Republican masterminded robberies before playing key role in Sinn Féin’s road to peace
They faced a range of charges but gradually some of them were withdrawn. In December 2005, the prosecution case ended, lawyers reporting it was no longer in the “public interest” to proceed with the case – a term that not infrequently is shorthand for protecting undercover sources or agents.
The outing of Donaldson allowed Adams and other Sinn Féiners to claim the whole Stormontgate affair was yet another example of a British “securocrat” conspiracy and that there was no republican spying at Stormont. One of the explanations for Donaldson’s arrest, even though he was an agent, was that he had not told his handlers about all the secret documentation. Another reason for the police moving in was fear that the material would be transported for safer keeping across the Border.
In turn Storey had a fierce loyalty to Adams. In 2014, when Adams was arrested and questioned at Antrim police station for a number of days about the 1972 abduction, murder and secret burial of mother-of-10 Jean McConville, Storey rallied to his cause. Following the August 1994 IRA ceasefire, senior Sinn Féiners went to IRA units across Northern Ireland, and in the Republic, to argue for the peace strategy. Encouraged to speak up, a couple of IRA volunteers attending a meeting close to the Markets in central Belfast did so, and expressed their opposition to the ceasefire.
“We always believed that Bobby Storey was director of intelligence in the late 1990s and early noughties for the IRA,” he said. “He was very much a key player, extremely close to the leadership. His support for them was pretty vital in containing any individuals within the organisation who were threatening to throw over the traces, because they were all terrified of him.”
In addition to those he threatened, there were other Republicans who had little time for Storey. One in particular was former IRA leaderThat case centred on testimony Bell gave on the Boston tapes – the ill-fated oral history of the Troubles – where it was alleged that one night in 1972, Bell, the late Pat McClure and Adams gathered to settle the terrible end of the life of Jean McConville.
A clearly annoyed Bell said that he told Storey, “What are you asking me about it for, sure my knowledge of it would be second-hand, why don’t you ask Gerry?” “Then there was the massacre on Bloody Sunday when 13 people were gunned down . . . The fact that British paratroopers could gun down innocent protesters had a massive impact on me and from that point on I was attempting to join the republican movement.”
Storey was 6ft 5in. O’Doherty is 5ft 2in, or little more. O’Doherty had been attending a lecture in the Felons’ Club in west Belfast when Storey approached him. O’Doherty recalled: “He put me up against a wall and told me I was a slug and not welcome in west Belfast.” He recalled occasions in prison when inmates were shown films. “I hated sitting beside him because no matter how complicated the plot of the film he’d work it out immediately and ruin it for you,” he said.
Across the Border he was also very well known to senior Garda and Army intelligence officers. “He was certainly on our radar; he figured a lot in our intelligence reports down the years, he was an interesting character,” said one former Garda source. He held a senior position for Sinn Féin at Stormont and also served as party chairman for a period. He was a prominent backroom figure at times of political crises and during elections. He could energise the footsoldiers when the vote had to be got out. Perhaps jaundiced by the necessity to deal with journalists it seemed, however, that elected politics was not for him.
That view was reflected in a piece in the Belfast Telegraph on the day before the funeral by historian Ruth Dudley Edwards which was headlined: “Bobby Storey: a violent thug who played role in the collapse of Stormont on three occasions”.wrote: “If it is possible for one individual to embody the spirit, the dynamic, the duration and durability, the depth and complexity of the republican struggle over the last 45 years then it was Bobby Storey.
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