Families Against Intimidation and Terror

Families Against Intimidation and Terror

This Blog Post is purely about the reasons why I got involved with Families Against Intimidation and Terror. For a full Chronology of events leading to my decision to get involved in Families Against Intimidation and Terror (FAIT) please see my Blog Post on the Omagh Bombing.

Sinn Fein Press Statement, 1999, "At no time has Sinn Fein named Vincent McKenna as a suspect in relation to allegations of sexual abuse in Monaghan, such naming would deny such a suspect a fair trial"...https://www.anphoblacht.com/contents/5427

Following the ‘Secret’ Sinn Fein/PIRA Convention in Donegal in October, 1997, which voted to continue to back Gerry Adams and the fledgling peace process, Michael McKevitt who was PIRA Quarter-master on the PIRA Army Council and others walked away from the Adams Project.

Vincent McKenna Autobiography

When my cousin Seamus McKenna (Continuity IRA) told me that the Sinn Fein/PIRA Leadership were allowing McKevitt and others to empty PIRA arms dumps, I challenged my cousin, PIRA Chief of Staff, Kevin McKenna and Head of PIRA Northern Command, Martin McGuinness.

Kevin McKenna and Martin McGuinness were of one-mind:

“The odd bomb going off here and there will keep Unionists focused on working with the Doves”.

The Sinn Fein/PIRA Leadership had decided to use the Real IRA as Proxies to bomb Unionists into a power-sharing Executive at Stormont.

Following this duplicity, I walked away from my role in the peace process. I had worked for many years to bring about the surrender of the Provisional IRA and I was not going to support a process that would allow Terrorism to continue in any form.

War on Duplicity

Following my front-page interview with Liam Clarke for The Sunday Times, in which I explained how an official policy of Ethnic Cleansing had been operationalised by the Sinn Fein/PIRA Leadership in 1986, I was asked by Liam Clarke if I would go into FAIT as it was about to close.

I was reluctant to go into FAIT as a short time earlier, I had been threatened with legal action by FAIT when I had stated in The Irish News that FAIT was a front for Criminals. I contacted Garda Detective, Liam Donnelly in Monaghan and told him that I had been asked to go into FAIT, Garda Detective, Liam Donnelly told me to take up the offer as Sam Cushnahan was known to Garda Special Branch Officer, John McCoy and Cushnahan was believed to be associated with Loyalist terrorists who could pose a threat to the peace process and in particular with bomb attacks in The Irish Republic.

Letter published in The Irish News January 11, 1996.

Letter published in The Irish News, January 19, 1996.

I got back to Liam Clarke and told him that I would go into FAIT. I agreed to meet with Sam Cushnahan at the FAIT office on High Street. While Sam may have believed that everyone knew who he was, I had no clue. Sam told me that he knew that allegations had been made against me in Monaghan as Sinn Fein/Provisional IRA were using the allegations to discredit my work.

Sam Cushnahan told me not to worry about the allegations as he had been through the same thing himself, Sam claimed that a 12-year-old boy had threatened to report him (Sam) to the RUC for sexual abuse, Sam clinched his teeth and said he (the child) never got a chance.

As explained in this document, my focus and instruction, was to get on the inside of FAIT to establish certain facts about certain Terrorists who posed a threat to the peace process. While people believed that my high-profile work on continued violence was my primary objective, it was not, this campaign was useful to keep pressure on Sinn Fein/PIRA and their Proxies, however, my covert work was much more important.

At this time, 1998, Sam Cushnahan was facing bankruptcy, I helped him put a loan application together for 20K that would be co-signed by his brother John Cushnahan, John was a politician in The Irish Republic. As Sam began to confide in me more and more, and became more and more dependent on me for money, I would discover that Sam was in 1998 involved in two extra-marital affairs, one was with the mother of the 12-year-old boy who had committed ‘suicide’, I genuinely never established if Sam was involved with the mother before the child’s death or after.

Sam was also in a Homosexual relationship with a male Journalist in BBC NI, I know this, not simply because Sam told me, but because on one of the occasions Sam asked me for the ‘loan’ of some money to buy wine for his Mistress, I went with Sam to his Mistress’s house in East Belfast (I sat in the car) and Sam gave his Mistress the wine. Sam then drove to Linen-hall Street in Belfast to pick up his Homosexual partner, who had just finished his shift in BBC NI, all very weird. I would rather not name the Journalist as he was a married man at that time, or at least that is what Sam said.

Sam then set about telling me about brothels that he and senior loyalist paramilitaries were fronting. Sam said that FRU used the brothels to recruit sexual deviants within Sinn Fein/PIRA by covertly recording them with under-age boys/girls and so forth. I found the conversation bizarre.

Sam Cushnahan never paid Tax or VAT, but was never pursued.

Cushnahan said that a senior member of Sinn Fein/Provisional IRA and two loyalist paramilitaries had been involved in the running of one of his brothels on the Falls Road. The senior Sinn Fein/PIRA member was John Joe McGee, who Sam claimed was a British Agent. John Joe McGee would socialize with members of Sinn Fein/PIRA and then invite them to the brothel on the Falls Road. Once the Sinn Fein/PIRA members were recorded in compromising activity, they would be recruited by British Army Intelligence.

This brothel on the Falls road was a regular haunt for Gerry Adams Snr, Freddie Scappitticci, Ruby Davidson and a host of Sinn Fein/PIRA sexual deviants. As a result of the number of Sinn Fein/PIRA deviants recruited in this brothel and others operated by Cushnahan, the security services referred to the Sinn Fein/PIRA Leadership in Belfast as 'The Jocky Club'.

I honestly do not know how many calls I received from Sam Cushnahan begging me to go into FAIT, in the end I relented. I was the only person in the FAIT office, initially I spent my time going through any paper work I could find to establish where the money went and what was owed. I was Lecturing in Business part-time at this point in The Department of Continuing Education at QUB, so I had a good handle on accounts.

It is not unfair to say that a great deal of tax payers’ money (£1,000,000) had been squandered and the debts were insurmountable. As someone who had worked in factories up to 1992, I found this waste of tax payers’ money unforgivable.

As I had no money or resources, I used the only tool available to me, the media. As Sinn Fein/PIRA were hammering me in their own media outlets such as An Phoblacht and through some of their proxies, I hammered back, and this is where it got interesting.

Because people seen me standing up to the terrorists, and the terrorists hitting me hard, some disgruntled people within paramilitary groups began to contact me and provide me with information about planned terrorist attacks, weapons, explosives and so forth. While I had some contacts before 1998, this was a tsunami of information.

Following a high-profile attack on me 18 July 1998 by six members of Sinn Fein/PIRA Mark Sykes, Stephane Long, and so forth led by PIRA killer Sean Clinton, my kudos was boasted by those who sought a safe space to disclose information. One of my attackers pleaded guilty to assault in Court and the threat to kill was taken into consideration. The Sinn Fein/PIRA member who pleaded Guilty to assaulting me was accompanied to Court by Jock Davidson and others with whom a few months earlier I had been sharing a pot of tea.

I can say with confidence that some of this information, and the related action by the RUC, saved the peace process and the Good Friday Agreement and that is why I shared a public platform in The Ulster Hall and thanked the RUC in 1999. In fairness to those attacking me, they did not know that they owed their lives to the RUC and that includes senior Sinn Fein/PIRA and others who would jump in front of cameras to try and discredit me, not knowing that my work had saved them and their families.

The suspicions highlighted by my Garda contact that FAIT was being used by extreme loyalist elements connected with Sam Cushnahan, who were not only trying to undermine the peace process but also running black propaganda against PUP/UDP were well founded.

Plans by some to plant no-warning bombs in Dublin and Monaghan once again 1998-99, were prevented by the information I gleamed from my time in FAIT and later Northern Ireland Human Rights Bureau which I set-up purely to maintain contact with valuable informants, it was essential that the ‘intelligence’ aspect of my work was removed from FAIT or many people could have died. I can prove all of this.

When the LVF/Orange Volunteers murdered Solicitor, Rosemary Nelson, Sam Cushnahan wanted me to issue an outrageous press release, which suggested that some markings that Rosemary Nelson had on her face, throughout her life, were the result of a bomb she was making some years earlier exploding prematurely. While I was trying to maintain my intelligence role, I refused outright to issue such a press release.

Over the few months that I managed to tolerate Sam Cushnahan, I gleamed a great deal of information about his personal life and criminal activity, in which I had no particular interest.

Sam had been involved in Kincora Boys home, that involvement began when he was laying down carpet in the home, he spoke to me openly about all of this, as if I were someone who would tolerate such criminality. Sam Cushnahan stated that his helper at Kincora, also from the lower Falls was Gerry Adams Snr, and both of them had sexually abused children in Kincora, although he did not use the word ‘abused’.

Sam told me that he had been in the merchant navy, and when he ‘retired’ from that he was involved in criminality with James Craig, although he told this as if it was nothing, as if he was Arthur Daly out of Minder, wheeler and dealer. He had been involved in break-ins, stolen property and acted as a fence. He also said he was caught red-handed, when he burned a building to get the insurance, but again he knew the right people, again this Mantra about the ‘right people’ came up time and again.

Sam Cushnahan told me that he had begun his career in the brothel business with a Pimp called Bernie Silvers and later Sam was in a sexual relationship with a Mr Francis with whom he operated a Brothel on Stranmillis Road in Belfast. The women and girls in these Brothels were referred to by Sam as his ‘Girls’ and they in turn referred to him as ‘Sammy’, a well know female in Northern Ireland was the Madame in his Brothels before she reinvented herself. 

Interestingly, Monica McWilliams of The Northern Ireland Women's Coalition sought a meeting with Sam and I, I had no interest in meeting McWilliams as I viewed her as a "Powder-Puff Provo". Sam and I meet with McWilliams at her office in Stormont, a good friend of mine Kate Ferron, whom I knew from QUB showed us into McWilliam's office. Monica McWilliams welcomed Sam with an embrace and referred to him as "Sammy".

Monica McWilliams became fixated on me once I walked away from FAIT and Sam Cushnahan, I had to report Monica McWilliams to the PSNI for Stalking me on Social Media in 2023.

When I closed FAIT, Sam realised he had said too much and he and the Madame set about trying to discredit me, as they had done to Nancy Gracey, Glynn Roberts, and others over the history of FAIT. It is worth noting, that Spotlight, BBC NI, only set about trying to discredit me when I left FAIT and parted company with Sam Cushnahan, before this, when I was in FAIT, BBC NI supported my work.

In this Newsletter article, Sam Cushnahan claims that porn had been found on the FAIT computer after Glynn Roberts had left FAIT in order to discredit Glynn. In fact it was Sam who had planted to the porn to discredit Glynn. Glynn had done no wrong. In 2000, Susan McKay would claim in an article in The Sunday Tribune that porn had been found on the FAIT computer while I was there, however, Susan McKay knew well the porn referred to was found long before I went near FAIT, McKay, a liar and fraudster, now the Press Ombudsman in The Republic.

However, I had no interest in them or their sordid life style, I was interested in preventing murder and saving the peace process and I can easily prove that I done this.

Sam Cushnahan constantly talked about knowing the right people, yet, any RUC Officer that I spoke to wanted nothing to do with him, it was as if there was something in the background that I did not know about, the main objective was achieved, and then I spoke to The NIO, Billy Stevenson, to ensure no further funding for FAIT, I closed it down, and I continued to work on a voluntary basis nurturing and maintaining new intelligence assets within The Northern Ireland Human Rights Bureau.

While I was in prison in The Republic, I received letters from a journalist called Frank Doherty, whom I did not know. In the letters Frank said that he had seen ‘The Bank Statement’ relating to a £2,000 payment made to FAIT by RUC Informer, Martin McGartland. When I was released from Prison, I meet Frank Doherty in Drogheda, my only interest was to establish where he got McGartland’s details.

Frank Doherty told me that Sam Cushnahan had given him McGartland’s details prior to McGartland being shot as Sam wanted to be at the centre of a book that Frank was writing about various matters relating to Northern Ireland.

I am aware that McGartland issued a press release after he was shot claiming that I was an active PIRA Intelligence Officer, this press release shown to me by Mr Hugh Jordan of The Sunday World. On the basis of McGartland’s lies, I was questioned at Castlereagh RUC station for several hours.

I can say with certainty, it was Sam Cushnahan who not only leaked McGartland’s details, but got paid for such leaking. I believe it was Sam Cushnahan who set-up McGartland, and was able to do so because of McGartland’s passing his own information by way of a bank statement. I have supporting evidence that Sam Cushnahan had previously sent a come-on letter to British Army Captain, Fred Holroyd, who served with MI6 in Northern Ireland in the 1970s. The letter was to lure Holroyd to an address in Belfast. Holroyd was to be murdered by loyalists, and the blame placed on The PIRA.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is not unfair to say, that nobody could have envisaged the amount of Intelligence that I would gain from entering FAIT and later creating The Northern Ireland Human Rights Bureau. Scores of lives were saved, bomb attacks prevented, and the fledgling peace process got a chance to deliver, in my view it did not deliver, and my explanation for this determination can be viewed in the Omagh Bomb Blog Post.