Loughgall Informer
The leadership of Sinn
Fein/PIRA in Monaghan have serious questions to answer as to why they allowed a
fully-fledged RUC Informer back into the ranks of Sinn Fein/PIRA when he had
served only a few months in Long Kesh for PIRA membership when he had admitted
his role in two high profile murders. Owen Smyth (AKA Eoin Smyth) from Monaghan
Town had been told in 1981 by PIRA Commander Jim Lynagh not to travel into the
north, after members of The PIRA who had shot pensioner Norman Strong and his
son James at Tynan Abbey were found by Gardai hiding in the basement of The
Round House Bar in Monaghan Town which was owned by Owen Smyth’s Uncle Robert
Loane but which was run and operated by Owen Smyth. When Owen Smyth was
arrested by The RUC Smyth began to talk immediately and named every member of
Sinn Fein/PIRA in Monaghan and anything else that he could tell the RUC about
Sinn Fein/PIRA in Monaghan. Owen Smyth would also tell a 17-year-old Vincent
McKenna in Crumlin Road Jail that he had turned informer as he did not want to
go to jail for the two killings, Owen Smyth also boasted that he and Jim Lynagh
had planned the killings of Norman Strong and his son James. Seamus Shannon
would be extradited in 1984 based on information provided to The RUC by Owen
Smyth. Why did the Command Staff of The PIRA in Monaghan allow Owen Smyth to
return to a position within Sinn Fein/PIRA that gave him access to details of
PIRA operations including Loughgall? In 1990 Owen Smyth again turned informer
when arrested by Gardai in relation to a Human Bomb attack in Fermanagh, again,
Smyth had the charges against him mysteriously dropped and he returned to the
Sinn Fein/PIRA fold.
Owen Smyth also has questions
to answer in relation to his close association with two sisters from Monaghan
Town who were bringing UDR members into Monaghan Town periodically between 1994-1997.
These two sisters would be seen drinking with the said UDR members in loyalist
pubs in places such as Caledon in County Tyrone. On one occasion the two women
and the UDR members were followed from Caledon to Monaghan Town. These UDR
members were being brought into Monaghan Town by the two women and the UDR men
were using these visits as scouting missions for a UVF death squad who would
later target Caoimhghín Ó’Caoláin in a bomb attack. Another UDR man would be
found shot dead on the out skirts of Monaghan after the gun he was carrying
went of as he was preparing to target a member of The PIRA. All of these
questions remain unanswered, and various suggestions have been put forward as
to why The PIRA in Monaghan failed to establish the truth in these matters, one
theory being that Smyth was being protected by a high-ranking informer on The
PIRA Command Staff in Monaghan.
Loughgall is a
picture-postcard village on the borders of Tyrone and County Armagh that with
its neatly arranged window boxes and hanging baskets you would expect to win
the best kept village competition year after year. Tourists come for the
antique shops and cosy tea rooms that line its narrow main street. 31 years ago
in 1987, other visitors came to Loughgall.
The quiet of a May evening on
8 May 1987 was shattered by the thunder of SAS guns as the Regiment (as it is
known) ambushed and wiped out one of the most heavily armed and experienced
Active Service Units (ASU) the Provisional IRA had ever assembled. It was known
as the ‘A’ Team. Eight bodies in boiler suits, some with balaclavas, lay bloody
and dead on the ground and in the back of the van in which they had been
travelling. The SAS had been lying in wait and had opened up with a barrage of
over 200 rounds blasted from General Purpose Machine guns (GPMGs) and
high-powered Heckler and Koch rifles. The SAS outnumbered and outgunned the IRA
by three to one. The van was riddled like a sieve and its IRA passengers cut to
pieces. It was the biggest loss the IRA had suffered since 1921 when a dozen of
its men were wiped out by the notorious ‘Black and Tans’. Loughgall police
station, a few hundred yards outside the village and the target of the IRA’s
attack, was reduced to a twisted pile of concrete and rubble. The IRA just
managed to detonate its 200 lb bomb before the SAS opened up.
A few miles away in the ops
room that was the nerve centre of the security forces’ Tasking and
Co-Ordinating Group (TCG) from which the ambush had been directed, an SAS
Commander, a Senior M15 Officer and two senior RUC Officers (both shot dead
1989, see, Smithwick Tribunal) anxiously gathered to hear the result of one of
the most carefully planned M15, RUC and Army operations of the northern
conflict. They gathered around an SAS officer who was in radio contact with the
SAS commander on the ground, when the news came through, the SAS Officer turned
to those gathered (TCG) and declared, “Total Wipe-out”.
To the British, the SAS had
given the IRA a taste of its own medicine and to Ulster Unionists clambering
for the army to take the gloves off, not before time. There was celebration in
the TCG at the unprecedented spectacular and quiet contentment in the Northern
Ireland Office. Its Permanent Under-Secretary at the time, Sir Robert Andrew,
later said how he felt on hearing the news. ‘My personal reaction was really
one of some satisfaction that we had ‘won one’ as it were. I think it
demonstrated to the IRA that the other side could play it rough. I hope it sent
a message that the British government was resolute and was going to fight
them.’
Certainly the IRA had been
playing it very rough. Only a fortnight earlier, it had assassinated Northern
Ireland’s second most senior judge, Lord Justice Gibson and his wife with a 500
lb bomb as they drove back across the border after a holiday away. The
explosives had come from Libya. The judge had been a prime target ever since he
had acquitted the police officers who shot dead Gervaise McKerr (whose case was
also ruled on at Strasbourg) and two other IRA men during a car chase in 1982.
He commended them for bringing the deceased to ‘the final court of justice’.
None of them was armed at the time. The then Northern Ireland Secretary, Tom
King said, ‘We were conscious we were facing an enhanced threat and we took
enhanced measures to meet it.’ The SAS was the cutting edge.
At the time of Loughgall, the
IRA was brimful of confidence. It had recently had its bunkers filled almost to
bursting with over 130 tons of heavy weaponry and high explosives smuggled into
Ireland in four shipments courtesy of Mrs Thatcher’s sworn enemy, Colonel
Gaddafi (murdered 2011) of Libya. The depleted ranks of its leadership had also
been strengthened by the IRA’s mass break-out from the Maze prison in 1983,
many of whose senior gunmen were still on the run. One of them was Patrick
McKearney (32).
It was known that IRA
Commander, Jim Lynagh, had developed a new Maoist strategy of liberating Green
Zones, zones that would be cleared of the British and their collaborators. The
IRA began its new strategy in 1985 with a devastating mortar attack on the RUC
station in the border town of Newry in which nine police officers died. It
followed it up with a bomb and gun attack on Ballygawley police station that
left two RUC men dead. In 1986, it launched a bomb attack on another police
station, unmanned at the time, in the tiny village of the Birches along the
shores of Lough Neagh in County Tyrone. Now a new delivery system had been
used, a JCB digger with a 200-lb bomb in the bucket. The digger smashed through
the security fence, the bomb exploded and reduced the station to rubble. The
attack on Loughgall was designed to be a carbon copy of the attack on the
Birches. But this time British and Irish intelligence knew the IRA was coming
and was across its plans.
The first indicator about the
Loughgall operation came three weeks earlier from an RUC agent based in
Monaghan Town, Patrick Kelly had travelled to Monaghan to meet Jim Lynagh,
however, as often happened, Lynagh was not about, Patrick Kelly made the fatal
mistake of making inquiries about Lynagh with Owen/Eoin Smyth, the Round House
Bar, Church Square, Monaghan Town. Barely three weeks before Loughgall, five of
the East Tyrone IRA had shot dead Harold Henry (52), a member of the Henry
Brothers construction business that carried out repairs on security force
bases. Just before midnight, the IRA took Mr Henry from his home, put him up
against a wall and shot him dead with two rifles and a shotgun. He left a widow
and six children. To the IRA he was a ‘legitimate target’, the first of more
than twenty ‘collaborators’ to be ‘executed’ by the IRA for ‘assisting the
British war machine.’ One of the weapons believed to have been used in the
Henry killing was later retrieved at Loughgall.
On the basis of the
information passed to the Garda Siochana (Irish Police) and RUC Special Branch
by the IRA informer in Monaghan Town, a major security operation was put into
action. Extra SAS Teams were brought into the north, within hours of arriving
in the north, the SAS Teams were brought to the firing range beneath the RUC
Forensic Lab in Belfast, were they test fired similar weapons to those that
would be used by the IRA Team at Loughgall. The SAS Team was briefed by Chief
Superintendent Harry Breen and RUC Superintendent Robert Buchanan. This test
firing would allow the SAS to distinguish between friendly and enemy fire on
the night of the Loughgall executions. While the Monaghan Informer had given an
indicator that a major operation was about to take place, the actual target was
not immediately known, this would take a detailed mapping of a myriad of
intelligence sources. The Monaghan Informer would contact his handler a couple
of days before Loughgall to say that Jim Lynagh had moved to a safe house in
Coalisland, County Tyrone.
There was other vital
intelligence too from M15′s listening devices planted inside the homes of IRA
suspects, usually put in place when they were away – or even when the homes of
the more prominent ones were being built. As long as the batteries held out,
these technical devices – or ‘bugs’ – could be monitored many miles away or
their content down-loaded by helicopters flying over the premises where they
were hidden. It’s likely too that the location where the explosives were stored
for the Loughgall bomb were also under M15 technical surveillance. They were
probably also under human ‘eyes-on’ observation by operators of the army’s
top-secret undercover unit, 14 Intelligence Company (known colloquially as the
‘Det’) and the RUC’s equivalent covert unit, E4A. ‘E’ is the code for the RUC’s
Special Branch.
The security force operation
was put in place on Thursday 7 May, the day before the IRA’s planned assault.
Three Special Branch officers from the RUC’s specialist anti-terrorist unit
volunteered to remain inside the normally sleepy station as decoys to give the
appearance of normality whilst the IRA did its ‘recce’. ‘Matt’, a veteran of
such covert operations, was one of them. They entered the station with some of
the SAS troopers as darkness fell on the Thursday night. They made sandwiches
and cracked jokes to lighten the tedium of waiting and perhaps to calm the
nerves.
The joint leaders of the ASU
was Patrick Kelly (30), an experienced IRA commander whose sister, supported by
the other relatives, was a prime mover in bringing the Loughgall cases before
the European Court. Kelly had been arrested in 1982 and charged with terrorist
offences on the word of a ‘Super-grass’ but was subsequently released as the
testimony lacked corroboration. Jim Lynagh was the second Commander and was the
man most sought after by the British and Irish security services. Among the
younger members of the ASU were four young friends from the village of Cappagh
who had joined the IRA after the death of one of their village friend, Martin
Hurson, on hunger strike in 1981. One of them, Declan Arthurs (21), was to
drive the JCB with a 200 lb bomb in the bucket – just like the Birches.
Throughout the long hours of
Friday, the maze of country lanes around Loughgall police station were watched
and patrolled by ‘Det’ operators on the look-out for the ‘A Team’. One of them
was a young women called ‘Anna’ who was driving around the area with her ‘Det’
partner as part of the surveillance cordon. Suddenly they spotted a blue Toyota
Hiace van. At first they thought it was simply stuck behind a slow-moving
vehicle but when they realised it was a JCB, they immediately put Ballygawley
and the Birches together. ‘You suddenly realize it’s the MO (modus operandi)
used by the East Tyrone Brigade,’ she said. ‘It was like a replay. But this
time we were on top of it and we knew what was happening. So we passed on the
information to the TCG and pulled off.’ The Chief Constable of the time, Sir
John Hermon, said the IRA ASU could not have been arrested. He said it was
never a realistic option since the IRA would be unlikely to come out with their
hands up and police officers lives would therefore be at grave risk.
At 7.15 pm as dusk gathered,
the JCB with Declan Arthurs at the wheel and the bomb raised high in the
bucket, trundled past the police station with the blue Toyota van in
attendance. Both then turned and headed back in the direction whence they had
come. Suddenly, the JCB roared into life, headed for the perimeter fence and
crashed through it. Almost simultaneously, the van drew up outside, disgorging
Patrick Kelly and other members of the ASU who sprayed the station with their
assault rifles. The SAS almost certainly opened up the moment Kelly started
firing. Everything seemed to happen at once in a deafening crescendo of noise.
Inside the station, ‘Matt’ (Special Branch), who was by the front window, was
only about ten metres from the JCB when it came to a halt right before his
eyes. He turned and ran to the back with one word on his mind. Bomb! ‘I thought
of the Birches and Ballygawley and the next minute there was an almighty bang.
I was hit in the face, knocked to the ground and buried. I thought “I’m dead”,
simple as that!’ Miraculously ‘Matt’ survived although buried in the rubble
‘inhaling dust and darkness.’ The ‘A’ Team did not. ‘Declan was mowed down. He
could have been taken prisoner,’ his mother, Amelia Arthurs, said. ‘The SAS never
gave them a chance.’ The photographs taken at the scene are gruesome. The van
in which the IRA volunteers had travelled was ripped open by part of the
shrapnel from the digger bucket when it exploded, this is new information.
‘Matt’ felt no sympathy for
the bullet-riddled bodies on the ground outside the station and in the back of
the van. ‘They were there to kill us,’ he said. ‘These guys were responsible
for lots and lots of deaths in that area and other parts of the province. Dead
terrorists are better than dead policemen.’ Forensic tests carried out on the
IRA weapons retrieved at the scene were linked to eight killings and
thirty-three shootings.
The area around the police
station had not been cordoned off since to have done so would have risked making
the IRA suspicious and wary of the carefully laid ambush. As a result, two
brothers returning home from work, were shot by the SAS. The security personnel
who lay on the outer core of the ambush had been ordered to kill everyone
within the kill zone. Perhaps the
soldiers thought they were part of the ASU or mistook their white Citroen for
an IRA ‘scout’ car, maybe because one of the occupants was wearing a boiler
suit. The brothers had been working on a car. The SAS fired forty rounds at the
vehicle, killing Anthony Hughes (36) and seriously wounding his brother Oliver
who was scarred for life. He said no warning was given. The RUC’s Chief
Constable, Sir Jack Herman, described the attack on the two innocent men as ‘an
unspeakable tragedy’ and blamed the IRA, not planning and operational
shortcomings, for his death.
When ‘Anna’, her ‘Det’
colleagues and the SAS returned to base, there were great celebrations. ‘There
was a huge party and it probably went on for 24 hours,’ she said. ‘A lot of
beer was drunk. We were jubilant. We thought it was a job well done. It sent
shock waves through the terrorist world that we were back on top.’ She said of
the dead IRA men. ‘They’re all volunteers and actively engaged against the
British army. They’re ‘at war’ as they would describe it. My attitude is that
if you live by the sword, you die by the sword. We were just happy at the end
of the day to be alive ourselves.’
Some new information is
contained in this article, it is certain that the first indicator for the Loughgall
operation came from an RUC Special Branch Informer in Monaghan Town. This
informer also contacted the RUC to let them know that Jim Lynagh had moved to a
safe house in Coalisland just before the Loughgall operation. Once the security
services had their first indicator of a major IRA operation, M15 and the RUC
had to simply correlate their myriad of intelligence to match the A Team with
their target. At the same time that M15 and the SAS were focused on the East
Tyrone IRA, M16 were working closely with Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams and
had adopted a hands-off approach to the IRA in Derry and Belfast.
There is no question that the
relationship between Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and The British Secret
Service lead to the SAS executions at Loughgall, the British wanted to
undermine PIRA Chief of Staff, Kevin McKenna, McKenna wanted to take the war to
the British and their collaborators and he viewed politics as nothing more than
a public relations exercise that could provide cover for the real business of
The PIRA, which was to drive the British apparatus out of Ireland. Adams and
McGuinness had already sold out, and even at the graveside of Jim Lynagh, Adams
would spout his lies when he said, “Anyone who does business with The British,
The Freestate establishment or The SDLP are fools for they have all sold out on
the Irish people”, Adams said these weasel words while he was already in bed
with all of the above.
Sinn Fein/PIRA can get as many
illiterates fools as they like to make videos for YouTube stating that Lynagh
and Kelly would have supported Sinn Fein/PIRA’s British inspired
‘peace-strategy’, however, anyone one who was on the same intellectual level as
Jim Lynagh would know well that Adams, McGuinness and their ‘peace straegy’ is
nothing more than a British inspired surrender of Irish Republicanism.
Keywords: Loughgall Martyrs, 32
Anniversary, Jim Lynagh, Patrick Kelly, Declan Authurs, SAS, Ambush, Gerry
Adams
