Fishers of Men - the Gripping True Story of a British Undercover Agent in Northern Ireland by Rob Lewis

Author:Rob Lewis [Lewis, Rob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Military, True Crime, Espionage, General, Historical, History, Europe, Great Britain, Political Science, Terrorism
ISBN: 9781786068484
Google: iSKtDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B075DRQTNB
Publisher: Kings Road Publishing
Published: 2017-09-07T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

THE RECRUITMENT

One of the most amusing characters I had dealings with, and funnily enough one of the more successful sources we ran, was a man who came to our attention owing to his friendly attitude towards the troops at the various checkpoints along the border. Code-named Declan, he seemingly, like many people in the Province, hadn’t a care in the world – he was a happy-go-lucky bloke who had a ruddy, roguish look about him. He was in his forties but looked a lot older, which might have had something to do with his clothes. He always wore a battered old suit over a recycled pullover which he’d never take off, even in the height of summer. He was an extremely likeable bloke who amused me immensely. I got along easily with him. He was also regarded with mild affection by some extremely well-known and thoroughly documented Provisional terrorists living in his home area. They very loosely trusted him, and were quite happy to give him run-of-the-mill tasks to carry out, which he did, mainly under our guidance. He loved the situation. He was, in his eyes, very important to the IRA, and in turn he was also important to us. Some of the information he supplied undoubtedly prevented one possible terrorist killing. His recruitment into our organisation came about from his being involved in several conversations with one of our detachment collators, who had spent several days a week working out of the area that Declan would pass through on his day-to-day business. The collator would speak to him on a frequent basis. Any traffic travelling along this particular route was regularly monitored – the people in the area were known to be sympathetic to the nationalist cause, and because of this incidents recorded in the locality were high. Foot patrols of both the regular army battalions and the UDR had in the past been shot at by terrorist snipers from across the border.

During one particular spell prior to Declan’s recruitment I had gone there myself for a few days, and had spent my time working with some Scottish infantry soldiers on patrols and chatting to members of the local community. Their attitude to normal people passing through their patch was not exactly what I considered to be conducive to good public relations, and it was no surprise that some terrorist had decided to organise a few snipings. They were downright offensive to the local population, who in turn hated them with a vengeance. I spoke to their Intelligence Officer on the subject in some depth, and tried to get him to encourage his lads to at least tone down their obvious hatred of anyone they considered to be a ‘Teague’ or a ‘Fenian’. This constant barrage of abuse did absolutely nothing for us, as the whole business of approaching someone and persuading them to pass information depended on the ability to get friendly with them and establish a rapport. A difficult enough task at the best of

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