The full 'Stormontgate' story is emerging as peace returns to the North, but more revelations will follow, writes Brian Rowan
You could sense a certain smugness as Denis Donaldson posed with Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness on the steps of Parliament Buildings at Stormont just a few weeks ago. It was Friday, December 9th, and 24 hours earlier in Belfast the so-called Stormontgate case had collapsed.
The background to this case was an allegation of IRA intelligence- gathering inside the Northern Ireland Office. The IRA had been accused of stealing British government documents and, in the political fall-out, the power-sharing Executive at Stormont fell. All of this was a little more than three years ago. But what was really going on behind the scenes?
In October 2002, Denis Donaldson, Sinn Féin's then head of administration at Stormont, was arrested at his home and a bag full of documents was seized. It had not been there for long. The Special Branch of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) knew where it had been and knew what was inside. Its officers were not surprised to find the bag in Donaldson's house.
Donaldson faced a range of charges, as did two others. But, over a period of time, those charges were withdrawn without explanation until the case was eventually dropped in a Belfast court on December 8th 2005. On that date, the PSNI issued a statement, saying it understood the reasons for the withdrawal of the charges against Donaldson, his son-in-law Ciarán Kearney, and William Mackessy.
"The entitlement of those three individuals to the presumption of innocence remains intact," the statement read. "The background to this case is that a paramilitary organisation, namely the Provisional IRA, was actively involved in the systematic gathering of information and targeting of individuals. Police investigated that activity and a police operation led to the recovery of thousands of sensitive documents which had been removed from government offices. A large number of people were subsequently warned about threats to them."
The following day, December 9th, Donaldson posed for photographs alongside Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness. According to republicans, the Special Branch had created Stormontgate. They claimed that it was the work of the so-called "securocrats" and that it had destroyed the power-sharing politics that had grown out of the Belfast Agreement.
But, just a week later, we had one of those pinch-yourself moments in the peace process.
By now, Donaldson appeared more shattered than smug. As he read a statement confirming his role as a British agent over a period of about 20 years, he had the haunted look of an outed informer. Adams and McGuinness were not in this picture-frame. This time, Donaldson was alone.
ON DECEMBER 10TH, uniformed police officers had visited Donaldson's home. According to a Sinn Féin account, he was advised that "members of the media had information that he was an informer and that he should consider his life in danger". Donaldson contacted Declan Kearney, chairman of Sinn Fein's six-county executive, and was advised to speak to a solicitor.
By Monday, Kearney had spoken to Gerry Adams, and 24 hours later the Sinn Féin president instructed him to arrange a meeting with Donaldson and to ask him directly "was he working for the Brits?". That meeting took place at 11am on December 14th. Kearney was accompanied by Leo Green, a former IRA hunger striker and now a member of Sinn Féin's "core group", the party's negotiating team.
The meeting was adjourned after a short time and, minutes later, Donaldson is said to have told Kearney and Green that he was an agent. He was suspended and then expelled from the party.
Donaldson is said to have confirmed that he was working for the British and for Special Branch for about 20 years, to have explained how this came about, and to have given an estimate of the amount of money he was paid.
For some, the Donaldson revelations have explained everything: he was working for Special Branch; he had the documents; it adds up to Stormontgate and to a securocrat conspiracy.
But security sources in the North have a completely different version of events. Yes, Donaldson was an agent, they say, but he did not inform the police about the Stormontgate documents. That is why he was arrested.
According to security sources, there was another informer - a covert human intelligence source (CHIS) - and the IRA's intelligence-gathering operation inside the Northern Ireland Office was compromised long before the documents were moved to Donaldson's house. For weeks, indeed months, before then, the PSNI Special Branch and the British security service, MI5, had known precisely where the Stormontgate documents were being kept.
This was in 2002, not long after the St Patrick's Day break-in at Special Branch offices at Castlereagh in Belfast - a robbery blamed on the IRA and believed to have been planned by its "director of intelligence".A man approached the PSNI at one of its stations in Belfast and offered to work for the police. His motivation is said to have been a falling-out with a republican who holds a senior position in Sinn Féin. The informer is not a significant republican figure, but he was able to identify the house that was being used to hide the Stormontgate documents.
They were not in Donaldson's home, but in another house in west Belfast, in a bag under a bed. The documents were being kept there along with a laptop computer, and the police believed they had uncovered a major IRA intelligence-gathering operation.
What the informer did was to takeSpecial Branch deep inside an IRA intelligence-gathering operation which, when revealed, caused the collapse of the North's power-sharing Executive.
The documents could have been seized at that point and the owner of the house arrested, but there was a bigger plan. One of the targets of a long-running Special Branch bugging and surveillance operation - codenamed Torsion - was the IRA director of intelligence. If he could be caught with the Stormontgate documents, the Branch would have revenge for Castlereagh.
For weeks, the occupant of the house where the documents were hidden was followed by the police. He was away from his home for significant periods of time, long enough for the Special Branch to move in, using what is known as "alternative means of entry".
At one point, the Stormontgate documents were removed from the house, photocopied and then returned. The computer was bugged, as was a bag in which the documents were being kept.
The bugs were "locators" and the IRA's intelligence-gathering operation was compromised - compromised because of information provided by an informer who was not, it is claimed, Denis Donaldson.
The computer was then moved by Republicans to another house, and later the documents were moved to Donaldson's home. According to a source who has spoken to me, Donaldson's home was "the end of the chain" for the documents. They were there for only "a very short time" before being found in a police raid, and, according to my source, Donaldson had not informed his handler.
"If he had, we would have let it [the bag containing the documents] make another move [to another location]," a source said. "Does anybody really believe that Special Branch would [have wanted to] risk such a high-level source?"
The computer was not in Donaldson's house, but was found elsewhere, and the police had moved to make arrests because they believed the IRA might be about to move its intelligence material across the Border.
JUST WEEKS LATER, in November 2002, I revealed details of Operation Torsion, and later the fact that the Stormontgate documents had been removed and photocopied by Special Branch during its surveillance and bugging operation.
The legal teams representing those who had been arrested wanted disclosure of the details of Torsion, but this was resisted.
Special Branch had much to protect: informers at the beginning and the end of the Stormontgate chain, one who had identified a house where the documents were being held, and Donaldson, at the end of the chain, who didn't tell them the documents were in his house but who had provided them with valuable political intelligence over many years.
Then there was the issue of Special Branch "methodology", the business of alternative means of entry, bugging and surveillance, and removing and then returning documents.
For weeks, Special Branch knew that the IRA had on its files the personal details of hundreds of prison officers, but those officers were not told until after arrests were made in October 2002.
The Donaldson revelations will be followed by others in both the republican and loyalist communities in the North following the aftershocks of a 30-year "war".
Everyone knows that Special Branch and MI5 were running agents. It is what happens in conflicts of this kind, but it is who they were running that will continue to cause tremors.
A loyalist convicted of a gruesome murder, suspected of involvement in the illegal drugs trade, and linked to some of the most ruthless figures in the leadership of the Ulster Defence Association, worked for the Special Branch.If he can be an agent, then, frankly, so can anyone.
The Donaldson story may well have been a surprise, but there are more shocks to come in the North's long transition from "war" to something more like peace.
Brian Rowan is former security editor of the BBC in Belfast and author of a number of books on the peace process