Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland

by Patrick Radden Keefe

“All the main paramilitary groups operating during the period of the Troubles remain in existence,” the report announced, specifying that this included the Provisional IRA. The Provos continued to function, albeit in “much reduced form,” and still had access to weapons. Big Bobby Storey was right: they hadn’t gone away. Gerry Adams dismissed the report as “nonsense.” But it caused a firestorm. One claim Villiers made was that, in the view of rank-and-file Provos, the IRA’s Army Council—the seven-member leadership body that for decades directed the armed struggle—continues to control not just the IRA, but also Sinn Féin, “with an overarching strategy.” Secretly, behind the scenes, the army was still calling the shots. The report was careful to indicate that the organization was no longer engaged in violence, and now had a “wholly political focus.” Even so, as one columnist in The Irish Times suggested, it seemed to reinforce “the notion of men and women in balaclavas running the political show.”