THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JONATHAN MANN, INSIGHT (voice-over): They say they served the British government, as double agents inside the Irish Republican Army. Now, no longer under cover, they say they have been cast off.
(on camera): Hello, and welcome.
It has been three years since leaders in Northern Ireland signed the Good Friday accord, laying out plans for a peaceful future for their province. The progress has been slow, but optimists continue to hope that the terrible conflict they call the troubles may be over. They look forward.
At the same time, many other people continue to look back -- at the suffering they endured, the reasons behind it, the efforts to bring it to an end. Several British soldiers are looking back and saying disturbing things about what they have been through. They have alleged in interviews with CNN that they were recruited to infiltrate the IRA in the 1970s and take part in IRA violence.
They and others like them say that after serving the British government, they were more or less abandoned by it. Nic Robertson has this special investigation.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): As the British government struggled in the 1970s to combat the IRA's growing terror campaign, it had a secret tactic to undermine the IRA's efficiency, according to those interviewed for this report.
In the wake of the deaths of 234 people in 1972 alone, the British army, according to the allegations, began recruiting Catholic Northern Irish soldiers to send them home as deep-cover agents. In 1974, Willy Carlin said he was one such soldier.
WILLY CARLIN, FORMER BRITISH ARMY: I served in the British army for nine years, and I was at a point where I needed to decide if I was leaving the army or signing on for the whole game, 22 years. At that time, I was approached by MI5 to go back to Northern Ireland, to infiltrate the republican movement and to do a job for them as a servant soldier.
I went back to Northern Ireland. I took a number of years to establish credibility within the republican movement. Initially, I just worked in Sinn Fein in the area that I lived in.
ROBERTSON: He says he not only worked for Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA for nine years, he also worked for MI5 and other parts of British military intelligence. In 1985, he says he fled Northern Ireland after his cover was blown, and that the British government relocated him, gave him and his family new identities and a house.
This former British soldier, whom we're asked to call "Kevin," not his real name, and whose words are read here, says he was able to stay hidden in the upper echelons of the IRA from the mid-1980s until last year. He saved lives, he says, by passing information while, at the same time, helping to build bombs.
"KEVIN" (through narrator): I was a terrorist, but I was a British agent. You had to do things to stay there. Otherwise, believe me, there would have been a lot more dead people.
When I had to do my IRA job, I had to do it. I am not going to sit here and say that people lost lives at my hands because, basically, the way the law works now is I will go to jail for the rest of my life, and I don't think I deserve that. I broke the law seven days a week, 24 hours a day. Everything I've done broke the law. Helped to make bombs, some of those bombs got caught, they were never used. Some of those bombs exploded and damaged property, and that gave me credibility.
ROBERTSON: "Kevin" and other former agents and a former British intelligence handler interviewed for this report refused to discuss specific operations.
"KEVIN" (through narrator): You know, it's easy for people, oh, he's a tout and informer. A tout and an informer is a real stigma in Ireland, and it follows the family for the rest of time.
But the thing is, a lot of lives were saved. Some were people that will throw stones and cast, "He's a tout! He's an informer!" I wasn't. I was a British soldier.
ROBERTSON: Shortly before Christmas last year, "Kevin" says his cover was blown. He says he received this letter from the IRA, informing him of his violation of two IRA orders for which the penalty is death. "The death sentence," the letter went on, "will be carried out at our convenience."
"Kevin" asked Willy Carlin for help and appealed to the British government for protection. The Ministry of Defense replied it was "unclear on what grounds he would qualify for help." Willy Carlin and "Kevin" then contacted conservative opposition MP Andrew Hunter, who says he has no reason to doubt they were agents. He has raised their case with the British government.
ANDREW HUNTER, BRITISH PARLIAMENT MEMBER: Quite clearly, morally the government is under an obligation to ensure that the men who risked their lives in this form of service are looked after properly. It doesn't seem to be happening. That is a cause of concern.
ROBERTSON: Willy Carlin claims others like "Kevin" have contacted him for help.
CARLIN: And the people that I represent do not want money. They do not want medals. They just want to get on with their lives. I mean, these guys saved peoples' lives, hundreds and hundreds of lives. A few lives might have been lost, but then there was a war on here.
ROBERTSON: Carlin's former handler was this man, "Martin Ingram," not his real name, whose words in this report are also read. He says he served with the British Army's secretive false research unit, the FRU. The FRU's job, he says, was to spy on the IRA and disrupt IRA operations. "Ingram" believes "Kevin" and the other agents have been abandoned by the government they served.
"INGRAM" (through narrator): They've been used, abused, and they are of little more use to the British government, and effectively they are of no consequence. And I think it's disgraceful the way they've been treated, and they owe a debt of loyalty to these people who have served society.
ROBERTSON: Meantime, the British government has gone to great lengths to stop public disclosures about the activity of British undercover agents inside the IRA. Only this week the government obtained an injunction banning the broadcast of an Ulster television documentary.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: UTV will contest this injunction and remains intent on showing the program at the earliest possible date.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERTSON: That documentary alleged the agents, in order to maintain cover and ultimately save lives, took part in the manufacture of bombs and assisted in the killings of soldiers and policemen. The government has also obtained an injunction banning publication against a Sunday Times newspaper.
The British government has been already under pressure for several years by human rights groups and the United Nations special rapporteur on the independence of judges to investigate allegations the FRU also colluded to commit murder with paramilitaries opposed to a united island.
JANE WINTER, BRITISH IRISH RIGHTS WATCH: I think it looks very bad for a developed democracy to be sanctioning, as it were, murder gangs. And in particular to be covering up, in retrospect, what they were doing -- many newspapers have been gagged.
DATO PARAM CUMARASWAMY. UN SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR: There appears sufficient materials to begin an open inquiry and lay to rest all the suspicions, all these concerns, all these frustrations. I am told that is done, because if there is no resolution to this, these concerns, I think even any long-term peace processes can be a problem for Northern Ireland.
ROBERTSON: These agents say the lost lives amidst the government campaign to defeat the IRA may cause the British government the most embarrassment.
CARLIN: Some of the actions that the soldiers had to be involved with need admitting by someone. To admit that more or less gives, shall we say, the British government are guilty of allowing murders to take place.
"INGRAM" (through narrator): Well, the dangers posed by running agents in Northern Ireland is first and foremost, if there is no rule book, which there wasn't in Northern Ireland. We missed the difference between right and wrong.
ROBERTSON: Andrew Hunter says he has no specific knowledge of incidents where agents contributed to deaths, but...
HUNTER: I think it's impossible for people who have not been in those circumstances to imagine precisely what the conditions were they had to endure -- certainly loneliness, yes, great personal danger and obviously uncertainty. Uncertainty what threat lay where and in what direction it would come. And I think in those circumstances, people find it sometimes very hard to make the sort of moral distinction between right and wrong.
ROBERTSON: The former agents we interviewed for this report said they were recruited from the army, given early discharge papers, promised a secret paycheck, plus a savings account.
"KEVIN" (through narrator): So they paid us to become terrorists to fight the terrorists.
ROBERTSON: "Kevin" says he was 21 when he volunteered for what he thought would be exciting undercover James Bond-type work. At the time, he thought he could go back to his army regiment when it was all over. Twenty years later, he says he's wiser.
"KEVIN" (through narrator): We were a deniable commodity, and now they're denying us. The thing is, we're an embarrassment. A lot of those IRA men who are or were on the run, they can go home. I can't go home. I am sentenced to death.
But I have certain things I can prove. It would be embarrassing for me at this stage. I am dead anyhow, I am a dead man walking, so I really don't have anything to lose.
ROBERTSON (on camera): CNN asked several former secretaries of state for Northern Ireland and the British Ministry of Defense for comment about the army infiltration of the IRA. CNN was repeatedly told there would be no comment. The British government, a Ministry of Defense spokesman said, never discusses security matters.
Nic Robertson, CNN, London.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MANN: Gerry Kelly, senior Sinn Fein negotiator and member of Northern Ireland's legislative assembly, joins us now. We'll speak to the Ulster Unionist later in the program, and we also point out that the British government declined our invitation to appear on this program.
Gerry Kelly, the republican movement knew that there were infiltrators in its midst. Do these reports offer any surprises, any new concerns to you or to your party?
GERRY KELLY, NORTHERN IRELAND LEGISLATOR: Well, except that they are being made public. I mean, it is long documented and known that the false research unit existed. I think we must put it in its context. What they were there for was to actually create pseudo gangs who went out not just and gave information and were involved in collusion with loyalist murder gangs, but actually went out and committed killings themselves.
There was a shoot-to-kill policy here. There were upwards to 400 nationalists killed by state forces. There have been all sorts of - there is something like 1,000 Catholics killed by loyalists, many of them who were - which was at the behest of the British forces.
So - and it was back further, I mean, there was an organization before the false research unit which was called the MRF, which was the military reaction force in the early `70s. So the facts of these things have been known for quite a long time. The British have always denied them, and what is interesting about this is that they continue to try and deny that.
But we shouldn't, I mean, make these people into anything else than what they were. They went undercover for the British army. They imprisoned their own people. They gave information which caused the deaths of many people and were actually involved in some of these killings themselves.
MANN: Well, you've just covered a lot of ground, making many allegations that we don't make. Our reporting has been very careful, and it's limited to what you just heard from Nic Robertson. But let me ask you about the role that these people had.
KELLY: Well, I've lived here for 30 years, which is why I make the accusations. I beg your pardon.
MANN: Let me ask you about the role that these people had. When you look at the IRA, and there is now a growing suggestion that it was infiltrated by several people -- we don't know exactly how many - how does it change your picture of the IRA? There are suggestions that there were units of the IRA that were so heavily infiltrated they were essentially under the command of the British military.
KELLY: Well, I don't think that that is true. We do have evidence and very stark evidence that there were, for instance, C Company of the UDA in Belfast, which carried out numerable murders, was actually restructured and armed by agents of FRU. We know that (inaudible) Nelson, who was a British agent, helped to - with the help of MI5 brought in weapons from South Africa.
MANN: I'm going to stop you once again. Forgive me. We're trying to avoid making specific allegations against individuals. We're talking more about the general times.
KELLY: Well, these are - well, forgive me. These are well-documented cases. These are not accusations coming from me as a republican. They are well-documented up to this moment in time, and there is a vast amount of evidence to prove it. So I.
MANN: How dirty was this war? How much of the dirt has yet to be documented, has yet to come out? How much more are the people of Northern Ireland going to learn, do you think?
KELLY: Well, there is a mass of documentation still to come out and for people to be seen. And I think it needs to come out. But if you're talking in terms of people, there was a human rights lawyer who was killed 10 years ago, Pat Finucane, who is probably now well known in America and everywhere else for the fact that there was collusion in his death.
There was another human rights lawyer a couple of years ago, Rosemary Nelson. So I could go through a list of names, go back a long period of time.
MANN: Well, those are good examples because, especially in the Finucane case, there have been efforts to find out what happened. There have been inquiries. What is your sense about the official efforts so far to get to the bottom of these killings, of these kinds of episodes?
KELLY: Well, the people here have tried to find out the truth, our human rights organizations and, indeed, the family themselves. The people who have tried and up to this point have actually succeeded in preventing the truth coming out are the very people who are saying, who withdrew the (inaudible) program on Ulster television and who are saying to you that they will not participate in this program.
They do not want the truth to come out because they do not want to face up to what the truth said.
MANN: Is it helpful, though, that these reports are coming out in the media, whatever the official reaction to them? Does it help the Good Friday accord and the process in the last three years, or do you think it sets it back?
KELLY: No, I think if the truth comes out, it certainly helps in any conflict resolution situation. There are many people and especially (inaudible) who have lost loved ones in what were at the time mysterious circumstances and shoot-to-kill policies and that. For them to find out what happened to their loved ones I think is a part of conflict resolution and a part of a healing process. So certainly I - the more information that comes out on these incidents, the better it will be.
MANN: All right. Just one last question for you. We don't think about these countries as being similar necessarily. But places as different as South Africa and Guatemala have established truth in reconciliation commissions to try and work through national tragedies. Is that what Northern Ireland needs?
KELLY: Well, I think we need to have some sort of process of drawing out what actually happened and what was the truth. I don't know if you can, as you point out yourself, lift the truth and reconciliation process directly off South Africa and put it on here. I don't know if it will work like that. But certainly, people are exercising their mind as to what way the truth can come and what way people can now be allowed to grieve and to realize the truth and look at this (inaudible).
MANN: Gerry Kelly of Sinn Fein, thank you so much for talking with us.
KELLY: Thank you.
MANN: We have to take a break. And then we'll get reaction to the allegations from a leading member of the Ulster Unionist Party. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MANN (voice-over): Bloody Sunday - January 1972. One of the most contentious events in Northern Ireland's troubled past. A civil rights rally in Londonderry turns violent. Thirteen Roman Catholic protesters are shot dead by British troops.
Now a new development - Martin McGuinness, a top Sinn Fein official and Northern Ireland's education minister, is expected to reveal his involvement to an official inquiry. The tribunal has received a written statement from McGuinness reportedly saying that he was the IRA's second in command in the area at the time. It would be the first time that McGuinness had acknowledged that he was, indeed, an IRA activist.
(on camera): Welcome back.
The Northern Ireland peace process may effectively be on hold, pending a British election. But the province is rarely out of the news. Joining us now to talk about the latest developments is Ken Maginnis, vice president of the Ulster Unionist Party and member of the British House of Commons.
Thank you so much for being with us. CNN's Nic Robertson and other media within the United Kingdom are reporting allegations made by former British soldiers who say that they infiltrated the IRA at the request, under the command of the British government and, in fact, committed violent acts in that regard. Do you know about these reports? Are you troubled by them? Do you believe them?
KEN MAGINNIS, VICE PRES., ULSTER UNIONIST PARTY: Well, first and foremost, they've got to look at what was happening in Northern Ireland, particularly in the 1970s, but really over a 30-year period when we had 3,500 - more than 3,500 people murdered by terrorists. Most of those murdered, let me say, were civilians.
And faced with that, it's fairly obvious that it happens in other countries. It happens in America in terms of dealing with the Mafia. There is infiltration by members of the security forces where that is possible into the organizations that are carrying out the criminal acts or the terrorism. There's nothing surprising.
MANN: Now you sound very sympathetic in your description of them. These were people who, at the request of the British government, were committing violence against property, violence against people, killing people, perhaps even including people who were serving the government.
MAGINNIS: Well, I think that's a gross exaggeration. What I'm trying to say is that you've got to separate the propaganda element from the realism of what happens when either you tackle the Mafia or you tackle terrorists. And I think that a good parallel between the sort of infiltration that took place and some of the activities that were employed in America in dealing with the Mafia and the same sort of activity which was employed in fairly desperate circumstances in Northern Ireland. No, I'm not making excuses if people became rogue elements, if in fact they stepped over the border of what was justified in the fight against terrorism and what, in fact, was illegal activity.
But remember that in the 1970s in particular, we - the death toll, I think 1972 the death toll was 400 people being killed nearly at that time by the IRA in Northern Ireland. And government had to very quickly and the security services had to very quickly try to find ways of infiltrating and dealing and frustrating the terrorist activity that was occurring then.
Now, it's very easy in hindsight, when we've got all the conventions to do with human rights and with civil rights and with the rights of the individual within a comparatively peaceful situation - when you've got all that, it is very easy to sit and look back and say that shouldn't have happened in 1972, or that.
MANN: Well, it's not clear that it's entirely over. Do you know, or are you satisfied that the British government has no longer infiltrated the IRA and is no longer active in any paramilitary organization now?
MAGINNIS: Well, I hope that that is not the case. I hope that we continue to have brave men and women who infiltrate these organizations in order to help to protect society. We'd be absolute fools if we haven't. But what I do hope is that some of the mistakes that were made when things were at their very worst will not be made again.
MANN: Should the government be doing more to help these people? You described the brave men and women. They're complaining that they've essentially been cast off. They can't communicate. They can't get any kind of assistance.
MAGINNIS: My experience over 30 years is that it is a particular type of individual who will undertake that sort of double agent role. A person very often who is a bit of Jekyll and Hyde character, a person who believes he's indestructible, a person who believes that he knows very often better than his handlers know, that he is - and who in that sense loses his objectivity.
So it is a very, very difficult situation.
MANN: I just want to inject these were, in fact, servicemen recruited from the British army.
MAGINNIS: Not all of them, I can assure you of that. There were some recruited directly from the organizations themselves, people who perhaps were came to believe that what they were doing was not right and that they owed a debt to society. I can think of one person in particular who probably saved hundreds of lives by supplying information to the security forces from within the IRA.
And eventually, that individual was killed, summarily executed by the IRA. But before that, he'd done a remarkable job. People don't talk about that now in, I suppose, deference to his family and those who survived him. On top of that, of course, one would ask what can you do to protect a person like that?
I happen to know that he was advised to leave the country. He would have been well looked after and would have had a new identity and sufficient funds to move. But he wouldn't go. He believed he was indestructible. He believed he was better than the organization that he was, in fact, dealing with. And that turned out, sadly, not to be the case.
So as I say, some of these people - I think most of them start off with the proper idea. Some of them may become rogues, and it's very difficult to deal with that and to ensure that you keep your undercover agent or your double agent true to the cause that he's ultimately supposed to protect.
MANN: On that note, Ken Maginnis, member of parliament, thank you so much for talking with us.
MAGINNIS: Thank you.
MANN: And that is INSIGHT for this day. I'm Jonathan Mann. The news continues.
END
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