Article: Congress To Probe Bush "IED's from Iran" Claim

I don't normally do this, but the following article will disappear behind a pay-to-read firewall in a few days and given what I've previously written I really think it should be a part of the freely accessible public record. So here it is in full:

Congress probes 'IoS' revelations on IRA link to Iraq

By Greg Harkin
Published: 19 March 2006
Independent/Independent on Sunday

It was just another St Patrick's weekend in Washington. The Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern presented shamrock to President George Bush, the Northern Ireland political parties continued to bicker over who is responsible for the latest impasse, and green beer was drunk by the gallon.

This weekend, however, a new cloud hangs over the legacy of the Troubles and the alleged role played in a number of deaths by both American and British security agencies.

The claim - if true - threatens a new political storm over how and why FBI officials and MI5 operatives conspired to supply deadly bomb-making equipment to the Provisional IRA in the early 1990s, mechanisms the paramilitary organisation later shared with Palestinian fighters.

Today in Iraq the same technology is being used by insurgents to kill and maim British and American soldiers.

Six months ago, when The Independent on Sunday first broke the story, the Secretary of State for Defence, John Reid, was forced into a humiliating retraction.

For weeks his officials had claimed that bombs which killed eight British soldiers in separate attacks in Basra had been supplied to foreign fighters by Iran's Revolutionary Guard.

Our story showed that the technology, far from being new, had in fact first been used in Newry, Co Down, in 1992 to murder a policewoman and maim her male colleague.

Kevin Fulton, a former soldier who infiltrated the IRA on behalf of the security services, made an astonishing claim: that he had flown to New York, met FBI and MI5 agents and was given money to buy an infra-red device to be used to set off IRA bombs.

The security services - already successful in preventing radio-signal bombs - believed that by supplying the equipment they could then introduce counter-measures.

"They knew the IRA was looking at the technology. By supplying the equipment, they thought they could stay one step ahead of the IRA," Mr Fulton told the IoS yesterday.

Following our article in October, an investigative journalist from the American magazine Atlantic delved deeper. And in an article to be published next week, Matthew Teague claims FBI sources have confirmed Mr Fulton's trip to the United States.

"I was satisfied with Fulton's story after checking it with FBI sources. I also had a record of Fulton's stay at a New York hotel at the time he said he was there," Mr Teague said. He said the article had already sparked a wave of interest before it hit the news-stands and he was aware of a number of senior American politicians who were waiting for publication before raising the issue in Congress.

The IoS has also spoken to a republican who was a senior IRA member in the early 1990s. He confirmed that Mr Fulton had introduced the IRA to the new technology and that the IRA shared this with "like-minded organisations abroad".

Mr Fulton currently lives in hiding in England and is taking legal action against the MoD, insisting he should receive a soldier's pension. A former member of the Royal Irish Rangers, he infiltrated the IRA after being recruited directly from the regiment by the shadowy army outfit the Force Research Unit, which ran agents inside loyalist and republican organisations.

Mr Teague says Mr Fulton answered "no comment" to claims that he had been responsible for 11 murders while working as an agent and that he had been given carte blanche to kill by his handlers.

Yesterday Mr Fulton refused to comment on those claims again, but asked about his New York arms-buying trip, he said: "I have been in touch with representatives of some senior American politicians in the past few days and I've told them that I am willing to travel back and appear before Congress if necessary."

The Police Ombudsman in Northern Ireland has been investigating the FBI/MI5 link to the murder of Constable Colleen McMurray, 34, who was killed when an IRA Mark 12 mortar hit the side of her patrol car as it travelled along Merchants Quay, Newry, on 26 March 1992. Officer Paul Slane, who was travelling with her, lost his legs.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Newshog has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is Newshog endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

Now I've a couple of points to make here.

Bush and his administration used the claim that Iran was responsible for these IED's in Iraq only recently, fully aware that back at the close of last year the UK Defense Minister had made a retraction of the same claim.

For the first time I am aware of, it is now alleged that Bush Senior's FBI were involved in the original botched sting that led to the IRA gaining this design.

According to the newspaper, a senior IRA member has confirmed their part of this story - including that they shared the design with other terror groups.

The Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman is investigating the story - his office obviously thinks there is a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing here.

Matthew Teague of Atlantic Magazine, who has been following up this story, says "a number of senior American politicians " are awaiting publication of his article this week before "raising the issue in Congress". Were those politicians aware of this at the time Bush and others made their claims and if so why did they remain silent? One hopes that, whetever else, they will now stand up and expose the narrative for war with Iran as being just as fake as the narrative for war with Iraq.

Update 21st March
More from the Independent.

Last night over 300 British troops ran a massive sweep in Basra which netted seven suspects, five of whom were later released. British officials say the sweep aimed at "arresting members of what officials said was a smuggling network bringing arms from Iran...The people who were arrested are suspected of smuggling arms, drugs and alcohol."

While acknowledging that money doesn't seem to be the sole motivation for these smugglers - there also seems to be an ideological mission to support Shiite resistance to the occupation -

military sources in Basra played down the significance of the arrests and insisted there was no evidence of any concerted attempt by the Iranians to destabilise the region.

Get that? Not just no proof, but no evidence.