Irish police mole helped entire IRA leadership avoid capture in 1974

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
The former intelligence director of the Provisional Irish Republican Army has claimed that an informant within the Irish police helped the entire leadership of the militant organization avoid capture during a raid in 1974. The raid was conducted in December of 1974 by Garda Síochána, the police force of the Republic of Ireland, in the village of Feakle, County Claire, in western Ireland. On the day of the raid, the entire leadership of the Provisional IRA was taking part in a secret meeting with Protestant clergy, which had been pursued by the separatist organization following the so-called pub bombings in the English cities of Guildford and Birmingham. The bombings were meant to take the war in Northern Ireland to the British mainland, but were eventually deemed disastrous to the image of the IRA. Nearly 30 people died in the bombings, while hundreds were injured, many of them seriously. The secret meeting between the IRA’s leadership and Protestant clergy was part of a wider negotiation campaign between republican separatists and pro-British loyalists, which eventually led to a ceasefire that lasted until the start of 1975. However, an informant had given the Garda accurate information about the meeting location between the IRA senior command and Protestant clergy, and the agency’s Crime and Security Branch planned to swoop on the meeting and arrest the republican militants. However, in an interview with British newspaper The Guardian, the IRA’s former director of intelligence, Kieran Conway, said the IRA leadership managed to escape arrest thanks to “a tip-off from high-placed figures within the Garda”. Conway joined the IRA in 1970 and became director of its intelligence wing in 1974. He left a year later and joined again in 1981 during the hunger strikes by republican prisoners. He left for good in 1993, in protest against the IRA’s decision to sign the Downing Street Declaration, which formed the basis of the IRA’s eventual decision to decommission its weapons and enter the political process. Conway also told The Guardian that the IRA had the support of “prominent members of the Irish establishment” including mainstream politicians, senior bankers, stockbrokers and journalists. Many of these supporters provided safe houses for members of the IRA in affluent neighborhoods of Irish capital Dublin, he claimed. Conway was speaking to promote his recently published book, called Southside Provisional: From Freedom Fighter to the Four Courts. This is not the first time allegations have surfaced about IRA moles inside the Irish Garda. In 2011, an Irish government investigation unearthed intelligence reports claiming that an informant within the agency helped the IRA plan the killings of a judge and two senior British police officers in the 1980s.