Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

Because David Burke’s The Puppet Masters: how MI6 masterminded Ireland’s deepest state crisis surveys how MI6’s network of agents instigated the 1969-1998 Irish Troubles, his book is relevant not only to students of Ireland, but to those interested in how MI6 have more recently instigated terrorism in arenas as diverse as Russia, Armenia, Iraq and Syria.

Just as with our earlier review of Caroline Elkins’ Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire, so do we find the same cast of cut-throats making their way to Ireland, which they subjected to more than 30 years of wanton violence.

Chief of these Colonel Blimp criminals is the notorious SAS General Frank Kitson, whose Low Intensity Operations classic is quoted on page 153, to remind us that ”in the historical context it may be of interest to recall that when the regular [British] army was first raised in the 17^th century, ‘Suppression of the Irish’ was coupled with ‘Defence of the Protestant Religion’ as one of the two main reasons for its existence” and, by extension why both of those institutions must be destroyed root and branch.

That said, the author makes plain that, in Ireland at least, both have very deep roots and very many branches. Although Major McDowell, the long-time proprietor of the Hibernophobic Irish Times, is one such MI6 asset who should have been neutralised long ago, there are far too many others in all walks of Irish life to adumbrate.

Suffice it to say that these MI6 agents, according to the author and other informed sources, range from IRA Chief of Staff Seán MacStiofáin to Detective Inspector John The Badger McCoy, who helped MI6 explode their no warning bombs in Dublin between 1974 and 1976.

Although the author cites a number of credible journalists in his work, it is worth noting that the best of them were chased out of their chosen profession; Joe McAnthony was forced to flee to Canada to work and Kevin Myers, a lover of both the Crown and the Zionist state, had his career destroyed because of his propensity to speak the truth, to call a spade a spade.

All that said, Burke’s “Puppet Masters” primarily focuses on the mysterious case of Patrick Crinnion, the garda (Irish police officer) who was passing information to Mi6’s John Wyman while Crinnion was at the heart of the Gardai’s secretive intel department. Although Burke gives a good summary of his book in this interview, there are two very important points he highlights that were news even to me. These are that former Irish Prime Minister Charlie Haughey, not the IRA, was MI6’s primary target, and that Saor Éire (Free Ireland), whose main agents we have met before, not only first brought the gun into recent Irish politics, but were a key tool in MI6’s kit for dividing and conquering modern Ireland.

Not only did MI6 try to conjoin Haughey with Saor Êire, but, seeing the success of the Godfather movie, they also tried to link him to the Mafia as some sort of master puppeteer of political violence in Ireland.

Not only was all that laughable on the surface, it was also deeply cynical as well. I well remember MI6’s 1972-74 Dublin bombing campaign, as I was almost caught up in several of them and several of my classmates got one way tickets to the hereafter thanks to these acts of MI6 terrorism, which included executing witnesses in Belfast to their crimes. Not only did the dogs in the street know that all of that was the work of MI6 but those same dogs knew what terrorist team the Littlejohns, English criminals MI6 paid to bomb Irish police stations, played for and which MI6 official at Dublin’s British Embassy was charged with handling them.

Fast forward to today and we have the Russian government attacked for expelling British diplomats from Moscow, a city MI6’s government is hell bent on bombing. The British are, of course, outraged over that. If no warning bombs are good enough for Paddy, surely Ivan should suck it up as well. And then there is Basra, where the Iraqis captured Kitson’s SAS death squads in the act of committing sectarian murders to set the various locals against each other. And let’s not forget MI6’s gallant White Helmets Netanyahu helped evacuate from southern Syria after the Syrian Army and their Russian and Lebanese allies put an end to their sectarian terror campaign.

There was a time, back in the early 1970s, when Crinnion, Garvey and the Badger were selling their country out to MI6, that most politically active Irish people would have analysed those Russian, Iraqi and Syrian MI6 episodes in the same fashion as I still do. But those days are gone thanks, in large part, to the main puppeteer Burke’s book draws attention to. That puppeteer in chief is MI6 boss Sir Maurice Oldfield who, with his fellow serial paedophile, Sir Edward Heath, set up major MI6 networks on both sides of the Irish border which ranged from the Kincora Boys’ Brothel in Belfast to equal acts of sordidness south of the Irish border as well.

Although one has to believe in an afterlife on the off chance we could catch up with Heath and Oldfield and batter their brains in for all eternity, there are other sorts of creatures Burke draws attention to that likewise deserve similar opprobrium.

Chief amongst these are the newspaper proprietors, journalists, academics and socialites Burke claims MI6 use to smear their enemies by word of mouth. Although Ireland now teems with such pond life, just consider this article in the Jewish Chronicle by our old friend, the fake philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, which argues that “lovers of freedom everywhere are secretly rooting for Israel to win”. No they are not. Though they are hoping that the liars of MI6, of Israel and of the Jewish Chronicle will one day be held to account, Burke’s book is part of a wider testimony that shows the road to serving justice on these gangsters will be a long and difficult one, not least in Ireland where MI6 has considerably consolidated its position from when it engineered the crimes Burke’s book deals with.