Robert Nairac
Robert Nairac was a British officer serving in Northern Ireland, when he was killed on 14 May 1977. He was abducted and killed by the IRA while visiting a bar in South Armagh.[1].
Special Reconnaissance Unit
Some years after his death, former Army intelligence officer Fred Holroyd made a number of allegations about Nairac's activities.
- He was keen and brave , if a little rash, but totally committed to the war against the terrorists. However, there was another side to Robert that I was to learn about. The unit he was involved with, with the cover title '4 Field Survey Troop, Royal Engineers' was located at Castle Dillon with a genuine engineer regiment. It had a second level of cover as 'Northern Ireland Training and Tactics Team' (NITAT).[2]
Holroyd elaborated on Nairac's role in an unpublished letter to the Guardian:
- 4 Field Survey Troop, Royal Engineers does not appear on the official list of Sapper units in Ulster for the three years mentioned. This is not surprising as the title was the first layer of cover which hid the fact that it was an SAS Troop. It's two Officers Commanding in my time were both infantry officers currently serving in 22 SAS Regiment, the second of these was Captain Julian (Tony) Ball, KOSB. His 2i/c was Captain Robert Nairac. The CSM, NCO's and operational members were either former, serving or recently trained SAS personnel.[3]
Liam Clarke describes Nairac's role as follows:
- The official job of the former Oxford boxing blue and Grenadier Guard was liaison officer between Bessbrook military base and covert organisations such as the SAS and RUC Special Branch. Nairac had spent some time training with the SAS and was a founder member of a related covert intelligence unit known as the Det.[4]
Clarke's account questions notions that Nairac was a 'rogue agent':“Robert was tasked directly from Headquarters Northern Ireland. So he wasn’t really under my control,” says Brigadier Peter Morton, the army commander in south Armagh at the time. “I was not surprised when Nairac was abducted. I could never understand how he could leave the army base in Bessbrook in his car, go to pubs in republican areas and return to base without expecting to be followed or traced.”[5]
The 1974 briefing Army Plain Clothes Patrols in Northern Ireland states that the Special Reconnaissance Unit reported directly to Headquarters Northern Ireland, and that it operated under the cover name Northern Ireland Training and Tactics Team (Northern Ireland).[6] The emergence of this document in 2006 confirmed key elements of Holroyd's account of the unit.[7] Nairac would therefore seem to have been a officer of the Special Reconnaissance Unit, which is consistent with Morton's account of his chain of command.
John Francis Green
Holroyd claimed in his book War Without Honour that Nairac admitted to him his involvement in the killing of IRA man John Francis Green in the Republic, and gave him a photograph of Green's body which Holroyd turned over to the RUC. Holroyd also stated that ballistic evidence linked the Green killing with the Miami Showband massacre, and with a group of loyalists linked to a group of loyalists who would later become known as the Glennane Gang.[8]
Notes
- ↑ David McKittrick, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney, Chris Thornton and David McVea, Lost Lives, Mainstream Publishing, 2004, p. 722
- ↑ Fred Holroyd, War Without Honour, Medium Publishing, 1989, p47.
- ↑ Letter from Fred Holroyd to The Guardian, Lobster magazine, Issue 16, June 1998.
- ↑ Liam Clarke, Murdered maverick Robert Nairac showed how to beat the IRA, Sunday Times, 25 May 2008.
- ↑ Liam Clarke, Murdered maverick Robert Nairac showed how to beat the IRA, Sunday Times, 25 May 2008.
- ↑ Defensive Brief D Meeting between the Prime Minister and the Taoiseach 5 April 1974 Army Plain Clothes Patrols in Northern Ireland, National Archives PREM 16/154.
- ↑ Robin Ramsay, The View From The Bridge, Fred Holroyd vindicated, Lobster Magazine, Winter 2006/07.
- ↑ Fred Holroyd, War Without Honour, Medium Publishing, 1989, p47.
