David Flood
"Michael O'Neill" <onq@indigo.ie>wrote in message news:3CBFEC62.C037D72E@indigo.ie...

Michael O'Neill
David Flood wrote:

<snip>

David Flood
Care to reply/acknowledge Michaels' quite pertinent point (on which I can elaborate further, if you like)?

Michael O'Neill
<snip>

Go on, you know you want to. I know I want you to. Ojay may be a bit miffed but what the heck. He doesn't know about the London/Rest of England divide [known to everyone in England north of say, Gloucester] so he needs the experience. Ar aghaidh leat!

David Flood
Well, he'll likely try to pretend he didn't see it, so I'll simply reproduce one of the paper articles and save myself the RSI ;)

Who stole the secrets of room 2/20?

The brazen and precise nature of the Castlereagh raid points to an inside job

Northern Ireland - Observer special

Henry McDonald Sunday March 24, 2002 The Observer

Confident of evading capture, they left their fingerprints all over the room. The three men must have also been aware that the CCTV cameras overlooking the office they were about to break into would not record their entry. Unmasked and unarmed, they entered Castlereagh police station - supposedly the most secure building in Europe - even dropping a Save-the-RUC pin on the floor as they fled last Sunday night.

Although carried out with military precision, the men involved in the raid on Room 2/20 - the call centre for Special Branch informers throughout Northern Ireland - were also spectacularly brazen in their approach.

At around 10.15pm on St Patrick's night, a Special Branch constable manning the office in Castlereagh police station heard a knock on the door. After opening it, he was punched on the chin and fell to the ground.

Although he was dazed from the blow, the constable noticed that three men had entered the room. They were not carrying guns or any other weapon. The trio tied him up with thick masking tape and pulled a hood over his head along with a Walkman to drown out any noises.

According to the officer's report, no further violence was applied during the next few minutes as he was left trussed up in a corner of the room. He said the men did not appear to speak and spent around 10 minutes inside the room. He said there was no sound of any panic or of the office being pulled apart during their stay.

Eventually he wriggled free and raised the alarm at about 10.45pm. The CCTV cameras did not record the raiders who stole intelligence documents from one of the key nerve centres of anti-terrorist operations in Northern Ireland. Spy cameras overlooking the entrance to room 2/20 were not linked to video recorders. This will bolster suspicions that the break-in was an inside job carried out by members of one of the security services' branches.

The Observer has learnt that the raiders took four notebooks containing code names of informants working inside the IRA, the Real IRA and loyalist terror groups.

According to a senior officer in the Police Service of Northern Ireland, the codes were 'not massively encrypted' - indicating that the identities of the intelligence sources could be vulnerable to decoding.

It has also emerged that the team behind the break-in did not wear gloves, as they left several fingerprints throughout the office. Since the raid the room has been forensically swept for prints. A number of prints, not belonging to officers with full-time access to room 2/20, were found last week by the investigating team led by the PSNI's top detective in Belfast, Chief Superintendent Phil Wright.

Sources within the PSNI believe disgruntled members of the security forces, possibly members of the British Army's secretive undercover Force Research Unit, were the most likely conspirators. The trio believed to have been responsible for the raid flashed army ID passes at police guards on the gate.

On the failure of spy cameras overlooking room 2/20 to record the raid, a senior PSNI officer said: 'It is simply to do with a lack of resources.'

Although the source said the raiders undoubtedly had 'inside knowledge' of the heavily guarded station in east Belfast, the officer declined to point the blame at any one quarter of the security services. 'It's hard to discern what their motives were. Are they going to sell the material to the paramilitaries?'

'Are they going to publish it?' Or was this raid 'to send a message from disgruntled members of the security forces about the way the police service has been downgraded,' he added.

While the favourite theory for the break-in remains disaffected members of the Army's Force Research Unit, the PSNI cannot rule out the possibility of paramilitary involvement. Early last week they received reports that an elite IRA unit was seen in the area in the weeks leading up to the raid.

The IRA has penetrated security bases in the past. However, terrorists rarely leave their fingerprints behind or carry out such a raid unmasked under the glare of CCTV.

One of the indisputable results of the break-in was the damage inflicted on the terrorist informer network.

Within an hour of the raid Special Branch officers were called in and ordered to contact all their informants, who were made aware of the security breach hours before it was officially announced.

As for Special Branch, one member of the elite anti-terrorist unit this weekend described his members as 'being sick as parrots' following the raid. 'The shock has gone right through the entire system,' the Special Branch source said just before cutting the conversation dead with this warning. 'I can't talk to you any more, as I've asked for all my calls to be monitored so there is no suspicion over me,' he said. Such is the level of paranoia infecting not only the entire informer network in Northern Ireland but also the police officers who handle the vital, life-saving intelligence.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Northern_Ireland/Story/0,2763,673130,00.html

And here are a few more (there are better accounts in the past few Sunday Tribunes, but their website isn't up)

http://www.sbpost.ie/story.jsp?story=WCContent;id-41529 http://www.sbpost.ie/story.jsp?story=WCContent;id-42695

D.