The Spying Game

Even at the best of times, Northern Ireland’s peace process resembles a roller-coaster ride. But the lurch it took last week was so unexpected that many riders may be thrown off the track.

On Friday, police showed up at Stormont, the seat of Ulster’s government, and went straight to the offices of Sinn Fein, a key partner in the province’s power-sharing arrangements. Detectives seized computer discs that, police said, might contain evidence that the Irish Republican Army spied on the British government during the peace process. The raid was the tail end of a major police operation in which documents were seized and arrests were made across Belfast. Two hundred officers staged raids on half a dozen homes, starting just before dawn. Among four people held for questioning was Denis Donaldson, the Sinn Fein official who runs the office at Stormont. The searches were prompted by a theft that occured just a few hundred meters from Sinn Fein’s Stormont office, in a dull brick building that houses the last remaining outpost of the British central government in Northern Ireland, which still presides over the Ulster’s policing and justice system.

In September 2001, a messenger working there was caught photocopying files. He was fired, but police began a year-long investigation that led it to conclude the I.R.A. was stealing politically sensitive material, such as communications between officials in Belfast and Downing Street. “What we know so far, or suspect so far,” said the province’s First Minister David Trimble, leader of Ulster’s unionists, “is that there has been an I.R.A. intelligence operation directed against the upper echelons of the government, having penetrated the Northern Ireland Office.”

As the political wing of the I.R.A., Sinn Fein members are well used to raids by British authorities. But after the 1998 Good Friday accord, which established the Stormont power-sharing arrangement, such signs of conflict were supposed to fade away. Last week’s raid showed that disturbing questions remain. Insisting that the I.R.A. is behaving itself, Sinn Fein dismissed the spying charges as a plot against it by British security agents determined to scupper the Good Friday agreement. While the I.R.A. has broadly stuck to its cease-fire where the British army and police are concerned, it has been implicated in various other dubious adventures, such as a series of vigilante attacks on street criminals in Belfast and a plot to import handguns from Florida. Three I.R.A. suspects accused of teaching terror tactics to Colombian guerrillas go on trial in Bogot soon, while operatives are also suspected of carrying out an audacious break-in last March, when burglars penetrated a police intelligence office in east Belfast, tied up a guard and coolly rifled through files containing details of police agents and their handlers.

If the I.R.A. has indeed been spying on the British government, Trimble says, London should throw Sinn Fein out of the power-sharing arrangement. Doubts about the I.R.A.’s intentions have already led Trimble to threaten a January walkout from Stormont. Northern Ireland Secretary John Reid said he wants the police investigation to run its course before any political fallout, but unionists say Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams has to rein in the I.R.A. now. The crisis was pulling in Prime Minister Tony Blair, as Trimble headed for Downing Street seeking action, and British officials looked for ways to buy time. “Otherwise,” fretted one, “things could be in freefall.” All of which adds up to another white-knuckle ride for the peace process.