Agents, Informers and Double Agents
Martin Dillon · 1999
In the shadowy areas of the dirty war, the use of people as informers, agents and agents provocateurs not only creates controversy but raises serious issues for a democracy. The police, Army and intelligence agencies never admit that they employ people to spy on their behalf or that they tolerate the fact that some of those people act in a criminal fashion or are encouraged to do so to enhance their standing within terrorist organisations. Claire McMahon was unaware that the face behind the mask was that of Dominic McGlinchey, the most wanted man in Ireland, and the operations officer on the General Headquarters Staff of the INLA; a man who had killed at least thirty people, civilians as well as members of the police, Army and UDR. The professionalism of the security agencies is vital in a dirty war in which the rules can become obscured or blurred. The question inevitably is whether such distortion is deliberate.