Secret military file indicates that Robert Nairac was meeting an informer when abducted - and MoD wanted to conceal it
Sam McBride, Belfast Telegraph, March 22nd, 2025
MINISTRY OF DEFENCE TOLD MINISTERS THEY SHOULD BE PREPARED TO SEE TRIALS OF SOLDIER'S KILLERS COLLAPSE RATHER THAN ADMIT WHAT SAS-LINKED OFFICER WAS DOING THAT FATEFUL NIGHT, DECLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS REVEAL
Ever since the news of Robert Nairac's disappearance in south Armagh in 1977 emerged, he has been a mythical figure shrouded in the highest secrecy.
In one sense, far more is known about the young Grenadier Guardsman than about almost any other Troubles victim. And yet crucial questions remain unanswered.
The two most significant mysteries are where his body now lies, and what this highly unconventional 28-year-old soldier was doing on the night of his abduction and murder.
Last year, acting on information gathered by a former IRA man who has spent decades trying to locate Nairac's body, a significant dig was undertaken at Faughart in Co Louth, but it failed to find his remains.
Now a declassified file discovered by the Belfast Telegraph in The National Archives in Kew goes some way to answering the first question: What the intelligence operative, who worked closely with the SAS and RUC Special Branch, was doing when he vanished.
Lost Lives, the definitive record of all Troubles deaths, describes Nairac as “one of the most controversial and intriguing figures of the Troubles”. It noted that there have been multiple rumours that he was involved in unlawful killings, but that such claims had been unproven; since then, close inspection of some of them has undermined their credibility still further.
Unorthodox undercover operative
Lost Lives states: “As a result, whatever the truth of his activities, he has developed an indelible reputation as a mysterious figure... the most controversial military intelligence officer in the history of the Troubles.”
Nairac was an unorthodox undercover operative who lived on an Army base but wore civilian clothing, grew his hair, and had an elaborate cover story as an Irish republican, complete with a Belfast accent.
His visit to the Three Steps Inn on the night of May 14, 1977 would have been unthinkable for most other soldiers. The Dromintee pub was in the heart of IRA territory in south Armagh. Even more unthinkable was that he would get up to sing republican songs with the band as the night wore on.
Such bravado means that to this day even military opinion of Nairac is split between those who regard him as a swashbuckling hero and those who view him as a reckless risk-taker.
There has long been intense speculation as to why Nairac acted as he did that night. He'd been to the same pub the previous evening. And when he returned that night, he chose not to have undercover backup which might have saved his life — but which if he'd had could also have been discovered and scuppered any meeting with a sensitive contact.
Now previously secret documents strengthen the theory that he was there to meet an unknown informer.
Embassy cable
On the day Nairac was murdered, a secret NIO cable to the British Ambassador in Dublin informed him that “Captain Robin Nairak [sic] Grenadier Guards, acting as a liaison officer with SAS was involved in covert operations yesterday evening at Dumitee [sic]...”
The cable, sent by David Ford, a Northern Ireland Office official with significant intelligence links, said: “We are naturally anxious to bring as much pressure as possible to find him but are concerned that the Gardai [sic] should not be sourced by premature political interference.” Someone underlined those words by hand and put a question mark in the margin.
The following day, Robert Ramsay, private secretary to the Secretary of State, said he had been told that the Prime Minister wanted to make a statement to Parliament by the following day “about the fate of Captain Nairac… I explained that at the moment we had no definite knowledge of what had befallen Captain Nairac, though we were assuming that PIRA's claim to have killed him was true”.
In fact, Nairac's killers had bungled their abduction which appears to have been unplanned. They left crucial evidence both at the pub and where he was shot. Some of those involved were quickly caught and the first to go on trial at Dublin's Special Criminal Court was Liam Townson — the IRA man who shot Nairac.
British security concerns
At this point, the British authorities became uneasy because they feared details of what Nairac had been up to could emerge.
In July 1977, as preparations were being made for Townson's trial, a memo from the head of the Ministry of Defence's (MoD) Defence Secretariat 10, which dealt with Northern Ireland, told the Foreign Office they would need “defensive press briefing on the SAS connection since we have already correctly denied that Nairac was a member of the SAS”.
MoD documents have been censored to obscure the names of the two Army witnesses in the case; one was from G2 Intelligence at the Army's headquarters in Northern Ireland in Lisburn and the other was the second in command of the SAS squadron based in Bessbrook.
Irish Government assurances
In October, as the trial loomed, the Dublin Embassy had been told — seemingly by the Irish Government — that “any attempt by the defence to probe more closely the exact nature of Captain Nairac's duties and his relationship with the SAS will be resisted by the presiding judge”.
Nevertheless, the document admitted that there was an awkward element to what was happening: “The fact that evidence will be given by an SAS officer offers some prejudice to the position taken up earlier — that Nairac was not a member of the SAS — but there is no way round this.”
The two Army witnesses were to travel to Dublin under assumed names on an Aer Lingus flight from London, staying at the guarded home of the British military attaché.
A Foreign Office telegram to the Dublin Embassy set out answers to questions which might be asked about Nairac.
Those answers said that Nairac's role included “coordination of intelligence information” and confirmed he was both on duty when he disappeared and was wearing civilian clothes. They also stated that Nairac was not a member of the SAS but that his role “brought him into regular and close contact with the SAS”.
Convicted man campaigned for Conor Murphy
Ultimately, the trial saw Townson convicted. When released, he campaigned for Sinn Fein's Conor Murphy; in 2021 he was pictured standing just yards from Prince Charles during the future King's visit to Slieve Gullion Forest Park, where he was working.
The following year, several others went on trial in Northern Ireland, accused of involvement in Nairac's murder.
A secret memo from Secretary of State Roy Mason's private secretary told him that prosecuting counsel in the case had suggested that the defence “may seek to determine the precise nature of Captain Nairac's duties and in particular the reason why he was at the Three Steps Inn on the night he was abducted.
“MoD in consultation with the Treasury Solicitor and the Attorney General have been considering how far they are prepared to go in disclosing this information during the proceedings.”
No disclosures
The February 17, 1978 memo said the MoD position “is that it should not be disclosed that Captain Nairac was at the Inn in the hope of meeting an informant”.
It said that to do so “would compromise the Army's method of operation in this sphere (in particular there is some sensitivity within MoD about the payment of informants, which in their view equates with the running of agents).
“This might lead to a request for the name (s) of the informant (s) which could not be disclosed.”
That implies that the name of the person Nairac hoped to meet was known to the military; otherwise it could quite honestly say it didn't know who he was meeting.
The memo, sent nine months after Nairac's murder, went on: “None of the military witnesses at present listed are in a position to say why Captain Nairac was at the Inn. If the defence pursues this line of questioning, counsel has been instructed to argue that this is not material and not relevant, and to seek an adjournment if the court ruled otherwise.”
Mason was told that decisions about whether to seek a court adjournment if questioning strayed into “areas of sensitivity” might have to be made urgently.
Mason was also told that the MoD were advising the Defence Secretary “that if a further witness has to be produced, he should say no more than that Captain Nairac was a liaison officer between the RUC and the Army including the SAS; that his duties included the gathering of intelligence information; that this would have brought him into contact with local civilians; and that he was on duty for this purpose when he went to the public house on May 14.”
It went on: “This would enable him to indicate why Captain Nairac went to the Inn (“to see what he could pick up from the locals”) but it would avoid making any admission that he might have gone there for an arranged meeting with a source.
“The relevance is that the defence might take the line that Captain Nairac was not abducted but went willingly in pursuit of information.”
Better for prosecution to fail than risk security breaches
Mason was told that if the judge allowed the defence to go beyond this, the MoD “believe that the risk of the failure of the prosecution is preferable to disclosure”.
The official, WJA Innes, said that the NIO agreed with the MoD stance but “we have however suggested to MoD that an abandonment of the trial is bound to lead to speculation about what Captain Nairac was doing (“Was he a member of a secret assassination squad?”) and that at the very least, nothing must be said during the trial which would inflame this.
The Secretary of State responded: “Not a very satisfactory state of affairs. I hope MoD fully realise the importance of a prosecution.”
On the same day Mason was told this, the Defence Secretary was told that the Army's Brigadier General Staff (Intelligence) “considers that the precise nature of Captain Nairac's duties, especially the fact that they included the handling of intelligence sources, could not be disclosed without putting at risk the lives of people still in the area and jeopardising intelligence activities in Northern Ireland generally”.
He was told that the “last resort” was to let the trial collapse rather than answer questions about Nairac's duties.
The Defence Secretary was also told that “the possibility of prejudice to RUC special branch activities, should disclosure go further than we have recommended, is relevant here”.
Ultimately, the trial did not collapse. Gerard Fearon and Thomas Morgan were found guilty of murder. Daniel O'Rourke was convicted of manslaughter. Michael McCoy was found guilty of kidnapping and Owen Rocks was convicted of withholding information.
But the fact that the MoD was prepared to see such the collapse of a murder trial for one of the most notorious murders of the entire Troubles rather than reveal what Nairac was doing that night will add to the mystique about who he really was and what he was doing.
South Armagh was least compromised PIRA
South Armagh was notoriously difficult for the security forces to penetrate. Even when the IRA was heavily infiltrated by agents and informers, the south Armagh brigade was the part of the IRA about which the security forces knew the least.
The MoD has confirmed in these documents that Nairac — who was based in south Armagh — had a role which involved “handling of intelligence sources”; an intelligence 'handler' in common parlance.
Was there an individual in the South Armagh IRA who was sufficiently important to warrant the risks Nairac took that night, and the secrecy which has since surrounded the case?
Writing in 1991, an NIO official said of the location of Nairac's remains: “It is unlikely that the mystery will ever be solved.”.
Even if that mystery is one day resolved, who Nairac was hoping to meet that night is likely to involve even greater enduring secrecy.
If you have information about the location of the bodies of the final four Disappeared victims — Joe Lynskey, Columba McVeigh, Robert Nairac and Seamus Maguire — you can contact the ICLVR in confidence on 00353 1 602 8655, secretary@iclvr.ie or ICLVR PO Box 10827 Dublin 2, Ireland.
The night ‘The Greatest’ broke bread with ‘Irish Joan of Arc’
In the build-up to his bout at Croke Park in July 1972, ‘the Greatest’ invited Bernadette Devlin, then an outspoken MP, for dinner. The remarkable encounter remains etched in her memory, as she recounts in this extract from Dave Hannigan’s new book, The Big Fight: When Ali Conquered Ireland
IN HIS classic work, Loser and Still Champion, Budd Schulberg opens the chapter concerning the first Ali–Frazier bout at Madison Square Garden with quotes from both fighters, from match referee Arthur Mercante, and from the then MP for Mid Ulster, Bernadette Devlin.
It says much for the level of international recognition the 24-yearold civil rights activist enjoyed in 1971 that among a crowd including Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, Barbara Streisand, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis and Frank Sinatra (moonlighting as a photographer), Schulberg felt Devlin in a ringside seat chanting, ‘Ali! … Ali! … Ali!’, was noteworthy.
As Devlin sat in the Garden that night, Americans were watching her being interviewed on a previously recorded episode of The Dick Cavett Show on ABC.
‘Mini-skirted Castro’
That high-profile television appearance was the culmination of a month-long tour of the country in which she spoke at 38 universities, shattered lazy American preconceptions about the auld sod, and caused newspapers to dub her “the Celtic Rosa Luxembourg” and “the mini-skirted Castro”.
“I remember being castigated by the revolutionaries for going to the fight in New York,” said Bernadette McAliskey (née Devlin).
“They considered that I should have been on more serious business, not participating in these lower class-type things.
“I was in the city on political business but Jimmy Breslin, the newspaper columnist who I happened to know, he had got two tickets for myself and the woman I was travelling with.
“We weren’t going to pass them up, two tickets, good seats in the house to watch Ali fight.”
Fourteen months after that night in New York, somebody in the Ali camp decided she was exactly the type of person the most outspoken athlete on earth might like to meet in Dublin.
Striking parallels
The parallels between their lives are quite striking. Ali stood up to the US government on the issue of the draft, McAliskey stood up to the British government in the battle for equality for all in Ulster. He was the youngest heavyweight champ, she was the youngest woman MP. He styled himself as the poor black boy from Louisville. In her maiden speech to the House of Commons, she declared her presence to be “the arrival of a peasant in the halls of the great”.
“My main recollection is of being totally overawed at being in his company,” said McAliskey. “He was just a lovely man, really sharp, really bright and witty. A very equitable sort of man.
“You know there was none of this ‘I’m the champ’ about him on a faceto-face level. It’s kind of hard to explain. He had a lot of charisma.
“People say to me, you know, you must remember things like hitting Reggie Maudling [in the House of Commons after Bloody Sunday], and I have to scratch my head, but Ali I remember vividly.
“The whole excitement, the aura of it, and people at home not believing you had tickets for it, never mind that you had sat down and eaten dinner with Ali in Dublin. I used to find that hilarious.
A lovely man with charisma
“None of the other famous people I met impressed my constituents at all, but they were all nearly shaking my hand after that – not because I had gone through hell for them – but because mine was the hand that had shaken the hand of Muhammad Ali.”
Her travelling companions that Wednesday morning in July 1972 were Michael McAliskey, the man she would later marry, and his friend Frank Gervin, both of whom were deeply involved in amateur boxing with the Coalisland and Clonoe clubs in Tyrone.
“I’ve no recollection of any in-depth conversation about the north. He knew who I was but that wouldn’t have been too hard at that time. I suppose that would have been pointed out to him.
None of the other famous people I met impressed my constituents at all, but they were all nearly shaking my hand after that – not because I had gone through hell for them – but because mine was the hand that had shaken the hand of Muhammad Ali
“But he was equally friendly and interested in the people who were with me, who were running small, rural boxing clubs in the north. There was no showmanship about him in private, just a lovely man, very intelligent actually and a good conversationalist. He was such good company.”
Bernadette grew up the second eldest in a family of six in Cookstown, Co Tyrone. Her father died when she was nine years old. And given that her only brother was the youngest child, she still struggles to comprehend how the house came to be dominated by two sports and two names: Manchester United and Muhammad Ali.
When she sat down with Ali, she was breaking bread with a man she had idolised since childhood. Even for somebody foreign media referred to as an ‘Irish Joan of Arc’, gaining an audience with Ali was intimidating.
“I don’t have many heroes, I don’t go in for heroes, but he was a hero. I was totally overawed. But then to find that sitting down for dinner with him was like sitting down with your mates, to be welcomed into the circle the way we were, that nervousness dissipated quickly.
“I mean, I wasn’t in line with the taoiseach or even the head of Macra Na Feirme at the stage, I was more like the local troublemaker not yet disposed of. I’d have been in his corner all my life.
“He was very important to everyone in that sense, not just important to young black people. He took principled and difficult stands.”
‘One of the world’s great ladies’
Ali was equally taken with Devlin. In conversation with his friend Paddy Monaghan, he described her as “one of the world’s great ladies”. Hearing the compliment relayed after nearly 30 years, McAliskey laughed at the language used by Ali.
“One of the world’s ladies? Lady had a different connotation in his circle than it did in ours.
“I think he used it in that old-fashioned way, whereas we would use woman.
“The way the Protestant community would use lady in that sense, they would consider it rude to speak of a woman as a woman.
“They would say ‘A lady called’. And we would say: ‘Had she a lord with her?’ I think it must be something to do with the Baptists.”
The Big Fight: When Ali Conquered Ireland by Dave Hannigan is out now, published by Merrion Press, £17.99
‘All available’ PSNI resources diverted for ‘sensitive’ research on Omagh bomb
Alan Erwin, Irish News, March 22nd, 2025
ALL available police resources have been diverted to undertake “sensitive” research on more than 30 incidents potentially relevant to the Omagh bombing, the High Court has heard.
The Omagh bombing in August 1998 killed 29 people including a woman pregnant with twins
Counsel for the PSNI disclosed that qualified staff will spend up to six months carrying out the work on behalf of the public inquiry into the Real IRA atrocity.
The development could delay attempts by the father of one of the victims to obtain investigative reports for his ongoing civil action.
Michael Gallagher is suing the chief constable over alleged failures which led to the Omagh bombers escaping justice.
His 21-year-old son Aiden was among 29 people – including a woman pregnant with twins – killed in the August 1998 attack on the Co Tyrone market town.
Mr Gallagher is involved in a long-running civil action, claiming shortcomings by the then RUC in taking steps to bring the perpetrators to justice.
He sought discovery of up to six reports related to the bomb investigation as part of attempts to establish the alleged failings.
But the court was told police resources have been directed to a request made on behalf of the public inquiry which commenced hearings earlier this year.
33 relevant incidents to be included in Public Inquiry
Donal Lunny KC said Chief Constable Jon Boutcher wrote to the lady chief justice earlier this month, explaining that disclosure is being sought about 33 other potentially relevant incidents.
“All available PSNI researchers who have the skills and credentials to undertake sensitive research are now going to be working on that request for up to the next six months,” the barrister confirmed.
Michael Gallagher is suing the chief constable over alleged failures which led to the Omagh bombers escaping justice
“The rationale is that without taking that step it risks delaying the work of the public inquiry.”
Referring to the possible impact on the civil action, Mr Lunny added: “What that means for cases like today’s is potentially no sensitive research will be undertaken [during that period].”
Mr Justice Colton questioned whether the development may also have consequences for a wider body of Troubles-era litigation.
Disruption to other Troubles inquests may be challenged
“Does this mean the chief constable doesn’t intend to do any work in relation to legacy inquests?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s challenged.”
Earlier this year the PSNI failed in a legal attempt to have Mr Gallagher’s lawsuit stayed until after the completion of the inquiry.
But lawyers for the bereaved campaigner expressed frustration that the police research work could still delay the action.
Hugh Southey KC contended: “We are facing a stay application by the back door.”
Adjourning proceedings, the judge listed the case for a further review in May.
He told the parties: “I’m content that you are working on the matter and I hope you will be able to report further progress.”
