Spies like us

OK, the posts proper start next Monday, but in the wake of the Denis Donaldson affair - the IRA ex-prisoner and senior Sinn Féin official who recently admitted to being a British spy for 20 years - I see the police have called at the homes of several prominent Sinn Féin members to warn them that the IRA are (allegedly) investigating them as potential spies within the Republican ranks.

 

Bluff or not, this is a tactical twist worthy of Frederick Forsyth. If the PSNI are telling the truth, it's jolly nice of them to tell these guys - people who probably look to their own ranks for security and couldn't give a stuff about the PSNI. If it's just all one great big Crown Forces bluff, you have to admire the sheer cheek of it ...

 

Turning up on a high-profile visit banging on the front doors of well-known Republican activists to let everybody know (or make everybody think) their own people have them on a hit-list they know nothing about is the political equivalent of sending a 7.5 Richter seismic shockwave through the entire Republican movement - turning the latent terror potential within the movement back on its prominent members until they disappear up their own armalites. Possibly.

 

Actually it's potentially so devastating, maybe it's got to be a ruse. But, like most great ruses, there may be a grain of truth in it that's simply been blown out of proportion for effect.

 

Something tells me it ain't over yet though.