Rogue British agents name MI5 bosses in video expos

national | miscellaneous | news report Tuesday November 19, 2002 23:44 by Neil Mackay Home Affairs Editor

Abandoned double agents spill Ulster Dirty War secrets Rogue British agents name MI5 bosses in video expos

THE identities of at least 12 of Britain's most senior intelligence officers are to be exposed in a new video made by a team of rogue undercover army agents.

The army agents, who were infiltrated inside the IRA and Sinn Fein, are releasing the video in the Irish Republic as part of a whistle-blowing campaign aimed at exposing the truth behind the Dirty War in Northern Ireland.

As well as revealing the identities of some of the most senior army, police and MI5 officers working in Ulster, the agents also disclose the techniques used to handle agents and expose some of the most shocking operations undertaken by the British security forces in Northern Ireland.

These include claims that MI5 helped one undercover army agent, who was working in deep cover inside the IRA for more than a decade, source infra-red equipment which was used to provide the IRA with state-of-the-art bomb detonation technology.

The video, Agents: No More Lies, is to be sold in the Irish Republic to get around British national security laws and Ministry of Defence censorship.

One of the agents behind the video is Kevin Fulton, a former British soldier. The Catholic from Newry was given false discharge papers from his regiment and told by the shadowy military intelligence agency, the Force Research Unit (FRU), to infiltrate the IRA. As part of long- running investigations by the Sunday Herald into Ulster's Dirty War, Fulton has already claimed he warned RUC Special Branch that the Omagh bombing was being planned at least 48 hours before the Real IRA attack killed 29 people.

Last week in the Sunday Herald, Fulton revealed that he took part in a series of terrorist crimes in order to preserve his cover inside the IRA. He said that at all times his handlers in the FRU were aware and also encouraged him to take part in robberies, bomb-making and the movement of weapons.

Fulton and the other rogue agents are fighting for the MoD to clear their criminal records give them relocation packages and new jobs, and for full military pensions.
In the video, which has been seen by the Sunday Herald, Fulton names four FRU officers -- including a serving lieutenant-colonel in the Intelligence Corps -- and one MI5 officer. He said: 'We are to distribute this in the Irish Republic because that is the only way we can get this information out. We want to get this information out so the MoD will honour its debt to us. If the MoD settled our disputes, this video would never see the light of day'.
The video will also be available on the internet for people in the UK to buy from a distributor in Ireland. Another agent in the video, the former British soldier Willie Carlin, who infiltrated the upper echelons of Sinn Fein for UK intelligence, names family members of senior FRU officers. He disclosed the identity of the wife of Brigadier Gordon Kerr. Kerr, from Aberdeen, was the officer commanding the FRU. He is now the British military attach? to Beijing.
The FRU is under investigation by Scotland Yard commissioner Sir John Stevens for colluding with paramilitaries in a decade-long campaign of state-sponsored assassinations. It is alleged FRU officers handed agents in both the IRA and the UVF details of targets.

The most controversial death being investigated is that of the Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane, who was shot dead by loyalist paramilitaries in 1989. It's alleged the FRU gave details of Finucane to loyalist terrorists who then carried out the murder. Kerr is to be interviewed in relation to this in the next few weeks.

In the video, Fulton tells how his handlers in the FRU helped him gain credibility in the eyes of the IRA, allowing him to make contact with the IRA and infiltrate republican ranks. FRU officers made a hoax bomb for Fulton using a plastic box and an oil can and then drove him to the main railway line between Belfast and Dublin. He placed the device and was then able to tell IRA men that he was behind the disruption to Ulster's rail network.

Fulton says he was encouraged to carry out most of his terrorist activity -- including bomb-making -- in the Irish Republic. 'Ninety per cent of what I did took place over the border,' he says. 'I was basically told that over there anything goes.

'If the IRA ask you to shoot someone in the arms and legs and you can't do it because it's illegal, then you aren't going to last long as an agent.'

Fulton also told how he helped develop a light-sensitive remote control device for booby-traps for the IRA with his handlers' full knowledge. The detonation equipment was set off by photographic flash units. In the video he says he made so many bombs -- all of which he told his handlers about -- that he lost count. Fulton also names intelligence handlers in Customs and Excise and C16 -- the RUC anti-racketeering unit -- who he warned about IRA drug deals. Again, he says, no action was taken.

Carlin, one of the other army agents in the video, tells how he befriended senior republicans, including Martin McGuinness. Carlin eventually became McGuinness's press officer and the treasurer of Sinn Fein in Derry.

Carlin says that, when his cover was eventually blown and the IRA worked out he was an informer he was flown out of Northern Ireland on, Margaret Thatcher's private jet. Last week, Fulton told the Sunday Herald that his handlers in the FRU told him that his illegal undercover work had been sanctioned in 1980 by the Thatcher cabinet.

Army and intelligence sources have reacted with horror to news that the video is to be released before the autumn.
One said: 'Irrespective of what members of the Army and the security services are alleged to have done, nobody should consider naming them publicly. This puts them at serious risk from IRA attack. It's a disgraceful gambit.

'It is even more damaging and dangerous to go around naming the family members of security personnel. But there isn't a lot we can do about it. If they are doing this in the Irish Republic it is completely out of our control.'