MI5 INFORMER'S WARNINGS ON OMAGH
MI5 informer's warning on Omagh
BY BARRY O'KELLY
ALLEGATIONS a second security force agent may have warned of a bomb attack on Omagh are unlikely to be investigated by the Police Ombudsman's office.
Weekend reports alleged that US agent David Rupert, who had infiltrated the Real IRA and CIRA on behalf of the FBI, had told MI5 that dissident republicans were planning to bomb Omagh and Derry,
The day after the Omagh car bombing on August 15 1998, republican informant David Rupert received an urgent message from M15 summoning him to London.
"Collect tickets at Belfast City Airport," he was told, "you will be here for two nights. We need to talk ... it's extremely urgent."
Rupert, a 49-year-old American, was supposedly operating inside the Republic of Ireland with the full knowledge of the Garda Siochana, through a senior garda in Dublin and an FBI man in Chicago, Ed Buckley. But he was answering to British intelligence.
As he prepared to fly out to London, Rupert even expressed concern to his MI5 handlers that his official garda contact might want to talk to him about the bombing in Omagh that was primed and prepared in the Republic that weekend.
"I'm sure the garda is going to send Ed [Buckley, the FBI man] after me and maybe it's a good idea if Ed says that I would allow myself to be debriefed by Ed on my return. That would insulate me from the garda," he told his handler.
It is not known if the British acceded to his request to be insulated'. However, his handlers in London may not have been too happy about him being briefed by their Irish counterparts on his activities much of which would have been news to the Special Branch in Dublin.
It has been established that only four months earlier M15 expressly told Rupert to steer clear of his Garda contact while operating as an agent in the Republic, based in Donegal.
In other correspondence that April, Rupert was instructed by the intelligence services in London: "You will be well advised to stay well out of the way of that garda's people."
The informant responded: "I will make all attempts to steer clear of the garda. Trust me on this."
This subterfuge might be explained away as innocent paranoia among spooks. But it also coincided with intelligence reports from David Rupert about a possible attack on Omagh.
Specifically, on April 11,1998 the informant told his MI5 handlers about republican dissident's from the Continuity IRA in Co Donegal who had prepared a car bomb and that "Derry or Omagh would be two suspect viable targets" for it.
Rupert admitted that he played a scouting role in the movement of the car bomb through Bundoran. "This [operation] yesterday was a military operation and I was part of it," he reported.
Gardai were subsequently tipped off by MI5 three suspects involved were arrested and released without charge-but it is believed that the car bomb was not intercepted.
In a follow-up message to Rupert, MI5 told him: "We disrupted the intention to use the car bomb, but maybe not for long ... Mr Blair (the British prime minister) owes you a beer."
The irony of it all was not lost on Rupert when the Omagh bombing went down four months later. Omagh, he recalled to his handlers, was one of the locations he had "mentioned" to his republican associates as a possible target for a car bomb.
The Real IRA may have been involved in the bombing. But Rupert's associates in the Continuity IRA (CIRA) are believed by garda sources to have played a leading role in providing intelligence and logistical backup for the operation.
Rupert told his handlers that a number of these CIRA men went into hiding the day after the bombing, and he believed they were involved. He described it as a 70 per cent CIRA, 30 per cent Real IRA operation.
The double agent's complete intelligence reports were apparently not handed over to the Gardai until Christmas 1999, when he was told by MI5 that he would now be required to become a state witness against Mickey McKevitt, alleged chief of staff of the Real IRA.
Rupert supplied details about 30 named individuals, but MI5 appeared interested only in McKevitt, whom British intelligence linked with the Omagh bombing in its immediate aftermath (the Daily Mail turned up at his doorstep within hours of the explosion) although he was not among
the 81 people arrested about the bombing. The Dundalk man faces the Special Criminal Court on charges of directing terrorism later this year, but Rupert could yet turn out to be a deep source of embarrassment to all concerned.
The supergrass maintains that he was 'turned' the day FBI agent Ed Buckley walked into his office in Chicago in 1994 and showed him photographs of meetings he had with republicans in Donegal. He was "shocked" and immediately agreed to pass on any information he had to the Feds.
Rupert's past would suggest that he is not a man to be easily shocked. He is a four times bankrupt who has accumulated debts of nearly $20 million. The Sunday Business Post understands that he has accumulated more than 200 creditors from collapsed businesses in pubs, a motel, a clothing firm and a string of haulage firms.
One of his last legitimate business ventures was Transport Arrangements Inc (TAI), a Florida trucking firm in an unfortunately-named town called Treasure Island. The company had debts of $2.4 million when it went bankrupt in late 1993.
Rupert's enthusiastic response to FBI agent Buckley also coincided with demands he faced from America's Internal Revenue Service for $700,000 (for not paying income tax or social security on behalf of his former employees).
How David Rupert managed to inveigle himself into the confidence of the dissident republican movement is a tribute to the remarkable hard neck that saw him through his many business failures. Six feet seven inches and 20 stone, Rupert stood out.
And as his name would suggest, he is 100 per cent WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant), the son of a Protestant Canadian truck driver from the New York state border town of Madrid.
He first surfaced in Irish republican circles in America in October 1995 in the company of a Republican Sinn Fein (RSF) member whom he met while on holiday in Donegal three years earlier.
His introduction was at a ballads and beer affair, organised by the RSF support group in Chicago called the Irish Freedom Committee (IFC). "There was no big recommendation from the man he was with, but it seemed to put Rupert in the right context," according to Chris Fogarty, former vice president of the IFC.
"He seemed to be concerned about the occupied Irish; we only found out later that he became an instrument of the FBI," Fogarty said last week.
Fogarty had a previous run-in with Rupert's American handler, Ed Buckley. In 1992 Buckley arrested him for allegedly threatening FBI informant John Tuttle.
The charges were dropped after it emerged that tape-recorded evidence was edited by the FBI. It was later revealed that the, bureau intervened on Tuttle's behalf in a drink driving case and another where he broke a woman's nose.
Buckley's new agent, Rupert, moved to Co Leitrim in 1995 and took out a lease on a bar called the Drowse Inn in Tullaghan.
Over the next two years, as a paid employee of the FBI, he became increasingly associated with members of the Continuity IRA in Donegal and the American republican support group the Irish Freedom Committee (IFC) in Chicago.
Those who met him say Rupert was always a little detached. IFC member Catherina Wojtowicz recalled how he rarely drank and always made a point of collecting receipts.
Bronx lawyer and republican Martin Galvin, introduced to him at an IFC event in New York, remembers Rupert as being "a bit eccentric, strange".
"He promised things like typing and it was never delivered," said Galvin last week. "These were public meetings, it was all legal and proper. What he's now claiming is absurd."
By the spring of 1998 Rupert was living in Bundoran and was spying primarily for MI5 on the activities of the Continuity IRA.
In a message that April to his handler in London, officer N, Rupert claimed to have driven the scout car for the abortive first Omagh bomb in the company of the organisation's leader. "I am in the cell here. I will work on numbers," he reported.
In another report, four months before the Omagh bombing, he said: "I am well in on the military side. But yet they're very protective of me because of my being American and recognisable."
In an apparent reference to the birth of the Real IRA the previous October, he added: "Another splinter group within Sinn Fein is developing called Real Sinn Fein. Probably insignificant, but they may try some action."
BARRY O'KELLY IS CRIME CORRESPONDENT WITH THE SUNDAY BUSINESS POST
BY BARRY O'KELLY
ALLEGATIONS a second security force agent may have warned of a bomb attack on Omagh are unlikely to be investigated by the Police Ombudsman's office.
Weekend reports alleged that US agent David Rupert, who had infiltrated the Real IRA and CIRA on behalf of the FBI, had told MI5 that dissident republicans were planning to bomb Omagh and Derry,
The day after the Omagh car bombing on August 15 1998, republican informant David Rupert received an urgent message from M15 summoning him to London.
"Collect tickets at Belfast City Airport," he was told, "you will be here for two nights. We need to talk ... it's extremely urgent."
Rupert, a 49-year-old American, was supposedly operating inside the Republic of Ireland with the full knowledge of the Garda Siochana, through a senior garda in Dublin and an FBI man in Chicago, Ed Buckley. But he was answering to British intelligence.
As he prepared to fly out to London, Rupert even expressed concern to his MI5 handlers that his official garda contact might want to talk to him about the bombing in Omagh that was primed and prepared in the Republic that weekend.
"I'm sure the garda is going to send Ed [Buckley, the FBI man] after me and maybe it's a good idea if Ed says that I would allow myself to be debriefed by Ed on my return. That would insulate me from the garda," he told his handler.
It is not known if the British acceded to his request to be insulated'. However, his handlers in London may not have been too happy about him being briefed by their Irish counterparts on his activities much of which would have been news to the Special Branch in Dublin.
It has been established that only four months earlier M15 expressly told Rupert to steer clear of his Garda contact while operating as an agent in the Republic, based in Donegal.
In other correspondence that April, Rupert was instructed by the intelligence services in London: "You will be well advised to stay well out of the way of that garda's people."
The informant responded: "I will make all attempts to steer clear of the garda. Trust me on this."
This subterfuge might be explained away as innocent paranoia among spooks. But it also coincided with intelligence reports from David Rupert about a possible attack on Omagh.
Specifically, on April 11,1998 the informant told his MI5 handlers about republican dissident's from the Continuity IRA in Co Donegal who had prepared a car bomb and that "Derry or Omagh would be two suspect viable targets" for it.
Rupert admitted that he played a scouting role in the movement of the car bomb through Bundoran. "This [operation] yesterday was a military operation and I was part of it," he reported.
Gardai were subsequently tipped off by MI5 three suspects involved were arrested and released without charge-but it is believed that the car bomb was not intercepted.
In a follow-up message to Rupert, MI5 told him: "We disrupted the intention to use the car bomb, but maybe not for long ... Mr Blair (the British prime minister) owes you a beer."
The irony of it all was not lost on Rupert when the Omagh bombing went down four months later. Omagh, he recalled to his handlers, was one of the locations he had "mentioned" to his republican associates as a possible target for a car bomb.
The Real IRA may have been involved in the bombing. But Rupert's associates in the Continuity IRA (CIRA) are believed by garda sources to have played a leading role in providing intelligence and logistical backup for the operation.
Rupert told his handlers that a number of these CIRA men went into hiding the day after the bombing, and he believed they were involved. He described it as a 70 per cent CIRA, 30 per cent Real IRA operation.
The double agent's complete intelligence reports were apparently not handed over to the Gardai until Christmas 1999, when he was told by MI5 that he would now be required to become a state witness against Mickey McKevitt, alleged chief of staff of the Real IRA.
Rupert supplied details about 30 named individuals, but MI5 appeared interested only in McKevitt, whom British intelligence linked with the Omagh bombing in its immediate aftermath (the Daily Mail turned up at his doorstep within hours of the explosion) although he was not among
the 81 people arrested about the bombing. The Dundalk man faces the Special Criminal Court on charges of directing terrorism later this year, but Rupert could yet turn out to be a deep source of embarrassment to all concerned.
The supergrass maintains that he was 'turned' the day FBI agent Ed Buckley walked into his office in Chicago in 1994 and showed him photographs of meetings he had with republicans in Donegal. He was "shocked" and immediately agreed to pass on any information he had to the Feds.
Rupert's past would suggest that he is not a man to be easily shocked. He is a four times bankrupt who has accumulated debts of nearly $20 million. The Sunday Business Post understands that he has accumulated more than 200 creditors from collapsed businesses in pubs, a motel, a clothing firm and a string of haulage firms.
One of his last legitimate business ventures was Transport Arrangements Inc (TAI), a Florida trucking firm in an unfortunately-named town called Treasure Island. The company had debts of $2.4 million when it went bankrupt in late 1993.
Rupert's enthusiastic response to FBI agent Buckley also coincided with demands he faced from America's Internal Revenue Service for $700,000 (for not paying income tax or social security on behalf of his former employees).
How David Rupert managed to inveigle himself into the confidence of the dissident republican movement is a tribute to the remarkable hard neck that saw him through his many business failures. Six feet seven inches and 20 stone, Rupert stood out.
And as his name would suggest, he is 100 per cent WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant), the son of a Protestant Canadian truck driver from the New York state border town of Madrid.
He first surfaced in Irish republican circles in America in October 1995 in the company of a Republican Sinn Fein (RSF) member whom he met while on holiday in Donegal three years earlier.
His introduction was at a ballads and beer affair, organised by the RSF support group in Chicago called the Irish Freedom Committee (IFC). "There was no big recommendation from the man he was with, but it seemed to put Rupert in the right context," according to Chris Fogarty, former vice president of the IFC.
"He seemed to be concerned about the occupied Irish; we only found out later that he became an instrument of the FBI," Fogarty said last week.
Fogarty had a previous run-in with Rupert's American handler, Ed Buckley. In 1992 Buckley arrested him for allegedly threatening FBI informant John Tuttle.
The charges were dropped after it emerged that tape-recorded evidence was edited by the FBI. It was later revealed that the, bureau intervened on Tuttle's behalf in a drink driving case and another where he broke a woman's nose.
Buckley's new agent, Rupert, moved to Co Leitrim in 1995 and took out a lease on a bar called the Drowse Inn in Tullaghan.
Over the next two years, as a paid employee of the FBI, he became increasingly associated with members of the Continuity IRA in Donegal and the American republican support group the Irish Freedom Committee (IFC) in Chicago.
Those who met him say Rupert was always a little detached. IFC member Catherina Wojtowicz recalled how he rarely drank and always made a point of collecting receipts.
Bronx lawyer and republican Martin Galvin, introduced to him at an IFC event in New York, remembers Rupert as being "a bit eccentric, strange".
"He promised things like typing and it was never delivered," said Galvin last week. "These were public meetings, it was all legal and proper. What he's now claiming is absurd."
By the spring of 1998 Rupert was living in Bundoran and was spying primarily for MI5 on the activities of the Continuity IRA.
In a message that April to his handler in London, officer N, Rupert claimed to have driven the scout car for the abortive first Omagh bomb in the company of the organisation's leader. "I am in the cell here. I will work on numbers," he reported.
In another report, four months before the Omagh bombing, he said: "I am well in on the military side. But yet they're very protective of me because of my being American and recognisable."
In an apparent reference to the birth of the Real IRA the previous October, he added: "Another splinter group within Sinn Fein is developing called Real Sinn Fein. Probably insignificant, but they may try some action."
BARRY O'KELLY IS CRIME CORRESPONDENT WITH THE SUNDAY BUSINESS POST
Further Information
Publisher: ULSTER HERALD
Ref: UH/0963
Published Date: 14-Feb-02
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