Spying has long been a part of political life in Northern Ireland, but now we are into a new phase of using a fear of spies to spread suspicion, writes Jim Dougal
A couple of months ago I met Denis Donaldson. I had gone to the Sinn Féin headquarters on Falls Road in west Belfast with the intention of interviewing party president Gerry Adams. As I waited in the reception area, Mr Donaldson arrived. I had not met him for a few years and did not recognise him. He reintroduced himself and then said: "I'm the spy. Everyone thinks I'm a spy."
We laughed and joked about this for a while and then off he went about his business.
And I thought he was referring to Stormontgate! Many's the true word etc.
Surely the only surprise that Donaldson was a spy or double agent was because of his standing within his party and the ease with which he was able to move within it, fooling his colleagues, experts in intrigue, for more than 20 years.
This includes some in the United States who suspected him. Some of these people, including Noraid director Martin Galvin, later rejected the present Sinn Féin leadership
Donaldson is lucky he was not outed a few years ago. If he had, he would have been found shot in the head on a lonely country road. Perhaps there are those on the fringes of this peace/political process who hoped that the IRA would take this action and scuttle attempts at renewing the political institutions for good.
This affair has been massively embarrassing for Sinn Féin, and has sent a wave of paranoia through the party. If one of its senior and most trusted aides can be a spy, then who else? The spinners from the other side are already whispering the names of more senior party members to further destabilise the party. There may have been good reason for the use of moles when there was a so-called war in the North. Now they are doing it to keep one step ahead of the people they are trying to do a deal and make peace with.
The problem in Northern Ireland is that every party will use whatever opportunity exists or arises to consolidate their distrust of the other side. Deal-making becomes more difficult when you cannot trust the people with whom you are negotiating.
The IRA has been spying on the British security forces, governments and others at least since 1969, and the British have been spying on anyone they thought might be useful since well before that.
I know of no journalist or politician in Northern Ireland who does not suspect that at some time his phone has been tapped or his movements monitored.
In the 1970s, there was a pub in the grounds of British army headquarters in Lisburn. It was built to look as much like an English country establishment as possible, a home from home for the soldiers.
It was there that senior army personnel would entertain journalists of an evening. I went occasionally. Indeed, I even ate in the officers mess sometimes.
Then one afternoon my telephone rang at home. The short clipped English accent at the other end introduced itself as a captain at army headquarters.
They were having a few problems with information, he informed me. He knew that I had relatives in west Belfast, visited the area regularly, and wondered if I would be able to help him with some gaps in his knowledge about people in the area?
Before dismissing him and telling him not to phone me again, I asked him if I had said or done something specific to make him believe I was mad. He never did call again, but I had no doubt he and others were fully aware of the contents of my phone conversations thereafter and worked on that basis for the next 30 years.
Not long afterwards a journalist from the Guardian newspaper was regaled by a drunken official at a Stormont Christmas party with the contents of private telephone conversations she had had with her boyfriend. This was how cavalier they were with information at the time. A bit more sophisticated now perhaps.
No one who worked in journalism at the time could have a private life.
The former SDLP leader John Hume was bugged, he believed by the Provos, in 1992 when he was in talks with Gerry Adams.
While I was preparing a BBC Panorama programme on the peace process in 1993 I have it on the highest authority that every move made by the production team was monitored by MI5. When my producer and I returned to London, we put a bag of videotapes we had recorded in the hold of the aircraft.
When we arrived they could not be found, but somehow the airline recovered them the next day. When we examined them the tapes had been rewound. That means that someone had watched them, and it wasn't us.
There are many other instances of the spooks at work. Sinn Féin headquarters was bugged. The Adams-McGuinness car was bugged on the authority of Mo Mowlam, and the Provos managed to infiltrate police headquarters at Castlereagh in east Belfast. The British army and Special Branch colluded with loyalists to target people and the IRA used all means available to get its victim as well.
So why has the outing of Donaldson not been followed by a public outcry? The reason is that few people are surprised that this has been happening.
They would have been surprised if it hadn't been happening.
It is a fact of life. The British government, the RUC Special Branch, MI5 and the Provos were masters in the field. One problem for the PSNI is that many of the police experts left on early retirement when the RUC wound up. The biggest gap there has been in recent years was the failure of the PSNI Special Branch to rumble the Northern bank robbers before Christmas 2004.
Those who are calling for an inquiry into the Donaldson/Stormont affairs are whistling in the wind. There will be none. If the powers that be would not disclose the evidence to bring the matter to court, they will not produce it to an inquiry. They would not even disclose it to an independent disclosure judge to assess its value.
This is a judge who assesses the information and, without disclosing it, gives a view to the presiding judge. So this particular can of worms will remain tightly shut.
Many in the police believe that if there was devolution, and responsibility for justice was returned to a devolved administration, Sinn Féin would seek to decimate the PSNI Special Branch.
This year is important for Northern Ireland. It may be the last year that Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and British prime minister Tony Blair will be in a position to influence events.
The Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain has said he will not sanction elections to an assembly at Stormont, due in May 2007, unless there is an institution to hold elections for. He is absolutely right.
It's up to the politicians to create the conditions in which this can happen and in which the spooks, from wherever they come, can begin to wind down. Until then, we can be sure their activities will continue.
Jim Dougal is a journalist and broadcaster, former Northern editor of RTÉ, Northern Ireland political editor of the BBC and former head of the European Commission in Belfast and London