The army asked me to make bombs for the IRA, told me I had the Prime

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Jun 23, 2002 | by Home Affairs

Ulster's "dirty war" is in the headlines again following a BBC Panorama programme which aired allegations that British Military Intelligence colluded with terrorists in a campaign of assassination. The Panorama programme - which concludes tonight - was largely based on long-running investigations by the Sunday Herald and other newspapers.

The allegations have deepened today with one former British agent claiming he was told by his military handlers that his collusion with paramilitaries was sanctioned by Margaret Thatcher herself.

KEVIN Fulton is very clear about where the orders were coming from. "I was told that this was sanctioned right at the top," he says, sipping a Pepsi in the bar of a Glasgow hotel. "I was told 'there'll be no medals for this, and no recognition, but this goes the whole way to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister knows what you are doing."

This was 1980, and if Margaret Thatcher knew about the activities of military intelligence agents such as Fulton, then she was also aware her own military officers were planning to infiltrate British soldiers as "moles" into the IRA. These moles were ordered by their handlers to carry out terrorist crimes in order to keep their cover within the Provos so they could feed information on other leading republicans back to security forces.

For almost two years the Sunday Herald has been investigating the activities of the FRU - the Force Research Unit, an ultra-secret wing of British military intelligence. Fulton worked for the FRU for much of his career as an IRA mole. This unit, which has been under investigation by Scotland Yard commissioner Sir John Stevens for more than a decade, was involved in the murder of civilians in Northern Ireland.

Nicholas Benwell, a detective sergeant formerly attached to the Stevens Inquiry, says the Scotland Yard team came to one conclusion: that military intelligence was colluding with terrorists to help them kill so-called "legitimate targets" such as active republicans. FRU handlers passed documents and photographs to their agents operating within paramilitary groups detailing targets' movements and the whereabouts of their homes. Pictures were also handed over to help gunmen identify their victims. But there was a problem. The targeting was far from professional and many of the victims of these government- backed hit squads were innocent civilians.

In 1989 the FRU passed information to the UDA which the loyalist gang used to murder the Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane, who was shot dead in front of his wife and children. Last week, Prime Minister Tony Blair pledged that the Government was determined to uncover the truth about Finucane's murder. The Canadian judge Peter Cory who was called in by the government to investigate the case is expected to recommend a public inquiry. The Irish government is also pressing for an inquiry of its own.

So who was the overall controller of the FRU with its "licence to kill" republicans? Until now it seemed that responsibility for the activities of the FRU rested on the shoulders of one man - Brigadier Gordon Kerr, the Scottish officer who led the unit and is now the British military attache to Beijing. A two-part BBC Panorama programme, concluding tonight, much of it based on the Sunday Herald's previous investigations, puts Kerr squarely in the frame.

But if Fulton's claims are correct, then Kerr, soon to be questioned by the Stevens team, was just one link in a chain of command which went all the way to the cabinet and the Prime Minister. As Fulton says: "Kerr was just following orders. Soldiers don't make up the rules, they just do as they're told."

Fulton's story begins in 1979. He was 19, and had just enlisted in the First Battalion Royal Irish Rangers. Kevin Fulton isn't his real name, but a pseudonym used to protect his identity since turning whistle-blower on the activities of the British military, the RUC and the security services in Ulster's "dirty war". His work for military intelligence has been confirmed by FRU sources.

Fulton's military file quickly found its way onto the desks of the Intelligence Corps, the regiment which includes the FRU. It made interesting reading. Here was a Catholic from Newry, in the heart of a republican strong-hold, who seemed a loyal servant of the Crown. After only a few weeks in the army, Fulton's staff sergeant approached him. "I was told that some guys from military intelligence wanted to speak to me," Fulton says. "They asked me if I'd like to work for them and I said 'no' as I wanted to remain in uniform. They told me to think about the offer. They added that I shouldn't tell anyone about the visit and that if I was asked I should say they were from a military welfare group. The next time we met they asked me if I'd go to Newry with them. We looked through pictures of local characters and I put names to faces, saying if they had a republican background or not."

The two FRU officers, one of whom was Scottish, continued to try and persuade him to work with them. "They confessed they needed guys like me - Catholics from that part of Northern Ireland - in order to get inside the Provos," he says.