Ulster Defence Association

And it was at a time when you had people like Billy Wright, who was at that stage totally against the UVF ceasefire and against the peace process, who would later go on to form the LVF and was using John Cree to stir up support for his new paramilitary organisation, a fully sectarian paramilitary organisation.

And Johnny Adair, he fancied himself as the Supreme Leader of the UDA, was siding with Billy Wright, which caused a UDA feud.

And that is the context, and that context doesn't exist.

And the Prates Commission had to take that into consideration.

And he's talking about people like Jimmy Craig.

By the late 1980s, people like Craig, he was killed, but others who were in charge of C Company and the West Belfast UDA were essentially removed for one reason or another.

either through death or because they were arrested.

And particularly in the late 1980s, Tommy Tucker Little, who was the West Belfast commander of the UDA, had been heavily involved in targeting of civilians and Republicans, probably the most high profile being, of course, Pat Finucane and, of course, Lachlan McGinn.

Uh, there were efforts by him, it seems, to get himself closer to Paisley than he actually managed to do.

And the Tara paramilitary, it was a strange group, perhaps linked to the UVF, but quite different from the UVF and UDA.

It involved, to some extent, mythology, Irish mythology, and it married a sort of mysticism with loyalism.

It's part of the strangeness behind William McGrath, because the organization was in itself very strange.

But at this point, he is a respected Orange man.

He's somebody who has the ear of the late Ian Paisley, who's a significant player in Northern Ireland's politics.

He's a guy who's close to the gunmen, to the leading gunmen in the UVF, in the UDA.

He's close to British intelligence.

However, in Nelson's case, it was much higher than that because for him, it would look suspicious if he wasn't aggressively pursuing assassinations.

Can you talk to us about what Brian Nelson's role in the UDA was?

Yeah, so he was appointed by the UDA as their chief intelligence officer.

And his role was to provide information the Ulster Freedom Fighters which as you probably know was simply the UDA with masks on and guns and with suitable targets for them to kill and so that involved gathering intelligence on targets that Nelson thought should be targeted and also responding to requests by the UFF for specific intelligence on specific targets.

And Nelson collated all this material into what he called P cards or personality cards, which, you know, was a sort of pro forma of name, address and everything else, but also cars they drove, um, cars driven by their wives, girlfriends, any, any details, a, a, a sort of amateur version of the real thing.

Um, the mirror opposite, if, if you like.

It wasn't entirely clear in the initial stages of this targeting of Adams that his handlers were totally opposed to the idea.

One detects from the record that the fruit was in something of a dilemma as to whether to allow it to go ahead or not.

The UVF was always kind of the scherpunkt of loyalism.

You know, the UDA was this kind of like mass vigilante movement, which wasn't outlawed until 92.

But UFF, which was technically like their direct action wing, that was very, very, very much cultivated by British intelligence and military elements.

Okay.

They'd have these mass rallies in London and, you know, in in Liverpool and in Belfast, although it hit Belfast a little bit later.

And I'm getting ahead of myself, but.

The guys who came to constitute the West Belfast Brigade, like C Company of the West Belfast Brigade of the UDA, Johnny Adair, who was an infamous guy and not an admirable guy, very much a gangster.

He was a National Front skinhead and he was in the Rock Against Communism scene and so were all his friends.

Their strategy was a blend of guerrilla operations against soldiers and the Royal Ulster Constabulary, as well as coordinated bombings in Belfast city centre, airports and commercial districts to destabilize economic life.

While Republicans advanced, loyalist paramilitaries such as the UVF and UDA stepped into a parallel arena, attacking Catholic communities, shopkeepers and any perceived Republican sympathizers in an escalating cycle of sectarian retaliation.

Operation Demetrius in 1971 brought internment without trial to over 1,000 Catholics deemed suspected of IRA links.

The operation revealed flawed intelligence, with many detainees later found not linked to any militant activity.

Stephen, listen.

Jonathan Wooden, on the roundabout way, said, but me and you know, it's the UDA or the UVF or both.

None of these flags go up without their OK and none of them come down without it.

And I don't blame the contractor for not doing it because if he goes to take them down...

But if that contractor is contracting with the Department for Infrastructure and it's a business and taking a profit as a result, should Northern Ireland, and this is an open question because I get it, the dangers that there are, right? But in order to get any business from a government department, should you as a business be prepared to take on the unsafe work as well as getting the safe work? In other words, is that contractor still employed by the Department for Infrastructure, the contractor that wouldn't go in without the support and authority of the local community reps? Are they still getting public money?

Well, listen, Stephen, I honestly don't think you can blame the GEC.

I mean, who would, how would his insurance cover that? Because if you get up a ladder to pull that down and the UDA and UDF get wind of it, there'll be four or five ballots round the baseball bat and you'll be pulled to a ladder and that'll be an ad.

But if they give the go-ahead, you'll take it down and there'll be no comeback.