Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness defended murders of IRA men by key British agent

When questioned about the murder of IRA informers, Martin McGuinness defended the killings, saying: “Well, I don’t see it as murder.”

Asked about the IRA torture and murder of another alleged IRA informer, Gerry Adams said that “the consequence of informing is death”.

Spotlight On The Troubles: A Secret History broadcast some of the intelligence video footage filmed as the security forces staked out the IRA’s ruthless East Tyrone brigade.

Many of that unit’s most accomplished killers were themselves killed in an ambush by the SAS as they attempted to blow up Loughgall RUC station.

Former IRA man John Crawley said that when news filtered through to the jail that eight had been killed in an attack in Loughgall, there was “a cheer in the jail because people thought it was Brits”.

When it was realised that it was in fact eight IRA men who were dead, former senior IRA figure Kieran Conway said that there had been “great despondency”.

Aware that they had been infiltrated in order for the Army to have had prior knowledge of the attack, the IRA sent Freddie Scappaticci – head of its internal security unity – to find out who had betrayed them.

Yet Scappaticci was himself working for their enemy as a long-term informant at the top of the IRA.

The local IRA man who was assigned to Scappaticci’s ‘investigation’ was Gerard Harte, but they fell out over who was to blame for the leak.

Harte was himself later killed in another ambush by the SAS while carrying out another IRA attack.

Glen Espie, a UDR man in Tyrone, said that before Loughgall “the East Tyrone IRA was a very well oiled killing machine”. Mr Espie twice survived attempts on his life when he was off-duty, with one of the guns later found with IRA man Jim Lynagh who was killed at Loughgall.

Edward McCusker, a former investigator with the Historical Enquiries Team, said that those killed by the SAS at Loughgall had been a “very ruthless group who brought a great deal of misery and despair to many families”.