Former NI Secretary Tom King on the IRA’s armed struggle during his time in Northern Ireland and how the SAS wiped out one of their top units.
A former Northern Ireland Secretary of State has said he believed Sinn Fein leaders were committed to ending the IRA’s armed campaign from the late 1980s, but were concerned they could be assassinated by fellow republicans.
In an exclusive interview with the Belfast Telegraph ahead of the publication next week of his memoirs, Tom King recalled surviving two IRA attempts to wipe out the British cabinet.
He also insisted he had no advance knowledge of the 1987 Loughgall ambush in which the SAS shot dead eight members of the IRA’s East Tyrone Brigade.
King (87) said that he had heard reports that Gerry Adams had set up the men because some of them were hostile to the Sinn Fein president’s political strategy and had threatened to kill him, but he never saw anything to indicate that this was true.
Continue reading @ Belfast Telegraph.
This old chestnut. No Informer. East Tyrone PIRA got full of themselves and sloppy. No dogs put in the fields first, no questioning of the change of routine of the RUC. British Intelligence saw Lynagh in the village in the days before. Previous attacks on isolated stations. JCB located and watched. Nobody was permitted to live.
ReplyDeleteI don't buy into Tom Kings account that he knew next to nothing.
ReplyDeleteThe account I read in Charlie One sounds plausible but I wouldn't rule out the thought the British had some sort of inside info...
I don't think there is any evidence that the allegation is true.
ReplyDeleteFeeling that he would have done it in pursuit of his political career is far removed from believing that he did do it.
I guess there were as many rumours swirling around the British security services as there were around the republican camp.
I agree with AM, I also believe Gerry Adams was a partially protected species not because he was an informer but because the British government believed he may be someone they might be able to do business with in the future. They did this type of stuff in Kenya, Cyprus, Malaya and elsewhere
ReplyDelete100%. I even heard first hand from RUC/Squaddies on VCP's that he 'was not to be touched'. One one occasion a friends Da said he stopped him at one and he said 'You can't fucking touch me', before he was briefly stopped then let go when word filtered down off the net.
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