OPSEC Tradecraft: Modern Clandestine Groups Face New Challenges

There were no mobile phones or recording devices allowed at this bizarre encounter. The digital era is perceived as posing new threats to the security of terror groups in Ireland in terms of their being tracked and covertly recorded.

 Source: The Guardian

Bottom Line Up Front

• Compartmentation via unlinking
• Strict anti forensic practices to mitigate police techniques
• Metadata analysis evasion by forcing the recipient to make a copy
• Brief encounters to limit the duration of exposure
• Your security is your own concern

The Source

This post is based on two separate interactions between journalists for The Guardian and the dissident Irish republican group the Real IRA (RIRA).

In 2010 The Guardian arranged to pass RIRA number of questions. RIRA then setup a secure operation to return the answers. A couple years later, in 2012, The Guardian was contacted to release a statement announcing the formation of the New IRA (NIRA), of which RIRA was a significant founding member.

In both events, the operational security practices on display show some remarkable sophistication and awareness of modern risks.

Operation 20 Questions

In 2010 the Guardian conducted an interview with the Real IRA by delivering a set of questions and collecting a written response at a later date. The security aspects of how the answers document was delivered is quite interesting.

Dead Drops, Not Dead Yet

In our final meeting at a location near the border in northwest Ulster the Guardian was advised to go into a public toilet and search around the back of the bowl for something.

The Real IRA used a dead drop in a restroom to pass a USB thumb drive containing a file with the answers to The Guardian’s questions. It sounds as if the primary RIRA operative was around to meet the journalist and provide directions, while another operative (the courier) was responsible for loading the dead drop. This arrangement would ensure that the “exposed” operative has nothing incriminating on him if he is captured by security forces.

Read the Remainder at Medium

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Guerilla Warfare History: The IRA and ‘Fantasy Troubles’

A lot of articles, books, documentaries and news pieces have been produced over the last two decades exploring the origins of the Peace Process in the North of Ireland, and none more so than in the murky world of Britain’s Dirty War. It has become de rigueur in certain British nationalist circles (and amongst their sympathisers) to claim that it was “the Brits wot won it!” thanks to the alleged penetration of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) by various branches of the British intelligence services. It was not boots on the ground that brought about the peace, or even the “hit squads” of the infamous Special Air Service (SAS), but rather “human intelligence” – and in particular informers and double-agents.

The successful penetration of PIRA at all levels by British spies and agents, from top to bottom, helped the British to turn the organisation around, point it in the direction they wanted it to go, convinced it there was nothing further to be gained by continuing the armed struggle, and set it off on the path of peace (a few bumps and hiccups along the way not withstanding). Or so the story goes. Some even go so far as to claim that the British succeeded in a complex, decades-long strategy of bringing Irish Republicans into the governance of the north-eastern part of Ireland on behalf of the British – a masterstroke indeed.

If true.

This particular narrative has gained legs in recent years with the dramatic unmasking of several senior British agents at high levels within the Republican Movement, in both the military and political wings. Not simply the (Provisional) Irish Republican Army but Sinn Féin itself was compromised, it would seem. So the cries went up: the Brits knew everything! The Brits ran everything! The whole last decade of the war, the whole peace process itself was nothing more than a sham.

All of which is complete and utter nonsense.

Read the Remainder at Ansionnachfionn

History of Terrorism: How British Intelligence Infiltrated the IRA

This is an article from The Atlantic in 2006 but I thought it a great read on the History of the IRA from the British perspective.-SF

I first met the man now called Kevin Fulton in London, on Platform 13 at Victoria Station. We almost missed each other in the crowd; he didn’t look at all like a terrorist.

He stood with his feet together, a short and round man with a kind face, fair hair, and blue eyes. He might have been an Irish grammar-school teacher, not an IRA bomber or a British spy in hiding. Both of which he was.Fulton had agreed to meet only after an exchange of messages through an intermediary. Now, as we talked on the platform, he paced back and forth, scanning the faces of passersby. He checked the time, then checked it again. He spoke in an almost impenetrable brogue, and each time I leaned in to understand him, he leaned back, suspicious. He fidgeted with several mobile phones, one devoted to each of his lives. “I’m just cautious,” he said.

He lives in London now, but his wife remains in Northern Ireland. He rarely goes out, for fear of bumping into the wrong person, and so leads a life of utter isolation, a forty-five-year-old man with a lot on his mind.During the next few months, Fulton and I met several times on Platform 13. Over time his jitters settled, his speech loosened, and his past tumbled out: his rise and fall in the Irish Republican Army, his deeds and misdeeds, his loyalties and betrayals. He had served as a covert foot soldier in what has come to be called the Dirty War: a cutthroat and secret British effort to infiltrate and undermine the IRA, carried out in the shadows of the infamous Troubles. “It was a lot grayer and darker,” Fulton said of the clandestine war. “Darker even than people can imagine.”But there’s this: it worked. British spies subverted the IRA from within, leaving it in military ruin, and Irish Republicans—who want to end British rule in Northern Ireland and reunite the island—have largely shifted their weight to Sinn Féin and its peaceable, political efforts. And so the Dirty War provides a model for how to dismantle a terrorist organization. The trick is to not mind killing, and to expect dying.This came clear to Kevin Fulton on the day his cover as an IRA man collapsed. It happened inside an IRA safe house in north Belfast, in 1994. Fulton sat facing a wall, blindfolded. Curtains shut out the pale light of winter. Bottles lay scattered on the floor, and the place stank of stale beer. An interrogator paced the room, his boots scuffing against the floor. He said, “I know what yer done, boyo.”

He pressed a thick index finger against Fulton’s temple, hard, then leaned in close to Fulton’s ear and murmured a series of threats: The IRA hunts down all snitches and executes them. Two quick bullets in the brain. Remember the boy from County Armagh who left behind the pregnant wife. Remember the boy from County Louth who left seven children mewling for a father. Remember them all.

Read the Remainder at The Atlantic

For Further Reading on the IRA Check out the Conflicts Archive on the Internet, CAIN.