Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

N. Ireland shocked over double agent

DUBLIN, Ireland - For 20 years, Denis Donaldson says he worked both as an important backroom official for Sinn Fein - and, to the public dismay of his closest party colleagues, as a paid informer for the British.

His Dec. 16 declaration to have been a turncoat sent shock waves through Northern Ireland's peace process. It raised fresh doubts about why the province's power-sharing government really collapsed three years ago - an event triggered by Donaldson's own arrest as a suspected Irish Republican Army spy - and whether any trust remains to build a new one.

Donaldson, 55, is hiding somewhere in Ireland, leaving the IRA-linked Sinn Fein and British officials to push rival conspiracy theories about what "their" man was really doing.

The central achievement of Northern Ireland's 1998 peace deal, a four-party government that included Sinn Fein, fell apart in October 2002 because of the arrest of Donaldson, an IRA veteran who was Sinn Fein's administration chief in the power-sharing government.

Police charged Donaldson, his son-in-law and a British civil servant with pilfering British documents and records that included transcripts of confidential discussions between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush; negotiating papers of Sinn Fein's political rivals; and the personal details of more than 1,000 potential IRA targets.

Police said most papers were found in a backpack in the Belfast home of Donaldson, who spent years in prison for plotting to bomb British government buildings in 1971, then was detained in 1981 by French police while traveling on a fake passport from Lebanon.

On Dec. 8, Northern Ireland was stunned when prosecutors dropped all charges against the three men, obscurely citing "the public interest" and refusing to explain further.

Protestant leaders accused Britain of cutting a secret deal with Sinn Fein to remove a potential obstacle to resumed power-sharing. They said such duplicity demonstrated why they would not cooperate until the IRA disbanded, something the underground group refuses to do despite handing its weapons stockpiles to disarmament chiefs in September.

A week later, there was an even bigger shock: Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams announced that Donaldson, a veteran diplomat for Irish republican efforts, had confessed to Sinn Fein officials he was on the British informer payroll. Within hours, Donaldson confirmed it during a surprise appearance on Irish state TV.

So far, Britain has refused all Northern Ireland parties' demands to explain why it charged an alleged British informer with IRA spying, then dropped the case. Sinn Fein cites this as proof that the alleged "spy ring" was a British production, not an IRA one.

On Wednesday, Blair told lawmakers in London he wanted "to state rather more clearly what had happened" but warned that any disclosures must "be done within the right legal procedures, because otherwise we will all get into trouble over it."

Sinn Fein's moderate rival for Catholic votes, the Social Democratic and Labour Party, said Sinn Fein had at least as many questions to answer because its version made no sense and its public claims to be surprised by Donaldson's duplicity ring hollow.

"Everybody agrees that a rucksack with a mound of documents was found in Denis Donaldson's house over three years ago," SDLP deputy leader Alasdair McDonnnell said Friday. "If there never was an IRA spy ring, why did Sinn Fein not expel him immediately when these were found?"

The probable truth, said Ed Moloney, author of A Secret History of the IRA, was that the IRA spy ring did exist, Donaldson was part of it, and his "handlers" in Special Branch, the intelligence-gathering arm of the Northern Ireland police force, disowned him because of it.

Moloney cited as evidence a part of Donaldson's Dec. 16 admission: He had no contact with his British intelligence contacts between his 2002 arrest and this month's outing.

He said Sinn Fein may be trying to hide the possibility of more British agents in its ranks.

[Last modified December 24, 2005, 01:10:16]