Denis Donaldson knew he was in trouble when the window came in. As the door
was forced, he tried to escape to a back room but he wasn't fast enough. If
he screamed for help as his killer pointed the shotgun, no-one heard.
His nearest neighbour, in the remote lane outside Glenties, was two
kilometres away. There was no chance to reach for his mobile phone. He may
well have known his assassins. They could have been among the thousands of
republicans he'd met moving in Sinn Féin/IRA circles over 40 years.
If he begged for mercy, it was futile. They were never going to change their
minds. This was one situation that Denis Donaldson, charmer and raconteur,
couldn't talk his way out of. In vain, he raised his right arm to protect
himself as the gunman took aim. His hand was almost severed in the blast.
In close combat situations, a shotgun is deadly. It rips you to shreds in a
split second. Later, a female passer-by apparently noticed the broken window
and rang gardai. But until then, Denis Donaldson lay on the floor of the
pre-Famine cottage, hidden in the Doochary hills.
It will be no comfort to his family but other informers have met even more
horrific deaths: tortured, then dumped naked by the road, covered with a
bin-bag.
In other parts of Donegal, wild daffodils light up the landscape and
hedgerows blaze with the colours of Spring. But not much grows in the fields
around Donaldson's abode. There's a magnificent, cruel wildness to the
place.
"Denis loved it up there," says veteran republican and former Sinn Féin
Assembly member John Kelly, recalling conversations with Donaldson, before
he was outed as a spy.
"He was always talking about heading to the cottage, lighting a big fire and
spending the night in a sleeping bag. He was as excited as a boy scout
going to weekend camp. He loved the whole idea of roughing it, drawing
water from the well, going back to nature."
Donaldson, 56, was Sinn Féin's chief administrator at Stormont, so Kelly
knew him well. "Sometimes, I'd look around and wonder who the British
agents were in Sinn Féin. Denis never crossed my mind.
"He was there under Gerry Adams' tutelage, so he was trusted. He was very
affable – not intellectual but smart, in a streetwise kind of way. He was
meticulous about his work.
"At social functions, he'd never take more than a few pints. Denis
displayed no excesses in mood or habit. He must have been on big money from
his British paymasters but he was never flash. He drove a 10-year-old car.
He was a thrifty kind of fellow, always counting his pennies."
Kelly recalls Donaldson's courtesy to Stormont staff, most of whom were
Protestants: "They'd often be treated with disdain by unionist politicians
but Denis went out of his way to be nice to them. He saw it as good PR for
Sinn Féin. Every year, he'd invite the cleaners, canteen staff and civil
servants to our Christmas party. He'd go and get the sandwiches, biscuits
and buns himself."
Gerry Adams down-plays his relationship with Donaldson, stating he had "very
little contact with him over the years in terms of our day-to-day business".
Kelly says that's untrue: "Denis Donaldson was Gerry Adams' eyes and ears
at Stormont. We all knew that. For whatever reason, Gerry Adams is rewriting
history."
The Sinn Féin president has unreservedly condemned Donaldson's murder. It's
not in any way to justify the killing to say that Adam's response is
unrepresentative of the feelings of republicans the Sunday Tribune
contacted.
"Ordinary republicans aren't shedding any tears," says Kelly. "There's a
certain inevitability about what happened Denis. He was a husband, a
father, and a grandfather. I sympathise with his family, but goodness knows
how many republicans went to jail or their graves as a result of his
betrayal."
That "betrayal" hurts more because Donaldson joined the IRA in the mid-60s,
when it wasn't the fashionable thing to do. He grew up in the Short Strand,
surrounded by loyalist East Belfast, where life was tough for Catholics.
In 1971, he was sentenced to 10 years in Long Kesh for explosives offences.
It was there he made friends with Bobby Sands. Released after five years, he
became involved with Sinn Féin but was also a senior IRA intelligence
officer, travelling the world to meet organisations like the PLO and ETA.
The information for his handlers was invaluable.
Donaldson's pleasant, unassuming nature meant he was privy to countless
confidential conversations over the years. No-one ever worried about his
presence. "Ach, it's only Denis!" they'd say.
He claimed he became an informer at a "vulnerable time" of his life in the
1980s. There are rumours he was blackmailed by the security services after
he was caught stealing from Marks and Spencer's. But that's an
unsatisfactory explanation as to why he continued spying for decades.
The only talk in republican ranks was of his womanising. He was notorious,
even showing up one night with a bottle of wine at the home of lesbian
Belfast community activist, Marie Mulholland. She told him she "didn't vote
that way". He said he knew but thought it worth a try. It all ended in
good-humour and they became friends.
Republican sources say police raiding a North Belfast woman's house found
him in bed with her. A female Sinn Féin worker at Stormont complained when
he accessed porn on his office computer. But such displays of crudeness were
rare. Women generally liked Donaldson.
He was married with three children. His wife Alice remained devoted, even
after his outing as an informer. "She never once thought of disowning him,"
says a family friend. "She just loved him in a very old-fashioned way."
Sources say she visited her husband in the cottage but it was too
uncomfortable for her to sleep there, so she'd stay overnight in
Letterkenny.
The family's West Belfast home has been put up for sale in recent weeks.
Viewers noticed photographs of Donaldson still on the walls and a stack of
James Bond DVDs.
In the early 1990s, Donaldson was sent to run the Noraid office in New York.
Colleagues recall days he walked all the way from his apartment in the
Bronx, to Noraid's Manhattan office, just to take in the sights of New York.
He visited jazz clubs in Greenwich Village and enjoyed eating in ethnic
restaurants. He clashed with Noraid's publicity director, Martin Galvin. "I
liked him at first but then I increasingly found him to be a fraud. He lied
while smiling into your face," says Galvin.
Will Galvin condemn his murder?: "Denis Donaldson treated his posting to New
York as a holiday. His apartment and expenses were paid by republicans while
he was also obviously in the pay of the British. He toured the country,
staying in people's homes, taking their hospitality, while betraying them.
"His information undoubtedly condemned republicans to jail or death. There's
a tradition of how informers are dealt with. I've some degree of sympathy
for his family but I won't offer a hollow condemnation of his killing."
Ex-IRA prisoner Paddy Murray from Co Antrim isn't unhappy about Donaldson's
killing: "He was a spy and a traitor who deserved to be shot. The IRA green
book says touts are to be executed, it's as simple as that. There is no
negotiation – they get whacked. I sympathise with his family but he knew
what he was doing. He wasn't a £10 tout. Denis fancied himself as James
Bond."
An ex-IRA prisoner from West Belfast, who wishes to remain anonymous because
he knows the Donaldsons, goes even further: "Shooting was too good for him.
I'm disappointed he wasn't tortured."
To those outside the republican movement, such views are heartless and
immoral. But the ruthlessness of life in the IRA has deep roots. Michael
Collins actually claimed the killing of informers made the air sweeter.
"There is no crime in detecting and destroying, in war-time, the spy and the
informer. They have destroyed without trial. I have paid them back in their
own coin," he said.
Former IRA prisoner and writer, Anthony McIntrye, disagrees with those who
justify Donaldson's murder: "During the war, I supported the killing of
spies. We joined the IRA, not a knitting club. But the war is over so there
is no reason to kill informers. What Denis Donaldson did was inexcusable but
he was banished from normal society. A social death was imposed on him.
There was no need for a physical death."
Former IRA hunger-striker Marian Price, now a member of the 32 County
Sovereignty Movement, says Donaldson was "a traitor who knew the risks".
Like other republicans, she says the information he provided his handlers
meant jail or death for his friends.
"Long-term informers at a leadership level are entirely different to those
who break during interrogation. Donaldson wasn't forced for 20 years to be
an informer. Had he wanted out, he could have got out.
"He could have staged an argument with a leading republican and told the
Brits he'd been sidelined because of it. He could have told the Provos he
wanted to step aside because he was suffering stress or not in good health.
He kept informing because he wanted to."
Price claims it's "too simplistic" to say Donaldson informed for the money:
"Spies have a faulty gene. In takes a certain type of person to live a lie,
to form deep friendships and share confidences with people and then betray
them." She says she has "no problem" if Donaldson's killing means other
informers now "sleep less easily at night".
The most puzzling aspect is why a shrewd operator like Donaldson chose to
remain in Ireland. Sources say he received assurances from the Army Council
that he was safe. But so did informer Frank Hegarty after he went into
hiding in England. A fortnight after returning to Derry in 1986, he was
found shot in the head on a road, his hands tied behind his back and black
insulating tape round his eyes.
Donaldson evidently believed such a face was unlikely for him in the
post-ceasefire climate. Some suggest that maybe, subconsciously, he had a
death-wish. But his family's loyalty despite everything, and his
self-centred natured and survival instincts, make this unlikely.
He wasn't completely outcast. He was seen socialising in a bar in Crolly, Co
Donegal. Unconfirmed reports put him, for whatever reasons, at a Sinn Féin
reception in a Dublin hotel, on January 26th.
Perhaps leaving Ireland was psychologically too traumatic for Donaldson. He
didn't want to be a Sean O'Callaghan, pontificating on the IRA from the
streets of London.
He declined police protection. To accept, would have emphasised how far he'd
strayed from the republican fold. He stuck tenaciously to the Sinn Féin
script that there was no spy-ring at Stormont. He gambled that playing
Provo rules would save his life, that promises would be honoured, and that
no other republicans posed a threat.
Over the years he surely discovered other agents who are still within
republican ranks. He could well have guessed the identity of the other
agent whom for whom, it's likely, he was sacrificed over Stormontgate to
protect. Did he swear an affidavit to a solicitor, detailing this, as an
insurance policy against murder?
Sinn Féin claims that during questioning by the party after his outing,
Donaldson refused to disclose details about his spying career. Given his
vulnerable position, that seems most unlikely, but it suits Sinn Féin
because now no explanations are required for the republican base about
Donaldson's activities.
Gerry Adams says Donaldson claimed he earned £40,000 for spying. "That's two
grand a year. Catch yourself on! Denis wouldn't have put himself at risk
for that," says a former friend. One theory is the Provos took his savings
as part of the deal that he live. Denis Donaldson, of all people, should
have known that, in the murky world of spies and paramilitaries, there can
be no such thing as trust.
