Clifford Hill (IRD)
Clifford Hill was an Information Research department operative seconded to the Northern Ireland Office in the early 1970s. Known as 'Cliff the spy' inside Stormont - according to NIO sources[1] he played a key role in co-ordinating official disinformation campaigns.
According to Tony Staughton, an information officer at British Army HQ in Northern Ireland:
- Immediately after internment, the IRA started to get the upper hand. And from that time on, the Foreign Office and the Intelligence people insisted on much more say in public relations. They sent a man over called Hugh Mooney - he was from a department of the Foreign Office called the Information Research Department (IRD). None of us ever knew what Mooney was about. Who he reported to or what he was entitled to. All we knew was that they gave him a big house to live in and freedom to move at will throughout the barracks and Stormont. There was another man called Clifford Hill - I always imagined that he had something to do with Intelligence. None of us knew precisely what he was up to either. (Tony Staughton interview by Paul Foot, Who Framed Colin Wallace?)
Notes
- ^ Interview by David Miller with senior Northern Ireland Information Service operative, Belfast August 1989.
