UK drops prosecution to protect its Spies in Ire.

[Moses]

Times Online December 16, 2005


Denis Donaldson, centre, with Martin McGuinness, left, and Gerry Adams in Stormont last on December 9 2005

Adams aide 'was British spy for 20 years'
By Simon Freeman



A prominent republican and trusted lieutenant of Gerry Adams was expelled from Sinn Fein tonight after he was accused of being a British security services agent for 20 years.

Denis Donaldson, a 55-year-old former head of administration at Stormont was ousted from the party in a new twist to a spying scandal which triggered the collapse of the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Mr Donaldson's arrest in October 2002, along with that of his son-in-law Ciaran Kearney and William Mackessy, a civil servant, became known as Stormontgate - a republican spy ring at the centre of government.

Eight days ago, the Public Prosecution Service announced it was no longer pursuing a case against the three men because it was not in the public interest.

Today's turn of events indicates that far from being a republican spying on the Government, Mr Donaldson was a British double agent working at the heart of Sinn Fein.

Tony Blair, the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith and the Northern Ireland Secretary, Peter Hain, now face demands from unionists and moderate nationalists for a parliamentary statement explaining why the case was withdrawn.

Mr Adams said that Mr Donaldson had approached Sinn Fein’s chairman Declan Kearney yesterday after being warned by the Police Service of Northern Ireland he was going to be exposed publicly as an agent and his life was in danger.

Asked if he had ever suspected that there had been an informer within Sinn Fein’s ranks, Mr Adams said: "I was very, very suspicious and some of us were very suspicious when the events of 2002 unfolded, when we saw this hugely-orchestrated operation at Stormont because we knew there was no Sinn Fein spy ring at Stormont.

"More recently when this case collapsed, when the British did not prosecute, that suspicion was deepened. I had suspicions that there was somebody wrong within this - I had no specific suspicions about Dennis Donaldson."

A Police Service of Northern Ireland spokesman said: "Police do not confirm or deny whether an individual is or was an informant."

Unionists have demanded, with no success, that the "public interest" in dropping the charges be explained. It is likely that today's developments may go some way to explaining what seemed, even by Ulster’s standards, a murky decision.

DUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson said: "This has certainly given an added twist to the entire Stormontgate scandal, and confirms our view that the reasons the court decided not to prosecute was because to do so would have compromised an agent of the state and sensitive security documents. It also raises the question that the decision not to proceed was politically motivated."

The Northern Ireland office strongly rejected Mr Adams’s claims.

In a statement, it said: "We completely reject any allegation that the police operation in October 2002 was for any reason other than to prevent paramilitary intelligence gathering.

"The fact remains that a huge number of stolen documents were recovered by the police. In terms of the dropping of the prosecution, that was a matter for the independent prosecuting authorities and there was no political interference whatsoever in that decision."

Mr Donaldson is fortunate in at least one respect. The traditional fate of a republican charged by his or her own comrades of working for the British was to be condemned to death. The bodies of scores of earlier "volunteers" have been found, shot through the back of head on a lonely roadside.

Mr Donaldson could not be contacted last night.
 

[Moses]

Gerry Adams himself seems to be working for the Brits. Does any one suspect him?

[Moses]

Sinn Fein official unmasked as spy flees to Continent

MURDO MACLEOD
POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT

A PROMINENT Irish Republican who has been unmasked as a British government spy was last night believed to have fled to the Continent in fear of his life.

Denis Donaldson's house in West Belfast was found abandoned, with informed sources saying there was no prospect of him returning to Ulster or the Republic of Ireland because of the risk of being killed. Scotland has also been ruled out as a bolthole.

Unionists last night renewed their calls for a full public inquiry into the "Stormontgate" affair which saw Ulster's assembly suspended in 2002 amid allegations of spying by Sinn Fein officials.

Donaldson, Sinn Fein's former head of administration at Stormont, was expelled from the party on Friday after he owned up to working for British intelligence and the Northern Irish Special Branch for 20 years.

He had been one of three Republican officials charged with spying at Stormont, but last week the Public Prosecution Service in Northern Ireland controversially decided to drop the case against all three.
In his statement admitting being a British government informer, Donaldson denied that the Republicans had ever carried out any spying at Stormont.

He had issued his statement from a hotel in Dublin after fleeing Belfast.

Although the IRA has put its arms beyond use and should in theory not be able to harm Donaldson, it is feared that individuals within the Republican movement would want to kill him in revenge for having been a British mole.

One informed Belfast-based source told Scotland on Sunday: "He has gone to a bolthole on the Continent, either France or Italy. He can basically forget about coming back to West Belfast. Even if the Sinn Fein leadership says he is not to be harmed, he will always worry that someone from the movement will regard him as having betrayed 'the cause' and will want to get him."

The source added: "He won't have gone to Scotland either. He will regard Scotland as much too risky."
Throughout the Troubles a series of Republicans have been unmasked as British agents. Many died - their bodies dumped with an IRA bullet in the head.

Sinn Fein last night accused the UK government of having operated the only spy ring at Stormont.

The party's chief negotiator, Martin McGuinness, said: "It is very, very clear from Sinn Fein's perspective - and I think this is shared increasingly by many other people within our society - that there was a spy ring at Stormont, but it was a British spy ring controlled by securocrats, by people within the establishment who are hostile to the peace process."

The "spying" is believed to have consisted of Sinn Fein officials using their position at Stormont to secure access to previously confidential files from the Northern Ireland Office which could have been used to help piece together information about the security services.

But one informed source claimed that any espionage by Sinn Fein would have been a cosmetic exercise designed to keep extremists in the Republican movement from resorting to violence.

She said: "If there was spying then it was gathering of information that would never be used. It worked like this: the IRA guys and the hardliners keep agitating for a return to the 'armed struggle'. So to keep them on board the leadership would say, 'Don't worry, our boys are in there using the system, carrying out spying.'"

But a spokesman for the Ulster Unionist Party renewed calls for a full public inquiry.

He said: "What must now come out is the truth about what was going on. Right now it seems that the Republicans are saying, 'How dare those Brits spy on our spies?'"

[Moses]

Questions left unanswered after ‘outing’ of British spy

18 December 2005  By Colm Heatley and Paul T Colgan

It was a drab October morning in 2002, like any other at Stormont until a convoy of Land Rovers from the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) drove up the avenue.

Within hours, the powersharing Assembly was effectively collapsed and Sinn Féin was in the dock for spying - an allegation that had profound political consequences for the North.

Swarms of armed PSNI officers descended on Sinn Féin's offices in a raid that the public was told was part of an investigation into republican intelligence gathering.

The power-sharing experiment was in tatters. Unionists who had always been hostile to the idea had a perfect reason to walk away from the Assembly.


Only days earlier Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble had warned that he would abandon joint government with Sinn Féin unless the IRA disbanded by the following January.

He had backed himself into a political corner and conceded significant ground to the dissidents within his own party. The so-called Operation Torsion, claimed republicans, was designed to “Save Dave'‘. [And Dave is a proponent of the neocon agenda]

Bill Lowry, head of the PSNI's special branch, oversaw the investigation and arrest operation. Handcuffed and arrested, senior Sinn Féin members were led away to answer charges of using their political position at the Assembly to spy for the IRA, charges republicans always denied.

Ciaran Kearney, Denis Donaldson and William Mackessy were charged with gathering intelligence likely to be of use to terrorists. An excited Trimble described the uncovering of the alleged spy ring as “ten times bigger than Watergate'‘.

The three arrested men denied the politically devastating claims and ten days ago the charges were, without notice, withdrawn in the “public interest'‘.

Given this week's events, the only certainty in the ‘Stormontgate' affair is that the only spy working at Stormont was a British one and his role was to report to MI5 and Special Branch the secrets of Sinn Féin.
Denis Donaldson's ‘outing' as the most senior spy to date within republican ranks began early last week when he was told by his handlers that the game was up.

He was, they said, going to be unmasked as an informer by a Sunday newspaper today.

Nothing could be done. Of course, in all likelihood, the leak could only have come from British Intelligence or PSNI Special Branch.

Last Wednesday, Donaldson walked into Sinn Féin's office on the Falls Road in Belfast and told his Sinn Féin ‘line manager' of the visit by the PSNI to his Andersonstown home.

Declan Kearney, Sinn Féin's six county organiser, relayed the news to the party leadership. That night, Donaldson revealed his 20-year role to Kearney and Leo Green, adviser to Sinn Féin MEP Bairbre De Brun. He was suspended from the party immediately.

The next day he was expelled.

By Friday the shockwaves were reverberating across the country. According to republican sources, the party's leadership had feared that a senior mole had been operating in Stormont for some time. However, Donaldson's outing is said to have come to many as a huge shock.

The Sunday Business Post has learned Donaldson was given the opportunity to go into the PSNI's protective custody last weekend. If he had, then the consequences for Sinn Féin would have been potentially earth-shattering.

With the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) set to report on the status of the IRA within the coming weeks, the peace process is at yet another crucial juncture. It is widely expected in political circles that the monitoring body will give the IRA a “clean bill of health'‘.

However, had the IMC been able to report that a senior Sinn Féin member was being protected by the PSNI, the implication would be that the republican organisation was still functioning and still prepared to carry out killings.

In retrospect, the clues to Donaldson's role as an agent can be traced back to 2002.

He was the first republican ever to be granted permission by the British to carry a personal protection weapon. He was granted the licence in the weeks running up to the Stormontgate arrest operation, which must have raised eyebrows in republican circles.

There were also clues last year when lawyers acting for the prosecution in the Stormontgate case applied for a public immunity certificate.

Had the order been granted it would have meant that sensitive information relating to the case - or more accurately, Donaldson's role as an informer - would have been denied to the defence, and never have surfaced in public.

There are two reasons the application could have been denied: that it defied justice or that it stopped the accused from mounting a fair defence. Unusually, the application was denied, and from that moment the prosecution case was dead in the water.

Stalling and prevarication marked out the Stormontgate case, which by then had ground to a halt.
Donaldson is Sinn Féin's Freddie Scappaticci. His importance in the republican movement, particularly politically, was huge.

As chief administrator of Sinn Féin at Stormont he had privileged access to confidential republican documents, outlining debates on some of the most sensitive issues facing the party.

As chief administrator he was able to read documents from all sections of the party.

“It was a huge investment of trust in him,” said one senior Sinn Féin member.

“In terms of what he had access to, it was a lot. He was there when we had our ministries up and running, he was seeing things from all over the six counties and clearly he was reporting on that to the British.

“He was able to look over Sinn Féin documents that were strictly confidential.”

However, republicans were keen to point out that he was never on Sinn Féin's negotiating team nor the party's ruling executive. One described him as “middle management'‘. But Donaldson was well regarded by senior republicans and his advice was sought on a wide range of issues.

He was a trusted aide of Sinn Féin policymakers and his unmasking has caused deep embarrassment within republican ranks. It was claimed yesterday by a Belfast newspaper that, in addition to his role within Sinn Féin, Donaldson was also a senior IRA intelligence officer.

At crucial moments in republican history - the decision to take seats in local councils in the 1980s, to go into a power-sharing assembly with unionists, to decommission IRA weapons - his voice was added to the debate.
Far more importantly, though, he was able to relay the internal debates within republicanism to his British spymasters, giving the British government an advantage in political negotiations.

“A human bug'‘ is how one republican described him.

The astounding revelation that Donaldson was working as an informer for more than 20 years raises fresh concerns about the ongoing intelligence war being fought in the North by and often between, Special Branch and MI5.

It is also likely that, from the outset of the Stormontgate affair, the PSNI and the Northern secretary of state Peter Hain [BLAIR] would have known the case had no chance of success, given Donaldson's role as an agent.

However, the case was allowed to proceed despite the political paralysis it caused in the North.

At a hastily convened press conference in Dublin last Friday night, Donaldson publicly admitted his role as an informer. He also denied a Sinn Féin spy-ring ever existed.

“I was not involved in any republican spy-ring in Stormont,” he said. “The so-called Stormontgate affair was a scam and a fiction. It never existed. It was created by Special Branch.”

The question remains: why did the British intelligence services not do more to protect Donaldson and why was he arrested in the first place?

One possibility is that Donaldson had outlived his usefulness and that his outing would be the latest salvo in an operation that had always been designed to embarrass and cause difficulties for Sinn Féin.

Another theory is that the police who conducted the raid on Stormont were unaware of Donaldson's dual role.
That seems a less likely scenario given Donaldson's admission last Friday that he met his Special Branch handlers just two days before the raid.

Perhaps most likely is that Donaldson's ‘outing' was part of a battle between Special Branch and British Intelligence.

After the collapse of the court case last week neither group wanted to take responsibility for the fiasco, which had embarrassed not only them, but the British government in the North.

Outing Donaldson partially explains why the Stormontgate case had not gone ahead. The plot has thickened in the last 24 hours, however, with suggestions that Donaldson may not in fact be the key agent behind Stormontgate.

There was speculation yesterday that his exposure as a police agent may have been planned to give cover to someone more useful to British Intelligence.[/color][/b]

The whole affair has left republicans wondering who will be next to be unmasked and how much damage Donaldson actually did to the republican movement over the past two decades. Certainly few believe that the British have just given up their most senior republican spy.

One of the tasks facing Adams and McGuinness in the coming days will be to reassure republicans and ease tensions within the ranks.

However, the key question facing politicians north and south is why such an elaborate spy network is still in place almost eight years after the Good Friday Agreement was signed.

In 1999 a bug was found in a car used by the Sinn Féin negotiating team at Stormont.

Last year a sophisticated listening device was discovered in a room used by republicans for private discussions.

Perhaps now the power of the spy-masters working in the shadows will finally be addressed.
 

[Moses]

Secys State Northern Ireland, under Blair:

Mo Mowlam (May 1997 to October 1999), Peter Mandelson (October 1999 to January 2001); John Reid (January 2001 to October 2002); Paul Murphy (October 2002 to May 2005); Peter Hain May 2005 to current day.

[Moses]

'Adams should quit': SDLP vice chair
18/12/2005 - 10:14:44
Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams (pictured) should quit in the wake of spying allegations which have rocked his party, a leading SDLP member claimed today.

As pressure mounted on the British government to hold an inquiry into the scandal which brought down Northern Ireland’s devolved government in 2002, SDLP vice chair Eddie Espie said Mr Adams should take the heat for the revelation that one of his aides Denis Donaldson was a British spy.

Mr Espie said: “This project of super collusion happened under Gerry Adams’ watch. For 20 years, Denis Donaldson, one of Adams’s closest allies, has been feeding information to the British intelligence services.

“Only a few days ago, Gerry Adams was happy to appear alongside Donaldson on the steps of Stormont, presenting him as a ’victim of securocrats’ and trying to tell everyone to move on from the Stormontgate affair.

“Now it transpires that Adams was singing the praises of an arch-British agent.

“As party leader throughout the period of Donaldson’s double agency, Gerry Adams was party leader. The buck stops with him. The only option now open is for Gerry Adams to resign.”

Republicans have been reeling since it emerged on Friday that Mr Donaldson, Sinn Féin’s former head of administration at Stormont, was working for British Army and police intelligence since the mid-1980s.

The revelation came eight days after the Public Prosecution Service announced in Belfast Crown Court it was dropping a case against Mr Donaldson, his son-in-law Ciaran Kearney and civil servant William Mackessy based on claims that they were involved in a republican intelligence gathering operation.

The three men were arrested in October 2002 and a high profile raid by police took place on Sinn Féin’s offices at Stormont.
Allegations that republicans were running a spy ring led to the suspension of power-sharing by the then Northern Ireland Secretary John Reid.

Devolution has not been restored since.

Sinn Féin has strenuously denied there was ever any republican spy ring.

On Thursday, Mr Donaldson, a friend of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands, confessed to party officials he had been spying on them for two decades after he was warned by police he was about to be publicly exposed as an agent.

His expulsion from Sinn Féin was revealed by Gerry Adams on Friday who also unmasked the 55-year-old as a spy.

Mr Donaldson later confirmed the claims in a statement on Friday night.

The former Sinn Féin official said he had been recruited by the security services after he was compromised at a vulnerable time in his life.

He also stuck to Sinn Féin’s claims that there was no republican spy ring at Stormont.

“I was not involved in any republican spy ring in Stormont,” he said.

“The so-called Stormontgate affair was a scam and a fiction. It never existed. It was created by Special Branch.

“I deeply regret my activities with British intelligence and RUC/PSNI Special ranch. I apologise to anyone who has suffered as a result of my activities as well as to my former comrades and especially to my family who have become victims in all of this.”
Democratic Unionist MEP Jim Allister yesterday called on British Prime Minister Tony Blair to make a statement in the House of Commons tomorrow on the Stormontgate affair.

Ulster Unionist leader Reg Empey has also demanded an explanation.

Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness yesterday insisted the only spy ring which operated at Stormont was run by the British intelligence services.

He stopped short of calling for a public inquiry into the affair.
The Mid Ulster MP told BBC Radio Ulster: “What would a public inquiry achieve? In the circumstances the unionists have called for an inquiry. Let’s see if they get one. Let‘s see if that happens.
“It is very, very clear from Sinn Féin’s perspective – and I think this is shared increasingly by many other people within our society – that there was a spy ring at Stormont, but it was a British spy ring controlled by securocrats, by people within the establishment who are hostile to the peace process.”

[Moses]

Focus: Stormont scandal
------------------------------------------------------------------------
20 years of treachery

Henry McDonald reports on the fallout from a tumultuous week when one British secret agent was exposed and a frantic hunt began to find more spies in Sinn Fein
Henry McDonald
Sunday December 18, 2005

Observer
At the side of Sinn Fein's Belfast headquarters is a mural the size of an average terraced house, depicting the smiling face of Bobby Sands, the first IRA hunger striker to die in 1981.

The image is based on a photograph from inside Long Kesh in 1974 taken by a fellow prisoner who had smuggled a camera into the jail. The original picture also includes one Denis Donaldson, a fellow IRA prisoner who had become a close friend of Sands the year before.

For 36 long hours last week Donaldson, 55, faced his friends and comrades inside the very same building. He must have thought about Sands as he confessed to 20 years of treachery, for working for the British security forces inside the republican movement, an admission that not long ago was the equivalent to signing your own death warrant.

Donaldson would have known that, once his confession was complete, he would stand accused within the republican faithful of betraying everything Bobby Sands stood for and died for. Some of those who, like Donaldson, had given life-long service to the republican movement were bitter about the 'verdict' of the midweek interrogation. 'During the war he would have gone down a hole [republican-speak for execution and secret burial]', one East Tyrone IRA veteran told The Observer this weekend. 'There are men in their graves for far less treachery than him.'

The events that exposed that 'treachery' would not have been out of place in a John le Carré novel. They involve allegations of spy rings, break-ins at police headquarters, double agents and moles at the heart of government.

The exposure of Denis Donaldson began on 8 December in an extraordinary decision by Northern Ireland's Director of Public Prosecutions. Donaldson, along with his son-in-law Ciaran Kearney and civil servant William Mackessy, had been facing charges for running a republican spy ring, the exposure of which in October 2002 led to the collapse of the powersharing government in Belfast.

During the investigation the Police Service of Northern Ireland discovered thousands of documents, including the personal details of police officers, prison officers, civil servants and even rival politicians. As a result, around 1,200 people were moved from their homes, at an estimated cost to the taxpayer of £30 million.

Yet after two and a half years the DPP suddenly announced that it was dropping all the charges against the trio on the grounds of 'public interest'. Immediately a political storm blew up at Westminster with the unionist parties and the SDLP demanding that the British government reveal exactly what the DPP meant by 'public interest'. There were murmurings about the need to protect a high-placed informant. Speculation reached fever pitch by the start of last week, with MPs demanding answers from both the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State, Peter Hain, in the House of Commons.

With the fear that Donaldson's name was about to leak out to the press and that by the weekend he would stand accused as the man the DPP had sought to protect, PSNI officers visited Donaldson's West Belfast home to inform him that he was about to be unmasked as a long-term British agent. By late last Wednesday, Donaldson had made a statement to his solicitor and then faced a long night and day of questioning by comrades. As far as The Observer can establish, there was no use of physical violence to extract a 'confession' from the republican veteran.

By mid-afternoon on Friday, rumours were flying that a top-level informer within the ranks of Sinn Fein was about to be exposed. And at 4pm in Dublin a rather crestfallen Gerry Adams emerged alongside Gerry Kelly, former IRA bomber and Sinn Fein's justice spokesman, to confirm the existence of a British spy at the heart of the party's machine in Stormont.

During a tense and nervous press conference, Adams made some extraordinary claims about the man he is normally seen beside on these occasions - Denis Donaldson. 'He was not a member of our negotiating team. He was not involved in any of the senior leadership forums within the party. He was not a member of the ard comhairle [ruling body]. But, yes, he was a long-standing member,' Adams said.

In fact, Denis Donaldson was more than just a 'long-standing member'. In the mid to late Eighties he held an important position as director of Sinn Fein's international department.

More crucially, Donaldson was part of a so-called 'kitchen cabinet' of advisers within Sinn Fein and the IRA who supported and nurtured Gerry Adams's peace strategy.

'To say Denis was just a "long-standing member of the party" is simply untrue. He was not only Adams's chief-of-staff at Stormont, he was one of his closest aides and allies. He probably knew what colour of toilet paper Gerry wiped his bum with,' one former IRA prisoner said yesterday.

In the 36 hours or so that Donaldson was in the company of his old comrades, the republican leadership had the time to turn the tables on the British and attempt a propaganda coup. At the press conference on Friday evening Adams said Donaldson's role as an agent proved that there was a spy ring, but one run by and concocted by the British. Martin McGuinness repeated that claim yesterday.

'It was a British spy ring controlled by securocrats, by people within the establishment who are hostile to the peace process,' McGuinness said.

Donaldson's 20-year career as a high-placed informant certainly raises questions about the strategy of the security forces regarding the IRA.

The road to what became known as 'Stormontgate' in October 2002 began seven months earlier, on St Patrick's Day, when the IRA pulled off what seemed like an audacious intelligence coup against the police. An IRA unit broke into the normally highly secure Castlereagh PSNI station and stole files belonging to Special Branch. The files of the anti-terrorist agency included the names and addresses not only of officers but also codenames of informants.

Some PSNI officers, however, suspected there was more to the Castlereagh break-in than just a major security blunder. Suspicion quickly fell on an American civilian who had worked as a chef at the heavily fortified police base. Larry Zaitschek (who is still in the United States but faces arrest if he returns to Northern Ireland) was later alleged to have been involved in the break-in. The PSNI claimed Zaitschek provided the IRA with the plans of the building.

As the investigation into Castlereagh led to the raid on Stormont in October 2002, it emerged that Donaldson and Zaitschek were close acquaintances. Security sources this weekend said it was Donaldson's idea to bring Zaitschek to Northern Ireland, set him up with a house in East Belfast and burrow his way into Special Branch headquarters. 'The big question we are asking ourselves today is whether Denis did this on behalf of another wing of the intelligence services. Was the idea to open up the door to Castlereagh so the Provos would get caught in a trap?' one senior police officer said.

Zaitschek strenuously denies any involvement in the incident.

Donaldson belonged to a six-man IRA intelligence unit attached to the Provisionals' general headquarters staff. According to another former agent, Donaldson was in the invaluable position, from a British viewpoint, of being a confidant to the most important member of that team - Seanna 'Sid' Walsh.

Sid Walsh came to prominence earlier this year when he became the public face of the IRA. In July, Walsh was the figure chosen to read out the IRA's statement that it was decommissioning its weapons of war.

Sean O'Callaghan, the ex-IRA southern commander and a spy inside the Provos for the Gardai, said Donaldson's friendship with Walsh would have given the British invaluable insight into republican thinking.

'Seanna is, after Adams, the most important strategist of them all. Denis and Sid were great pals; they even went on holiday together. So it would have been a real gain for the Brits if they could get Denis to in turn get Sid talking. It was a way into the thinking of one of the most intelligent and important IRA members in Ireland,' he said.

On the ground in West Belfast and in Donaldson's native Short Strand, the East Belfast Catholic enclave where he grew up, there is despair that one of their most trusted comrades had been working for the 'enemy'. And although Sinn Fein has tried to make political capital out of the crisis, by blaming the entire Stormontgate on the perfidious British, they have been unable to dispel the widespread suspicion this weekend that there are more highly placed informants operating within Sinn Fein and the IRA. One republican source said at least one Sinn Fein worker with a track record in the IRA is now under suspicion as the informant who first tipped off the PSNI about the extent of the spying at Stormont.

Another senior police officer went as far as to say 'that at Castlereagh one of the branches of the security services had dangled the bait to the IRA, and the Provos bit at it. They thought they were getting the crown jewels, but it led Special Branch to a major spying operation at Stormont'.

Asked if there were more informants in danger of being unmasked, he replied: 'The leadership must be looking around and wondering who the hell they can trust. But one thing is for sure - Denis Donaldson did not tip off anyone about Stormontgate. He was definitely not the source, of that I am certain.'

Despite Donaldson's apology to his former comrades, Martin McGuinness sounded in an unforgiving mood last night.

'There has always been in conflict situations around the world people who betray their comrades and colleagues and betray the very organisation they publicly claim to be supportive of,' the Mid Ulster MP and former IRA chief-of-staff said.

In the past the 'betray' word would have spelt certain doom for those accused of treachery. Denis Donaldson would not have been 'confessing' inside Sinn Fein headquarters but rather some squalid barn or a rural outhouse in South Armagh, in front of far less sympathetic 'comrades' from the IRA's 'nutting squad'. He can only thank the peace process that he helped piece together, not only for Sinn Fein but also it seems for his British paymasters, that he hasn't suffered the fate of other far less fortunate IRA informers.

Secrets and spies: the Stormont links
17 March 2002 The IRA stages an audacious raid on Special Branch HQ at Castlereagh police station, east Belfast.
4 October 2002 An investigation into the Castlereagh raid unravels a spy ring at Stormont involving senior republicans.
6 October 2002 Denis Donaldson's west Belfast home is raided and he is charged with holding information on police officers and British soldiers.
14 October 2002 Powersharing executive at Stormont collapses after David Trimble pulls out in protest at alleged IRA spying.
8 December 2005 The Northern Ireland Director of Public Prosecutions drops charges against Donaldson and two other men. He does so 'in the public interest'.
16 December 2005 Donaldson expelled from Sinn Fein.

---

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

[Moses]

  Police dirty tricks on Castlereagh alleged
Sunday, May 18, 2003
By Barry O'Kelly

The man accused of setting up the alleged IRA raid on Castlereagh Police Station has been told by detectives that he will be denied access to his four-year-old son unless he provides them with information. Larry Zaits chek's son Pearse and his ex-wife have been brought into a witness protection programme by police probing the break-in on St Patrick's Day last year.

"It's a Stakeknife, an illusion. They have taken my son, the most important person in the world to me. They have said: `Give us the information.' They want me to barter information for access to my son with information that I don't have," said the NewYork chef.

"It does not matter what I think. None of this makes sense. People say to me it was Special Branch who broke in, but it's irrelevant to me. I have absolutely no idea who was responsible. I have been interviewed several times. I have told them what I heard. But they are only interested in pointing the finger at me," he said.
Since he was denied access to his son in April last year, Zaitschek has received phone calls from intelligence officers offering him ten-minute chats with the boy in return for information which he says he does not have.
Zaitschek, 32,was in Castlereagh station's gym with his son hours before the raid in March last year. He said he did not learn about the break-in until police contacted him on his mobile phone some time later.

He then volunteered to be interviewed by police in Willowfield Police Station in Belfast. He supplied fingerprints and forensic material to the detectives.

"I have no knowledge of it. I was set up.This was planned a long time beforehand," he said.
Zaitschek revealed that his child was later quizzed by the investigation team. "They have interrogated my four-year-old boy. They showed him around the place, and asked him things like `where did your daddy park the car?' And my boy is saying `leave my dad alone.' It was unbelievable."

Zaitschek told the police who he had seen in the police station in the hours leading up to the break-in.
As he left the station that evening, he said goodbye to the officers on duty, including a policeman from the canteen who walked him to his car.

Zaitschek ridiculed the idea that an IRA mole would bring his four-year-old child with him on a top secret break-in operation.

He supplied the investigation team with his contact details when he left the North to return to take up a new job in New York. "I thought that would be the end of it," Zaitschek said.

Zaitschek was later linked in the media with a well-known republican, Bobby Storey. However, he said he had not even heard of Storey until he read a report that he was supposedly best friends with Storey.

On March 29 last year Zaitschek found himself surrounded by six FBI agents in an underground station in central New York. "They were wearing earpieces and trenchcoats and they bustled me into a coffee shop."
They accused of him of being involved in the break-in and offered to bring him into the witness protection programme. They asked him to think of his son, Pearse. "I was furious. I couldn't believe it. I didn't have any information to give them."

When his former wife was brought into the protection scheme in April last year, Zaitschek was refused all access to his child. He was even denied phone contact, and birthday and Christmas presents he sent to the boy were returned unopened.

Zaitschek said he knew the Sinn Féin official Dennis Donaldson, who is facing charges of being involved in an alleged IRA spying operation within Stormont. But he also knew a diverse range of other public figures, including the former chief constable Ronnie Flanagan.

He said the last time he spoke to Donaldson was six years ago. He said it was crazy to suggest that he would "go to the extremes of the IRA".

Zaitschek's solicitor, Joe Rice,of John J Rice & Co, said this weekend that it beggared belief that Zaitschek's ex-wife was being accommodated on a witness protection scheme when she was not a witness to any proceedings.

"It is reasonable to suggest that Larry Zaitschek has been scapegoated," said Rice. "It is now 14 months sinc e the break-in.The DPP has had the police file on the case for months and is still saying that it is under consideration.

"He is entitled to the presumption of innocence before due process, and yet his name has been leaked to the media by the police.The ongoing delay would suggest that there is no evidence, and he should be informed of this. Mr Zaitschek just wants to get on with his life."

Senior unionists, including Fred Cobain, the Ulster Unionist Party representative on the Policing Board, have questioned claims by the Police Service of Northern Ireland that republicans were behind the Castlereagh raid.
Sinn Féin's Gerry Kelly insists that police or military agencies were behind the break-in, and that a smokescreen of IRA involvement has been created.

"The Castlereagh raid was an inside job. The spooks and their uniformed agencies are both part of a smokescreen to divert attention from the real culprits," said Kelly.

Ronnie Flanagan is reportedly also among those who believe that Castlereagh was an inside job by the security services.