🚀 go-pugleaf

MI5 and Omagh - the bomb to end all bombs?

By John Hanley

www.newrepublicanforum.ie



In 1996 MI5 assigned agent David Rupert the task of infiltrating dissident 
republican circles in Ireland. Rupert's priceless intelligence gave MI5 an 
indispensable insight in to the membership and modus operandi of both 
dissident republican groups on either side of the border. Throughout his 
stay in Ireland Rupert forwarded all of the relevant intelligence he had 
acquired to MI5 via encrypted e-mails. Between 1997 and 2001 Rupert posted 
2166 e-mails to his paymasters in British intelligence.



On 11 April 1998 Rupert dispatched his most controversial e-mail to MI5 
headquarters. It was almost five months before the now infamous maroon 
Vauxhall Cavalier would decimate the centre of Omagh town and kill 29 
people. For this reason the e-mail is all the more startling because in it 
Rupert informed MI5 that a dissident republican group was planning a car 
bomb attack in Omagh [E-mail 104, 11-04-98]. The April car bomb attack in 
Omagh was eventually frustrated by gardai south of the border. However, MI5 
management knew the threat was only postponed and not extinguished. Within 
days MI5 e-mailed Rupert: "We disrupted the intention to use the car bomb, 
but maybe not for long" [MI5 to Rupert, E-mail 126A, 17-04-98]. MI5 
obviously foresaw the strong likelihood of a renewed attempt to bomb Omagh. 
However, MI5 now held the advantage over the would-be car bombers in that 
from as early as April 1998 it knew Omagh was a likely target for a 
dissident republican car bomb attack.



Rupert's e-mails were not the only pre-August 15th information in MI5's 
possession which pointed to a dissident republican attack in Omagh. A second 
key piece of intelligence came to light on August 4 when an anonymous 
phone-caller warned British intelligence of a planned dissident republican 
gun and bomb attack in Omagh on August 15. MI5 subsequently claimed that it 
dismissed this anonymous phone-warning as a rogue RUC Special Branch call. 
However, this was a poor attempt at distraction. The importance in all of 
this is that whereas Rupert provided specific details with regard to the 
proposed location of the planned bombing, this phone-warning supplemented 
his e-mail intelligence by not only confirming the location, but also 
providing the all important precise date of the planned attack.



However, the windfall of dissident republican intelligence did not end 
there. MI5 possessed a third piece of high-grade information which indicated 
that a car bomb attack was scheduled for mid-August. Two days before the 
Omagh bombing, FRU agent Kevin Fulton met with a Real IRA informant whose 
clothing, according to Fulton, was covered in dust particles of homemade 
explosives. Fulton correctly suspected that a car bomb attack was in an 
advanced stage of planning. Fulton provided British intelligence with the 
agent's name and car registration number. Yet once again this vital piece of 
intelligence was ignored.



But perhaps the most startling disclosure concerning MI5's foreknowledge of 
Omagh came during the inquest into the bombing. According to the Sunday 
Business Post (26/8/2001) leading British barrister Michael Mansfield QC, 
acting for Lawrence Rush, cross-examined several RUC witnesses. It emerged 
that a warning specifying the precise location of the bomb had not been 
passed on to local officers in time to clear the area.



"After that, we started getting threatening calls. We were told by the RUC 
that our name was on a death-list," Solicitor Des Doherty said.



The RUC also confirmed to Doherty that a newspaper report of a spy satellite 
picking out the car used to transport the bomb was correct.



Doherty said. "It is understood that when the RUC contacted the Federal 
Bureau of Investigation in America, they produced information from the 
satellite."



This suggests that the maroon Vauxhall Cavalier contained a tracking device 
which enabled a US GPS satellite not only to follow the car's movements but 
also pinpoint its exact location on the day of the bombing. At the request 
of MI5, US intelligence would have monitored the car as a priority and would 
have conveyed this surveillance data to MI5 without delay. Yet MI5 chose not 
to relay this information to RUC officers on the ground on August 15. 
Furthermore, the presence of a tracking device on the maroon Vauxhall 
Cavalier indicates the involvement of an MI5 agent in the planning or the 
execution of the Omagh bombing, at some point between the unlawful 
procurement of the maroon Vauxhall Cavalier and the detonation of the 
explosives on August 15.



After the Omagh bombing MI5 ordered Rupert out of Ireland as a matter of 
urgency. An August 16 MI5 e-mail instructed Rupert to "insulate yourself 
from the gardai" [MI5 to David Rupert, E-mail 305, 16-08-98]. Later that 
night Rupert was ordered to: "Collect tickets at Belfast City 
Airport...You'll be here [London] for two nights. We need to talk. It's 
extremely important" [MI5 to David Rupert, E-mail 329, 17-08-98]. Rupert's 
MI5 handlers obviously feared that their agent might be gripped as part of a 
massive cross-border investigation and that - if placed under sufficient 
pressure - Rupert might disclose the prior bomb warning he had conveyed to 
MI5 in early April in relation to Omagh. Indeed all of Rupert's MI5 e-mails 
on Omagh were subsequently withheld from Nuala O'Loan when she conducted her 
large-scale investigation into the intelligence background to the tragic 
bombing. By late August 1998 there were a number of skeletons inside MI5's 
cupboard.



We now know MI5 possessed four pieces of high-grade intelligence which 
forewarned of a dissident republican car bomb attack in Omagh on August 15. 
The earliest intelligence data was dated 11 April. Then came the anonymous 
August 4 phone-call, Kevin Fulton's August 13 intelligence report and 
finally the satellite monitoring of the Vauxhall Cavalier arising from a 
tracking device planted by a British agent involved in the Omagh bombing. 
Yet notwithstanding this avalanche of intelligence MI5 made no attempt to 
intercept the bomb? How can this operational decision be rationally 
explained? What was the motivation of MI5 management? Did British 
intelligence want to protect the identity of its agent at all costs? Or was 
this yet another "securocrat" plot to subvert the peace?



MI5 management did not want to scupper the peace process, but it did want to 
protect the identity of its agent and, at the same time, drive - what it 
hoped would be - the final nail into physical force republicanism at an 
exceptionally sensitive time in the Irish peace process.



By August 1998 the provisionals were well on their way to exchanging the 
armalite for British ministerial portfolios. Articles 2&3 were deleted. The 
constitutional status quo had been preserved. Provo engagement with the IICD 
and future acts of decommissioning lay only months away. But from British 
intelligence's perspective a black cloud hung over the firmament. By the 
summer of 1998 MI5 was seriously concerned about the growing threat from, 
and the possibility of large-scale provo defections to, dissident republican 
paramilitaries. In the nine months between its formation in late November 
1997 and August 1998 the Real IRA planted large car bombs in Banbridge, 
Portadown and Markethill. Armagh and Moira RUC barracks were the target of 
audacious mortar attacks. In early April 1998 gardai intercepted a BMW 318 
series at the Dublin port of Dun Laoghaire. The BMW was destined for central 
London and was packed with 1,200 lbs of explosives. Once again the prospect 
of massive bombs in the heart of London seemed a distinct possibility. In 
May two cars containing 500lb bombs were intercepted on the border. Two 
dissidents were arrested. In July a three man unit was captured in London 
with a semtex based device and a number of incendiaries. By August 1998 the 
Real IRA campaign was gathering momentum at a time when the Belfast 
Agreement had yet to be firmly rooted and the Adams-McGuinness leadership 
was confronted with the specter of large scale defections.



British intelligence was confronted with an extremely volatile political 
situation. For two decades it had infiltrated both the military and 
political wings of the provisional movement. By 1994 a large number of 
senior PIRA members had been compromised and the organisation was rendered 
incapable of sustaining an effective armed campaign. The reformists Sinn 
Fein leadership had been nurtured and protected and surrounded by MI5 agents 
who influenced the constitutional trajectory of the movement over a period 
of two decades. Was MI5's twenty-year project about to be jeopardised at its 
moment of triumph by the emergence of another IRA and widespread provo 
defections? No. MI5 would allow nothing to destabilise the provisional's 
transition from armalite to ballot box. Drastic solutions were required.



Was it at this point - in April 1998 - that the British agent at the heart 
of a dissident republican group first flouted Omagh as a potential target 
for a car bomb attack? Was the carnage of August 15 the product of his 
labour? From MI5's perspective Omagh was an ideal target for a number of 
reasons. It was the only town in Ireland that retained an elected dissident 
republican. Therefore, a catastrophic car bomb attack would not only 
permanently discredit the emergent political opposition to Sinn Fein in 
Omagh but also throughout the whole island. Furthermore, the resulting death 
toll would also serve to dissuade disaffected provisionals from crossing the 
rubicon into the realm of dissident republican activity. At one foul stroke 
MI5 could deal a decisive blow to both the political and military wings of 
dissident republicanism.



Indeed within days of the bombing the Adams-McGuinness leadership regained 
the initiative. Amid a torrent of anti-republican hysteria they were now in 
a position to publicly condemn a republican attack and visit the scene of 
the explosion. It seemed dissident republicanism has committed political 
suicide. Only weeks previous it seemed unimaginable that the provisional 
leadership could countenance a move towards arms decommissioning and a 
formal end to its campaign, however, the tragedy at Omagh now made this a 
distinct possibility. MI5 had four instances of high-grade intelligence 
concerning Omagh, which when placed together indicated that town would be 
bombed by the dissident republicans on August 15. Yet MI5 deliberately 
allowed the bomb to proceed to protect the identity of a key informant and 
to deliver a decisive blow against republican recalcitrants. After Omagh the 
Belfast Agreement drifted in and out of political crises, but the peace was 
secured. So was Omagh MI5's bomb to end all bombs?



Maurice Kellett

One of the many victims of the very corrupt UK establishment operating by 
appointment to Queen Elizabeth II.



The Judicial Oath sworn by all UK judges and magistrates only to Queen 
Elizabeth II is proven to mean nothing whatsoever other than probably as a 
means to deceive the UK public into believing that the UK has a credible 
justice system and is a democracy which in fact it is not. Hypocrisy is a 
more fitting word to use for the UK rather than democracy.



UK Members of Parliament swear their Oath of Allegiance only to Queen 
Elizabeth II and not to the UK public who elect and then pay their wages. 
Queen Elizabeth II is the Patron Head of the UK Secret Society of 
Freemasonry.



The UK public now live in what can only be described as a modern day middle 
ages. Terrorists do not just happen they are often manufactured.



http://www.mason-rule.bizhosting.com