Castlereagh to serve Belfast Region. It was followed in 1979 by one at Gough Barracks to serve South Region, and later by another in Londonderry for North Region. Although there have been some changes in the function of different regions during the last ten years, the centres at Castlereagh, Gough and Londonderry were normally known as TCG Belfast, TCG South and TCG North respectively.
The TCGs attained a critical role in what security chiefs called ‘executive action’ – locking together intelligence from informers with the surveillance and ambushing activities of undercover units. The Army’s TCG Liaison Officer (TCGLO), a captain or major, is almost always a veteran of an SAS or 14 Intelligence Company tour in Ulster, whose duty is to act as go-between and advise senior detectives on the Army’s capabilities. The Army and the SB have people permanently delegated to the TCG, but the Security Service (MI5) does not, according to people who have worked in this field. Security Service personnel may, however, join the TCG for limited periods during operations in which they have a particular interest, for example where one of their agents is involved.
As a result of this initiative, Regional Heads of Special Branch, operating through their TCG, were able to eliminate duplication of effort by Army and police surveillance squads. They ensured ‘de-confliction’, declaring areas where covert operations were underway out of bounds to prevent accidental confrontations with uniformed patrols. The new arrangement also lessened the chances of the Army or police arresting one another’s informers by mistake.
The founding of the first TCG preceded the examination of intelligence-gathering efforts by Maurice Oldfield and his Planning Staff. They were impressed with the system as a key step in the integration of security forces intelligence activities, and in their report to Whitehall recommended the establishment of a similar system of joint operations and intelligence centres at the RUC division/Army battalion level. These lower level groups had a less formal structure and concentrated on the co-ordination of patrolling activities rather than on the response to sensitive intelligence.
The centralization of activities in the TCGs carried certain risks, however. For example, the TCG commander was permitted to hold back information. An informer might allude to the identity of terrorists who were about to carry out an attack. The TCG commander might pass on to the Army information about the likely target and timing of the attack without referring to the would-be perpetrators, feeling that doing so could put the informer at risk by revealing the small group in which he or she moved. But in omitting this information, the commander might himself be committing a crime because he would leave the soldiers with no option but to confront armed terrorists, when they might have had a chance of arresting them before their attack. Working in the TCG forced SB officers at times to make difficult decisions: should they compromise the security of their source in the interests of making possible preventive action against terrorists, or should they keep their informer’s identity secret and thereby run the risk of endangering the lives of soldiers and possibly bystanders?
Such responsibilities required the officers who ran TCGs to display the utmost judgement and integrity. In fact, as the events which followed the shooting of six people in the Armagh area by RUC undercover units late in 1982 were to show (see chapter sixteen), some of them were incapable of living up to these exalted standards.
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Although the SB developed the most extensive network of informers, other organizations such as the Army and MI5 also used informers – or ‘human sources’ as they were termed. The traditionally close relationship between the Branch and MI5, though not as intimate as in many British forces, provided a further boost to the RUC SB.
The Security Service became more involved in Northern Ireland in 1973. The government had initially favoured the use of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) because it was believed to be more adept at running networks of agents in a foreign country, namely the Republic of Ireland. However, after the IRA’s initial bombing campaigns in Britain in 1972, MI5 was able to convince ministers that its efforts to protect the realm from acts of this kind required an expanded presence on the far side of
