The Defence of the Realm (120 page)

In February 1976, Hanley announced in the DG's Newsletter that he intended to establish in the summer a new FX Branch to handle all the aspects of Irish counter-terrorism for which the Security Service was responsible: a decision prompted not by any dramatic event but by a gradual increase in F Branch business during the early 1970s. Though F Branch was to retain responsibility for ‘alien' (international) counterterrorism, FX was to run agents against both Irish and international terrorists as well as against domestic subversives. Director FX was to act as the deputy of Director F, who would continue to have overall control of the work of both Branches.
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This clumsy reorganization left a blurred division of responsibility which was not satisfactorily resolved until FX became a fully counter-terrorist Branch eight years later. Confusingly, FX sections kept the prefix ‘F'.
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The Registry sometimes found it difficult to know whether to route incoming correspondence to F Branch or FX.
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By the time FX Branch began work, ‘the height of the Arab terrorist threat' in Britain, retrospectively dated as from 1971 to 1974, was believed to have passed.
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FX agent penetrations of terrorist groups in the later 1970s revealed no plans for direct attacks on British interests.
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Protective security against international (as opposed to PIRA) terrorism thus declined in priority. Given both the decline in the threat and the ease with which Palestinians could use false names or travel on passports issued by other Arab states, it was decided, with some exceptions, that ‘general vetting by the Security Service of Arab visa applications be discontinued'.
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Counter-terrorism ranked low among Callaghan's priorities as prime minister. Probably his only CT initiative followed the hijacking in October 1977 of a Lufthansa Boeing 737 by four Arab terrorists. Callaghan personally authorized a secret meeting at 10 Downing Street between the commander of a German commando unit and SAS officers to discuss cooperation in ending the hijack. Soon afterwards two members of SAS took part in storming the hijacked plane at Mogadishu airport. Crucial to the success of the operation was the use of stun grenades which temporarily blinded and deafened those on board the aircraft as it was being stormed. All the passengers were rescued (though the pilot had been shot earlier by the hijackers), three of the terrorists were killed and the fourth captured.
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Callaghan's decision to publicize British involvement at Mogadishu was questioned by both Hanley and Merlyn Rees, who had left the NIO to become home secretary in September 1976. Rees asked the DG whether
he thought the publicity had increased the risk of terrorist attack in Britain. Hanley noted afterwards: ‘I said I thought it was right to suppose that the threat to Britain and British interests had been greatly increased. I had no intelligence to this effect, but it was a reasonable supposition.'
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In fact the Mogadishu operation, following the spectacular success of the Israelis in rescuing hijacked hostages at Entebbe in the previous year, seems to have acted as a deterrent. There were no further terrorist hijacks for the remainder of the decade.

During Merlyn Rees's period as home secretary from September 1976 to May 1979, counter-terrorism does not appear to have been discussed at any length during his meetings (usually monthly) with the DG. Those attacks by international terrorist groups which took place in Britain – usually in London – were mostly a spill-over from conflicts in the Middle East rather than being targeted specifically against British interests. Among the most operationally effective groups were tight-knit Armenian terrorist cells whose ultimate aim was to establish an independent Armenia. Their first attack in the UK was the bombing of a Turkish bank in north London on 10 February 1978. The F3 desk officer noted ‘the ruthless efficiency and determination of Armenian terrorists in striking against Turkish diplomatic personnel and premises' in a number of countries.
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All but one of the terrorist killings in London during the later 1970s were related to rivalries in the Middle East. In 1977 a PFLP assassin killed a former Yemeni prime minister, Abdullah al-Hejiri, his wife and the minister at the Yemeni embassy, and two Syrian intelligence officers planning an attack on an Egyptian office in London were killed when their bomb exploded prematurely. In 1978 the moderate PLO representative in London, Said Hammami, who was being used by Yasir Arafat to sound out Israeli liberals, was assassinated by the Abu Nidal Organization; General al-Naif, a former Iraqi prime minister, was killed by Saddam Hussein's secret service; and the Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was murdered by Bulgarian intelligence, assisted by its Soviet allies. Despite the fact that the KGB had felt bound to assist its Bulgarian ally in assassinating Markov, it was less directly involved with Middle Eastern terrorism than it had been at the start of the decade. After the death of the two main Soviet agents within the PFLP in 1978, the KGB's direct connection with it appears to have died away.
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The main lesson learned by the Security Service from the international terrorist attacks in London was the importance of foreign liaison. In F Branch's view:

International terrorist activity is not just a series of incidents scattered through various countries taking place on various dates but it is a constant and ongoing affair involving a high degree of mobility on the part of those involved, who, together with their support workers and contacts, are invariably difficult to locate and identify. Therefore when a Western service apparently scores a hit . . . it is important that the service concerned should:–

 i.   not repeat not think solely in domestic terms since it may be that other friendly services have unattributable collateral available and/or comments of assistance in assessing the significance of the hit.

ii.   should interpret the need to know criteria as liberally as possible particularly where there is a likelihood that possible targets . . . may transit the country of a friendly service.
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Unlike international terrorist groups, PIRA was not responsible for a single death in mainland Britain during the later 1970s.
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Though sectarian and terrorist violence continued in Northern Ireland, deaths attributable to the Troubles declined from an average of 264 a year in 1974–6 to 102 a year in 1977–9.
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The Provisionals emerged from the ceasefire of 1975 apparently weaker than before. The IRA veteran and former PIRA chief of staff Joe Cahill later acknowledged: ‘The second half of the 1970s were not good years for republicans. The armed struggle was continuing alright, but there were many volunteers being killed and lifted [captured]. In many ways, the Brits' strategy was working and the movement had been caught flatfooted.'
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IJS intelligence revealed that the Provisionals were also going through a financial crisis, due to a quarrel with Colonel Qaddafi, probably their main source of funds over the previous five years. In keeping with the eccentric division of responsibilities for dealing with Irish Republican terrorism, since the Qaddafi funds came from outside the UK the Security Service had the main responsibility for monitoring them. According to an IJS report: ‘Libyan–PIRA cooperation had initially gone smoothly, but PIRA [broke] off the contact in 1978 when it became clear that the Libyans were trying to lay down what policy PIRA should follow. The particular Libyan interest had been to promote a bombing campaign in England.'
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Roy Mason, who had succeeded Merlyn Rees as secretary of state for Northern Ireland in September 1976, publicly announced at the end of 1977 that ‘the tide has turned against the terrorists and the message for 1978 is one of real hope.'
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The total of eighty-one deaths in Northern Ireland in 1978 was to be the lowest since 1970.

In the summer of 1978, however, PIRA succeeded in extending its operations to the continent, where the Security Service, not the MPSB, had
the lead intelligence role. Its continental campaign began in earnest on the night of 18–19 August with bomb attacks on eight British army barracks in north-west Germany. No lives were lost. On 24 August two further explosive devices were discovered in a car in a NAAFI car park at Rheindalen. Two days later a bag containing PIRA bomb-making equipment was found on the banks of the Rhine at Düsseldorf. Though not surprised that the British Army on the Rhine (BAOR) was being targeted, neither the Security Service nor the rest of the British intelligence community gained any advance warning of the beginning of the bombing campaign.
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The Service's liaison arrangements on the continent against Irish Republican terrorism, a major element in its later strategy, were less developed than those against international terrorism. A decade later, it had still not ‘conclusively' identified the 1978 bombers.
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PIRA, however, lacked the capacity for a sustained continental campaign. There were no further attacks on the continent for the remainder of 1978. It was not until December that PIRA claimed responsibility for the August bombings in Germany, grandly declaring that it had ‘established [its] ability to strike at British Imperialism anywhere at any time'.
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Roy Mason's confidence that the war against PIRA was being won was undimmed by its relatively unsuccessful bombing campaign in Germany. He wrote optimistically on 23 November:

There should be no relaxation of the security profile in present circumstances, but we should recognise that PIRA are also being undermined by general Government policy and Government measures outside the immediate ambit of the Security Forces. Purely security objectives should not be regarded as paramount: it is important to pursue the general Government policy of encouraging progress towards normality. Improvements in the economic situation in the Province help to reduce any remaining authority enjoyed by PIRA in the minority community.
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Only a week later, however, PIRA stepped up its bombing campaign in Northern Ireland. On the night of 30 November to 1 December sixteen towns were bombed in a nine-hour period. Simultaneously the Provisional Army Council ordered a pre-Christmas bombing campaign in mainland Britain. On 17–18 December 1978 a total of thirteen bombs exploded or were defused in English cities. Seven people were injured in Bristol, two in London and two in Liverpool. There were no fatalities. Despite the fact that the MPSB retained the lead role, the Security Service was for the first time able to make a significant contribution to intelligence on a mainland bombing campaign as a result of the Irish Joint Section's success in penetrating PIRA. In the early twenty-first century, the issue of penetration became
a major theme in the Republican historiography of the Troubles, with informers – both real and imagined – being blamed for a variety of PIRA failures. Because of the guarantee given to Security Service and SIS agents that their identities will be kept secret indefinitely, all information about them remains classified.

The pre-Christmas bomb attacks on English cities were intended to be the prelude to a sustained New Year bombing campaign. On 17 January 1979 a bomb blew a hole in a tank containing aviation fuel at a Texaco oil terminal on Canvey Island, though the fuel failed to ignite as PIRA had intended. In the early hours of the 18th a bomb attack at a gas-holder near the south entrance of the Blackwall Tunnel ignited the escaping gas and caused a major explosion.
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A third bomb, discovered on the verge of the M6 in Leicestershire, was made safe by army bomb-disposal experts.
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Then the bombing campaign ground to an abrupt halt. According to IJS intelligence, the PIRA active service unit (ASU) responsible for the bomb attacks claimed that none of the promised preparations had been made for their arrival in England, thus limiting their capacity to mount operations. Because they were not provided with bogus identity documents, in order to hire a car the ASU had purchased a false driving licence which turned out to have been used before and began a trail which enabled the police to track down the flat they were using. The ASU had devised, but failed to implement, plans for bomb attacks on both Roy Mason and Margaret Thatcher (the latter, ominously, at a Conservative Party conference).
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The relative lack of impact of PIRA mainland operations was emphasized by a spectacular terrorist success by the much smaller Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) at the Houses of Parliament. Barely a fortnight after becoming prime minister in May 1979, Thatcher delivered the memorial address for her friend Airey Neave, whom she had intended to make her Northern Ireland secretary. Neave had been killed by an INLA bomb with a mercury tilt-switch attached to his car as he drove out of the Commons car park on the eve of the Conservatives' victorious election campaign.

Though the Provisionals' planned 1979 bombing campaign had been disrupted in Britain, it continued on the continent. On the morning of 22 March, the British ambassador in The Hague, Sir Richard Sykes, and his valet, Karel Straub, were shot dead. The same afternoon a Belgian banker, André Michaux, who had been mistaken for the British minister to NATO, was killed in Brussels. PIRA refused to acknowledge its responsibility for the bungled operation.
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Its only continental attacks in the remainder of the year were the bombing of a BAOR base in Dortmund on 10 July, which caused superficial damage, and an explosion beneath a
Brussels bandstand where a British military band was due to play, which injured eighteen people.
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Unsurprisingly, the PIRA leadership was reported to be seriously dissatisfied with the progress of its continental campaign.
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There seemed good reason to fear, however, that PIRA would be more effective in the 1980s than in the 1970s. A British army assessment of ‘Future Terrorist Trends' by Brigadier (later General Sir) James Glover of the military intelligence staff, which fell into the hands of the Provisionals and was published in the Republican newspaper
An Phoblacht
on 10 May 1979, concluded that PIRA was becoming an increasingly dangerous opponent: ‘The mature terrorists, including, for instance, the leading bomb makers, are sufficiently cunning to avoid arrest. They are continually learning from mistakes and developing their expertise.' The Provisionals were acquiring weapons at a faster rate than the army could recover them. Glover predicted that PIRA might also succeed in acquiring sophisticated Soviet SA-7 anti-aircraft missiles, similar to those used by Joshua Nkomo's guerrillas in 1978 to shoot down two Rhodesian Viscounts.
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IJS sources reported that Glover's assessment was in most respects ‘remarkably accurate' and that ‘its flattering picture of PIRA effectiveness had had a strong effect on morale throughout the movement'. The IJS believed, however, that there was no foreseeable prospect of PIRA obtaining Soviet SA-7s.
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