De Silva – Sinn Féin leader Alex Maskey also targeted – Spook Good Friday Agreement Hoax further exposed.
Human Rights lawyer Pat Finucane - murdered in front of his family in 1989
If we read closely enough between the lines, the forthcoming De Silva Report into the state sponsored murder of Pat Finucane – see here - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-20492994 will show that the British Cabinet under Margaret Thatcher (via its Joint Intelligence Committee) clearly approved a non attributable assassination campaign, which was meant to wipe out not only the leadership of Sinn Féin but also prominent advocates for Irish unity and civil rights such as Pat Finucane who were described as “fellow travellers” by the heads of the RUC.
News headlines yesterday told us that Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams received a letter from Sir Desmond de Silva QC advising him that his MI5-vetted report will also refer to a murder plot against Adams as well. Meanwhile, another prominent Sinn Féin figure (former Lord Mayor of Belfast Alex Maskey) has received a similar letter from De Silva saying that covert British forces in the North of Ireland also conspired with pro British death squads to murder him too.
In fact, what we now know is that the whole of the Sinn Féin leadership was to be taken out by “loyalist” killers who had been trained, armed and supplied with constantly updated targeting details by secret military or paramilitary units in “Northern Ireland” – principally RUC Special Branch, the Force Research Unit (FRU) and MI5 as an overarching command staff. Of course, once the guns and targeting assistance was given to loyalist killers, a lot of Catholics were killed at random as a result, but there is no doubt that the official plan was for a major assault on Sinn Fein.
But hold on. What we have been constantly told down the years by “Troubles” experts is that none of the above actually happened. The accepted narrative now is that the Sinn Féin leadership was actually in league with the very people trying their best to wipe them out.
MI5 HQ - The Buck Stops Here
I take my hat off to whatever chief spook dreamed up this deceit and managed to hoodwink otherwise sane journalists. It was a masterstroke. For whilst it is true that the “securocrat” hawks in Whitehall and at MI5 HQ had to grit their teeth and accept that the Government of Ireland Act be abolished. That a border poll is an intrinsic part of the Good Friday Agreement. Worse that the devil incarnate - Sinn Féin – would have to be part of the new dispensation, at the same time they left a series of ingenious boobytrap devices behind which certain media outlets and journalists seized upon because of their inherent anti Sinnn Féin animus.
Let us look very briefly at some classic boobytrap stories, many of which were put out by our favorite FRU spook Ian Hurst whose evidence at the Bloody Sunday Tribunal was demolished as untrustworthy:
Boobytrap 1
1) The FRU saved Gerry Adam’s life.
Yes, the covert gang who we now know was doing its best to have Adams killed was supposed to have saved Adam’s life by doctoring the bullets that were used to shoot him in 1984 as he sat in a car. Now this has to be true doesn’t it? Because that alleged supreme authority on the IRA, Ed Moloney, tells us so in his book on the IRA (p 578 of the 2007 Penguin paperback - A Secret History of the IRA):
“The other person whose life was saved by Brian Nelson and the FRU was Gerry Adams.”
Here Moloney tells us that Adams survived the gun attack with “remarkably light wounds”. His source for this is Martin Ingram (the cover name given to Ian Hurst by the Sunday Times). Indeed Liam Clarke of the Sunday Times ran the original version of this story in 1999. Neither of these veteran journalists seemed to have spoken to the surgeon (William Rutherford) who operated on Gerry Adams after the shooting. Or if they did they chose to ignore his testimony for some reason. Surgeon Rutherford told the BBC that two of the bullets that entered Adams’s body were very close to going right through his heart:
"I don't think he was particularly close to death from the actual injury he sustained. A few inches one way or another, it wouldn't have taken the bullet wounds to have been very different, slightly shifted down the chest, and they would have been right through the heart."
Source - BBC reporter Mark Devenport both in a BBC World Service report and in correspondence with this author.
Shall we just repeat what Rutherford said to demolish this "FRU saved Adams" canard once and for all?:
“... it wouldn't have taken the bullet wounds to have been very different, slightly shifted down the chest, and they would have been right through the heart."
In my view, many journalists have not been careful enough in checking Hurst's stories. With regard to his "doctored bullets" story, for example, common sense tells you that if a person stands at the side of the road and throws so much as a stone at a car, never mind fire allegedly doctored bullets into it, there is still an outside chance that the driver or one of its occupants will be killed. There is simply no way the FRU could have ensured Adams's safety in this way. Thus this story is rubbish and would almost be comical but for the fact that anti peace process factions have used it as a partial justification of their hatred of Adams in particular and Sinn Féin in general.
Ex FRU Ian Hurst mainly targeted Martin McGuinness
Boobytrap 2
Martin McGuinness was a British spy
Of course the other main propaganda target for Ian Hurst (aka Martin Ingram) and his FRU sidekick Peter Keeley (aka Kevin Fulton) was Martin McGuinness who was another target for Brian Nelson with his FRU handlers providing Nelson with the surveillance equipment he needed so that the UFF could assassinate McGuinness near Conway Mill in Belfast. Nelson describes this plot very fully in his diary.
What Hurst and Keeley, and whatever force in Whitehall that was undoubtedly backing them, wanted to foist on the public was the idea that McGuinness was an MI6 spy. To this end, they produced a quite sophisticated document which purported to show McGuinness in conversation with his MI6 handler. The document was a fake but don’t take my word for it. Not even Liam Clarke, who was once Ian Hurst’s greatest champion, would take the document, and said this in the Belfast Telegraph in December 2011:
“MR Hurst once backed claims that Martin McGuinness reported to MI6, the British foreign intelligence agency. This was based on a document passed to him, and accepted by him in good faith, after he left the Army but which appears to have been a forgery.”
Liam Clarke Belfast Telegraph, Wednesday 21st of December
So there we have it. Hurst’s MI6 document was a fake and his doctored bullets story was just ridiculous.
Of course, the effect of the stories peddled by Hurst and Keeley has been to distract attention from a murder campaign sponsored by the highest echelons of the British state. When we talk about the FRU we don’t think about Pat Finucane any more, we think about Fred Scapaticci. Or how the FRU "saved" Gerry Adams. Have either Hurst or Keeley revealed the specific role of one FRU officer in a murder? The answer is no.
Boobytrap 3
Fred Scappaticci ran Garda Eoin Corrigan
As a final example let us consider how Hurst and Keeley have become the star witnesses at the massively expensive Smithwick Tribunal. Hurst and Keeley have constantly said a Garda (Southern Irish policeman) called Eoin Corrigan was an IRA mole. Now what Hurst and Keeley have told Smithwick is that IRA man (and British agent) Fred Scappaticci was Eoin Corrigan’s handler and that it was through Scappaticci that Corrigan passed his information to the IRA in 1989 when two senor RUC officers were killed in the area between Newry and Dundalk as they returned from a meeting at Dundalk Garda station. This scenario is simply impossible.
For whilst it is true that Garda Corrigan was based in Dundalk in 1989, Fred Scappaticci was in Belfast during this period and did not move to Dundalk until January 1990 after he had been stood down from the IRA following the arrest of Danny Morrison and others. It is an impossible scenario but the Scappaticci-Corrigan connection has been reported as fact by a raft of seasoned reporters who again seem to have been too eager to rush to print.
On closer inspection, almost every story put into circulation by Hurst and Keeley turns to forensic dust.
I shall leave you, dear readers, with the verdict of the Bloody Sunday Tribunal on the quality of Ian Hurst’s evidence because it bears repeating. He exaggerated his role and his access to intelligence and he was an “unreliable” witness:
"147.270 - We are of the view that Martin Ingram to a substantial degree exaggerated the importance of his role at HQNI and his level of knowledge and access to intelligence.
148.81 - Martin Ingram gave confused accounts in the course of his evidence about the intelligence that he said he saw.
148.84 - We formed the view that Martin Ingram had, at best, an imperfect recollection of events and that it would be unwise to rely upon his evidence."
To my knowledge, the above damning verdict on Ian Hurst’s testimony has never been reported by the media outlets which consulted him so often on the intelligence game. To my mind, it serves to prove my point that Hurst and Keeley were never part of the solution to the Troubles. They were always part of the problem.
Pat Finucane – an appeal to journalists
This Sunday, a new commemorative mural will be unveiled in the Beechmount area of Belfast to the human rights lawyer Pat Finucane who was targeted by the FRU and murdered in front of his wife and children as they sat down to Sunday dinner. The Finucane family has issued a general invitation to join them at Beechmount Drive Belfast on Sunday 9th of December at 2pm.
To my mind, the best thing that journalists and writers can do is to highlight the disinformation campaign described above and assist the Finucane family and many other FRU victims in their appeals for a public inquiry. The MI5-vetted De Silva report will serve to further undermine the spook campaign, but only a fully independent inquiry will get to the heart of the matter. Furthermore, the sooner those journalists who fell for Ian Hurst and Peter Keeley's disinformation tricks put their hands up and admit they were wrong (and this particularly applies to Ed Moloney whom I once regarded as my journalistic mentor), the quicker we can work towards discovering the real truth behind Britain's secret campaign of assassination in Ireland.
I ndil cuimhne Pat Finucane
(1949 – 12 Feabhra/February 1989)
Call for an independent inquiry
see http://patfinucane.blogspot.ie/
Paul Larkin
Carraic, Gaoth Dobhair
Mí na Nollag, 2012