When Prime Minister Tony Blair pulled the rug from under the election process for the Stormont assembly we were warned of the danger of a political vacuum with devolution once more consigned to the ice box for an indefinite period.
Well he didn't have long to wait.
Into the void came an explosive blast of poisonous gas clearly designed to shatter Sinn Féin and the IRA with the force of a nuclear bomb and throw the whole political set-up here into confusion.
Somewhere in the dark recesses of British intelligence, Mr Big – the supremo of the spying game – decided that this was the psychological moment for the hammer blow in the dirty war against the republican enemy.
There had been hints for months that the Brits had a top IRA man, codenamed Stakeknife, working for them here at the very centre of operations.
For some reason this had been discounted by the republicans as black propaganda.
So here was the moment for the spooks to explode a blockbuster by revealing the name of their superspy, alleged British army agent Freddie Scappaticci, also said to be an IRA torturer and executioner of unmasked informers.
How was it done?
They took a leaf out of the book of Hitler's Dr Goebbels who used to catch the British on the hop by firing his big propaganda broadsides at the weekends.
How to get maximum publicity?
The trick is to issue the big story in time for Saturday evening with blanket front page coverage in the Sunday papers and a follow-up in the Monday papers.
The damage is then done before officialdom, off duty for the weekend, has time to counter the blow. This paid off in the build-up to war in the late 1930s
To say that the Stakeknife revelations got maximum publicity is an understatement.
It was a sensation and made pages of so-called 'news', pictures and interviews with unnamed security sources detailing the murderous career of their agent, claiming that he was a friend of Gerry Adams and had been responsible for, among other crimes, the information which led to the killing of three republicans in Gibraltar.
To illustrate this latter story, The Times carried a picture of British agents walking past a policeman and a large crowd on the sidewalk, striding quickly away from the scene.
There was no end to the other leaks and briefings of the media in general with details of Stakeknife's remuneration – said to be equal to that of a British cabinet minister – and confirmation that his secret reports were read at Cabinet level by four prime ministers.
Most papers used the story that Stakeknife had been smuggled out of Belfast and was now holed up in a security location in Dorset, where he was being debriefed and given a new identity which might even entail plastic surgery!
The People exploded this tit-bit on Saturday evening by quickly sending a reporter to the west Belfast home of the man alleged to be Britain's secret agent inside the IRA.
The reporter claimed that he met Mr Scappaticci, a 50-year-old builder, who denied the whole allegation.
A British security source, when interviewed, refused to believe this and insisted that their man was in their safe custody for his own protection!
A downright lie, or is there another man claiming to be Stakeknife?
By Sunday night Sinn Féin and the IRA appeared stunned by the publicity onslaught, while the public and politicians on both sides of the Irish Sea were left in a state of confusion.
One unionist spokesman, now a noble lord, even suspected the IRA of masterminding the story to damage the reputation of the British security service!
By Monday it was reported that the grass roots of the republican movement were calling for action to counter the allegations.
At this point Mr Scappatacci presented himself at a brief press conference in a Belfast solicitor's office where it was announced that action for defamation of character was being taken... as he had left the republican movement 13 years ago and knew nothing of the Stakeknife allegations! The mind boggles at the thought of endless
High Court actions by the man who denies that he is Stakeknife.
To think that all this hue and cry, which could go on for many moons, began with an item on an internet website planted by your guess is as good as mine. A rustle in the undergrowth which led to a tornado?
The motive for all this extraordinary concoction? Is there a secret cabal?
The republicans call them 'securocats' with their own agenda to dismantle the hard-won Good Friday Agreement on the grounds that this was wished on them by American pressure.
Some inexplicable events which have threatened the agreement seem to confirm that theory?
Mr Big, who interviewed Malcolm Muggeridge when he enlisted for intelligence in the Second World War, sat in a room at the end of a long corridor in a London hide-out.
As Mug approached the door he noticed a red light and said he didn't know whether to knock or wait until it changed to amber.
The present bossman must be pretty desperate for recruits if the story is true that he tried to enlist the services of Johnny Adair as a new secret agent! Code name – Jack Knife?
