At first, it seemed like another half-baked gunrunning plot involving politically motivated amateurs whose affiliations seemed obscure. By the end of the week, however, it read more like a serious effort - once again - to get arms for the Provisional IRA.
Information emerging from the committal hearing in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, of two Irish men and a woman initially suggested a lack of sophistication that would put those allegedly involved firmly in the category of splinter group.
But this weekend, however, the gathering impression is of a complex, large-scale plot involving republicans with hundreds of thousands of pounds to spend acquiring specific types of weapons in the United States. There is a growing consensus among sections of the Garda and security agencies on both sides of the Atlantic that after years of inactivity, the Provisional IRA is again buying arms.
The plot was uncovered, it appears by accident, when one of eight parcels carrying hidden arms was accidentally discovered after it went astray in the mail sorting centre at the West Midlands International Airport on its way to Ireland. The parcel passed through a X-ray machine on its way back into the normal parcel post system. The attendant detected the familiar outline of a .357 Magnum revolver in a package, addressed to Oldcastle, Co Meath.
The man named on the packet did not exist. The parcel was on its way to a drop address and was to be picked up by a 39-year-old man from nearby Mount Nugent. According to Garda sources, this man is a dedicated Provisional IRA member who works directly under the organisation's quartermaster-general, who lives not far away in south Cavan.
The man was arrested last Friday night and held for questioning for two days in Monaghan Garda station. He did not utter a single word while held under the Offences Against the State Act. He also refused all food and drink offered to him while in the station.
Gardai from the Crime and Security Branch at Garda Headquarters and local Special Branch officers searched the man's house and found two fake passports, one bearing the picture of another Provisional IRA figure in Belfast, and two driving licences. There was also some computer equipment, which raised some interest as the man gives the appearance of being a small farmer with little need for or interest in computers or electronics.
His arrest passed unnoticed and local gardai were puzzled about the operation which had attracted so much interest from the force's top intelligence people in crime and security. Last Sunday, the man was released without charge and without any publicity.
The trail to Mount Nugent had started two weeks earlier. On July 6th, the day the first package was discovered at West Midlands, seven other packages were uncovered, all containing handguns and all addressed to destinations in the Republic. Another package was allowed through to a house in Inverin, Co Galway, where gardai moved in and arrested the people who received it.
On Wednesday another parcel was intercepted at the Post SDS parcel sorting centre on the Naas Road outside Dublin. That contained magazines for assault rifles and 30 rounds of .5 ammunition, the sort used with the Barrett Light Fifty sniper rifle used by the IRA's so-called Border sniper unit which killed nine policemen and soldiers between 1993 and 1996.
Members of this unit were arrested in 1997 as they prepared to kill their 10th victim and five men were sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Lance Corp Stephen Restorick and others in March this year. All five are due for release shortly under the Belfast Agreement and some have already been allowed temporary release.
The arrest in Co Cavan, it was learned on Tuesday, related to operations by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and British antiterrorist police.
The FBI in Florida arrested Siobhan Browne (who had a number of aliases) a native of Cork who had been living in the United States for several years. They also arrested Conor Claxton and Anthony Smyth, both from Belfast.
They were brought to court in Fort Lauderdale as Agent Mark Hastbacka from the FBI's joint terrorism task force in Miami outlined the case against them in a 10-page deposition to the Florida Department of Law seeking their incarceration on gunrunning charges.
John Holland, a staff reporter from the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel who broke the story, reported FBI sources as saying the gunrunning was the work of the IRA, by which he clearly meant the Provisional IRA. All police sources on this side of the Atlantic were reticent about pointing the finger at the IRA.
On Tuesday three more people were arrested in Galway when a parcel containing six brand-new, high-powered handguns arrived at a rented holiday cottage in Inverin in Connemara. A Belfast man, whose brother had been arrested in Florida, his wife and Conor Claxton's partner, were arrested. Claxton's wife was released shortly after but the others were held for the full three-day detention period under the Offences Against the State Act.
By midweek there was still very little indication from any security sources, North or South, that this was a Provisional IRA plot. It was confirmed by Wednesday that at least two of the people being detained had come up in intelligence files as "P" - for Provisional IRA.
However, senior sources were raising doubts about the actual involvement of the Provisional IRA, pointing to what appeared to be the relative amateurishness of the acquisition of the guns from ordinary dealers and the use of the postal system to send them to Ireland. The type of weapons initially uncovered, all handguns, was also highlighted as a reason not to believe this was the work of the Provisional IRA. Why would the IRA need handguns when it apparently already had so many such weapons?
Agent Hastbacka's affidavit throws a different light on the operation. Point nine in his summation refers to a handwritten list faxed by Smyth and Browne to a Florida gun dealer seeking:
"anything silenced .25 and up"
"any small concealable .25 and up"
"any full auto sub-machinegun . . . the smaller the better"
"H&K MP5 K Auto in briefcase if possible"
The H&K (the German-manufactured Heckler and Koch) MP5K is one of the weapons of choice of the the modern professional assassin. It is used to kill one or more people at close range quickly and efficiently. It is a small, easily concealable weapon that is favoured by special service agents and bodyguards. It comes with a shoulder holster and can be easily concealed inside a jacket or the glove compartment of a car. It has a ferociously deadly firing rate and a 30-bullet magazine.
The ".25" weapons referred to are tiny guns which can be concealed in boots or socks, and the Provisional IRA has in the past smuggled these types of weapons into prisons. The IRA escapers, Nessan Quinliven and Pearse McAuley, used these types of guns when they escaped from Brixton Prison.
Small calibre handguns such as these .25 - or even .22 - are often favoured by assassins for shooting people in the head. The small calibre ammunition has a devastating effect when fired at the head because it tends to stay inside the skull and cause instant death.
Hasbacka also outlined the array of handguns and six pump-action shotguns the three Irish people were known to have acquired. These automatic shotguns, when used with specific types of ammunition, can have a devastating effect when, say, fired at close range at a group of people. The "Mossberg" shotguns sought by the arms-buying republicans is a basic but reliable model of this type of weapon.
The republicans were also seeking silenced weapons and separate silencers, again all part of the professional assassin's kit.
Evidence was given in the Florida court on Thursday that the accused wanted the guns to kill British soldiers and members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary and loyalists in Northern Ireland, and that they believed the "peace process has failed and they want to re-arm the IRA".
The events - and the remarks in court - follow a statement from the Provisional IRA the previous week in which they warned that the political process was in "crisis" and that responsibility for this rested "squarely with the British government".
The statement, which both governments had earlier hoped, would show willingness on the part of the IRA to decommission weapons to allow Sinn Fein into government in a Northern executive was, in fact, quite bleak in its language and import.
Until Thursday, when the FBI returned to court to give further evidence, it appeared that the arms-buyers had only been intent on acquiring these assassination weapons. It appeared that the total haul would involve 30 to 40 weapons in all, mostly handguns.
However, during Thursday's hearing it emerged the team may have bought as many as 200 weapons. All the weapons known about so far are top of the range. The Austrian Glock pistols with magazines and ammunition may have cost four-figure sums. The cheapest known to have been acquired is a second-hand Magnum revolver which Siobhan Browne is said to have bought from a private dealer for $290.
By late this week the scenario of an amateurish and not very large arms buying mission - possibly led by dissident republicans - was changing considerably. It was clear this was large scale and, despite initial impressions, quite well organised arms smuggling. There were large sums of money and expensive air travel, fake passports and driving licences and a large conspiracy involving maybe a couple of dozen people with multiple addresses.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, whose job it is to monitor gun-buying in the United States, had not apparently picked up the level of weapons acquisition. The guns were well-concealed in parcels which were being sent to Ireland at a time when there is considerable parcel post (a lot of immigrants still send parcels to Galway and Connemara) and there is very little checking of parcel contents.
The figures involved had not, apparently, ever emerged in the Garda or RUC investigations into the dissident republican groups, the so-called "Real IRA" and the Continuity IRA. Garda sources have recently dismissed both groups, saying the Continuity group really no longer existed and the "Real IRA" went into terminal retreat after the Omagh bombing last year.
There were elements of amateurishness about the arms buying in Florida. Too many guns were being bought from two few arms-dealers, but this does not necessarily preclude IRA involvement. The operation bears striking resemblances to other Provisional IRA arms buying in the United States.
In 1991 the FBI tracked down and arrested another four-member IRA arms-buying team when they ordered too many electrical detonators from an explosives firm in Tuscon, Arizona, and the company notified the authorities. By the time they were intercepted, that team had equipped the IRA with two or three large consignments of detonators, bomb-making material, sniper rifles and ammunition.
According to republicans, the Provisional IRA has lost many of its top members since the ceasefires and peace process have begun. Some left and joined dissidents, but most merely resigned from terrorism and moved into civilian life.
The sources say the Provisional IRA is simply no longer the type of highly professional terrorism machine it once was. It is, within this context, understandable that an attempt to re-equip itself with modern weapons could have gone wrong.
There is, according to security sources, still a highly militant element within the Provisional IRA leadership, figures who still believe there is a point to "armed struggle".
While the majority of the Provisional IRA's "army council" is understood to be in favour of the political process (indeed at least three of the seven-member council are said to be prominent Sinn Fein figures), there are at least three others who are described as hardline militarists. Two of these figures are from Belfast and one from south Armagh.
There was, by the week's end, a vista emerging that casts a shadow over the entire peace process in the North.
By yesterday there was what can only be described as embarrassed silence from the authorities about the events unfolding on the other side of the Atlantic.
Senior Government and Garda sources, who would normally be well briefed on the affiliations of republicans, repeatedly said during the week that it was not known if this was a Provisional IRA operation or the work of a splinter group. By yesterday these explanations were losing credence.
If it turns out to be the work of the Provisional IRA, then both the British and Irish governments face the daunting prospect of the effective collapse of the political process in the North.
