The seedy world of spying in Northern Ireland is being unearthed, and the focus is about to switch to the loyalists, writes Brian Rowan
Some of the deepest secrets of Northern Ireland's "dirty war" are beginning to emerge. The recent collapse of the so-called Stormontgate case, in which the IRA was accused of intelligence-gathering activities inside the Northern Ireland Office in Belfast, is part of the after-play of a long conflict. This was a case in which the PSNI Special Branch had much to protect and much to keep secret: two informers, including Sinn Féin's Denis Donaldson, as well as the methodology of a bugging and surveillance operation that led to the Stormontgate arrests.
There have been unionist demands for a public inquiry to get to the truth of Stormontgate, and the republican leadership has been embarrassed that such a key figure in Sinn Féin was able to work for the British and the Special Branch for two decades without detection. But the Stormontgate and the Donaldson revelations have merely scratched the surface of the intelligence war, and, as the digging continues, more secrets will emerge and others will be embarrassed.
The business of agents and informers was not confined to the battle between the British security services, the Special Branch and republicans. It went as far as the leaderships of the various loyalist paramilitary organisations - inside the "Brigade Staff" of the Ulster Volunteer Force and the "Inner Council" of the Ulster Defence Association. As one source puts it: "You need to be among them, and deeply among them, to make the intelligence war work."
In the republican community, there have been the "Stakeknife" and then the Donaldson revelations, but soon the focus will switch to the loyalists. Inside the Belfast office of the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland, Nuala O'Loan, a report is being prepared into the RUC's investigation of a loyalist murder in 1997. The victim, whose body was discovered in a quarry, was Raymond McCord. He was killed by the UVF. His father - also Raymond - has alleged that the police failed to properly investigate the murder and that an informer is being protected.
According to one source, the investigation by the ombudsman has found evidence that "a series of agents" were involved "in a series of murders". This same source says the report will also point to an "institutional lack of control" in terms of the relationship between Special Branch handlers and their informers.
To Republicans, all of this will have the ring of collusion. The findings of the investigation have now been sent to the public prosecution service, and the report of the ombudsman could be completed within a couple of months.
The loyalist at the centre of that investigation - a one-time senior figure in the UVF in north Belfast - was a Special Branch informer, a covert human intelligence source who has now been de-activated by the police. It is not clear exactly when this happened, but in recent years the PSNI has carried out a "root and branch" review of "every single agent".
"One of the first things I was determined to implement was the recommendation [ by the former Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir John Stevens] to ensure that every single informant under police control was fully reviewed to ensure their retention was necessary, proportionate and essential to our fight against crime of all sorts," the PSNI chief constable Sir Hugh Orde told The Irish Times.
That review was carried out by a panel of police officers headed by the assistant chief constable, Sam Kinkaid. Part of that task was to ensure the "strict supervision and proper control" of all informants. "As a result, a number [ of informers] was seen to be no longer necessary or appropriate," Orde said. "I am quite satisfied that this review did nothing to damage our intelligence-gathering capacity. In fact, it probably enhanced it."
Orde would not discuss specific cases, but it seems a significant number of informers were struck off as part of that review. In conversations with me during the summer of 2004, a source with detailed knowledge of the intelligence world identified a number of loyalists who he claimed had worked - or continued to work - for the Special Branch. These included the man at the centre of the Ombudsman investigation; another senior figure in the UVF; a paramilitary leader who still sits on the Inner Council of the UDA; and a fourth loyalist, a convicted murderer. This man is now living in exile.
Inside loyalism, the alleged informer is blamed for the collapse of the Combined Loyalist Military Command, which brought together the UVF, the UDA and the Red Hand Commando for the announcement of the loyalist ceasefire in 1994. Intelligence reports - compiled mainly by the Special Branch - were twice used to return Johnny Adair to prison in the period after the Belfast Agreement. It is not known what input, if any, the informer had into those reports, but, given his own background and his involvement in murder, there are obvious questions about the appropriateness of using this man as an informer.
"There were people in the old RUC who recruited the worst elements of paramilitarism," claimed the SDLP's policing spokesman, Alex Attwood. "These included people who had killed and continued to kill."
But Attwood - a member of the Policing Board in Northern Ireland - is convinced that things have changed. "This shadow world is very different now. A huge number of agents have been de-activated," he says. "The use of informants is now governed by standards that comply with best international practice."
Loyalists - particularly inside the UVF - will be waiting with some trepidation for the publication of the findings of the Police Ombudsman investigation. This is where the intelligence world can still cause trouble for the peace process.
The UVF and the closely-linked Red Hand Commando are now engaged in arguably the most important internal consultation process ever to take place within their organisations. They are discussing how to respond to the decision of the IRA to end its armed campaign and to put its weapons beyond use. They are deliberating about the future of these organisations, about the involvement of their members in criminality, about their standing - or lack of it - within their own communities, about recruitment, and about the possibility of a future dialogue with republicans.
How will more revelations about informers impact on that debate? Inside the republican community, Donaldson survived his public confession that he was an agent for the Special Branch. But what if the IRA had not already ended its armed campaign? Would things have been different? The loyalist organisations have not yet arrived at that point, and we do not know how groups such as the UVF will respond to what will soon be said about informers and murder.
The world of the agent is no longer the secret place it once was. In the North's developing peace, there seems to have been a dropping of the guard - certainly among some of those who once operated in the intelligence world, and who now seem willing to tell their "war" stories, stories that are compromising agents. Then there are investigations that are getting inside police files that were never meant to be seen.
The stones under which the secrets of a 30-year conflict were buried are being disturbed, and slowly a dirty past is being unearthed.
Brian Rowan is former security editor of the BBC in Belfast and author of a number of books on the peace process