20-10-2008, 10:24 PM
Paul Rigby Wrote:RUC Special Branch reportedly lost ten, amounting to forty per cent of its command level.
http://www.mathaba.net/data/sis/history.shtml
RUC Special Branch
RUC Special Branch is formally constituted as the RUC's E Department. It is headed by an Assistant Chief Constable (Brian Fitzsimons*) who presides over an organisation subdivided by function and three regions (Belfast, North and South). E1 looks after vetting of personnel, internal security, the supply of under cover vehicles and security of communications (mail and telecommunications). E2 is the department responsible for legal liaison, the interrogation centres and SB activity in prisons. E3 collates all intelligence gathered by field operators, informers and uniformed officers. It is split into three sections. E3A evaluates intelligence on republicans, while E3B and E3C are concerned with loyalists and leftists and other groups (eg animal rights) respectively.
E4 is the operations division which carries out the day-to-day field work of intelligence gathering. E4A carries out person-to-person surveillance and achieved a certain notoriety through ‘shoot-to-kill' actions in the 1980s which were the subject of the Stalker inquiry. Technical surveillance - the installation of bugs, tracking devices etc. - is the responsibility of E4B. Finally, E4C and E4D carry out photographic and video surveillance.
Quote:* Killed on 2 June 1994 while travelling from the North of Ireland to a conference at Fort George, Scotland. 25 intelligence personnel and four RAF crew were killed when their Chinook helicopter crashed on the Mull of Kintyre. Among the dead were ten members of RUC SB, including the head of SB, 2 regional heads and the divisional heads of E1, E2, E3, E3A, E3B, and E4. 5 MI5 agents also perished in the crash along with a British Army colonel, three Intelligence Corps lieutenant colonels, and five majors. It is widely acknowledged that the crash killed the upper echelons of the intelligence agencies in the North of Ireland, including key members of the Provincial Executive Committee.