The lying: a former terrorist describes his life in the IRA, and looks at the current peace negotiations through the prism of what he learned in his old life

National Review, Jan 27, 1997 by Sean O'Callaghan

In March or April of 1975, I was in a flat in Monaghan town. The flat was a base for IRA men from the East Tyrone Brigade. That evening there were perhaps eight people, all full-time IRA activists, all on the run from Northern Ireland. I was making tea when a news item on the television about the death of an RUC woman in a bomb explosion was greeted with, "I hope she's pregnant and we get two for the price of one."

I felt utterly sickened and revolted. More so even when I realized who had spoken -- a Tyrone man who was second in command of the Provisional IRA and a man I held in the highest regard; a man to whom I had thought seriously about addressing my doubts and fears. I went to another room where I just wanted to cry my eyes out. That man later became the chief of staff of the Provisional IRA. He was chief of staff when the present peace process began. Small wonder that I have serious doubts about the Provisional IRA's commitment to peace.

Shortly afterward I went home to Tralee and resigned quietly from the IRA. I just cited personal reasons. People probably thought I was just tired and needed a break. I was not yet 21. Shortly after, I went to London where I started an office and industrial cleaning business and got married. I kept in touch with events in Ireland and wondered what to do, if anything, about what I had been involved in.

THE hatred of informers is burned so deep in the Irish nationalist psyche as to be almost incomprehensible to people not from that tradition. Informers had always betrayed the Irish. Whenever the Irish plotted a rebellion, the English had an informer to warn them. In my family the postman was regarded as a potential police informer. The fear, hatred, and loathing is impossible to explain. Yet that is what I decided to become, and I am glad I did.

My wife and I moved to Ireland in 1979 and I quickly rejoined the IRA. As soon as I had done so I contacted a detective whom I knew to be efficient, tight-mouthed, and opposed politically and morally to the Provisional IRA. I worked with him for six years. It was a time of often frantic activity for me and there were few areas of Sinn Fein or IRA activity that I did not gain access to in those years.

We had many successes against the IRA in that period. Some I can mention now, others have to wait for another day. My work brought me into contact with almost every IRA department and most republican leaders. We broke up and captured IRA training camps, foiled many IRA operations. One was a plot to kill the Prince and Princess of Wales at a charity concert in the Dominion Theatre in the West End of London during the British general election in 1983. It was also intended that I should plant 16 small bombs on beaches. This was based on a similar type of operation carried out by the Basque separatist group ETA on Spanish beaches.

The plot to murder the prince and princess was intended as retaliation for the deaths of the hunger strikers of 1981. I was to place a bomb containing roughly twenty pounds of frangex in the toilet at the rear of the royal box. I went into the theater and knew the plan was feasible. Buried behind tiles and equipped with a 32-day delay timer it would have killed or injured anybody in the immediate area. The Garda officer that I worked with came secretly to Liverpool to see me. We devised a plan which we hoped would foil the attacks and allow me to avoid IRA suspicion and continue to work against them.