Charlie One. Seán Hartnett
spent socialising with the other JCU-NI members at Thiepval, in particular the technicians from Cameras and Radios. One thing that became obvious was that none of the JCU-NI technicians fancied the idea of a ‘North Det posting’. Every time it was mentioned, they’d laugh, pitying whichever of us three new boys ended up there.
The following Monday morning our training began, and my fellow technicians and I drew our weapons from the armoury, SIG sauer 9mm pistols and HK53 assault rifles, weapons normally reserved for British Special Forces units. I was starting to wonder why Royal Signals technicians were going to need such firepower. We headed to RAF Aldergrove, a stone’s throw from Belfast International Airport, where we were among about a dozen other JCUNI new arrivals under the tutelage of three special-duty veterans. We spent the morning on the firing ranges, learning handling drills and how to zero the scopes of our new weapons. We then drove the forty miles to the base at Ballykinler in Co. Down. JCU-NI had a special area reserved at one end of the camp where they had a complete replica of a typical small Irish town.
First off, they gave us a demonstration of the devastating effects of an improvised explosive device (IED). About 500m from the reinforced observation bunker where we stood was a car with approximately four pounds of Semtex explosives attached to the underside. Before the bomb disposal officer pushed the switch to detonate the device, he informed us, ‘This is one of the IRA’s favourite booby-trap devices, used to kill police and prison officers, soldiers and Loyalist paramilitaries. Here’s why you always check your vehicle for an IED.’ No sooner had the words left his mouth than the car erupted in a ball of flames and was lifted from the ground like it was a toy. As it crashed back down to earth, all the chatter and jokes ceased and the grim realisation of what we risked hit us.
Over the next three days we ran through various scenarios we might find ourselves in while moving around Northern Ireland: paramilitary roadblocks, car hijackings, armed robberies, paramilitary punishment beatings, ambushes and suchlike. We also learned how to manoeuvre our modified vehicles, with their Kevlar armour plates fitted to the doors and seats, which made them a lot trickier to handle. (I suddenly understood the weight of the door on the car that Dave had collected me in.)
While my approach to some of the scenarios we trained for, including using my thickest Cork accent, perplexed the training staff, it was how I planned to deal with things here on my own turf, so to speak, so I wasn’t for changing or apologising. I planned to use my Irish background to my advantage whenever possible. This strategy also came in handy for one of my operations officers.
6 HOWES AND WOOD
The only overt thing about our overt cameras was the fact that you could see them if you looked. Their true nature was actually extremely covert, highly classified, and one of JCUNI’s best-kept secrets.
These cameras could read a vehicle number plate clearly from 1.8km away. They could pan, tilt and zoom in any direction in a matter of milliseconds. Each had a number of pre-programmed positions, and a simple push of a number on the keyboard controller would send the camera to that position in an instant. Using state-of-the-art low-light technology, they could even ‘see’ in the dark. There was nowhere to hide.
Connecting the cameras was a vast network of encrypted fibre-optic cables spread throughout Northern Ireland for the exclusive use of British Intelligence. The encryption ensured that even if the feed from a surveillance camera was intercepted, it would be indecipherable. This allowed real-time control of feeds from all the JCU-NI’s surveillance cameras.
Thanks to the distance between the camera locations and our ‘targets’, the paramilitaries didn’t associate the cameras with surveillance. Over time, they ignored the overt cameras altogether. This was a huge mistake on their part since those distant lenses gave us constant ‘eyes’ on their stomping grounds, like the Creggan, Shantallow, Strabane, the Waterside and the Bogside.
Sitting in front of a vast wall of TV monitors in the operations room, fed by signals from this powerful network, the operations officer(Opso) could track a vehicle or individual in real time from any point in the city to any other point, or manoeuvre his operators like chess pieces around the city, and indeed all the way down to the so-called ‘bandit country’ of South Armagh and Tyrone. As they dropped out on one camera they would be picked up by another, or by an operator; all the while oblivious to the level of surveillance they were under.
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There were three more modules to go in our technical training at JCU-NI, followed by an exam, before a decision would be made as to who would go where.
First was a riggers course at RAF Digby in Lincolnshire. To work as a technician at JCU-NI you had to have a head for heights. Rigging army cameras or radio antennas to public masts or buildings anywhere was challenging, what with hazardous weather conditions and awkward climbs. But in Northern Ireland there was the added difficulty of having to do all the rigging at night for security and tactical reasons. Even under cover of darkness, though, the chance of being hit by a firework or petrol bomb (some might even say by a gunshot, though that would be going too far in my experience) made working at JCU-NI even less appealing. If you failed your riggers course, you were out. Heights were never a problem for me and so I passed without difficulty. So too did the other two technicians.
The Cougar radio network was used by all British army units in Northern Ireland, including JCU-NI. There were, however, significant differences in what was available to JCU-NI through the network and what a normal unit had. Whereas normal units would experience dead spots where no radio communications were available, this wasn’t the case for JCU-NI. They had a series of signal boosters, known as ‘high powers’, placed strategically in military bases and police stations to enhance their network and prevent dead spots in communications. They were completely unknown to other units. There was also the fact that all JCU-NI communications equipment was covert in both appearance and function.
Finally, there was the Cameras section, covering JCUNI’s vast network of overt CCTV cameras. Of course, JCUNI weren’t the only ones using CCTV cameras in Northern Ireland. Everyone from commercial companies protecting their premises, local council authorities trying to stamp out antisocial behaviour, private individuals, and the RUC created an ever-increasing number of CCTV cameras. This posed a problem for JCU-NI as they tried to maintain their covert presence in Northern Ireland: there would be nothing covert about being caught on someone else’s CCTV entering a premises illegally.
That’s where my previous experience with 14th Signal Regiment (Electronic Warfare) gave me an advantage. JCUNI had a range of military-grade jammers capable of jamming CCTV signals over a wide frequency range. Carried either in a backpack for up-close work, or in a vehicle where a wider range of cameras needed to be knocked out, they were an excellent piece of counter-surveillance kit. Our own cameras worked at a much higher frequency range, thereby ensuring that the jammers didn’t interfere.
With the practical side of our training over, we returned to the training building at RAF Aldergrove for a series of training lectures. It would be the first time I would hear the British army’s unofficial, insider take on the situation in Northern Ireland, and I was all ears. To my surprise, it wasn’t the one-sided propagandist version I was expecting.
The initial lectures covered the civil rights movement and the persecution of the Catholic population that resulted in the first deployment of British troops in August 1969. It also covered, with commendable balance, some of the darkest days in Northern Ireland’s history, including criminal acts committed by Loyalist and Republican paramilitaries and by the British army itself. More significantly for me, though, I finally got some insight into the type of unit JCU-NI was.
Charlie, the chief instructor, was the first to speak.
‘Most of you have dealt with top-secret information before, but this goes way beyond that. Officially, this unit doesn’t exist. The various names, 14 Intelligence Company, FRU or simply “The Det”, that you may have heard given to British Intelligence units in Northern Ireland over the years, are all unofficial. The unit is officially the Joint Communications Unit – Northern Ireland or JCU-NI. It consists of nine sub-units called Special Communications Troops