British Army experts spying on IRA dissidents

Northern Ireland's police commander warned Friday that his force must use a specialist British Army unit to spy on IRA dissidents, whom he described as "lunatics" bent on mounting an attack as St. Patrick's Day approaches. Chief Constable Hugh Orde confirmed that a half-dozen officers from the shadowy Special Reconnaissance Regiment arrived this week in Northern Ireland to begin intercepting communications among members of Irish Republican Army splinter groups, which are strongest along the border with the Republic of Ireland. Orde said the army specialists had skills honed during deployments since 2005 in Iraq and Afghanistan, and possessed technical expertise that his own anti-terrorist officers lacked. He said their electronic eavesdropping on the conversations of IRA dissidents would "enhance the front-line capabilities of my officers." The move sent shock waves through Northern Ireland's Irish Catholic minority, whose leaders accused Orde of reneging on a political commitment not to commit British troops to any active security duty as part of Northern Ireland's peace process. Their criticism reflected deep-seated Irish suspicions about covert British military operations that, in the past, ended in bloody ambushes of IRA members and Catholic civilians alike. Britain formally withdrew all troops from active duty in Northern Ireland in 2007 as part of a wider peacemaking deal that revived a Catholic-Protestant government in the territory. Until Friday, the only publicly disclosed exception was the army's bomb disposal squad, which still does that work on behalf of the police–a universally accepted arrangement that applies throughout the United Kingdom. Also, because Northern Ireland remains part of the U.K., about 5,000 troops continue to be based here just as they are in England, Scotland and Wales. But they train for deployment overseas and are barred from patrolling in Northern Ireland itself. The senior Catholic in the power-sharing government, former IRA commander Martin McGuinness, said the decision to deploy army spying specialists was completely different. He called it "dangerous and stupid" because it risked inflaming Catholic opinion and spurring support for the dissidents. "I regard special forces as a major threat ... as much of a danger to the community as any other group," said McGuinness, who holds the No. 2 post of deputy first minister in the power-sharing coalition. He and the Protestant first minister of the government, Peter Robinson, are scheduled to visit the United States starting next week and meet President Barack Obama in the White House on St. Patrick's–traditionally the most important day on Ireland's political calendar as leaders from Dublin and Belfast alike converge on Washington. Orde rejected McGuinness' complaints as ill-judged. He said intelligence tipoffs indicate that IRA dissidents pose their greatest threat since he took command of Northern Ireland's police seven years ago. Therefore, he said, his force was right to use army experts to help prevent "a successful criminal explosion by these lunatics, who are out to wreck his (McGuinness') world and my world." The Special Reconnaissance Regiment soldiers were electronic surveillance experts "offering support of a purely technical nature," not undercover killers, he said. The IRA killed nearly 1,800 people from 1970 to 1997 in a failed campaign to force Northern Ireland into the Republic of Ireland. The IRA disarmed in 2005, but splinter groups continue to plot gun and bomb attacks in hopes of undermining the IRA cease-fire and the power-sharing it promoted. The dissidents have wounded several officers since November 2007 in a widening range of gun, bomb and rocket attacks. But their attempts to detonate a car bomb have repeatedly failed either because police intercepted them or their homemade devices failed to detonate properly.