From The Mitrokhin Archive, Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, 1999
Andropov . . . increasingly turned to using terrorist proxies. Among the first opportunities for their use was a new wave of troubles in Northern Ireland. On November 6, 1969, the general secretary of the Irish Communist Party, Michael O�Riordan, a veteran of the International Brigades,20 forwarded a request for Soviet arms from the Marxist IRA leaders Cathal Goulding and Seamus Costello. [ . . ] 21The IRA had been widely criticized by its supporters for failing to defend the Catholic community during the Belfast troubles of August 1969 . . . 22 In his message to Moscow, O�Riordan said that during the �August crackdown� the IRA had failed to act as �armed defender� of the nationalist community because �its combat potential was weakened by the fact that it had previously concentrated its efforts on social protests and educational activity.� He claimed that there was now a real possibility of civil war in Northern Ireland between the two communities, and of serious clashes between British troops and the Catholics. Hence the IRA�s appeal for arms. In a report to the Central Committee, Andropov insisted that, before going ahead with an arms shipment, it was essential to verify O�Riordan�s ability �to guarantee the necessary conspiracy* in shipping the weapons and preserve the secret of their source of supply.� 23 It was more than two and half years before Andropov was sufficiently satisfied on both these points to go ahead with the arms shipment.
( pages 377-8 )
. . . It was almost three years before the arms requested by the IRA in November 1969 through the intermediary of . . Michael O�Riordan, were finally delivered by the KGB. Shortly after the request had been made, the IRA had split into two : the Officials under Cathal Goulding and the Provisionals led by Sean MacStioftin.50 The sympathies of the KGB were wholly with the Marxist officials rather than the more nationalist Provisionals. Though Goulding's long-term aim was to create a non-sectarian, non-military, all-Ireland revolutionary movement, the officials were responsible for some of the bloodiest episodes in the Troubles of the early 1970s. [ �imperialism and exploitation�] Goulding declared in 1971. . . . The Official IRA�s bloodthirsty attempts to upstage the Provisionals ended by alienating some of its own supporters. In February 1972 a bomb planted at the Aldershot headquarters of the Parachute Regiment killed seven people. . . . Nationalist anger at the killing of an off-duty British soldier on home leave in Derry on May 21 led the officials� army council to announce a ceasefire eight days later [which however] had little immediate effect. Though Goulding gradually succeeded in scaling down �military operations,� local militants continued terrorist attacks during the remainder of 1972 and 1973. 51
On July 3, 1972 the Irish Communist leader, Michael O�Riordan, wrote to remind the PSU Central Committee that the arms he had first requested on behalf of the IRA in November 1969 had still not been received. Since then, on behalf of the Official IRA, he had held numerous discussions on the means of shipment with the KGB�s �technical specialists:� �The fact that there has not been the slightest leak of information for two and a half years proves, in my opinion, a high level of responsibility with regard to keeping the secret, so to speak.� Andropov agreed. On August 21 he presented to the Central Committee a �Plan for the Operation of a Shipment of Weapons to the Irish Friends,� codenamed SPLASH. SPLASH was a variant of operations VOSTOK, which had delivered arms to Haddad and the PFLP two years earlier. Once again, the weapons and munitions, . . . all of non-Soviet origin to disguise the involvement of the KGB—were transported by a Soviet intelligence-gathering vessel, on this occasion the Reduktor. On this occasion, the arms, in waterproof wrapping, were submerged to a depth of about 40 meters on the Stanton sandbank, 90 kilometers from the coast of Northern Ireland, and attached to a marker buoy of the kind used to indicate the presence of fishing nets below the surface. KGB laboratories carefully examined the arms shipment before it left to ensure that there was no trace of Soviet involvement. . . . A few hours after the arms had been deposited on the sandbank, they were retrieved by a fishing vessel . . . whose crew were unaware of their contents. 52 Operation SPLASH was supervised on board the Reduktor by an officer from the 8th Department of Directorate S . . . Several further Soviet arms shipments to the official IRA were delivered by similar methods. 53
The KGB can have had few illusions about the likely use of the arms it supplied, since the man in charge of their collection from the sandbank was the Officials most hard-line terrorist, Seamus Costello. 54 Late in 1974, after a dispute with Goulding, Costello was expelled from the officials and founded a new Trotskyite movement, the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP). The Officials set up four assassination squads to liquidate the dissidents, but came off worse in a series of shoot-outs in the spring of 1975. They had, however, rather the better of a feud later in the year with the Provisionals. The Officials IRA eventually succeeded in murdering Costello in 1977.55 The probability is that some of the arms smuggled into Ireland by the KGB were used in the internecine warfare between republican paramilitaries.
( pages 384-5 )
20. O�Riordan�s history of the Irish members of the International Brigades, Connolly Column, was printed in East Germany (though published in Dublin), and gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the Soviet agent and British defector to East Germany, John Peet.
21. The text of O�Riordan�s appeal for weapons for the IRA is published in the appendix to Yeltsin, The View from the Kremlin, pp. 311-16. In December 1969, shortly before the split which led to the emergence of the Provisionals, a secret meeting of the IRA leadership approved a proposal by Goulding to establish a National Liberation Front including Sinn Fein, the Irish Communist Party and other left-wing groups. Coogan, The Troubles, p. 95.
22. Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA, p. 88.
23. Eight memoranda on the subject by Andropov on the IRA appeal for arms are published, in whole or part, in the appendix to Yeltsin, The View from the Kremlin, pp. 311-16.50. Studies of the split between Officials and Provisionals include Bell, The Secret Army, ch. 18; Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA, chs. 7-8; Coogan, The IRA, chs. 15-17; Coogan, The Troubles, ch. 3; Taylor, The Provos, ch. 5-6.
51. Smith, Fighting for Ireland?, pp. 88-90.
52. O�Riordan�s letter to the Central Committee and Andropov�s memorandum on operation SPLASH are printed in the appendix to Yeltsin, The View from the Kremlin, pp. 314-16. According to Yeltsin, the file on SPLASH in the archives of the General Secretary does not indicate whether it was implemented. The files noted by Mitrokhin, apparently withheld from Yeltsin, show that it was and identify the boat used in the operation. vol. 7, ch. 15, para. 2.
53 vol. 7, ch. 15, para. 2.
54. O�Riordan informed the Central Committee, �I will take no part in the transport operation, and my role will only involve transferring the technical information about this to Seamus Costello.� Yeltsin, The View from the Kremlin, p. 314.
55. Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA, pp. 221-2; Smith, Fighting for Ireland?, p. 90; Coogan, The Troubles, pp. 276-80. The Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), founded as the military wing of IRSP, became arguably the most violent of the republican paramilitary groups. Its victims included Airey Neave, MP, Conservative spokesman on Northern Ireland, killed in 1979 by a bomb, activated by a mercury tilt switch, which was planted in his car in the Palace of Westminster car park.( notes on pages 639-40 )
New York : Basic Books, 1999.
* Those and such actions have been sometimes considered as �no communist conspiracy�, and by some writers of influence in the U.S., etc., who could hardly be presumed not to have been informed.Recently I have spoken with an Irishman, about these issues — of which I know next to nothing. I told my companion that I could not deem any Irish attempts to enlist the Soviet help wrong (for lack of data, on any count) — but I would certainly consider them questionable (risky).
Should there any success occur in Ireland of IRA with the Soviet help, including perhaps the assumption of the government, the Irish people would inevitably have been in some way or other ripped off by the Soviets, eventually. (It had never been any other, anywhere ; Chiang Kai-shek had, the truth told, out-foxed Stalin on one occasion, but that had only postponed the Soviet encroachment into China.)
An American Ambassador in Moscow 1930�s had given the best definition I know of the marxist-leninist Bolshevism : �The lie is normal and the truth is abnormal.� Had the Irish people fallen in the Soviet traps, they would have learned just that simple truth, sooner or later.
Any more Soviet bases, as in Ireland for example, would have further endangered the rest of Europe, etc. On this count that was not only somebody's "internal matter".
This is a sort of �outside viewpoint�, by one (i.e. me) with a scanty knowledge. As a common sense observation, the Irish people could find natural allies in other Celtic peoples. There may be non-Catholic or Protestant Celts, there are some British Catholics, the political and religious issues could be somehow disentangled. — (WPT)