Ex-spy says MI5 did not want Real IRA leader arrested

A US trucker who spied on a dissident Irish republican group says the security service MI5 did not want its leader arrested.

David Rupert infiltrated the Real IRA, the group behind the 1998 Omagh bomb atrocity, for the FBI and MI5.

His undercover evidence was used in 2003 to prosecute Michael McKevitt, the leader of the Real IRA, for directing terrorism.

Mr Rupert told BBC Spotlight that MI5 wanted to keep gathering intelligence.

The programme put this to MI5 but they did not respond.

The recent shooting of a top police officer in Northern Ireland shows the threat from dissident republicans has not gone away.

Dissident republicans have not signed up to the peace process and remain committed to using violence to try to bring about a united Ireland.

Flights-for-information agreement

Mr Rupert, who ran a trucking company in Chicago, first visited Ireland in 1992.

His ongoing trips and friendship with Joe O'Neill, a hard-line Irish republican who ran a pub in Bundoran, County Donegal, coincided with a critical point in Northern Ireland's peace process.

When an FBI agent arrived at his Chicago office in the summer of 1994, Rupert at first thought he had come to talk about the trucking business, but the agent raised the subject of Ireland and O'Neill.

"I'm thinking, 'Sweet Jesus'," he said.

"I wouldn't have done anything really illegal but the grey area was my specialty. So we went back and forth.

"'Would you come to work for us?' he asked. I said, 'No man, I don't need to get on the bad side of a foreign terrorist organisation'."

• Who are the dissident republicans and what do they want?

• Former Real IRA leader Michael McKevitt dies

The first IRA ceasefire of 1994 meant someone like Rupert would be a valuable asset to the FBI.

David Rupert in the 1990s

With US President Bill Clinton heavily invested in the peace process, the White House needed to know from their own spies on the ground if breakaway republicans, like Joe O'Neill who was aligned to a group known as the Continuity IRA, would fill the vacuum.

The FBI agent returned to Rupert's office with a new proposition - the FBI would pay for his trips to Ireland in return for information.

The flights-for-information agreement worked out and eventually led to the US trucker and his wife Maureen moving to Ireland to run a pub in County Leitrim, financed by the FBI.

"The value was it allowed me to become ingrained in the IRA population and to become accepted," said Rupert.

Watch Spotlight - I Spy on iPlayer or on BBC One Northern Ireland on Tuesday 21 March at 22.40 GMT.

By early 1997, the couple was no longer running the pub but the FBI's investment in the trucker turned spy had paid off.

He had become trusted by O'Neill's Continuity IRA group, and he had also positioned himself as the bagman for their US fundraising effort, regularly delivering thousands of dollars from Chicago to O'Neill's group in Ireland.

Top table

In the wake of a second IRA ceasefire in 1997, the danger posed by dissident republicans was even higher.

The FBI already had a US spy embedded within the Continuity IRA.

MI5 then made their move and by the summer of 1997, Rupert was working for the FBI and MI5.

"We used an encryption system when I sent an email it went to both handlers," he said.

That year, a dangerous split within the republican movement would radically change Rupert's spy operations against dissident republicans opposed to the peace process.

The Real IRA was formed in 1997 by Michael McKevitt, who left the Provisional IRA in fury over the direction of the peace process.

David Rupert gave his first television interview to BBC NI Spotlight reporter Jennifer O'Leary

McKevitt, the man who had been in charge of the Provisional IRA's arsenal for decades, saw peace talks as a sell-out and was determined to continue the war against the British.

In 1999, McKevitt not only brought Rupert into his secret army to help him fund his terror, he spoke in detail during what was only their second meeting about his plans to bomb Britain.

"Their first hit is going to be directed specifically at something like troops or London centre financial district," Rupert wrote as part of an email to his MI5 handler.

"To make a big enough splash to overshadow anything that could have happened at Omagh."

The 1998 Omagh bomb atrocity killed 29 people including a woman pregnant with twins, which the Real IRA claimed responsibility for.

Rupert's infiltration of the Real IRA put him in a different league of danger - McKevitt lived by a militant Irish republican code that demanded spies be executed.

Yet, despite the risks Rupert maintained his facade and was appointed to the top table of the Real IRA, its army council.

The development prompted elation from his MI5 handler, said Rupert.

"MI5 were wonderful to work with," he said.

"I would call them on my way to a meeting with McKevitt and they would tell me that he's probably going to ask you this or that and when he does, here's what we want you to tell him, and they were pretty accurate."

'Going forever'

However, Rupert's spy masters seemingly had different priorities.

The FBI is primarily an evidence-gathering organisation, versus MI5 whose focus is on intelligence gathering.

"MI5 wanted to keep it going forever," said Rupert.

"The FBI won. I mean they won the argument. It was more important to MI5 to have a thumb on the pulse than it is to go arrest a couple of people and prosecute them."

In early 2001, in a top-secret meeting in Dublin, Rupert made a detailed statement to Irish police who were building a case to prosecute McKevitt, who lived in the Irish Republic.

His day of reckoning came on 29 March 2001, when police knocked on his door.

Rupert went on to face the Real IRA leader in a Dublin court and in August 2003, McKevitt was sentenced to 20 years in prison for directing the activities of the Real IRA.

"I was just doing a job," said Rupert.

"And doing a job that I viewed as doing for good to stop them from killing people."