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Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R000100330001-5 SPECIAL EDITION -- A FORMER INTELLIGENCE OFFICER who served in Northern Ireland in 1974 and 1975 has revealed details of ‘dirty tricks’ by the Anny in Ireland. Captain Fred Holroyd was an intelligence specialist in Northern Ireland for nearly two years. The details of his allegations have been checked over six months. We have spoken to eye-witnesses and others personally involved in Holroyd’s reports. These activities range, says Holroyd, from the disreputable to the entirely illegal — and were conducted on both sides of the Irish border. Since 1982, a special team from the Royal Ulster Constabulary, led by Detective Superintendent George Caskey, has been investigating Holroyd’s allegations of illegal Army activities. Its report, a lengthy 900-page dossier, was submitted earlier this year to Northern Ireland’s Director of Public Prosecutions. Last month, the DPP delayed his fmal decision on the report and asked the team te carry out more extensive investigations of aome of the dozen or so cases that Holroyd has submitted. Until the DPP announces his decision on the cases concerned, neither the RUC nor the Ministry of Defence are willing to comment publicly on Holroyd’s revelations, But we have learned from Army sources that the Defence Ministry iast year ordered a special and separate enquiry by its own security officials into the ‘dirty war’ allegations. As a Military Intelligence Officer in Northern Ireland, Holroyd was on undercover attachment to the RUC Special Branch office in Portadown, west of Belfast. He worked in close Raison with the headquarters of the Army’s 3rd Brigade, which was militarily responsible for the highly dangerous territory along the southern border — the ‘bandit country’ of South Armagh. ; Captain Holroyd himself ultimately became a victim of the often bitter rivalry between different parts of the security apparatus. Army saff contrived to have him abruptly removed from his post in May 1975, as an alleged psychiatric casualty whose ‘mental stability’ epuld be examined only in the safety and security ofa hospital in England — a slur which was subsequently deleted from his official record, but which has left him bitter about the Army. He resigned his commission in 1976 and joined the then Rhodesian Army. Following his removal from Northern Ireland, Holroyd repeatedly asked for an investigation both of his own treatment and of the methods employed by British intelligence agents and officials in the North. Former Army and police colleagues still hold Holroyd in high esteem. In 1977, RUC Assistant Chief Constable Charles Rogers — who was put in charge of the RUC’s anti-terrorist campaign TERRORISM -- 26 JUNE 1984 Victims of the ‘dirty war Kidnap plots, assassination, forgery, lethal incompetence, former Army intelligence office in Northern Ireland reveals tricks’ department in Ulster — NEW STATESMAN even ‘political’ psychiatry... A the inside story of the Army’s ‘dirty in the first of a series of reports by Duncan Campbell unquestionable loyalty, devotion to Fred Holroyd: his RUC chief says that his equalled before or since’ following the ‘Darkley Church’ killings last Christmas — wrote that Holroyd was a ‘man of unquestionable loyalty, outstanding courage with a devotion to duty that one looks for but rarely finds today’. In short, Holroyd was determined, respected, and to many a hero. SO WAS ANOTHER Army officer — Captain Robert Nairac of the Special Air Services. In 1979, Nairac was posthumously awarded the George Cross, two years after being kidnapped and assassinated by the IRA while on under- cover operations in South Armagh. In 1975 Nairac told Holroyd how he had carried out a political assassination in the Irish Republic. Assassination Robert Nairac first arrived in Northern Ireland early in 1974, with a troop of about 30 men from the SAS Regiment’s Hereford base. At the time, the government was denying that the SAS were in Northern Ireland at all — so they were disguised as the ‘Survey Troop’ of the Royal Captain Holroyd appeared on the Channel 4 programme, Diverse Reports, on Wednesday. The programme was researched and reported by Christopher Hird and Duncan Campbell. one rarely finds t ‘success record against terrorists has not been duty that oday. Andrew Wiard/Report Engineers. They were based at Castledillon, near Armagh, in a secluded country house and estate that had previously been a sanatorium. The SAS unit’s commander was Capyain Julian A. Ball, who had joined the SAS fromithe King’s Own Scottish Borderers. Robert Nairac from the elite Grenadier Guards, at first a lieutenant, was his second-in-command. Nairac was new to the SAS and Northern Ireland, but had been specially trained by both the Army and the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) for work in Ireland. Ball had already served extensively in Belfast, winning a Military Cross. A former Army officer who served with Bali in Belfast has described him‘as an ‘irresponsible cowboy’. According to the official (‘Restricted’) manual on ‘Counter-Revolutionary Operations’, the SAS’s tasks included the ‘infil- tration of... assassination parties... into insurgent held areas’, and ‘liaison with... forces operating against the common enemy’, Ball and Nairac visited intelligence officers in the Armagh areas, including Holroyd in Portadown, asking for suggestions of worthwhile intelligence targets. They told Holroyd that they were under the direct orders & CONTINUED NEXT PAGE Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : cin! DP96-00788R000100330001-5 4 May 1984 Pages 8-l1¢