Real IRA. - The Accidental Spy

First published by Mirror Books in 2019

Mirror Books is part of Reach plc
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London E14 5AP
England

www.mirrorbooks.co.uk

Sean ODriscoll

The rights of Sean ODriscoll to be identified as the author
of this book have been asserted, in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Hardback 978-1-912624-28-7
Trade paperback 978-1-912624-18-8
eBook 978-1-912624-36-2

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior
written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of
binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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Every effort has been made to fulfill requirements with regard to
reproducing copyright material. The author and publisher will be
glad to rectify any omissions at the earliest opportunity.

For Sarah Hale, without whom
this book simply could not have been written.

For my parents, PJ and Enda, for Yvette Moya Angeler,
Michael Gallagher and for the people of Omagh.

INTRODUCTION

The first time I saw David Rupert was on the front page of a Sunday newspaper.

It was a picture of a smiling, heavy-set American man at an Irish republican fundraising event in Chicago. I picked up the newspaper at a Spar shop in the centre of Dublin. Other people were picking up the same newspaper, one after another, reading the headlines and looking at the photo.

The headline screamed that the FBI and MI5 had planted a spy inside the army council of the Real IRA and that its leader, Mickey McKevitt, and a dozen others, had been arrested.

This mysterious trucker turned FBI informant immediately became the object of a media obsession and endless rumours in Ireland. Who was he and where did he come from? Was he an FBI agent posing as a trucker, or a trucker who joined the FBI?

One tabloid newspaper reported that he was from Madrid, Spain. Others quickly corrected it he was born in Madrid in upstate New York. Every major UK newspaper sent reporters there to discover who he really was. His sister, the local school secretary, received a call from a journalist claiming to be his sister and explaining that the family needed his school photo. When his real sister explained who she was, the woman hung up.

In the centre of Madrid, reporters were dressing up in waders and redneck T-shirts, trying to blend in with what they thought rural America looked like, as they roamed around town searching for answers.

They discovered that he had since moved to the American Midwest. A British reporter called the beauty salon in his new home town to find out if his wife was a customer and if they sold butt implants.

The Sunday Times and the Boston Globe had reporters parked outside his house, waiting for him for days.

Reporter after reporter tried to interview his family and friends, his former workmates and his three ex-wives. Book deals were offered through his lawyer there have been four journalists before me who have tried to tell his story, but each time he walked away.

After the journalists came a wave of Irish republicans and private detectives, driving into town looking for anything to discredit Rupert. His brother drove one Real IRA supporter away with a handgun.

All that time, Rupert and his wife, Maureen, were touring America in an FBI-hired car, staying out of Irish bars and anywhere the press were likely to gather.

I was good at that because Im never one for talking to strangers, he said.

His reticence is what impressed Real IRA leader McKevitt in the first place. A large, stoic, unmoved American was also perfect as a spy for the FBI and MI5.

It is this reticence that has kept Rupert an enigma for so long. 17 years later, as I was writing this book, the BBC sent two reporters back to Madrid after they heard he was talking to a journalist. After begging Rupert to talk, they, like many before them, went home without a story.

My contact with Irelands most elusive spy came through Facebook. I spent 20 years writing about the Real IRA and other republican groups and I had become good friends with Michael Gallagher, the head of the support group for the Omagh bomb victims. I saw that Rupert was also Mr Gallaghers Facebook friend. I first wrote to him seeking a quote for the Times after the European Court of Justice praised his evidence against McKevitt as reliable and consistent.

I was surprised when he replied to my query. He would co-operate with my article on one condition I should try to get an article published in the local newspaper in Madrid so that his sister and friends could read it.

It was so heartwarmingly parochial a request that I instantly liked him. He had been vilified by defence lawyers as a liar, a philanderer, an opportunist, a snitch, a terrorist and an arsonist, yet he appeared to be quite a humble man, someone concerned with the slow-moving politics of his home town and someone who disliked the drama of the international media.

As soon as I wrote the article in the Times , there were immediate requests from other journalists for his contact details, but he refused to say any more. Over time, in many, many hours of conversation, the complexity of his personality emerged, and the reasons for his reticence became apparent both the obvious concerns about an IRA revenge attack and the culture of small-town America, which distrusted big-town media and the fleeting fame it offered. I hope I have done justice to his complex personality and the most extraordinary story I have come across in 20 years of journalism. I hope it answers many unanswered questions and raises some uncomfortable questions for security forces in the US, Ireland and the UK. Most of all, I hope it helps to explain the combination of injury, rage and ego that fuels international terrorism and the quiet patience it takes to bring it to an end.

CHAPTER 1

On a quiet wooded road, in a state the FBI does not want named, sits a two-storey house where leaves gather in the driveway and pine cones roll across the porch. It looks like any other house in this sloped, forested road except for the two English mastiffs that patrol the perimeter and the security cameras discreetly placed in the eaves.

A camera swivels every so often if one of the dogs barks loudly at a squirrel or a passing stranger.

The owner, in T-shirt and shorts, walks slowly to the gate.

His movement is deliberate, pushing his towering frame forward with his chin up and his arms swinging in front of his belly. He is 300 pounds with a boyish smile that makes him look like an overfed toddler dressed in adult clothes.

He extends a shovel-like hand in an upward movement of greeting. How ya doin?

His left leg has a chunk missing, earned while trying to stop a dog fight when he owned six mastiffs.

His jovial greeting is tempered by a flinty addition, You didnt bring any other visitors from Ireland with you, did ya?

On the front door hangs a small pumpkin, and just inside the door, his wife, younger and slimmer, offers squash and pepper soup. Her arm carries a visible scar from the 142 stitches she needed when one of the dogs bit her. They used to have a lot more ill-tempered dogs when security was tighter.

Standing arm in arm in the hallway, the couple look like an oddity from National Geographic : he, the leader of a lost tribe of giants and she, the smiling anthropologist who found him.

Leaning over the sofa, he offers tea. It is autumn and they have just returned from the farmers market. The silence in the living room is filled with the sound of two mastiffs rapidly sniffing the air. They know the farmers market bags mean there is meat, they just dont know where its stored.