Some people have detected the hand of MI5 or the RUC’s Special Branch in Oldfield’s fall. If a senior SIS officer had been taking young men to his flat, why hadn’t it been noticed before? The allegations about the incident in Northern Ireland itself are puzzling. One of Oldfield’s colleagues from Stormont says the story about the pub is wrong, and that the former SIS chief was questioned about an incident which had happened well before he arrived in Northern Ireland. The possibility exists that the ‘security and police sources’ cited by Ryder as the providers of the information in his story had known about Oldfield’s homosexuality for some time and that they chose to use the information because he would not back the middle-ranking SB detectives who wanted to take over the Army’s agents in Ulster.
12‘Jarking’ and the Technology of Terror
Although informers remained the prime source of intelligence for the RUC and the Army, the use of technical means of gathering information was on the increase. By 1980 both the security forces and their republican opponents had invested considerable resources in new technology. From state-of-the-art surveillance equipment to sophisticated bomb detonators, both sides tried to give themselves an advantage by exploiting the evolving technology.
The IRA had learnt from its early disasters in bomb-making and was able to produce devices of much higher quality, using more stable explosives and more reliable timers. And radio-controlled bombs, with which the organization had experimented since 1972, also became common during the late 1970s. Notably, the Provisionals used them in the bombings at Warrenpoint and of Lord Mountbatten at Mullaghmore.
A standard device would be triggered by a transmitter known as a McGregor, designed for use with model aircraft and boats. At first this was used to activate a simple switch, also often acquired in model shops, which would then set off the detonation. It was not long before the Army began to explore the possibility of sending jamming signals on the 27Mhz wave band used by this transmitter. This tactic presented risks, however, in that there was a chance that the Army, by transmitting on the same frequency, would cause the bombs to go off prematurely, possibly injuring innocent people.
As time passed, the IRA made various changes to its radio-controlled devices. Advanced electronic equipment, obtained overseas, was used to modify both transmitters and receivers, by means of a coded signal to activate the bomb. As a result Army jamming, based on transmitting a constant frequency, would no longer be able to set the bomb off or disarm it; and the security forces were not able to find out which modulations in the signal were necessary to arm the bomb. Although this represented a significant technological development for the IRA, both sides were to progress beyond simple coding.
Ministry of Defence scientists at research establishments in England were constantly pitting their wits against IRA bomb-makers, and the adoption by the IRA of coded arming signals for their bombs forced the scientists to consider new ways of protecting soldiers. They came up with the idea of ‘inhibitors’ which would prevent the bomb from functioning – an intervention which would save many lives.
By the mid 1980s soldiers had been equipped with a family of portable counter-measures packs designed to meet different threats. The IRA was aware of the function of the devices carried by soldiers on patrol and later tried to blame Army counter-measures for triggering the explosion in 1987 at the Remembrance Day service at Enniskillen which killed eleven people. In fact it was set off by a timing device.
Perhaps inevitably, IRA experts found an area of the electronic spectrum in which inhibitors would not operate – the ‘white band’. From 1985 onwards, several soldiers and police officers were killed, notably in south Armagh, by bombs set off using a radio signal in the white band. Defeating this threat became the subject of urgent effort at a Ministry of Defence establishment in southern England. After more than a year of intensive effort, the scientists came up with a successful counter-measure to transmitters operating in the white band. Having been chased across the electronic spectrum, increasingly the IRA reverted to an old-fashioned and unjammable method – the command wire.
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Under its strategy of long war, the IRA became more aware of the risks to its men and women and of the need to avoid reckless operations. Republican areas, particularly in the inner cities, were intensively patrolled and subjected to undercover surveillance activities by the security forces, which increased the chances of IRA agents being intercepted. Because of this, the IRA had to put greater effort into the preparation of attacks to ensure that snipers or bombers would get a free run at their target. The IRA developed the skills of its own intelligence organization, scoring some coups which were to cause dismay in the security community.
During the early days of the Troubles, women had banged dustbin lids whenever an Army patrol entered the estates. As the 1970s went on, the IRA shifted towards more subtle forms of communication. Telephones were used to pass cryptic messages. Sympathizers living in tall blocks of flats would spot patrols with binoculars and then hang a towel on their balcony or open a window. These warning posts made it safer for the IRA to stage attacks or move weapons and, in turn, forced an increase in undercover surveillance by the security forces. These were mainly plain-clothes operations which were more likely to catch people out. Attempting to counter this new surveillance activity, the IRA employed their own teams of watchers, known as ‘dickers’ or ‘dicks’. They were often recruited from the youth or women’s branches of the movement and took part in attacks, by observing the security routine or by finding the home of a police officer,
