The Troubles: Ireland's Ordeal 1966–1995 and the Search for Peace

by Tim Pat Coogan

The material, coupled with the testimony of former British intelligence agents who also appeared on the programme, included the names of the Loyalists whom I had previously been told were implicated in the bombing. By then those mentioned were all dead, most of them either killed in Loyalist feuds or by the IRA. The programme also included the names of two dead British officers who were alleged to have prepared the bombs: Julian (also sometimes known as Tony) Ball, who died in a car crash in Oman in 1988; and Robert Nairac, killed by the IRA in 1977. At the time of the bombings, Ball and Nairac were a captain and a lieutenant respectively in an intelligence unit based at Castledillon House near Co. Armagh, known as the ‘Fourth Field Survey Troop’. The contributions made by the British agents who appeared on the programme included statements that the UVF, at the time of the bombings, was controlled by British intelligence and that the Loyalist paramilitary organisation did not have the expertise necessary to make the bombs used.