Fatal misstep ended IRA spy's life

BELFAST - Within the IRA and Sinn Fein, Denis Donaldson was regarded as such a staunch republican that his incorrigible womanising rang no alarm bells, even in organisations forever suspicious of infiltration by the security forces.

Donaldson's frequent approaches to women were so well known in republican circles that they were not regarded as rendering him open to recruitment as an agent.

Indeed, one of a number of mysteries that remain about the Donaldson affair is exactly how Special Branch recruited him 20 years ago. He gave no details, apart from saying he was recruited "after compromising myself during a vulnerable time in my life".

The Irish feminist Marie Mulholland wrote of him: "Denis stood out, all five foot nothing of him. Yes, he was a small man, but somehow it never seemed to matter because he had charm - buckets of it. Not the smoozing of an operator, but real charm. It worked wonders with women, and Denis loved women - lots of them."

Donaldson was killed by two shotgun blasts after a break-in at the cottage in County Donegal he was hiding in. The multiple injuries he sustained led to inaccurate reports that he may have been tortured and mutilated.

In political terms, the Donaldson killing could not have come at a worse time. British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Irish counterpart Bertie Ahern were due to launch an initiative today aimed at reviving the Northern Ireland Assembly.

They act in the sombre knowledge that it will come to a sudden halt if the IRA was involved in the murder.

Donaldson's career in the IRA and Sinn Fein spanned the entirety of the Troubles, from the rebirth of the IRA in 1970 to Sinn Fein's growth into Northern Ireland's largest nationalist party.

A member of an old republican family, he was identified with crucial events in recent republican history.

In 1970 he helped give the IRA new credibility as the defender of vulnerable Catholic communities when he helped fend off a loyalist assault on the Short Strand district of Belfast.

Later, he was photographed inside the Maze Prison with Bobby Sands, the most revered republican martyr.

Donaldson travelled the world for the IRA, visiting Europe, the United States and many parts of the Middle East. In his travels he is thought to have acted in a dual role, seeking to win friends for Sinn Fein within groups such as the PLO but also looking for opportunities for the IRA to procure arms abroad.

More recently he became an important cog in the Sinn Fein machine, acting as the party's office administrator at Stormont, the Northern Ireland Assembly building. In this role he was not in the tight inner circle of Gerry Adams and his "kitchen cabinet", but he was close to the heart of the republican political operation.

Donaldson's unmasking came about in bizarre circumstances in October 2002. Following televised high-profile raids at Stormont, police arrested him and others, charging him with being part of a republican spy ring.

The allegation against him was that he had been at the centre of an IRA operation that had amassed large numbers of confidential documents from both the Northern Ireland Office and from local political parties.

The raids and arrests in effect brought down the power-sharing Administration, with David Trimble, Ulster Unionist leader at the time, declaring that it could not function in the light of such behaviour.

One of the ironies in this saga is that the IRA instructed him, a police informer, to start spying at Stormont, co-ordinating the collection and photocopying of confidential documents.

That is presumably exactly what he had been doing for British intelligence: collating documents and information on the activities of Sinn Fein and the IRA and passing them to police.

The IRA, in other words, ordered the British spy to start spying on the British - a tribute to his skill in avoiding suspicion.

There is no definitive answer to the question of why, in arresting and charging Donaldson, the police should have moved against their own agent of 20 years' standing. The most likely explanation is that he was selective in what he passed to his handlers.

Security sources say he did not tell the police that the IRA had appointed him as its spymaster at Stormont and thus forfeited any legal protections he might have had. In all probability, they suggest, he withheld the information to protect himself and his family.

Security sources also say his importance decreased over the years, an assessment that may help explain why Special Branch was prepared to sacrifice him. It may also be the case that the police and other agencies have other agents implanted at even more strategic levels within Sinn Fein and the IRA.

It is certain that they continue to use technological means of surveillance, making use of ingenious bugging devices planted in or near homes and other spots used by republicans.

His unmasking presented the IRA with a huge dilemma, since its traditional punishment for informers is death. During the Troubles it killed at least 50 people it claimed were informers.

But the Donaldson disclosure came after the IRA formally declared that it was abandoning violence. Killing Donaldson would have made a mockery of what republicans saw as solemn and historic pronouncements that their movement had entered a new phase, in which politics would displace terrorism.

The old procedure would have been to dispatch Donaldson with a bullet in the back of the head; instead, under the new dispensation, he was allowed to go free. The general assumption, which he himself shared, was that he was in disgrace but not in danger of death.

Had he left Ireland he would probably still be alive. By staying in Ireland, Donaldson sealed his own fate, since there is nowhere that anyone can completely hide himself away. Sooner or later, word would have got around about where the infamous informer was holed up.

His decision to stay was a fatal miscalculation: Ireland may be on the brink of a new and more peaceful era, but someone was determined that Donaldson would not live to see it. 

 
Rough justice

Christopher Harte
* Shot in 1993 by the IRA, who said he was a member and informer. His body was found with gunshot wounds to the head.

Patrick Flood
* IRA member from Londonderry was killed in 1990, his body found hooded and gagged on a border road. He had been missing for seven weeks.

Michael Madden
* Pensioner was shot six times at his west Belfast home in 1980. The IRA claimed he had given information to police about an attack in which a police officer was killed. A detective told the inquest there was no truth in the claim. The coroner described him as "a recluse causing no trouble to anyone".

Frank Hegarty
* Body was found on the border in 1986. Originally from Londonderry, he moved to England after an arms find but later returned to the city. The Republican leader Martin McGuinness denied claims by his mother that he helped persuade her son to return home, assuring him he would be safe.

Caroline Moreland
* Mother of three from Belfast was shot and her body left on the border in 1994. The IRA claimed she had been working as a police informer.

Eamon Maguire
* Former member of the IRA, his body was found close to the border in 1987. The IRA claimed he had worked for eight years as an informer with police in the Irish Republic, which his family denied.

- INDEPENDENT