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Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R000100330001-5 SPECIAL EDITION -- TERRORISM -- 26 JUNE 1984 smail village nearby, and whom they suspected was a key to the IRA escape route. McVeigh knew the priest concerned. Poole’s plan was to give the youth several rounds of ammunition in a cigarette packet, to put in a chest of drawers in his bedroom. Poole was then to order an army raid on his house, claiming ‘a tipoff from an informer. The Army would think the find was genuine. McVeigh’s parents have confirmed that the operation began as Poole had planned it; an Army team suddenly raided their house at 6am one morning in September 1974 — but Columba -escaped. His tather saw the Army searchers go straight to the bedroom drawer and announce as they opened the cigarette packet that ‘we’ve found it’, So McVeigh went on the run. But the suspected priest refused to help him; and another priest, unconnected with the IRA, sheltered him briefly. McVeigh then went to the police station to ask Sergeant Poole for further instructions, which surprised the police, as he was supposed to be on the wanted list. After a week spent openly in Dungannon, he was arrested by an Army patrol. He was charged with illegal possession of ammunition and held in jail. In court, he refused to recognise the court — the normal stance of a member of the IRA. But the IRA knew that McVeigh had not joined. Inside Crumlin Road Jail, he was beaten up by Pro- visionals and accused of being a stool pigeon. He confessed his involvement and agreed to give the IRA complete details of his dealings with the security forces and a list of names of people working with them. This information was sent out of Crumlin Road in a coded letter. The Army specialists decoded it and showed the list of names to Holroyd. The list the IRA had obtained from McVeigh was nonsense, fabricated in order to escape further beating. At the head of the list of Catholics supposed to be collaborating with the British was a well respected local solicitor and SDLP politician. At the top of the list of Protestants was the McVeigh family’s milkman, a Protestant who lived in the same area as the family. We have also spoken to a public figure in Dungannon, who saw the list after it had been sent out. He confirmed that he saw the same names as Holroyd. COLUMBA MCVEIGH was given a sus- pended sentence in January 1975 — completely unprecedented for someone accused of terrorist offences and who had implied membership of the IRA. He went to Dublin with his brother to live there, but suddenly disappeared ten months later. He has never been heard of since. Father Denis Faul, a leading spokesman for Northern Ireland Catholics, who knows the McVeigh family, says that by letting Columba go free in this way, he was in effect being pro- claimed an informer — even though he had been The suspended sentence, says Father Faul, VICTIMS OF THE 'DIRTY WAR'...Continued quite unable to supply any information at all. . “condemned him to death’. A month after McVeigh was freed, on 11 February 1975, the ‘milkman’ on his list was gunned down ina nearby village. The dead man was not in fact the regular milkman, but his“ relief roundsman. Christopher Mein, a recently married 29-year-old Protestant, had taken on the round on his own for the first time that day. He had no connection with any loyalist organi- sation. Holroyd noted the milkman’s death in his notebook at the time, commenting that ‘the milkman in Pomeroy was head of Tony’s man’s confession list . . . “mistaken identity”. As a result of this bungle, Sergeant Poole became persona non grata at Dungannon police station. So the Army created a new job for him in a town 30 miles away. When Holroyd revisited Northern Ireland in the summer of 1975, he says he was told that both Poole and another Army intelligence man were being posted home, because the RUC had begun investigating what had really happened to McVeigh. Sergeant Poole is still in the Army, But the Ministry of Defence have refused permission for journalists to talk to him about the case — which is, like the other Holroyd reports, under investigation by the police and DPP. Political psychiatry Captain Holroyd claims that he has been the victim of a campaign of vilification and what amounts to ‘political psychiatry’ by the Army. He has succeeded in getting the Army to withdraw allegations by a senior officer of ‘mental stress’, which were originally used to justify his removal from Northern Ireland. We have established that this original slur was based on false evidence used in Army records. The mid-1970s, was a time, as both the Ministry of Defence and the police now openly acknowledge, of poor co-operation and co- ordination between competitive intelligence operations in Northern Ireland. With the Army in effect unaccountable to civil authority, it was also a time when the ‘cowboys’, keen to make a name for themselves, flourished. Holroyd’s loyalty to the police and their undercover agents made him an awkward customer for some Army commanders. Another source of friction was that he started working directly for the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), whose controller was based at Army headquarters, but whose activities were kept a closely-guarded secret from the Army staff. Holroyd worked with both SIS staff and with the undercover SAS team, thus giving him detailed knowledge of sensitive activities by the security forces. The last straw, so far as some in the Army were concerned, was a secret trip Holroyd made to Dublin in the spring of 1975. At the invitation of a senior Garda officer, Assistant Commissioner Garvey, Holroyd and some RUC officers went to the Garda headquarters at Phoenix Park, Dublin, to inspect materials seized from an IRA bomb factory. Army officers were officially supposed never to cross the border without permission. Holroyd’s Army commander had told him not to go. But intelligence staff at the Northern Ireland Army HQ in Lisburn, says Holroyd, countermanded this order. Holroyd was removed from his post, without warning, on 27 May 1975. The ostensible reason given to him was that his wife (from whom he is now divorced) had suddenly complained that he had repeatedly threatened her life and those of their children with a hdden gun. Following this, his wife’s doctor was alleged to have told Army officers that, if the Army didn’t commit Captain Holroyd to mental hospital, they would. Following these alleged complaints, Holroyd was persuaded to- undergo a brief examination at Musgrave Park Hospital in Belfast. He was then ordered to report to an Army Hospital at Netley, Southampton. : Holroyd’s account of these events is now confirmed by the Ministry of Defence. An MoD spokesman claimed to the New Statesman earlier this year that Holroyd’s wife and her GP were discussing whether he should be certified or not... The Commanding Officer had no choice in view of what was recommended to him by the GP at the time... But this version of events is completely denied by both the ex-Mrs Holroyd, and by her GP — and by Holroyd himself. Holroyd’s ex-wife says that she merely told another Army wife that Holroyd was under too much strain in his job and had wanted her to return with their children to Engiand for a month, to avoid further pressure on their marriage. She had not been threatened with a gun, but had merely told his Army colleagues that he kept his ‘unattributable’ gun (in fact, merely a spare barrel) in their house. : Released after a rest period at the Nejley Hospital, Holroyd was told that he could not return to Northern Ireland. Instead, he was offered a job of equal status in England. He refused and appealed to the Army Board against the confidential order which had sanctioned his removal from Northern Ireland. He was told that the Board decided that his removal from appointment was justified in the circumstances at the time, but that this does not reflect adversely on his character or ability... The Board directed that ‘any reference to his mental condition shall be expunged’. The only justification for his removal that then remained was an allegation that he allegedly ‘disobeyed orders’ by going on the secret mission to Dublin — a serious disciplinary offence, iftrue, but one for which no charges or court martial were ever brought. Oo NEXT WEBK: Kidnap plots, death threats and booby traps. Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIARDP96-00788R0001003300041-5