Tag Archives: Ed Moloney

UPDATE BELOW

By Ed Moloney and James Kinchin-White

The document below is an extract from a British Army ‘watch-keeper’s log’ which appears to show that Kevin McKee, killed and disappeared as a British spy in 1972, and whose body may have just been found in a bog in Co Meath, betrayed a significant IRA arms dump containing five weapons and some 1600 rounds of ammunition.

A ‘watch-keeper’s log’ was a record of all incidents, searches, arrests, lifts, finds or contacts reported by military patrols during a tour of duty. Such logs were kept at each level of the British Army from company level, which this extract appears to be, to Battalion level, Brigade and HQNI, i.e. at Thiepval Barracks in Lisburn.

Kevin McKee – did he tell British Army to raid arms dump in Ballymurphy?

This post will be updated later with more complete details, including dates (although this event appears to have happened on February 7th and my recollection is that the year was 1972), but from memory this was a ‘watch-keeper’s log’ kept by a company of the Kings Own Scottish Borderers, then stationed in Ballymurphy

The relevant extract reads: “Kevin McKee gave info to search 57 Westrock Drive.” The log then goes on to say that a search was made at seven minutes past midnight and then lists the weapons and ammunition discovered.

It is important to retain a degree of caution about the identity of the informer. There may have been more than one Kevin McKee acting as an informer at this time but as it stands, the document appears to suggest that the IRA may not have been wrong in accusing him of being a spy.

Here is the extract. Click to expand.

UPDATE

We can now confirm that this ‘watchkeeper’s log’ was kept by ‘C’ Coy, 1st Btn, Kings Own Scottish Borderers (KOSB) which served in Ballymurphy between 28 December 1971 to April 24, 1972. The asterisk at the top of the page (see below) indicates that everything on that page should be sent to Brigade, i.e. 39 Brigade which included Belfast-based military units. This may have been because McKee was a member of the MRF (Military Reaction Force) and anything concerning that unit would have been of interest to the Brigade staff. CS 37 (call sign 37) is the codename for the officer who led the raid.

The cover page of the watchkeeper’s log with instruction to send pages marked with an asterisk to NIREP 1, i.e. report to 39 Brigade