18-10-2008, 09:57 PM
David Guyatt Wrote:I first remember reading of this crash in Private Eye the week after it happened...
This is an extract from Paul Foot's surprisingly triumphalist piece, "Spooky!," of 29 July 1994, p.26:
Quote:“The importance of the secret mission to the base has been underlined by reports in Scotland of the hysteria which followed the crash. Not since Lockerbie have so many security people poured into a single area. Holidaymakers on the Mull were taken off for hours of questioning, chiefly about documents.
The more probing media in Ireland have been full of speculation about a high-level conference at the base [at the US special forces base at Macrihanish – PR], which was to have been attended by MI5, the CIA, Scotland Yard and intelligence chiefs from Dublin.
The Sunday Business Post and the Phoenix have produced evidence of a plot by intelligence and police to react to an IRA rejection of the Major/Reynolds declaration with a round-up of suspects on both sides of the border. The highly-publicised Operation Madronna on 19 April, involving 1,000 troops and police, is said to have been a “dress rehearsal” for the biggest round-up since internment. An intercepted intelligence phone call suggested that the word “internment” would not be used this time and that suspects would be charged, on intelligence information, of “directing terrorism”: a new offence recently introduced into the Northern Ireland courts.
The result of the Mull of Kintyre catastrophe, however, is that pretty well all the hardline intelligence, police and special branch leaders have been wiped out. One curious consequence may be the replacement of MI5 Orange militants with softer greenish types from MI6 who are much keener on a settlement with Sinn Fein.”