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JIM CUSACK
THE British security forces infiltrated the IRA at levels higher than the position held by Freddie Scappaticci, the man reputed to have been Stakeknife, the British agent who held the position of second-in-command of the IRA's internal security unit.
The security forces recruited both the Belfast man believed to have
been Scappaticci's boss in the internal security unit, and another man
who has in recent years risen to the highest ranks in the terrorist group.
Senior security sources have confirmed that Davison was a key RUC Special Branch informant in the IRA in Belfast in the 1980s. He was recruited after being compromised in a sexual liaison with a young man in a Belfast gym. Davison supplied the RUC with high-grade information about IRA GHQ Staff in Belfast in which he was a senior figure. Information he supplied led to the seizure of one of the largest bombs ever brought into the city by the IRA. The huge device was found near the Lagan Embankment and an IRA man arrested and jailed.
Davison was shot dead by a UVF gunman wearing a stolen RUC uniform who called to his house in the Markets area of the city. Davison, 33, was gunned down as he answered the door. His role as an informer was either not known by other IRA men or else kept quiet and he was given a full IRA funeral.
According to security sources, the IRA internal security unit was responsible
for carrying out torture and interrogation of suspected informants. The
unit killed about 50 IRA men and civilians accused of informing. It is
now accepted among both
ANALYSIS
police and republicans that several of those killed were innocent of the charges brought against them by the IRA.
And, according to the sources, there was a second agent working within the IRA security unit. John Joe Magee, a Belfast man who fled south and lived in Dundalk from 1990 and who was the boss of the alleged Stakeknife figure, was also an informant.
It is alleged that Magee, who died of cancer two years ago, provided information which wrecked IRA operations in a number of areas of Northern Ireland and was personally responsible for the execution of at least one IRA man whom he knew was not an informant.
A ruthless torturer and executioner, Magee was greatly feared within the IRA. He joked with other IRA members about what happened at the interrogation and torture sessions he held at isolated farmhouses in South Armagh and about how he killed his victims.
Another agent whose identity has also not emerged was one of the IRA's top operations officers and rose to a very high level in the group. According to security sources, this man was unlike other agents who were paid regular flat fees. He would ring up his security handlers with information about arms dumps and demand single major payments. When the cash was handed over he would give the whereabouts of the dumps.
His information was said to have virtually brought IRA operations in Belfast to a standstill during the 1980s. On several occasions, military experts were able to penetrate IRA arms hides in order to booby-trap weapons and bombs, and plant transmitters in others. This led to many botched IRA attacks, some in which IRA members killed themselves in premature explosions or through misfiring weapons.
Some of the information gathered by the Army and RUC from its agents high up in the IRA was also passed on via the controversial British Army Force Research Unit (FRU) to loyalist terror groups who then stalked and killed dozens of republicans.
Information from the FRU was regularly passed to UDA intelligence officer Brian Nelson and to at least one double agent working in the UVF. Dozens of republicans - and many innocent Catholics - were murdered as a result of information which came from senior IRA figures in the pay of the British Army and RUC.
Meanwhile, British police yesterday arrested one of the former British agents reputed to be one of the sources of the leaks about Stakeknife. The man, who is originally from Newry, Co Down, is known by the cover name Kevin Fulton and was arrested in London by the Metropolitan Police investigating breaches of the Official Secrets Act.
Fulton, who has also made a series of other allegations about passing
information to the RUC about the Omagh bombing and other affairs, is not
believed to have been the main source of information about the agent Stakeknife.
