Gordon Carrera

So he's in and out a lot during this phase.

Yeah, this is where the intelligence side of this conflict really kicks in, because the army realize that they're struggling to deal with the bloodshed.

They respond partly by using some of the counterinsurgency tactics they've learned overseas.

For instance, fighting in the Maobao uprising in Kenya, an uprising against British rule.

That's part of the interrogation techniques, but also some of the attempts to create informers and recruit informers within communities.

They're importing some of those techniques and the army also takes the decision that they want to develop their own intelligence capabilities rather than rely on the RUC, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the local police.

One of the reasons is the RUC, as I said, is perceived as biased towards the Protestant population.

It's kind of disproportionately Protestant and the army also think that many individuals who might provide intelligence

would not deal with the RAUC as a result.

So the army are gonna kind of develop their own capability.

They start with these things called covert bomb squads, whose remit was to collect and act upon intelligence related to bombings, hence the name.

Later that's then remodeled into something called the military reaction force.

in 1971.

Now this is quite a controversial unit.

MRF military reaction force members were deployed in disguise at vehicle checkpoints trying to identify potential members of groups.

They often operated in plain clothes using unmarked vehicles.

They used front companies, so a mobile laundry service and a massage parlour.

to try and gather intelligence.

Famously, there's some incidents, and I think these are recounted in the TV drama, Say Nothing, which we'll talk about a little later on based on Patrick Braddon Keefe's book and who we're going to be talking to in a bonus.

But there's a scene there which is dramatized where the IRA then get intelligence about one of these laundry service vans and they shoot up the laundry van.