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

What struck me most of all was the degree of control exercised at those meetings by Adams and McGuinness. The level of political debate was very poor. Imagine a group of student Trots addicted to romantic nationalism and the whole thing glued together by the most awful elitism. I sometimes wondered what the reaction of Labour MPs and supporters in Britain -- who seemed to see the Provisionals as akin to the ANC -- would have been to the awful drivel that passed for political debate among the republican leadership behind closed doors.

Early in 1981, my wife and I separated. We remained good friends and divorced amicably in 1987. In late 1981 I met and fell in love with an English woman who lived in Kerry. Our daughter was born in June 1985, one week after I was elected as a Sinn Fein local councilor in Tralee. Later that year it became obvious that I was being viewed with a certain amount of suspicion by some local republicans. I took a backward step but realized that sooner rather than later I was going to have to answer some very difficult questions: my girlfriend also. Being English was not going to help her.

I decided that it was time to move. We left Ireland in November of that year and stayed in England over Christmas. I was introduced by the Metropolitan police to MI-5 in London in January, and moved at their request to Holland. My girlfriend and daughter joined me a couple of weeks later. I met the MI-5 for regular debriefing sessions until September 1986, and we returned to England in November of that year.

Two years later I walked into Tunbridge Wells police station in Kent and admitted my involvement in the two murders committed in Northern Ireland in 1974. Two RUC officers came to the station the next day and I returned to Northern Ireland with them that evening.

My reasons for giving myself up were fairly straightforward. I wanted to give evidence against the IRA leadership in both Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. I had no doubt that had I been allowed to I could have crippled the IRA's capacity to murder people. It quickly became apparent to me, if not to the RUC officers dealing with the case, that I was never going to be allowed to give evidence. I can only speculate as to the reasons. In May 1990 I pleaded guilty at Belfast Crown Court to the two murders and sixty or so related terrorist attacks which I had carried out in Tyrone in 1974 - 75. I was sentenced to life imprisonment plus five hundred or so years in total. I am now in Maghaberry prison in Northern Ireland where I am held in a special unit set aside for people at serious risk from paramilitary organizations. I am not allowed to write or speak publicly in any detail about this, or indeed about my time in prison in general. Were I to do so it is possible that I would not be allowed to write publicly again while in prison.

I now spend my time writing, which is what I have always wanted to do. While working against the IRA it was not possible for me to say or write what I wanted to or read the books I wanted to read --that was a hard part of it, spending all my time in the company of people I either disliked or loathed. I am working on some poetry, some short stories, and a novel, which I hope will shed some light on the real nature of extreme Irish nationalism. I am also working on a book about my time in the IRA.