BTW, some Irish-American readers want to know why I, along with the rest of
the press (including the Irish press) have not made more of the recent
revelations that the British security forces “colluded with Loyalist murders
of Catholics in Northern Ireland.” Well, because there is not much to make.
Here is what went on, as I understand it. The Brits had several “moles” in
both Loyalist and Republican gangs. As always in this kind of operation,
nasty moral problems arose when, in order to maintain the integrity of the
“moles,” their minders had to shut their eyes to killings. It seems to have
happened on both sides, with dead Catholics and dead Protestants both to the
account, theoretically, of the British govt. Because of this, nobody in
N.I. has been able to make much political capital out of it. The moral
problems here are, as I said, nasty, and I’m not going to second-guess them.
I doubt there is a nice way to fight terrorism.