IRD, home and away
The creation of the Information Policy unit in HQ Northern Ireland in 1971 may have been the last occasion on which the classic IRD psy-war operation was created. Evidence of previous examples is hard to find, but skimming through Charles Foley’s Legacy of Strife: Cyprus from rebellion to civil war (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1964) recently I noticed this section on p104:
‘No effort was spared by the Secretariat to win over the foreign press with titillating stories. Sometimes, for the benefit of American correspondents, “captured documents” which they were not allowed to see confirmed that EOKA was modelled on communist lines and that an increasing number of young Communists were joining it. The official introduction of sex into the Cyprus problem was another product of this period. Reporters were invited to ‘Operation Tea-Party’ in the Central News room and offered libations of everything but tea together with a handout declaring that schoolgirls had been “required to prostitute themselves with fellow-members of EOKA”. A later pamphlet described the sexual relations of such girls with members of killer groups in one (unnamed) town, alleging that one of them had her first lover at the age of twelve.’
Though not identified as such, this would have been IRD; and the techniques (if that isn’t too grand a word) on display in this paragraph were used by Information Policy unit.
‘The Wallace Affair’
The IRD officer who trained and directed the Information Policy unit for its first year and a bit, Hugh Mooney, and the erstwhile heads of Information Policy, Jeremy Railton and Maurice Tugwell, were tracked down and interviewed by Kevin Toolis. (Correspondent 18 March ’90) Mooney confirmed some of Wallace’s allegations — notably that he had been agitating about Kincora while in Ireland — and ran one of the disinformation lines, ‘Wallace-as-rogue-elephant’: ‘Wallace was exceeding his authority……leaking stuff to journalists he had no right to do….this “nutter” in press relations.’
Of Mooney, Maurice Tugwell said:
‘Mooney had his own agenda. He reported to this extraordinary Foreign Office set-up that was run by Howard Smith, who later became head of MI5, in Belfast…It was the liaison office between the Foreign Office and the Northern Ireland situation. And whilst he (Mooney) kept the General Officer Commanding briefed he really reported to that office.’
This is important confirmation of one of the central political facts about Information Policy: it was perceived as partly an MI6 operation. Hence the hostility to Wallace shown by MI5 when it got overall control of the intelligence set-up in Northern Ireland.
Rubbishing Wallace
Since what has now become ‘the Wallace Affair’ broke again at the end of January, all the major disinformation lines on Wallace seen previously have been rerun, though not with the same conviction as before.
- The ‘rogue elephant’ theme, recycled by Mooney, was launched, unnoticed, by Chapman Pincher in 1978, in Inside Story.
‘In the psychological war against the IRA, the Army ran an ‘Information Policy’ operation in which false stories were foisted on newspapers to such an extent that an official was forced to leave for overdoing it.’ (p.197)Pincher forbears from telling his readers that he ran some of these stories. (See Lobster 16) This line reappeared, amidst a welter of other disinformation, in ITN journalist Desmond Hammil’s book, Pig in the Middle: the Army in Northern Ireland, 1969-1985 (Methuen, London, 1985 and 86).‘In 1971 it was decided that there should be an additional branch within the Army Press Office in Northern Ireland called Information Policy, which would be distinct and different from the Public Relations Department. Its formation was a part of the attempt to look for some political solution, and its main task would be to issue facts on Government policy and describe what the Army was trying to achieve. “What we ended up with,” said a senior officer some time later, “was a press officer who dabbled in things he should not have. He acted in the most astonishing way and I think it fair to say he was pursuing a sort of disinformation policy all of his own without checking with anyone! It was most unfortunate! He was removed!”‘ (p. 173)
- The ‘Walter Mitty’ theme was run through the House of Commons by Tory MP’s Anthony Nelson and Rupert Allason (Hansard 1 February ’90 columns 459 and 460); and in print by the BBC’s John Ware in the Spectator (‘The Secret World of Walter Mitty’ [sic] 24 March ’90). In this astonishing article Ware repeats and expands slightly the snippets about Wallace’s parachuting activities he published first in the Independent in 1987, and informs the reader that the rest of us (including the Press Council, which ruled for Wallace in his complaint against the Independent have been conned. This parachuting aspect of the ‘Walter Mitty’ theme — Wallace wildly exaggerating his parachuting activities — seems to have first appeared in June 1987, when the media got interested in Wallace the first time round. It was run into the Channel 4 News office by a former Information Policy colleague of Wallace’s, via another ITN journalist. As part of the operation, records of Wallace’s parachuting ‘D’ license disappeared from the British Parachute Association office. (A duplicate set was found by Paul Foot. See Who Framed Colin Wallace? pp. 265/6.) Of the journalists working on Wallace in 1987, only John Ware fell for this; and his continuing protestations about Wallace are muffled somewhat by the foot jammed in his mouth.
- A variation of the Ulster Citizens’ Army smear (discussed in detail in Lobster 14) was recycled by Gerard Kemp, one of the journalists who had run it in December 1974. In the Sunday Express (4 February ’90) Kemp and Anthony Smith reported (sic) ‘a new ‘dirty tricks’ campaign, involving former Army intelligence officer, Colin Wallace, emerged yesterday.’ Wallace “helped invent” the Ulster Citizens Army. (The rest of the smear, Ron Horn etc. is also retold.) This story began in 1974, was recycled in 1981 at the time of Wallace’s conviction, (see Lobster 14) and again by Professor Paul Wilkinson in 1987 (see Lobster 16), for which he subsequently apologised.