Media peddles British agent's anonymous hearsay as fact

AN ANONYMOUS, self-proclaimed, unapologetic, paid British agent makes a number of allegations against Sinn Féin's Gerry Adams, which the informer acknowledges are based on nothing more than his hearsay, and a compliant media presents it as fact the next day.

This is what has happened following an episode of Spotlight which aired on the BBC on Tuesday featuring an unnamed individual who claims he was a member of Sinn Féin and the IRA while also working for British intelligence agencies.

This individual alleged that it was the IRA, and not a 'dissident' group, which shot dead British agent Denis Donaldson at a remote cottage in County Donegal in 2006. The paid informer also told the BBC programme that he assumes Gerry Adams would have known of the plan to kill the British intelligence asset.

Gerry Adams has categorically denied all the claims contained in the programme.

A senior Sinn Féin spokesperson told An Phoblacht:

“These allegations are nothing more than hearsay from an anonymous source who was a paid British agent. 

“The same agencies that made these allegations have over the decades misled the media by claiming the people murdered by British troops on Bloody Sunday were guilty and continue to deny collusion between British intelligence agencies and unionist murder gangs in the killings of hundreds of Irish citizens, including the Dublin and Monagahan bombings and the murder of human rights lawyer Pat Finucane.

“What we saw last night was more of the same from these agencies who are continuing to cover-up their actions and refusing to take part in the existing truth recovery processes.

“Essentially what we see here is the Spotlight team accepting a briefing from a unnamed, self-proclaimed British intelligence agent and rejecting a 10-year Garda investigation.”

Spotlight – which presented no evidence to substantiate any of the wild allegations made – was immediately seized on by by the anti-Sinn Féin media, with the Irish Independent and others repeating verbatim much of the completely unsubstantiated claims.

The Irish Independent laughably claimed (not for the first time) what it described as the “bombshell revelations” having “rocked the Sinn Féin party”.

RTÉ repeatedly referred to the anonymous informer – who was in the pay of the disgraced and subsequently disbanded RUC Special Branch – as a “witness”. However, this informer never claimed to have actually “witnessed” anything. Instead, he said it was his assumption that Gerry Adams would have known about the plan to kill Donaldson.

Gerry Kelly MLA dismissed the programme as “a collection of discredited conspiracy theories which relied on the claims of an anonymous paid liar and British agent”.