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

McIntyre conducted a series of interviews with a particularly important former Provo: Brendan Hughes, living in what remained of the Divis Flats. Never having fully recovered from his stint in prison and disapproving of the change of tide in republican politics, Hughes’s “mood had turned increasingly bleak” (235). He struggled with alcohol and tobacco addiction and lived off of a disability benefit.

The secret interviews allowed paramilitary soldiers to unload and reflect. For several militant former IRA volunteers, conversations ruminated on Adams, acknowledging his betrayal to their cause in favor of a carefully sculpted personal political career. Conceding that the British could remain on the island of Ireland was, to Hughes, a condemnation of the violent action once employed to expel them—action previously directed and endorsed by Adams. Whereas Adams had progressed to “become a well-heeled statesman, a peacemaker,” someone who could successfully “[absolve] himself of any moral responsibility for catastrophes like Bloody Friday” (237), Hughes saw his actions as needless and unjustifiable without the desired end of full Irish independence.

Others reflected this same “sense of disillusionment” (239). Ricky O’Rawe, a prison comrade of both Hughes and Bobby Sands, eventually shared a story he had planned to take to the grave: midway through the deaths of the hunger strikers, Margaret Thatcher sent a secret offer to meet most of their demands in exchange for ending the strike. Adams apparently rejected it, even though the remaining strikers were inclined to accept. O’Rawe speculated that Adams had glimpsed the drastic expansion of a republican political support base as the strike progressed and sacrificed six strikers to continue the momentum. It was widely held that the hunger strike bolstered Sinn Féin’s political capital.

The chapter ends with the introduction of a major revelation. Mackers asked Hughes about Jean McConville. Hughes revealed that Adams had approved her kidnapping, but also held that “the murder had been justified” in his view (243); McConville had apparently been a British informer. 

An RUC officer named Trevor Campbell specialized in “the handling of informants,” also called “touts,” during the Troubles (244). Campbell had created a sophisticated and clandestine communication network with them. He recruited additional informants with coercion and bribery. Campbell had truly developed a science, and as a result, managed many well-placed informants within IRA circles.

The IRA attempted to mitigate the threat of double agents with an internal justice system—the Nutting Squad, led by Alfredo “Scap” Scappaticci—which questioned and killed suspected informants. Scappaticci carried out the killings seemingly without hesitation or remorse.

Hughes reported “with conviction” that McConville had passed intelligence to the British via radio communication. Apparently, she confessed to an IRA unit and surrendered the radio, receiving a warning. The IRA then discovered a second radio and discussed how to dispose of her. An IRA leader named Ivor Bell favored letting neighbors discover her executed body to “send a lesson to other locals who might consider becoming touts” (251). Adams overruled this suggestion, ordering that McConville get buried—the contemporary term for disappeared. This course of action was uncommon, but Hughes provided a familiar account of what happened next: Dolours Price and other Unknowns escorted McConville to the Republic to assist in her execution.

Mackers also conducted Belfast Project interviews with Price, a close friend. She had moved to Dublin and divorced Rea in 2003. Like Hughes, she suffered in her reflection of her violent deeds and felt betrayed by Adams and the Good Friday Agreement, though she also expressed a “ferocious pride in her own headlong personal history” of physical and mental strength (255). In one interview, Price announced that she wanted to relate her version of the McConville disappearance. As her friend, Mackers warned her against implicating herself and burdening her children with future ostracization. She decided not to tell the McConville story. 

The chapter backtracks to 1999 to follow up on some immediate aftermath of the Troubles. That year, governments in the UK and Ireland commissioned the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains. Overall, the peace process included little emphasis on reconciliation and closure, but this organization committed to finding the 16 disappeared victims of violence and offered “a limited grant of immunity from prosecution” for those willing to share information (258). The search initially yielded some results, discovering three corpses and repatriating them with family members.

Information surfaced on McConville, suggesting that the IRA had buried her remains on a rocky beach of the Cooley Peninsula, a few dozen miles from Belfast. The McConville children, now in their thirties and forties, attended the excavation, “their grief and anger […]still raw and unprocessed” (260). They disagreed about how to move forward, but all of them vehemently denied that their mother had been an informant. Officials called off the search for McConville at the specified location, determining that the tip had been false. 

On March 17, 2002, thieves extracted sensitive police files from the Castlereagh complex in East Belfast, which housed the new Police Services of Northern Ireland (PSNI). Forging security clearances and acting quickly, they walked away with documentation pertaining to informants that had worked with Campbell. This leak of classified information meant that police needed to immediately relocate hundreds of prior informers to protect them from retaliation. No entity claimed responsibility for the break in, though people widely regarded it as an IRA operation.

Interest centered on one informant, in particular, who police had referred to as “Steak Knife” (269). This figure had long been rumored to operate from a high-ranking office within the IRA. In 2003, several newspapers broke a follow-up story: Steak Knife was the executioner Scappaticci. He denied the allegations but fled Belfast.

Scappaticci was not the only critical informant in the commanding ranks of the IRA. Joe Fenton had provided IRA safe houses secretly bugged to collect surveillance. Sinn Féin official Dennis Donaldson continued supplying British intelligence into the 2000s. An unknown gunman hunted him down while he was in hiding and killed him.

British Army officers in Belfast had, through the 1970s, commented on a perceived collusion between Protestant paramilitaries and the British State, though higher-ups hushed the criticisms. The Provos made these accusations as well, but commentators often dismissed them as anti-British propaganda. Thatcher apparently knowingly turned a blind eye to military collusion. The British Prime Minister David Cameron admitted in 2012 to rampant State collusion in the era in question.

The chapter ends with the highly anticipated discovery of McConville’s remains. A man named John Garland found her bones and clothes buried at a beach in the Republic in 2003. The McConville children reburied her after a funeral service. Because of the nature of the civilian discovery (versus IRA assistance in locating the body), the McConville case remained an open criminal investigation.