Behind the lurid headlines and sensational revelations of the Stormontgate saga lies a very human story, writes Ed Moloney
It was Denis Donaldson himself who provided the best clue to explain the puzzling events of what has become known as Stormontgate. In the course of his statement to RTÉ's Charlie Bird, admitting that he had worked as a paid British spy for the previous two decades, Donaldson gave details of his last contacts with his handlers in the PSNI special branch.
His last conversation with them was last Friday night, within hours of the revelation that he had been expelled from Sinn Féin for his treachery, when the special branch contacted him to arrange a meeting. Prior to that, he said, he had last met the special branch two days before his arrest in October 2002 - on the same day that some 20 PSNI officers raided Sinn Féin's Stormont offices and launched a series of events which ended in the collapse of the power-sharing executive.
In other words, there was a gap of over three years in the contact between the special branch and a figure who must have been rated as a valuable agent within the Provisionals.
One can only guess at Donaldson's motives for including this apparently arcane piece of information in his statement, but it doesn't take a genius to work out that he was trying to signal that relations between him and his handlers had soured badly. Between his arrest and his outing, the special branch had three years and innumerable opportunities inside jail and outside to talk to Donaldson, but they had ignored him. Something, clearly, had caused a breach.
There have been several media reports in the last few days suggesting that Donaldson was not the real source of the PSNI's information about the IRA/Sinn Féin spy ring at Stormont, but that it was another double agent in the Provisionals' ranks who blew the whistle. Other reports suggest that Donaldson had concealed the spy ring from his handlers. His own statement strongly suggests that the reports are accurate.
Not a great deal is known about what really happened prior to the PSNI raid on Sinn Féin's Stormont offices, but the official version goes something like this. The spy ring was extensive. The Provisionals had up to five agents working in the Stormont complex and elsewhere funnelling documents to the Sinn Féin and IRA leaderships.
Some dealt with security matters and listed names and addresses of security and government personnel. But the really interesting stuff was political, as Hugh Orde has now made clear - transcripts of conversations between Tony Blair and George Bush, position papers prepared by the British government for peace process negotiations, and correspondence and documents from the parties to the NIO. If you were leading Sinn Féin into talks, this was all massively valuable ammunition to use against your adversaries.
The authorities seemed to have known about the spy ring for some time but stayed their hand for two reasons. One was simply funk on the part of MI5, who were terrified of telling the then Northern Ireland secretary, John Reid, that the IRA was rifling his private papers, not least because of the political disaster it could precipitate for the Good Friday agreement.
The other was the hope that the IRA figure in overall charge of the operation, the organisation's intelligence chief, would be ensnared. The same figure organised the Castlereagh break-in and, later, the Northern Bank robbery, and the authorities were eager to punish him. The spy ring's linkage to the top echelons of the Provisionals, and the supposition that they approved these activities beforehand, is evidenced by the fact that the same man was the army council's interlocutor with the decommissioning chief, Gen John de Chastelain. He had the complete trust of the IRA and Sinn Féin leaderships.
But it was not to be. Instead, it seems that the PSNI and MI5 discovered that, in the person of Denis Donaldson, they had a rogue agent on their hands, the worst spookish nightmare come true. Why, when and how Donaldson decided to betray his handlers and somehow rehabilitate himself with the Provisionals, even if this was only inside his own head, are questions only he can answer. But behind the lurid headlines and sensational revelations lies a very human story of a man wrestling with his own treacheries - and that should not be forgotten.
In the light of all this it is not too difficult to construct a scenario in which the Stormont raid was justified partly on the grounds that it would bring the spy ring crashing to the ground and partly as punishment of Donaldson for betraying his spymasters. Nor is it stretching credibility to suggest that his outing was done deliberately by British intelligence also as punishment but as well to send a warning to other agents tempted to follow his example.
Whether deliberate or not, the exposure of Denis Donaldson sends another message, this time to Gerry Adams and his colleagues in the Provisional leadership.
The outing of Denis Donaldson is the second spy scandal to rock the IRA and Sinn Féin in recent years. The first was the revelation that the IRA's counter-intelligence unit had been penetrated by the British, and the IRA thereby turned into an open book for them, through the double agent Freddie Scappaticci.
That scandal was confined to the IRA, but the Donaldson revelation opens the possibility that the British had agents of influence inside the political wing, edging and nudging the Provisionals towards the peace process and strengthening the Adams/McGuinness leadership along the way. Between them, Scappaticci and Donaldson prompt the question of who was controlling and guiding the Provisionals during these crucial years: the British, the Adams/McGuinness leadership or the two together?
Whatever the answer to that question, one thing is clear. The Sinn Féin leadership cannot afford another spy scandal. The best way to avoid this is to complete the peace process journey, do the best deal possible with the DUP and recognise the PSNI. Only then, when they are safely inside the house and the door is locked, can Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness breathe easily.