True friends will wish me dead.
And I shall cause the bitterest tears that you have ever shed' - Emily Bronte.
After watching Freddie Scappaticci deliver his odious speech in his solicitor's office on 14th May 2003, Sylvia Jones became enraged at this charade and decided to bring it to an end. Jones had been the journalist with the Cook Report back in August 1993 and had secretly bugged the car Scappaticci climbed into at the Culloden Hotel. She felt her profession was being undermined and dragged through the mud so wrote an article in the newspaper, The People, on 20th July 2003, in which she recounted meeting Scappaticci on 26th August 1993 in the car park of the Culloden Hotel outside Hollywood, County Down. She wrote:
A senior officer in the then RUC warned us in the strongest terms that everything possible should be done to protect Scappaticci because even the slightest slip could put his life in danger and threaten their most important source of intelligence.
She then released the tape recording of Scappaticci from the bugged car to settle the matter. When Scappaticci was presented with the tape recording in the solicitor 's office he had the audacity to ask could he challenge the tape recording, but was told he couldn't because an independent' voice over expert ' had verified that the voice on the recording matched Scappaticci's voice, in other words they were one in the same person.
The man who had duped the IRA leadership for so long and ironically had entered into a dubious pact with them in order to save his own skin while indirectly helping the IRA hierarchy to save their credibility, had finally run out of road. He contacted his military handlers who faithfully extracted him from the island of Ireland, leaving behind his wife and children. And thus began his life in exile.
In early June 2003 I received a phone call to go to a house in West Belfast in relation to my brother Michael's death. When I arrived i was greeted by a man who told me that he had been Michael's Company OC in 1979. He actually went on to say that he felt guilty about meeting me because 'I am the man who handed your brother over to those shower of traitors and still don't feel good about it'.
When I pressed him further he explained:
When Michael was released from Castlereagh in June 1979 he came to me and I debriefed him. It was me who told him to write out his de-briefing report and to put it somewhere safe as he would need it in the near future. He told me he had been given a severe beating by the Special Branch in Castlereagh and was under pressure. So, to take the pressure off him somewhat he had revealed the whereabouts of a small cache of explosives which were redundant and waterlogged. I myself knew about the cache and knew it was waterlogged, so told Michael not to worry about a useless dump. Immediately after this I informed Brigade about Michael's situation and told Brigade I had debriefed my Volunteer.
Their reply: 'That's not a problem, we value your counsel'.
I thought that was the end of the matter until a few days later, Wednesday June 27th 1979, I was ordered by a Brigade Staff Officer to go and collect Michael and hand him over to 'the Security Team', which was the newly formed Internal Security Unit (ISU). When I protested and told him there was no need for the ISU to be brought in, I was told Brigade had invited the unit in, as was now standard procedure, and they wanted to interrogate Michael in depth. When I said I would need to be with Michael as he wouldn't know anyone in the Security Team, I was told by the Brigade officer, 'He will be fine, there will be a familiar face there.' Which meant Michael would know someone who would be familiar to him. I was ordered to drop Michael off near the Glenowen Inn, Glen Road, West Belfast and that there would be two cars waiting for him in the car park. After I dropped him off at the roundabout on the Glen Road, I watched him walk toward the Glenowen and never saw him again.
When I heard that Michael Kearney was executed in the early hours of 12th July 1979 I went ballistic and demanded an explanation from Brigade who had orchestrated this and invited in Internal Security to further interrogate Michael. To say there was 'dissatisfaction among rank and file' would be an understatement, as other IRA Volunteers and our own support base in Lenadoon were outraged at what had happened to Michael.
A few months later those of us who were disgruntled the most over Michael Kearney's execution were taken aside and had to listen to a statement being read out from Brigade, which claimed Michael Kearney had been a paid agent who had compromised weapons and tipped the British off over the Short Strand bombs, 42 cylinder bombs which had been captured on 6th March 1979. I never believed the validity of this Brigade statement, and thought Michael Kearney had been scapegoated to die to cover up someone else.
After the meeting ended I thanked Michael's former OC for his honesty and returned to my group for a further update. A complicated situation just got even more complicated.
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| Seamus Kearney is a former Blanketman and author of No Greater Love - The Memoirs of Seamus Kearney. |
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