British Used Psychiatric Patient as Spy

Monday December 09, 2002 18:01

by Bill Webster

Republican dissidents have accused the British Special Branch of recruiting a psychiatric patient to infiltrate their ranks. The man, who worked under the name Nick Gillespie and was codenamed "Agent Hooch", first penetrated the Troops Out Movement to spy on Clare Short MP, now a cabinet minister.

8 December 2002

British Used Psychiatric Patient as Spy, Says INLA
By Liam Clarke

Republican dissidents have accused the British Special Branch of
recruiting a psychiatric patient to infiltrate their ranks. The man,
who worked under the name Nick Gillespie and was codenamed "Agent
Hooch", first penetrated the Troops Out Movement to spy on Clare
Short MP, now a cabinet minister.

After he was uncovered, he tried to get into the Irish Republican
Socialist Party (IRSP), the political wing of the INLA, and the 32
County Sovereignty Committee (32CSC), the political wing of the Real
IRA. He even pledged undying love to an American republican
supporter.

"I question police tactics in targeting vulnerable individuals for
dangerous tasks that could drive them over the edge," said Terry
Harkin, head of the IRSP. "It's disgraceful."

A leader of the 32CSC in England alleged Gillespie claimed to be part
of the group even after he was refused membership. He showed the
Sunday Times an e-mail in which he threatened to fight for the right
to join under the group's constitution and claimed not to have
received a membership fee that had been returned to him.

Gillespie then contacted Dawn Michelle Gould, who runs a dissident
republican website in America. She claims to have been pestered by
Gillespie for two years by phone and e-mail. She said she ignored him
on the instructions of republicans in England.

Last week, an enraged Gillespie supplied semi-clothed pictures of
Gould, which she had taken for a boyfriend, to the Sunday People,
which ran a piece giving alleged details of her sex life. The paper
also disclosed her whereabouts in America, something she feels has
put her life and that of her child in danger.

Last night she said: "It is hard to feel sorry for someone who
harassed you and someone who would assist in a horrible, disgusting
story like the one he sent to The People. But, when I look at him as
a person, I do feel sorry for him. He was an informer and he failed
miserably at it. His own handlers have washed their hands of him.
Added to that, the man suffers from post traumatic stress and needs
help. In a perverse way, he is a victim of the Troubles."

Gould showed the Sunday Times e-mails in which Gillespie said he
loved her. She claimed his partner, Jill, who was being treated for
alcoholism when she died three weeks ago, had rung her to warn her
that he was a Special Branch agent.

"She said his job was to infiltrate the 32CSM in England, and he
decided to try to do that through me," said Gould who is a member of
the IRSP. She claims Jill read her excerpts from files the police had
given Gillespie about republican suspects he was to target.

She said: "Jill said Special Branch was paying his phone bills to
call me in America. Later, when he kept insisting he wasn't a tout,
we asked him to produce evidence that he paid his own phone bills,
but he couldn't."

Gould went on: "Jill said Nick was 'losing it' because Special Branch
had recently pulled him off the 32CSC case. The night she called, he
wasn't there because he had been arrested."

Harkin, of the IRSP, believes Gould was targeted after Gillespie
failed to make any headway with dissident groups in Britain. "He
would go to the IRSP and say he didn't like the Sovereignty Committee
and that he wanted to be with us, then he would go to them and say he
didn't like us. He didn't realise people talked to each other," he
said.

Justice for Spies, a website set up to help former intelligence
agents highlight abuses by the security forces, tells how Gillespie
first contacted the police after he developed paranoid fears about an
Irishman he felt was asking too many questions. Later, he told the
site the Special Branch recruited him to work for them while he was
being treated in a psychiatric unit for a breakdown.

Now Gillespie is claiming that pressure led to the death of his
partner.

He said: "The pressure I am under may be a contributory factor to her
death and that is going to be said in court at an inquest. You will
see the downfall of a cabinet minister very soon because of links to
a terrorist organisation."