{"id":16094,"date":"2016-06-09T17:57:12","date_gmt":"2016-06-09T22:57:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hcstx.org\/?p=16094"},"modified":"2016-06-09T17:57:12","modified_gmt":"2016-06-09T22:57:12","slug":"history-of-terrorism-how-british-intelligence-infiltrated-the-ira","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/2016\/06\/09\/history-of-terrorism-how-british-intelligence-infiltrated-the-ira\/","title":{"rendered":"History of Terrorism: How British Intelligence Infiltrated the IRA"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is an article from The Atlantic in 2006 but I thought it a great read on the History of the IRA from the British perspective.-SF<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"IRA2\"<\/p>\n

I first met the man now called Kevin Fulton in London, on Platform 13 at Victoria Station. We almost missed each other in the crowd; he didn\u2019t look at all like a terrorist.<\/p>\n

He stood with his feet together, a short and round man with a kind face, fair hair, and blue eyes. He might have been an Irish grammar-school teacher, not an IRA bomber or a British spy in hiding. Both of which he was.Fulton had agreed to meet only after an exchange of messages through an intermediary. Now, as we talked on the platform, he paced back and forth, scanning the faces of passersby. He checked the time, then checked it again. He spoke in an almost impenetrable brogue, and each time I leaned in to understand him, he leaned back, suspicious. He fidgeted with several mobile phones, one devoted to each of his lives. \u201cI\u2019m just cautious,\u201d he said.<\/section>\n
<\/div>\n
He lives in London now, but his wife remains in Northern Ireland. He rarely goes out, for fear of bumping into the wrong person, and so leads a life of utter isolation, a forty-five-year-old man with a lot on his mind.During the next few months, Fulton and I met several times on Platform 13. Over time his jitters settled, his speech loosened, and his past tumbled out: his rise and fall in the Irish Republican Army, his deeds and misdeeds, his loyalties and betrayals. He had served as a covert foot soldier in what has come to be called the Dirty War: a cutthroat and secret British effort to infiltrate and undermine the IRA, carried out in the shadows of the infamous Troubles. \u201cIt was a lot grayer and darker,\u201d Fulton said of the clandestine war. \u201cDarker even than people can imagine.\u201dBut there\u2019s this: it worked. British spies subverted the IRA from within, leaving it in military ruin, and Irish Republicans\u2014who want to end British rule in Northern Ireland and reunite the island\u2014have largely shifted their weight to Sinn F\u00e9in and its peaceable, political efforts. And so the Dirty War provides a model for how to dismantle a terrorist organization. The trick is to not mind killing, and to expect dying.This came clear to Kevin Fulton on the day his cover as an IRA man collapsed. It happened inside an IRA safe house in north Belfast, in 1994. Fulton sat facing a wall, blindfolded. Curtains shut out the pale light of winter. Bottles lay scattered on the floor, and the place stank of stale beer. An interrogator paced the room, his boots scuffing against the floor. He said, \u201cI know what yer done, boyo.\u201d<\/p>\n

He pressed a thick index finger against Fulton\u2019s temple, hard, then leaned in close to Fulton\u2019s ear and murmured a series of threats: The IRA hunts down all snitches and executes them. Two quick bullets in the brain. Remember the boy from County Armagh who left behind the pregnant wife. Remember the boy from County Louth who left seven children mewling for a father. Remember them all.<\/i><\/p>\n

Read the Remainder at The Atlantic<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

For Further Reading on the IRA Check out the Conflicts Archive on the Internet,\u00a0CAIN<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/section>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is an article from The Atlantic in 2006 but I thought it a great read on the History of the IRA from the British perspective.-SF I first met the man now called Kevin Fulton in London, on Platform 13 at Victoria Station. We almost missed each other in the crowd; he didn\u2019t look at…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[4076,2908,2004,5944,475,1725,1286,6051,4880,272],"tags":[12146,12147,10611,8723,11735,12148,757,12149,7967,2278],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16094"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16094\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}