The Curse Of The Informant

Looking back on Irish history, you will find an informant in every plot.

It was informers who tipped off the British to the planned Fenian uprising in 1867, which in turn led to a complex plot to spring the incarcerated Fenians from an Australian penal colony. Somehow, those who concocted the plans managed to keep it to themselves and the Fenians arrived safely in America, to foment revolution from afar.

But the success of that plot brought on more British agents to infiltrate the ranks of those who schemed to free the rebels. That resulted in a murder in Chicago, a trial riddled with perjury, and a flurry of activity in the Illinois State legislature to amend laws that created a case of injustice.

An Garda Siochana has reason to believe that they are now on the receiving end of informers in the ranks, and even though they are guardians of the Irish people, they're being treated like the old Royal Irish Constabulary.

Fuel laundering plant

Slab Murphy is a known supporter of armed insurrection against England, which continues to hold six Irish counties within the United Kingdom. He makes money by removing dye from diesel fuel intended for use in farm machinery on site, and then sells it on as government-sanctioned fuel for automobiles.

The English then miss out on the taxes due on motor fuel. The people who don't care to send their Irish money to England are not in sympathy.They're more than happy to pay less for their petrol, knowing that a hated government is getting burned on the deal.

A plan to catch Mr. Murphy in the act of laundering fuel was upended last week when authorities showed up at his isolated farm and found that some other laundering had gone on.

Computer records, documents and the like were all gone, destroyed in a jolly bonfire only days before the raid.

Someone tipped off Mr. Murphy, and that someone could only be an employee of the very authorities who planned the raid.

On a positive note, other raids carried out at the same time netted ill-gotten gains, a quantity of laundered fuel, and bank accounts with false names that were part of a money-laundering scheme intended to hide the proceeds of the fuel laundry.

Authorities on both sides of the border will have to scrub their staff clean of moles, not an easy procedure when the IRA enjoys a grudging support among the descendants of those who were ethnically cleansed when the border was created in 1922.

It's a dirty business, this espionage game.