Douglas Hurd, who took over as the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in September 1984, was a shrewd enough politician to understand the potential damage to relations with the Republic that fatal operations involving undercover soldiers could cause. It is worth recalling the comment by a senior officer at Lisburn following the wave of lethal SAS operations in 1978 that the Army is not in the business of ‘embarrassing politicians’. Mrs Thatcher’s major initiative on Ireland, the Anglo-Irish Agreement with the Dublin government, was by this stage at an advanced point in negotiations. Signed in November 1985, the Agreement was welcomed by the non-violent section of Northern nationalism (in the form of the Social Democratic and Labour Party), but its provisions allowing the Dublin government regular consultations with Britain over affairs in Ulster smacked to the loyalist community of a sell-out. They launched a campaign of protest under the slogan ‘Ulster Says No!’.
In the wake of the Agreement the RUC had to confront loyalist demonstrators. Many police officers were firebombed out of their homes. In the eyes of many of those around him, John Hermon’s handling of this difficult period marked his finest hour as Chief Constable. A senior officer at Lisburn who watched with alarm as many loyalists turned on the RUC says, ‘Jack Hermon personally kept the RUC on the rails. That man saved Ulster from a terrible bloodbath by forcing the RUC to face up to its responsibilities.’ Many nationalists confessed that their faith in the force had been boosted, for example by the Chief’s refusal to allow a loyalist march into a Catholic area of Portadown – a move which brought his officers into violent conflict with the crowd.
In 1985 a new CLF arrived at Lisburn, Major General Tony Jeapes. He had the unique distinction among CLFs of being a former CO of 22 SAS Regiment. He had run the unit during the 1970s and had published a book about his experiences in the Dhofar campaign in Oman. There was also a new GOC, Lieutenant General Robert Pascoe who, some years before, had worked on Maurice Oldfield’s Planning Staff at Stormont. Both men were open to the idea of using special forces for ambushes, but both were also aware that there were circumstances when such operations were not desirable and that other courses of action were available.
During the previous few years the covert operators had tried various approaches to the use of the foreknowledge which their penetration of republican groups gave them. ‘It is all a matter of acceptable levels’, says an intelligence officer borrowing a phrase used by politicians a decade before in a reference to terrorist rather than security forces violence – ‘We could ambush a lot more, but people realize that would stir things up too much.’ If the covert operators still had foreknowledge, but attempted to ambush on only a few occasions, what did their revised strategy consist of?
Some of those who have worked in the world of undercover operations in Ulster are frank about the alternatives to ambushing which the SB can choose. SB officers tend to be concerned first and foremost with protecting the life of their source. An action which causes the IRA to stop and think about where the security forces obtained their information must be avoided because it may lead them to the source. It is worth emphasizing that it is on this basis that some SB officers object to ambushing on principle, since operations like those at Tamnamore or Gransha in 1984 are bound to trigger witch-hunts within the organization. On the other hand, the SB is often reluctant to arrest Provisionals on lesser charges, for example picking them up at an arms cache and charging them with possession of firearms because many covert operators feel that sentencing someone to seven or eight years in prison, ‘which means three or four with remission’ as one officer puts it, does not justify the risks to the source and surveillance operators of a long-term covert operation.
Instead, the undercover experts have evolved various types of operation which can be used to prevent an attack happening while protecting the identity of a source. The technique of doctoring of firearms and bomb-making materials was used many times in the 1980s, says an intelligence officer. The IRA emerges from such an operation uncertain as to whether its cache was compromised, whether the Army simply managed to defuse the bomb in time or whether its detonator failed.
Another important tactic is to use uniformed patrols. For example, an IRA team sent to assassinate a UDR reservist will not press home its attack if there are several uniformed police, perhaps stopping vehicles to check their tax discs, outside his or her house. The police or soldiers involved will almost always be ignorant of the covert reason for their presence. Such patrolling is usually requested from battalion commanding officers or RUC divisional commanders by the TCG.
The vagueness of much informer intelligence means that the security forces may have to show great ingenuity in their attempts to frustrate the terrorist. Police cannot check tax discs in the same place every day, to follow our example, since this would arouse suspicion and make them the target for terrorist attack. If the terrorists are under surveillance the intelligence specialists will wait for an ‘indicator’ of a forthcoming attack, for example the meeting of three individuals associated with previous incidents, before triggering their thwarting operation.
It may be that the target of their attack is not known. In this case it may be necessary to step up checkpoints on the road around the ASU’s village. Such duties are normally carried
