Vessels of Truth

It remains to be seen just how sham – as in Sham Fight at Scarva sham – the crisis over the Kevin McGuigan killing really is, but whatever the truth it seems inevitable that a new version of the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC), will be set up to tell us in soothing, re-assuring words that there really is nothing to worry about.

The argument for a new IMC is that the PSNI really screwed up their handling of the killing, starting with a warning to the media not to blame the IRA followed within hours by an admission that it was indeed IRA fingers on the trigger that dispatched Mr McGuigan to eternity.

Sizable credibility problems then for Big George and his Merry Men. Cue a bunch of retired political hacks, superannuated cops and a George Smiley or two – Brits and Yanks only need apply – and the problem will be solved, not to mention the handy holiday money, expense account dining for a few months and the mirage of once again seeming relevant despite the advancing years.

But just how ‘independent’ was the Independent Monitoring Commission? Where did it get its information from? Were its sources really any different from those that assured us that it would be dangerous to speculate about IRA responsibility for killing the unfortunate Kevin McGuigan.

Well, in its last report – its 26th and longest report, published in July 2011 – the IMC went into some detail about how it went about its work, who it talked to and where its intelligence and information came from.

I am sure it will come as no surprise to my more cynical readers that the IMC relied in the main on the PSNI and MI5 for official intel. In other words what we’ll get with the new IMC  is the same information that George Hamilton would give the public anyway, except now it will be filtered through a bunch of former pols, cops and spooks and packaged in a polished, professional and media-friendly fashion.

But guess who else the IMC chatted to, aside from the usual community leaders, priests, vicars and the like? Well, none other than the paramilitary leaders whose lack of activity the IMC was supposed to be monitoring! And why not? Vessels of truth, all of them!

So, bring on the new IMC!

Flaws In IRA Decommissioning – Irish Govt To Washington: ‘Fr. Reid told Paisley Weapons “Rusty & Dust-Covered and none from 1990’s”‘; U.S. Believed IRA Kept ‘Not Just Small Arms’; IMC & De Chastelain Never Accounted For Un-decommissioned Arms.

Were the weapons the IRA decommissioned ‘rusty and dust-covered’?

The DUP told the Dublin government that it was aware of significant shortcomings in the final IRA decommissioning process of September 2005, including the possibility that the IRA had retained weapons, before the party agreed to go into government with Sinn Fein, according to a five-year old account of the negotiations that created the power-sharing government at Stormont.

At the same time the Bush administration in Washington believed the IRA had kept ‘not just small arms’ out of the reach of the international decommissioning body, suggesting that the IRA had held back heavier weapons than handguns.

Meanwhile a close reading of all the reports, post September 2005, issued by the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) and the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD) shows that while both bodies acknowledged that the IRA had retained weaponry neither body ever reported that the withheld weaponry was recovered or destroyed, or explained what happened to it.

The IMC said that the material that had not been surrendered by the IRA went  ‘beyond what might possibly have been expected to miss decommissioning such as a limited number of handguns kept for personal protection or some items the whereabouts of which were no longer known’. 

This appears to be a strong hint that high-powered weapons, such as automatic rifles were held back, a judgement that accords with the U.S. view of the quality of un-decommissioned weaponry at the time. It is believed that one of the weapons used to kill Mr McGuigan was a semi automatic rifle.

The IMC’s estimation of the withheld weaponry was initially significantly at variance with the IICD’s, which consistently downplayed its importance and scale. While the IMC implied that heavy weapons had been retained the IICD suggested only handguns had been involved; the US government reportedly sided, significantly, with the IMC’s initial assessment, on whose panel a former senior CIA official sat.

Both the IMC and the IICD ultimately agreed that the retained weaponry was kept back without the consent or knowledge of the IRA leadership – although it took some time for the IMC to chime with the IICD – but both bodies failed to provide evidence to support this assertion in their various reports.

Former Irish Justice Minister Michael McDowell (right) debates Gerry Adams. He claims government wanted the IRA to survive as an ‘unarmed husk’ to counter dissidents but failed to explain how this could be done without weapons

Given that it is now known, courtesy of former U.S. special envoy, Mitchell Reiss’s review of Jonathan Powell’s book, ‘Great Hatred, Little Room’, that Sinn Fein president, Gerry Adams asked that the IRA be allowed to keep guns to counter any dissident threat – a request that was accepted by the Blair government but rejected by Dublin – this account begs the obvious questions: notwithstanding the formal rejection of Adams’ request, does the admission that some weapons were retained by the IRA mean this happened with the implicit approval and/or knowledge of the British, Irish and US governments and their security arms, as well as the DUP, and were some of these guns used to kill Kevin McGuigan?

US peace envoy Mitchell Reiss (right) chats with former Irish Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern. Reiss revealed that Gerry Adams wanted to retain guns to use against dissidents. US believed IRA had retained ‘not just small arms’.

The account, published in ‘Peace Without Consensus’ by American academic, Mary-Alice Clancy in 2010 has been overlooked during the furore that has followed the killing of Kevin McGuigan outside his Short Strand home in East Belfast last month. Dr. Clancy was an academic at Exeter University at the time.

Her book contains fascinating, controversial and intriguing material about the inter-party negotiations conducted against the backdrop of a controversial decommissioning process undertaken by the IRA.

Not least of the unanswered questions that leap out of her book is the source of her material. In the book she cites only ‘Private information or correspondence’ but it is clear she had access to a wide range of documents and actors in this drama.

When asked by thebrokenelbow who her sources were, she declined to answer.

Ian Paisley told Dublin that the IRA had decommissioned no guns from 1990’s and material destroyed was ‘rusty and dust-covered’

By far the most contentious claim in her book concerns the DUP’s awareness that IRA decommissioning was flawed and that, implicitly, public assurances from at least one of the two clerical witnesses about the completeness of IRA disarming was, at the least, misleading.

Fr Alex Reid, a Redemptorist monk based in the order’s Clonard and Antrim Rd monasteries, and a major player in the development of the Sinn Fein peace strategy since the early 1980’s, was chosen, along with the Rev Harold Good, a former president of the Methodist church, to be witnesses to final IRA decommissioning.

An alternative proposal from Gerry Adams that a simple declaration from the decommissioning supremo, General de Chastelain, that the IRA had completed disarming was vetoed by the DUP leader, the Rev Ian Paisley who instead supported the idea of having clerical witnesses, one Catholic, the other Protestant, validate the process.

This they did and in a statement issued on September 26th, 2005 they attested to the accuracy of the claim from de Chastelain that full IRA decommissioning had occurred, adding:

The experience of seeing this with our own eyes, on a minute-to-minute basis, provided us with evidence so clear and of its nature so incontrovertible that, at the end of the process, it demonstrated to us, and would have demonstrated to anyone who might have been with us, that beyond any shadow of doubt, the arms of the IRA have now been decommissioned.

However, according to Mary-Alice Clancy’s account, a very different version was given to Ian Paisley and his DUP colleagues, particularly by Fr Reid, whose account, because of his perceived closeness to Sinn Fein, carries added weight. Paisley then gave his version of that meeting to Irish officials who in turn passed it on to Washington.

Mary-Alice Clancy wrote:

…..there was also recognition that the IRA’s final act of decommissioning, whilst important, was imperfect. US sources contend that the IRA retained ‘not just small arms’; in its eighth report, IMC members alluded to this, stating that the ‘material goes beyond what might possibly have been expected to miss decommissioning’ (IMC 2006:20).

Ian Paisley Snr also appeared to be aware of this, as in a US copy of Irish officials’ meeting with the DUP, Paisley stated that when he asked Fr Alec Reid – one of the individuals who witnessed IRA disarmament – whether or not he had seen any weapons that appeared to be from the 1990’s, Reid said no, and that the weapons he saw were ‘rusty and dust-covered’. According to Paisley, Reid continued with his negative assessment until the other witness, Rev. Harold Good, intervened.

(Source is given as: ‘Private information provided to the author. p. 157)

Fr Alex Reid (right) and Rev Harold Good. Witnesses to IRA decommissioning gave an account to Paisley at odds with their public statement. Fr. Reid died in November 2013.

Dr Clancy argues in her account that because of the pessimism engendered in the DUP by Fr Reid’s description of the decommissioning process, the DUP hardened its demand that Sinn Fein formally accept and recognise the PSNI before agreeing to enter the power-sharing government, a demand that the Blair government had been prepared to forego.

Dr Clancy does not explain why Ian Paisley was so exercised about IRA weapons from the 1990’s, especially since the Libyan arms shipments of the mid-1980’s would be regarded as larger and deadlier. Most of those shipments, supplied courtesy of the Gaddafi regime, were unloaded near Arklow and then hidden in dumps around Ireland.

Once Gaddafi mended his fences with the West, in the late 1990’s, he handed over a full manifest of weaponry supplied to the IRA, so the British could have checked whether all this had been decommissioned. Consequently, it would have been difficult for the IRA to hold any of the Libyan material back.

However it is now known that in the 1990’s the IRA shipped in weaponry from the U.S., allegedly with the help of a Florida-based gun-runner, Mike Logan, who reportedly is now ready to testify in court against his alleged IRA contact, former Northern Commander, Sean ‘Spike’ Murray. It is possible, but not known for sure, that Ian Paisley had these shipments in mind when he questioned Fr. Reid.

Sean ‘Spike’ Murray. Former Northern Commander of the IRA is alleged to be at centre of Florida gun-running ring in 1990’s

There had been media reports about the Florida consignments in the late 1990’s and 2000, some years before IRA final decommissioning, so it is likely the DUP was aware of them.

The Belfast Telegraph this week reported:

Logan claims he sent Murray hundreds of weapons during his five-year gunrunning career which began after the IRA ceasefire and continued following the Good Friday Agreement.

Add on to all this the IICD and IMC’s admission that some IRA weapons were not decommissioned in 2005 – nor, it seems, at any stage – and an awkward issue raises its head, namely that the major players in the process may have been aware that the IRA had unofficially retained weapons to counter dissidents, that they had accepted this as a disagreeable necessity but could not officially or publicly acknowledge it.

If so, then the display of political anger in Belfast & Dublin following the McGuigan murder and the IRA’s involvement in it, may be contrived, to put it mildly.

Here is a chronology of key events in this episode:

1. Gerry Adams asks the Blair government if weapons can be held back from decommissioning for use against any dissident threat. This is Mitchell Reiss’ recollection of that event:

In July 2005, the IRA had finally agreed to decommission all its weapons. At the last minute, [Gerry] Adams called No 10 to demand that some of the weapons not be destroyed so that the IRA could arm itself against possible attacks from dissident members. Unless this was allowed, he threatened, decommissioning would not proceed. The Blair government conceded, but wanted to check with Dublin. Irish Minister for Justice Michael McDowell refused to acquiesce in the backsliding, despite enormous pressure. Powell told Adams of the problem, and Adams gave way. Decommissioning took place as planned.

2. September 2005. The IRA completes the decommissioning of its arsenals and statements from the IICD and the two clerical witness, Alex Reid and Harold Good claim that the process was complete. The IICD said it believed that the weapons destroyed were consistent with estimates of IRA weaponry given by security forces on both sides of the Border and represent “the totality” of IRA weapons.

3. January 26th, 2006. The IICD admits in a statement that not all the IRA’s weapons were destroyed but claimed they were small in number, included handguns, were retained for personal protection and area defence and that retention was not authorised by the IRA leadership. The IICD appeared to accept IRA assurances that not all weaponry was under the leadership’s control and might have gone astray when those keeping weapons had died or memories faded.

General John de Chastelain, head of the IIDC. Along with the Independent Monitoring Commission, he failed to say what had happened to un-surrendered weapons retained by the IRA

3. February 1st, 2006. Eighth report of the Independent Monitoring Commission

Three days later the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) published its eighth report which inter alia repeated the IICD’s claim that IRA weapons had been retained but there was a significant difference in tone. While the IICD had minimised the retention, the IMC went in the other direction, saying that “….the material goes beyond what might have been expected to have missed decommissioning, such as a limited number of handguns kept for person protection or some items the whereabouts of which were no longer known.” The IMC noted that this retention raised questions about the IRA leadership’s knowledge of this. Reading between the lines the IMC appeared to be echoing that anonymous U.S. source quoted by Mary-Alice Clancy that the IRA had kept back ‘not just small arms’.

4. April 26th, 2006. Tenth report of the Independent Monitoring Commission

5. Further on in the same report, the IMC begins to claw back and readjust its position to be more in line with IICD, denying that it had suggested in February 2006 that the IRA leadership had authorised the retention, that the retention was really the fault of local IRA units who disobeyed the leadership and that the amount of un-surrendered material was not significant compared to what had been decommissioned. The IMC signalled its full agreement with the IICD by declaring its belief that it had no doubt that the intention of the IRA was to follow the political path and ‘eschew terrorism’:

6. October 4th, 2006. IMC Twelfth report.

The IMC was by now fully backing the official line on the retained weapons, that it was nothing to do with the IRA leadership and might even have been carried out by a dissident group:

7. November 7th, 2007. 17th report of the IMC.

By this stage the un-decommisioned weapons didn’t even rate a mention in the IMC report. Instead the IMC said it was so confident of the veracity of the Provisionals journey into peaceful politics that it would limit from now on what it had to say about the IRA:

8. September 3rd, 2008. IMC’s nineteenth report.

By this point the IMC was ready to declare that the Provisionals had ‘all but’ completed the transformation into a wholly peaceful and politically-oriented organisation. Most of its war-oriented structures had been dismantled.

In no report, either by the IMC or the IICD, is there any indication of what happened to the un-surrendered IRA weapons and in particular whether this material was ever destroyed.

9. August 12th, 2015. Former IRA member Kevin McGuigan was shot dead outside his Short Strand home. It is believed that he was killed in retaliation for the killing in May of IRA leader Gerard ‘Jock’ Davison. PSNI Chief Constable, George Hamilton confirms the suspicion that IRA members may have been involved in the McGuigan murder and says that the IRA still exists and has structures.

10. August 27th, 2015. Former Irish Justice Minister, Michael McDowell told The Irish Times that the Irish and British government had allowed the IRA to continue to exist in order to counter any threat from dissident republicans opposed to the Good Friday Agreement. The IRA was to be ‘an unarmed husk‘, he said. Mr McDowell did not explain how an unarmed IRA could counter armed dissidents.

You don’t have to be a fan of Tottenham Hotspur, as I have been most of my life, to know that a storm of criticism has engulfed Daniel Levy, Chairman and CEO of Spurs for the last 14 years, in the wake of a transfer window which ended with Levy’s failure to secure the transfer of Saido Berahino from somewhere called West Bromwich to White Hart Lane.

Daniel Levy, brings an accountant’s approach to soccer

Levy, who has steered Spurs to only one trophy and a single season in the Champions League during his entire tenure, has a name for watching the pennies and for leaving his transfer deals to the last minute, an approach which his critics say is deeply flawed: it limits the choice of available players to those left on the shelf at the end of the window and costs the team points since the new players are not available for vital early games. This season Spurs have so far secured just two points – that is two draws – out of a possible nine, from three games and scored just two goals.

The challenge facing Levy was to recruit a striker to supplement Harry Kane in case of injury or bad form, as seems to be the case in the first three games. Hence the targeting of Berahino. The haggling with West Bromwich was fierce and has ended with the two teams offering widely differing accounts of the negotiations.

West Bromwich claimed that Spurs had offered to pay £6.5m in cash and the remaining £18.5m of the £25m fee in add-ons which would be paid if Berahino achieved certain results, such as international caps. In other words there was no guarantee that the full fee would ever be paid.

Spurs counter claim that an offer of £25m cash was made but rejected by West Bromwich’s pugnacious chairman, Jeffrey Peace, who maintained that Levy had left his offers far too late and they fell far short of what was necessary.

Spurs fans are in little doubt that Peace is giving the more truthful version. Levy has a track record of negotiating like this and too many in the media have been willing to credit the Spurs boss with qualities that are arguably quite stupid and counter productive. As usual the hacks have got the story wrong, some possibly in an effort to ingratiate themselves with Levy.

The sale of Gareth Bale to Real Madrid raised real questions about Levy’s knowledge of soccer and his eye for talent spotting. He used the £100m from the Bale sale to buy seven players, most of who have now been sold off for a loss after failing to deliver. Soccer pros say the difficulties of integrating seven new players in a pre-existing squad are almost insuperable and by going down this road, Levy made a basic amateurish mistake. He hired Franco Baldini to do the deals for him and clearly that proved to be a bad choice. Baldini has now been retired.

The real power at Spurs lies with a reclusive currency speculator and billionaire called Joe Lewis, a tax exile who spends most of his life on a luxury yacht somewhere in the Caribbean. Lewis, who owns a majority stake in ENIC, a holding company that owns Spurs, seems to regard Spurs not as a football team whose job is to win trophies or bring glory to the owner but as an investment vehicle. So transfers are scrutinised more for their implications for the Profit & Loss account than for the impact on the field.

Joe Lewis makes a point to Daniel Levy: ‘Where’s my money, Daniel!?’

To get back to the need for a new striker, which was the background to the drama.

During his 14 years in North London, Levy has hired ten managers and fired nine of them. His latest acquisition, Mauricio Pochettino, an former Argentine international and manager of Southampton, looked as if he was going to make a difference.

Mauricio Pochettino: His Master’s Voice?

But to judge from the reports in the wake of the Berahino fiasco, it seems Spurs’ new manager is made of poor stuff, content to follow obediently in Levy’s path.

Compare and contrast the two stories below, the first that appeared about ten days ago, the second which appeared today. Very disappointing. Bodes ill for the season:

This is what Pochettino said on August 20th

Echoing Daniel Levy, this is what he said today…..

….and here’s more

There will soon be, apparently, a debate in Britain about whether to leave the EU. The two stories reproduced below surely suggest that the wrong debate is planned. The EU should be debating whether to expel Britain, not the other way round! A country which voted into power a politician with the heartless views described below does not deserve to be included in any civilised forum.

A Turkish policeman discovers the remains of a young Syrian refugee, presumably drowned as his family tried to flee the war

Claims this week, first by former Irish Justice Minister Michael McDowell and now from former Taioseach, Bertie Ahern, that the British and Irish governments agreed to accept the continued existence of an unarmed IRA – “a withering husk” in McDowell’s words – to counter the threat from dissident republicans are so ludicrous they should be laughed out of the room.

Former Irish Justice Minister Michael McDowell – “a withering, unarmed husk” of an IRA would stave off the dissidents

If such an impotent entity ever came into being how long would it have taken the Real or Continuity IRA, or any one of the multitudes of republican acronyms that have sprung up since 1997, to work out that the Provos had become, in that wonderful Belfast phrase, ‘a beaten docket’ and could be quickly taken out and sent scattering?

Former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern. Co-ordinated NI policy with McDowell and now claims that the IRA was to remain ‘unarmed’.

A few days, a couple of weeks, a month or two? I don’t know but it surely would not have been long before the dissidents gleefully realised their adversaries were weak and defenceless, as vulnerable as fish in a barrel.

The only way a rump Provisional IRA could see off a threat from the dissidents was to be at least as well armed, if not better armed. And both the British and Irish governments, and especially their security advisers, would have known that.

IRA Volunteres on patrol. Ahern & McDowell say an IRA bereft of weapons would have countered armed dissidents.

But neither government could afford to be found with their dicks in the honey pot, so to speak. And so, admitting the truth is not allowed.

So here is what I reckon may really have happened and we must base the alternative theory on the account provided by Mitchell Reiss, Bush’s peace process ambassador who is more credible and reliable than the other players if only because he had no dog in the fight, or if he did, that it was only a very small and insignificant one.

Here is what he wrote in his now famous review of Jonathan Powell’s book, ‘Great Hatred, Little Room’:

“In July 2005, the IRA had finally agreed to decommission all its weapons. At the last minute, [Gerry] Adams called No 10 to demand that some of the weapons not be destroyed so that the IRA could arm itself against possible attacks from dissident members. Unless this was allowed, he threatened, decommissioning would not proceed. The Blair government conceded, but wanted to check with Dublin. Irish Minister for Justice Michael McDowell refused to acquiesce in the backsliding, despite enormous pressure. Powell told Adams of the problem, and Adams gave way. Decommissioning took place as planned.”

What I suspect really happened was that when Blair’s proposed concession to Adams was discovered in Dublin the shit hit the fan in St Stephen’s Green, but for a reason altogether different from the one understood by Mitchell Reiss.

If Dublin had agreed to allow the IRA to remain armed it would have created the ingredients for a political scandal that would have overshadowed the Arms Trial imbroglio of 1970 which almost sent Charles Haughey to jail.

Not least of the consequences of making such a pact would be that Gerry Adams would have the Dublin government and a key adversary, Michael McDowell over a barrel.

A judicious leak at the right moment to the effect that an Irish government had permitted the IRA to keep weapons would destroy McDowell and his officials and the ensuing scandal would envelop another Fianna Fail Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, and perhaps other members of the Cabinet. The threat to the very integrity of the state could not be understated.

No politician worth his salt would leave themselves open to such a vulnerability and while Mr McDowell has, understandably, now dressed his refusal to countenance an armed IRA in moral propriety, I suspect the truth may have been more complicated.

Which still left the problem of the Provos versus the dissidents unresolved. And that is why I would, if I had one, give a fortune to have been a fly on the wall when Jonathan Powell and Gerry Adams met to discuss what to do when McDowell said no.

Reiss says: “Adams gave way”. If so, why? Did he just throw up his hands in surrender? Did he accept the inevitability of casualties on his side, colleagues, comrades and friends gunned down by dissidents who did have weapons? And how did he justify such a meek surrender to his colleagues on the Army Council? Or was he made another offer that he couldn’t and wouldn’t refuse.

Here, I am wandering into the realm of pure speculation, I freely admit – and critics can attack me for that if they wish – but it is hypothesizing rooted in common sense.

What if Jonathan whispered the following, or something like it, into Gerry’s ear: “Listen, Gerry. Here’s the situation. We can’t be seen giving your people the green light to be armed. If it ever got out, Tony would be destroyed and Dublin just won’t wear it. But if your people were to, let’s say, acquire, or even hold back the necessary, I don’t think any of our people would make a fuss. How does that sound?”

Now, call it what you will, but to my ear and eye that would still amount to a government consenting to the continued existence of an armed IRA, with Dublin a conveniently silent but consenting partner. But there would be no fingerprints at the scene of the crime.

And if that, or something like it, is what really happened, is this why the Kevin McGuigan killing has spooked both governments and police forces and got their proverbial knickers in such a twist?

Is it possible that the truth is horribly simple: that both governments knew, not only that the IRA would continue to exist, but that it would also, by nod and wink, have to be allowed to retain weapons because otherwise it would be unable to deal with the dissidents? And that the greatest fear in Dublin & Belfast therefore is that this truth, of which they were aware, will be exposed?

Postscript:

In two reports published following the September 2005 supposed full act of decommissioning by the IRA – one in February 2006. the other in April 2006 – the Independent Monitoring Commission reported that not all the IRA’s weapons had been put out of commission.

That was immediately denied by the decommissioning supremo, General de Chastelain and a rift was opened up between the two main bodies responsible for monitoring the ceasefire.

In its next report, its 12th, published in October 2006, the IMC had an explanation for the un-decommissioned weapons which got everyone off the hook:

Someone suggested to me that followers of this blog might be interested in reading two articles I wrote for The Irish Times on the continuing fallout from the Kevin McGuigan killing. One appeared last Saturday and the other today, Thursday.

Here they are. One is copied directly from the paper, the second is my unedited version sent to the paper on Wednesday (my ten free article limit having expired!) Hope you find them interesting:

Either IRA has got new weapons or it was not truthful on decommissioning