The offer of clemency applied only to those who confessed their treachery; the organization continued to kill other informers who had not come forward, often after lengthy interrogation. They were left, sometimes with a folded bank note in a pocket, without shoes and with masking tape over their eyes, and a bullet through the back of the head. Tape recordings were sometimes made of their confessions and played to relatives or others who complained about the punishment.
As well as killing touts, the IRA also carries out punishment attacks on petty criminals. During the 1970s hundreds of people were knee-capped. The aim is not simply to convince people that the Provisionals can provide an alternative system of justice on the estates; there is also a practical recognition of the fact that criminals are particularly susceptible to recruitment as informers by the security forces.
Informers are usually recruited in police stations or Army bases following arrests. Some inform out of hatred for the Provisionals while others within the organization have apparently used informing as a means of disposing of unwanted members. But most prospective touts range from the taxi driver stopped on a motoring charge to the IRA member caught with a gun. They are offered the chance to walk free in return for information. Most refuse to co-operate. Republicans claim that when such approaches fail, people are often blackmailed by the authorities. They could be threatened, for example, that if they do not become informers the IRA will be told that they are indeed ‘touts’.
Those who have been involved in attempts to recruit ‘human sources’ confirm that the techniques used to persuade people often are unscrupulous. Sometimes information gained by surveillance teams can be employed as a means of coercion. An Army intelligence officer relates that on one occasion an IRA member was shown photographs of his wife committing adultery with his ASU commander. But the basis for recruitment ‘is usually blackmail’, says an intelligence officer.
By the late 1970s, this had become so widely known as the standard method of recruitment that anybody who had gone free after an arrest was liable to fall under suspicion within republican communities – it became common for people to announce the fact that they had been approached by the police while in custody in the pages of nationalist newspapers as a means of trying to dispel suspicion about themselves. During the 1980s agent-recruiters refined their methods, putting more time into targeting suitable people and more ingenuity into setting up a situation in which an approach could be made.
The Secret Intelligence Service, Security Service and to some extent the Army, have gone to great lengths to recruit agents because, unlike the police, they do not have easy access to republicans in holding cells. During the 1970s, SIS set up a fake holiday firm so that it could tell a number of leading republicans that they had won free trips to Spain. When they took these holidays they were approached by intelligence officers who asked whether they would work as agents. Subsequent journalistic inquiries traced Caruso, the front company, to SIS’s London Station which deals with operations in Britain.
In 1985 Gerry Young, a Sinn Fein activist, revealed how he had been approached by plain-clothes police officers during a visit to his children who were living in Birmingham. Young says the officers threatened him with an exclusion order, separating him from the children, unless he agreed to work for them. This is believed to have been an operation carried out on behalf of MI5 by the local Special Branch.
Much effort goes into targeting people whom the intelligence specialists believe are suitable for recruitment for whatever reason. If they agree to provide information they are given a code-name and details of how to contact their handler.
Meetings normally take place in areas away from republican strongholds. There is a preference for the haunts of the respectable Protestant establishment – the carpark of a golf club, the area around Queen’s University in Belfast or outside a school in a middle-class suburb. Most informers are paid small amounts, often only £10 or £20 each week. A successful tip-off, about an arms cache for example, may lead to a bonus of £200 or £300. But top sources – people within the upper echelons of Sinn Fein, the IRA or INLA – have been paid thousands of pounds. The money is often banked in mainland accounts and it is frequently not possible for the informer to use it, because to do so would attract attention.
Meetings with handlers are often set up by telephone. The agent will ring a local police station or Army base on an unlisted number and ask to speak to his or her handler. Arrangements will then be made to meet. Agent-runners may arrange the rendezvous so as to be able to follow the source prior to the meeting in order to make sure that he or she is not being followed by the IRA.
Agent-running in Northern Ireland has taken the security forces into many profoundly difficult moral areas. The dangers of using informers are well known to intelligence officers. The information itself may be unreliable. The source may be fabricating evidence to get even with someone. They may even be involved in serious crimes and, by providing information on others, may thereby seek to remove themselves from police scrutiny. The security forces dilemma is often, most simply, that they find themselves developing uncomfortably close relationships with people intimately involved in terrorism. As one senior Army officer with experience of undercover operations in Northern Ireland explains, ‘for the informer to be any good, you can almost guarantee that he is going to be part of the operation’. In the battle for intelligence, SB or Army agent-runners found themselves developing close working bonds with people whom they suspected or even knew to
