Several of todays papers are making the claim that Martin McGuinness has been a British Agent within Sinn Fein and the IRA.
The Sunday World story is front page news and declares that “McGuinness was Brit Spy.” According to the Sunday World, Martin Igram, the former handler from the Force Research Unit supports his claim with documentary evidence.
The Sunday World claims to have obtained a transcript of a conversation that Ingram claims is between McGuiness and his handler. Again, according to Ingram, McGuinness was known as agent J118. Martin’s brother Willie is alleged to have been agent J119.
Ingram told the Sunday World “The most significant thing for me in this transcript is the fact that McGuinness’s handler is the driving force behind the human bomb campaign.” This is a reference to the human bomb campaign waged in the early 1990’s where indviduals were forced to drive a bomb to a destination and effectively became unwilling suicide bombers. The campaign was largely centred in the North West and Ingram’s claims appear to suggest that there was a determined effort to keep this type of campaign away from Belfast and the East coast.
Many of us are well familiar with the claims that there is a high level mole in SinnFein, and indeed for qutie some time some very high ranking names have been bandied about.
From my perspective, if there was any truth to this as yet unfounded allegation, the questions I would have would be much more focused on who drove the peace process, when and why. Unless there is a satisfaction among members of SF that the process belongs to them, to the rank and file, there is a real and present danger of increasing defection to splinter groups.
These are dangerous allegations by the Sunday World indeed, and the fact that they have been printed appears to suggest that they are confident about their sources and their substantiation.
Sinn Fein are calling the claims nonsense, so we must just wait and see what transpires over the next few days. As the Chinese tell us, we are indeed blessed to live in interesting times.
