Did Adams set up IRA gang to be shot dead by the SAS?
WRANGLING BY ministers in Margaret Thatcher’s Cabinet to secure the use of official chauffeur-driven Jaguars is laid bare in the government files.
Under Whitehall rules, only the Home, Foreign, Northern Ireland and Defence secretaries were supposed to travel by Jaguar – on grounds of security – with the rest of the Cabinet having to make do with considerably less prestigious Rovers.
However, the newly-released files show that other ministers were quick to come forward with ingenious reasons why the rules should be bent in their favour.
In September 1989, after he was moved from Foreign Secretary to become Lord President of the Council and Deputy Prime Minister, Sir Geoffrey Howe appealed to Mrs Thatcher to be allowed to keep his Jaguar.
As she examined the request, officials in No 10 pointed out that there were precedents.
Caroline Slocock noted that the previous year Mrs Thatcher had agreed – against official advice – that Chancellor Nigel Lawson could be allocated a Jaguar. Meanwhile, Trade Minister Alan Clark managed to get his hands on an official Jaguar by paying for it himself, much to the dismay of officials. GERRY ADAMS was rumoured to have set up a notorious IRA gang for ambush by the SAS as they tried to blow up a police station in May 1987, previously secret files have revealed.
Eight members of the Provisional’s East Tyrone Brigade were shot dead after they loaded a 200lb bomb onto a stolen digger and smashed through the gates of the RUC barracks in Loughgall, Co Armagh.
British Army special forces were lying in wait and killed them all, along with innocent bystander Anthony Hughes.
Declassified documents released through the National Archives in Dublin revealed that ballistic tests on weapons found on the dead were used in 40-50 murders, including every republican killing in Fermanagh and Tyrone in 1987.
Three civilian contractors had been murdered in the counties CHARLIE HAUGHEY was warned by loyalist paramilitaries that MI5 ordered his assassination, declassified state papers have revealed.
Records from his office while that year along with officers in the RUC and British Army’s Ulster Defence Regiment. The rumour about Mr Adams was passed on to Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs by respected cleric Father Denis Faul about three months after the Loughgall operation.
The priest, who had been at school in St Patrick’s Academy, Dungannon with Padraig McKearney, one of the IRA gang, said he was taoiseach in 1987 reveal that the UVF wrote to him to tell him that British intelligence also launched a smear campaign against him.
The loyalists claimed their organisation was used by MI5 and MI6, backed up by British Army the theory doing the rounds was that “the IRA team were set up by Gerry Adams himself ”.
Fr Faul said he was “intrigued” by the theory.
Mr Adams declined to comment on the contents of the file when contacted in recent days. Fr Faul, a school teacher and chaplain in Long Kesh prison, said the rumour was that two of the gang – Jim Lynagh, a councillor in Monaghan, and McKearney – “had threatened to execute Adams shortly before the Loughgall event”.
It was being claimed that Lynagh and McKearney “disliked Adams’s political policy” and that they were leaning towards Republican Sinn Fein. Irish Foreign Affairs Minister Brian Lenihan wrote to Northern Ireland Secretary of State Tom King urging him not to triumph over the killings. The operation has long been associated with questions of an informer having tipped off the RUC and British Army. special forces, from 1972 to 1978 and again in 1985.
The UVF also claimed MI5 planned to supply a spoon of “Anthras” (sic), “Foort and Mouth Disease” (sic), “Fowl Pest, Swine Fever, and Jaagsikpi” to be released in Ireland. OFFICIALS WERE quick to capitalise on John Major’s love of cricket to further the cause of British diplomacy, according to the newly released files.
The Prime Minister found himself roped into a charity match alongside other international leaders when he attended his first Commonwealth heads of government conference in Zimbabwe in 1991.
The game was the idea of Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif and, with Australia’s Bob Hawke agreeing to take part, files released by the National Archives in Kew show British officials were keen that Mr Major should also get involved.
Kieran Prendergast, the High Commissioner to Harare, wrote: “If the PM was attracted to this idea I recommend we try to arrange it in the form of an informal supper party on the Sunday evening after you return from Victoria Falls.
“It would also enable us to leave out the high commissioners if the PM preferred to keep the occasion really small.”
He added: “I would also need guidance on whether we should include wives or go for a stag party. The latter would help to keep the occasion cricketorientated.”