This could be a challenge too far for Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair, writesGerry Moriarty, Northern Editor
According to police and political sources, the IRA has proved that its intelligence-gathering is beyond compare. Not only can it allegedly breach Special Branch security at Castlereagh but it can penetrate right to the political heart of the British government in Northern Ireland, allegedly.
High sardonic praise therefore for the spooks in the IRA but as for the political conflagration that is beginning to rage from yesterday's police raid on the Sinn Féin office at Stormont, even the legendary Red Adair would have been hard-pressed to dampen down the developing firestorm.
Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair, who meet in London on Wednesday, have the fire-fighting responsibility to battle this political inferno. The view from Belfast last night was that this could prove a challenge too far. As an aside, it's easy to imagine Mr Blair and Mr Ahern banging their heads against oak-panelled walls in Downing Street and Government Buildings and declaiming respectively: "Iraq and now this"; "Ray Burke and now this".
Earlier yesterday a Dublin observer, frantically trying to keep abreast of a rapidly unfolding story, wondered were the Provisionals even in a semi-credible position to deny these latest claims or were they caught in flagrante.
Senior security and political sources say there is a clear evidential chain right the way through from the office of the Northern Secretary, Dr John Reid, to IRA intelligence. The allegation is that an employee at the Northern Ireland Office in Castle Buildings, Stormont, was copying sensitive internal and external mail - some of which may have been between Mr Blair and Dr Reid - and passing it on to the IRA. The fact that the PSNI would engage in as politically sensitive an act as a raid on the Sinn Féin office at Stormont yesterday is an illustration of its confidence. The Stormont incident grabbed the early headlines but the real story was elsewhere in Belfast where the alleged NIO mole and some of those to whom he had allegedly passed on the confidential information were being arrested.
Sinn Féin's main defence in the coming days may be that this is British "securocrat-led" dirty tricks, but the difficulty for republicans - if these well-placed sources are correct - is that the police have the goods on the IRA. Still, no one should under-estimate Sinn Féin's damage-limitation capabilities. In this instance though, the only people it may be able to convince of its bona fides is its own constituency.
It won't work on David Trimble or Jeffrey Donaldson. Donaldson said this was "the final nail" in Sinn Féin's involvement in the power-sharing Executive. His leader said it was now up to the British government to take action against Sinn Féin and gave it a few days - probably until just after the Blair-Ahern summit - to follow through on Dr Reid's July warning that republicans were on a "yellow card".
At its most extreme, Dr Reid can declare, as he did with the UDA, that the IRA ceasefire no longer has validity. There lies great danger because it could become a self-fulfilling ordinance, especially when this particular incident relates to alleged intelligence-gathering as opposed to murder, racketeering and internecine feuding in which the UDA is implicated.
What is of some, though possibly minor, significance is that the alleged copying of the politically sensitive material happened before Dr Reid issued his warning. The alleged IRA infiltrator left the NIO in September last year and the police have been tracking him since.
A London source said perhaps it could be argued that neither Sinn Féin nor the IRA could be red-carded as the offences happened before they were yellow-carded. Sinn Féin's Gerry Kelly was also keen to point out that these are allegations and no one has been charged let alone convicted.
As far as Mr Trimble is concerned though, due process or when the offence originally occurred are irrelevancies: this is about politics or the potential collapse of politics and the IRA's inability to keep out of the plot.
Without these allegations there was some hope that the two governments and the pro-Belfast Agreement politicians could have charted a turbulent but eventually safe path away from crisis, but now we are in crisis. The only solution may be to buy time by Dr Reid suspending the Executive and other institutions in the hope that some serious and straight jaw-jaw will ensue.
Expect much recrimination in the weeks ahead but ultimately, any chance of political rescue rests with the IRA.