[LAST week we told the story of Robert…]
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LAST week we told the story of Robert Lean, the informer who changed his mind and exposed the supergrass system | in Northern Ireland. But not all grasses are supergrasses. following account from An Phoblacht (by Jack Madden) shows the methods used by the 'security forces' to press gang local informers into service.
THE RUC's continuing efforts to ensnare people into becoming informers, side by side with by the experience of a 29year-old man from the Markets area of Belfast who contacted Sinn Fein.
William McKee, a married man with three children, was arrested on Thursday, October 20, and taken to Castlereagh.
His interrogators made a series of threats and offers of bribes - ranging from £20 to £50 per week — to induce him to report regularly on the movements of seven men in the area.
When McKee agreed to cooperate, he was told to meet the Special Branch in Bedford Street on Wednesday, October 26, at 11.30am, where he was to get into a blue transit van and would then be given a code name, a contact phone number and a Special Branch handler.
He was released from Castlereagh on Friday afternoon, October 21, and on the following morning approached Sinn Fein with his story.
Not so wise was a man from the nearby Short Strand area, super who confessed in an interview with the Irish News (Belfast's Catholic newspaper) on Tuesday this week that he had acted as an informer for over two years.
Michael 'Herbie' Devlin, a father of four, was recruited as an informer in June 1981 for the princely sum of £10 a week. His task was to inform on the movements and activities of republicans in his own locality.
After being detained in Castlereagh on suspicion of killing an RUC man, Devlin, a former Long Kesh prisoner, was released without charge and then subjected to constant harassment, arrest and raids until, he claims, on the verge of a mental breakdown, he agreed to cooperate with the RUC.
Devlin told the Irish News that as his conscience became increasingly guilty, he took to heavy drinking and later started petty thieving, hoping to be arrested, eventually succeeding in being sentenced to a sixmonth sentence in Crumlin Road Jail.
During his stay in prison, and since his release, the demands of his handlers increased to the point that they encouraged him to shoot a republican he knew, telling him "to put six in the 'scone' of the bastard."
Devlin fled the six counties. He says of his experience:
"The Special Branch kept on telling me that I was a brave man. The problem was that I stopped feeling like a human being the moment I accepted their money."