Republicans know him as 'Big Bob' while the security forces regard him as the IRA's most important spymaster since Michael Collins.
He has been named in the House of Commons as the PIRA's 'director of intelligence', linked to an alleged spy ring at Stormont, the raid on Special Branch offices at Castlereagh and the £26 million robbery of the Northern Bank.
Originally from the New Lodge in north Belfast, Bobby Storey (51) has spent most of his adult life in the Provisional IRA and has spent more than 20 years of his life in prison.
Storey first came to prominence in 1979 when he was arrested in London trying to use a helicopter to break then PIRA leader Brian Keenan out of Brixton prison.
He was acquitted at the Old Bailey but less than two years later was arrested in west Belfast after a gun attack on British soldiers.
He was jailed for 18 years but within weeks of being sent to the H-blocks Storey was planning the biggest jail break in British penal history.
In September 1983 Storey and 37 other PIRA prisoners broke out of the H-blocks in a food lorry.
While 19 of the 38 escaped, Storey and two others were found hours later hiding in a nearby river.
He later received £7,500 damages for injuries received in an assault after his recapture.
He received a further seven years for the attempted escape and was not released until June 1994, just weeks before the PIRA ceasefire.
Storey was seen as a crucial ally of Gerry Adams and was publicly identified as the man who the PIRA's 'army council' sent to south Armagh to convince republicans of the need for a ceasefire.
However, when that ceasefire broke down two years later Storey was accused of masterminding a PIRA attack which placed two car bombs inside the British army's Northern Ireland headquarters at Thiepval Barracks in Lisburn in October 1996.
At the time it was regarded as the biggest security breach of the Troubles.
Soldier James Bradwell died four days later from injuries received in the blasts.
Less than a month later Storey was back behind bars when the personal details of the then lord chief justice, Lord Hutton, and a British soldier who had sold guns to the UDA were discovered in his diary.
As Storey was being held in the H-blocks awaiting trial he was suspected of masterminding another planned republican breakout when a 40ft tunnel was discovered.
In July 1998 he became the last man to walk free from Crumlin Road courthouse when his defence proved that the names and addresses found in Storey's diary had been previously published in newspapers and books.
In the run-up to the Good Friday Agreement Storey's near legendary status within the PIRA meant he was again asked to convince disgruntled republicans of the need to support the Adams/ McGuinness leadership.
On March 18 2002 the RUC suffered its single biggest security breach in the history of the Troubles with a break-in at Special Branch offices at Castlereagh.
Hundreds of files relating to Special Branch agents and handlers were said to have been taken.
Security sources soon pointed the finger of blame at the PIRA and Bobby Storey in particular.
Within days a specialist RUC unit crashed through the windows of Storey's west Belfast home.
After two days he was released without charge.
In an interview with The Irish News the next day Storey questioned how his 6ft 4in frame and place on the RUC's 'most wanted' list would have allowed him to walk around one of the most heavily protected police stations in the world.
On December 21 2004 more than £26.5 million was stolen from Northern Bank headquarters in central Belfast.
Again Storey was publicly identified, this time as having masterminded one of the biggest bank robberies in the world.
In 2005 Special Branch is believed to have used an alleged PIRA spying operation inside Stormont to try and capture Storey in possession of stolen files.
It would later emerge that Special Branch had secretly bugged the home of Sinn Féin administrator Denis Donaldson in the hope that they could capture Storey handling stolen intelligence documents.
Special Branch's plan to trap Storey failed and in the events that followed Denis Donaldson was exposed as having worked as a police agent for more than 25 years.
In January 2005, then Ulster Unionist MP David Burnside used parliamentary privilege to accuse the secretary of state of the day, Peter Hain, of being soft on republicans and to name Storey as the PIRA's 'director of intelligence'.
"He knows who carried out the Northern Bank robbery," he said.
"It was the Provisional IRA.
"It was Bobby Storey – Bobby Storey of Stormontgate, Bobby Storey of crime, Bobby Storey of Castlereagh."
However, nine months later Storey and Gerry Kelly found themselves in the unusual position of being praised by the British tabloids after in-tervening to save trapped squaddies during rioting in Ardoyne.
Over the past two years Storey has been seen as a key figure in the PIRA's decision to decommission and then to stand down its units.
