Missile Hits Home of British Intelligence

Attack on MI6 Snarls Central London

Newspaper article

By: Tom Buerkle

Date: September 22, 2000

Source: Newspaper article entitled "Attack on MI6 Snarls Central London: Missile Hits the Home Of British Intelligence," published in the International Herald Tribune, an English-language newspaper published in partnership with major newspapers in several locations around the world.

About the Author: Tom Buerkle was a correspondent for International Herald Tribune until April 2001. He is now European Editor of Institutional Investor.

INTRODUCTION

Four months after the Good Friday Agreement of April 1998 (a treaty signed by the Irish and British governments) had finally seemed to bring a political settlement to Northern Ireland, a 500-pound car bomb was set off at the height of shopping time on a Saturday afternoon in the small County Tyrone town of Omagh. The explosion on August 15, 1998 killed twenty-nine people (including a woman pregnant with twins) and injuring another 200.

The group that carried out act dubbed itself the "Real IRA", a splinter group created a year earlier after the Irish republican Army (IRA) had implemented ceasefire. The ceasefire was intended to enable Sinn Fein, a political wing affiliated with the IRA, to partake in negotiations on power-sharing in government. The Real IRA comprised a score of IRA veterans, most from the Irish Republic, that were opposed the peace process.

Compared to the IRA proper, however, this dissident group lacked resources, political strength, and manpower. Rather than operate with a top-down leadership structure as the of IRA always had done, Real IRA members worked in splinter cells, carrying out attacks independent of a conventional command structure.

A series of minor attacks carried out by rebel republicans preceded the Omagh bomb—some of which were perpetrated by a rival dissident group, the Continuity IRA. After Omagh, most of the Real IRA's visible leaders were arrested by British and Irish authorities. MI5, Britain's domestic intelligence service and, in particular, Irish Guardian police worked diligently to infiltrate and track down Real IRA members. Throughout 1999 and most of 2000, this strategy seemed effective—arrests were made, arms caches seized, and no further attacks followed.

However, on the night of September 20, 2000, a missile fired from somewhere in London hit the southern side of the headquarters of MI6, Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, in Vauxhall on the south bank of the River Thames. Damage to the fortress-like building—it is protected by bomb and bullet-resistant walls—was minimal and no one was hurt.

Suspicions that were initially directed towards Iraqi agents (at that time Britain was involved with the United States in bombing targets in northern Iraq) and Libya (Lybian leader Colonel Gadaffy had recently accused MI6 of planning to assassinate him) were quickly dismissed by police, who instead focused their search on Real IRA operatives.

PRIMARY SOURCE

A small missile smashed into the eighth floor of the headquarters of MI6, Britain's foreign intelligence service, and the London Metropolitan Police warned Thursday of a "genuine threat of terrorism" in London.

The attack, which occurred late Wednesday, was believed to be the work of a dissident wing of the Irish Republican Army. It caused no injuries and only minimal damage to the headquarters, an imposing concrete and green-glass building alongside the Thames a short distance upriver from the Houses of Parliament.

The incident was an embarrassment for an intelligence agency that has sought to keep its activity out of the public eye.

And like an IRA mortar shell that exploded in the garden of No. 10 Downing Street during a cabinet meeting in 1991, the blast demonstrated the vulnerability of major government institutions to terrorist attack.

'It was an audacious attack in a busy part of London,' said Alan Fry, deputy assistant commissioner and head of the Anti-Terrorist Branch of the police force.

'We will be looking to hunt down whoever was involved.'

The incident caused tremendous disruption during the morning rush hour as the police sealed off a wide area around the building to search for evidence.

Rail lines leading into Waterloo Station, which handles tens of thousands of commuters from southwest suburbs as well as Eurostar services from the Continent, were shut down until shortly after midday, while traffic was suspended on the Albert Embankment, the main artery into central London on the south side of the river.

Suspicion quickly turned to the Real IRA, a small group of dissidents who broke away from the Irish Republican Army because of their opposition to the peace process in Northern Ireland.

Like a small bomb blast at Hammersmith Bridge in southwest London in June that was believed to be the work of the group, the attack showed an ability to strike and create disruption without causing indiscriminate damage like the bombing in Omagh, Northern Ireland, in 1998, which killed 29 people and stirred up revulsion against the terrorists.

'This is right out of the Real IRA's playbook and consistent with what they've been doing lately,' said Steven Simon, assistant director at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies and a former counterterrorism expert at the National Security Council in the United States.

'They want to express contempt for the process, and they want to express contempt for Britain.'

Although the heavily fortified building withstood the attack easily, the incident raised fresh questions about the wisdom of the agency's move in 1994 to such a central and high-profile building.

Indeed, a bomb attack at the building featured in the opening sequence of the latest James Bond film, 'The World Is Not Enough.'

'As I have warned, we all need to be vigilant,' Mr. Fry said. 'We have a genuine threat of terrorism in London and that is against a number of targets, as we have seen.'

SIGNIFICANCE

The attack on the MI6 headquarters marked the end of an apparent ceasefire by the Real IRA. A further three mainland attacks followed over the next six months, but the very nature of their terrorism pointed to the weakness of the dissident group. As with the bomb fired at the MI6 headquarters, further targets were high profile (such as a car bomb outside the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) headquarters in White City), but the operations were low-tech, and disruptions and injuries minimal.

In August 2002, a booby trap at a Territorial Army British Army Reserves camp in County Londonderry killed a maintenance worker. It was the first life claimed by the Real IRA since the Omagh bombing. In October 2002, a message from the Real IRA's members in Portlaoise Prison in the Irish Republic, denounced the organization's leadership as corrupt, saying that it had "forfeited all moral authority," and called for its immediate disbandment.

A darker threat to the Good Friday agreement seemed to come from the reluctance of the IRA itself to disarm (even though a ceasefire remained in place). This was accompanied by a political shift by Northern Ireland's opposition Protestant community towards political parties who had rejected the Good Friday Agreement.

On October 14, 2002, the IRA's refusal to disarm led to the suspension of the Northern Ireland Assembly, the political body created by the Good Friday Agreement. Northern Ireland came back under the direct control of the British Government.

FURTHER RESOURCES

Books

McKittrick, David, David McVeigh. Making Sense of the Troubles. London: Penguin, 2003.

Web sites

Rowan, Brian. "Wars and Conflict: Paramilitaries—The Real IRA/32-County Sovereignty Committee." BBC News. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/troubles/factfiles/rira.shtml> (accessed June 27, 2005).

Sinn Fein. <http://sinnfein.ie/> (accessed June 27, 2005).