Dead Man Running: A True Story of a Secret Agent's Escape from the IRA and MI5 (29 page)

As a result of correspondence between the Command Secretariat of the RUC and my solicitor, however, the discrepancy of £36,000 came to light. The mystery of the missing money was enthusiastically taken up by Robert McCartney, the MP for North Down, who is also a Queen’s Counsel. He asked the Northern Ireland Secretary of State to list the sums of money paid to me since August 1991 and to state which agencies paid the money and under what powers. The Secretary of State was also asked how much was paid to me by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Agency.

Probing the money paid to me arose after my solicitor had applied for a hearing to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Agency for the serious injuries I had received as a result of throwing myself out of the third-floor window. To this day, seven years after the event, I still suffer from splitting headaches, for my head had been severely lacerated in the plunge. Neurological consultants have told me that I still have scar tissue on my brain and am suffering minor brain damage.

Kevin Ham, a senior case worker for the Compensation Agency, informed that another anonymous Crown servant had told the Agency that a house costing £80,000 had been purchased for me and that I had been given a further £40,000, in cash, which took fully into account compensation for injuries caused when jumping out of the window. As a result, of course, the Agency wanted to know why I was making an application for further compensation.

What horrified and enraged me, however, was that a note had been sent to the Compensation Agency from the RUC Special Branch which stated, ‘Martin McGartland was known to be an IRA sympathiser and had never worked for the Special Branch.’

The statement – a direct, unquestionable lie – puzzled me and I wondered why such misinformation could have been sent to the Agency by the Special Branch who knew I had worked for them for four years. I didn’t immediately condemn the SB for sending that note because I just found it totally inexplicable. But it made me realise I not only needed to write a book telling of my career as an undercover agent, but I also needed help from the most influential people in the land.

As a consequence, I wrote to the then Prime Minister John Major, Opposition Leader Tony Blair, Lord Tebbit, former Northern Ireland Secretaries Tom King and Michael Mates as well as the Unionist Leader David Trimble. All wrote letters of support to me as well as writing to Sir Patrick Mayhew, then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, demanding that my case be looked into as a matter of urgency.

Sir John Wheeler, Minister of State, wrote to MP Robert McCartney telling him that I could not claim compensation because there were no medical records covering my injuries and I had not served notice of my claim for compensation within 28 days as required by legislation. The Minister’s argument was not soundly based. The reason there were no medical records submitted was because after I had been moved from the Musgrave Park military hospital to safety in an army barracks the Special Branch took away all my hospital records and burned them. The reason why I had not put forward my claim within 28 days was because I was only semi-conscious and under police guard in protective custody throughout that time. It seemed extraordinary that a minister of state would go to such lengths to deny me natural justice. But the minister’s fallacious arguments would go further in an effort to blacken my name.

In one letter Sir John Wheeler wrote to Robert McCartney, it is said that; ‘Mr McGartland applied for compensation to the Compensation Agency in 1992 in respect of an incident in August 1991 in which he alleges he had been injured when he jumped from a third-floor flat having been kidnapped’. It continued, ‘Mr McGartland then appealed to the County Court against the Agency’s decision but before his case came to hearing, information came to light which suggested that he had been a member of the Provisional IRA and involved in terrorism including the murder of an off-duty soldier. His case was heard at Lisburn County Court where the judge dismissed his appeal primarily on the grounds of his membership.’

When I read that I saw red. The Northern Ireland Minister Sir John Wheeler should have known that I had been recruited by the Special Branch; that I had been urged by my Branch handlers to join the Provisional IRA and work as an undercover agent supplying information to the Special Branch. Sir John should have been made aware by his advisers that I had been responsible for reporting activities of PIRA members and their plans to bomb strategic targets as well as their evil plots to kill individuals, usually members of the security forces, the RUC and prison officers. For four years I had risked my life trying to save people’s lives and this was the way I was being treated by the British government. I felt Sir John Wheeler’s letter was disingenuous at best.

I was determined to establish the truth, not solely because the money would have been very useful but also because this revelation seemed to be part of the overall pattern to undermine my credibility. And all because I had escaped a bid to have me murdered, probably organised by that most secretive Crown agency, MI5. But why?

And then silence. I presume the Northern Ireland Office and RUC senior officers hoped the accusations would go away. For more than 12 months I heard nothing whatsoever and as the months passed by I became even more angry and determined. I believed the very fact that no reply was sent to my solicitor meant that the authorities realised they were at fault. Some newspaper friends of mine believed that they saw the hand of official chicanery behind my court case. They argued that if the Crown had been able to convict me on charges of perverting the course of justice I would have been jailed and my good name tarnished to such a degree that no one would believe any accusations I might make against MI5, the RUC, the Home Office or the Command Secretariat.

In may 1998 my solicitor wrote to Ronnie Flanagan, Chief Constable of the RUC, demanding a substantive reply to the questions that had been asked over the previous two years, adding, ‘This matter is beginning to acquire the flavour of a “cover-up”.’

Seven days later a reply was finally received from the Chief Constable stating that, according to their records, I had been paid – surprise, surprise – a total of £82,000 including an amount of £12,500 for the purchase of a ‘milk round’ for me to run as a business following my resettlement. The letter came as a considerable shock because it was the first time ever that I had heard anything about the purchase of a milk round!

My solicitor immediately wrote back asking for full details and the records of monies paid to me and by whom, where and when. He also asked for full details about the alleged milk round, asking particulars about the business, from whom it had been purchased, and where and when. There was no reply to any of those questions. More than six months later the Chief Constable has still not produced any records to me or my solicitor, no details whatsoever have been supplied and nothing has been heard of the mysterious milk round. It seems someone has been economical with the truth.

Unhappy with the extraordinary course of events, I phoned Kevin Ham at the Northern Ireland Compensation Agency, the civil servant responsible for authorising payments to people injured in attacks and beatings by the IRA and the Protestant paramilitaries. He knew of my case and produced the answers to my questions. I taped the phone call.

I asked him how much my house had cost.

Kevin Ham; ‘I was told the figure paid for your house was £80,000.’

Me; ‘But I have the letter from the solicitor that the RUC used and it states that the house only cost £52,500.’

Kevin Ham; ‘Well, as I understand it, and what they have told me . . . I have to accept from a fellow Crown servant what they have stated.’

Me; ‘Did they definitely say £80,000, are you sure that they said £80,000?’

Kevin Ham; ‘I can’t depart from that figure of £80,000. I mean, what I am saying is that the total figure was £120,000 including £80,000 for the house.’

It appeared that the Chief Constable himself had been given false information. But after talking to Kevin Ham, an honest civil servant, I was convinced that someone in the system had cheated me, though not for one minute did I believe the Chief Constable was involved in such deception. And yet it seemed unbelievable both to me and my solicitor, that someone, or some organisation, would want to steal from an agent who had risked everything. I wondered how many other agents and informants had been treated in the same way, receiving less money than had been authorised. I knew there would have been dozens of agents who needed to be resettled during the Troubles and I wondered if they too had been ripped off.

Menacingly, however, and more worryingly, I wondered how many other agents who had worked undercover inside the IRA had been betrayed by MI5 or any other British security or intelligence agencies; kidnaps arranged in secret deals between the Provos and MI5 officers, which ended in the most appalling beatings, tortures and deaths. I knew the Provos loved to capture British agents and informants because their torture and killing would be seen as a warning to other Catholics and Republicans who were thinking of working for the RUC, MI5 or any other of the government security services. That was why whenever an informant was captured by the Provos and subsequently shot dead, statements were always issued by the IRA propaganda machine. Every killing of every informant instilled fear in the hearts and minds of any Republican who might have been thinking of working for the British government or the RUC.

I also understood only too well that if agents or informants had been betrayed by the British government’s security services, in the same way that I had been betrayed, there was no possibility that the Provos could make a mistake, accidentally interrogating and killing an innocent person. They were certain the men and women they interrogate and tortured – tape recording their traumatic confessions – were guilty, so, no matter how long it took for the punishment squads to tear a confession from the wretched victim, the squads never gave up demanding the answers they required. One can only wonder how many have been betrayed by the security services during the Troubles. About 50 men and women were executed by the Provos and Loyalists for giving information – ‘betraying the cause’ as they called it. And there were apparently only a couple who were innocent of the accusations made against them by the IRA. It led me to believe that with such an extraordinary success rate – 95 per cent accurate – the Provos must have been either brilliant detectives or they had been receiving impeccable information from the forces of law and order and the intelligence agencies.

Each and every time I thought through what I had been told by my SB friend Mick, that I had been set up by MI5 or some other intelligence agency, I shuddered not only at the thought that I only just managed to escape but more so for those poor bastards who hadn’t managed to elude the Provos; who had taken terrible beatings and torture till their spirit had eventually broken. They knew the consequences. Every informant and agent in Northern Ireland knew the penalty if they were ever caught. What those brave men and women never bargained for, what they never knew, was that when the powers that be decided that an informant had passed his sell-by date, when his usefulness was at an end, he wouldn’t be handed a pension and out to grass but, instead, would be sacrificed, treated like a pawn in a game of chess.

Now that it appears peace has finally come to Northern Ireland, however briefly, I hope those who infiltrated the IRA, risking their lives to save other people, will be handsomely rewarded. They should be honoured by the authorities, not treated like nuisances. Those men and women fully realise that even today, there are those amongst the Provos, including some hard men released from jail, who are hell-bent on seeking revenge, determine to teach the ‘touts’ a lesson. In today’s political climate that penalty might not be death but it would probably be a severe punishment beating that might maim them for life. I only hope that those agents and informants who are now seeking a new life won’t be betrayed as I was. But I wouldn’t bet on it.

Autumn 1998

Chapter thirteen

For some months I had come to believe that I was finally a free man – from the constant attentions of Northumbria Police and all the government agencies which had given me shit over the past few years. Unfortunately, I was being too optimistic, for in the autumn of 1998, I ran into trouble with them again. And, more worryingly, the Provisional IRA had once more directly targeted and intimidated my family in West Belfast in their customary cowardly way.

On the morning of Friday, 2 October 1998, I was driving along a main road in Tyne and Wear when I heard the siren of a marked police car behind me, the blue lights flashing. I slowed and stopped. I wondered why they were targeting me.

Constable 5999 walked to my car and told me he had pulled over because one of my brake lights wasn’t working. He asked me for my name and address and I told him my name, ‘Martin David Ashe’, and, as I always did on such occasions, gave him the address of my solicitor instead of my home address. I had previously given my solicitor’s address, not wishing to give my home address to every police officer who stopped me. In the past the police had always accepted the solicitor’s address. But not this day.