Posted on 06/24/2003 12:44:27 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
DUBLIN, Ireland (AP) - The American witness against a reputed dissident Irish Republican Army commander testified Tuesday that the FBI made him a pub-keeper to cover for his spying and the establishment became "my IRA theme park." David Rupert told Ireland's anti-terrorist court that FBI Agent Patrick Buckley paid him $8,500 in 1996 to lease a derelict pub and adjoining trailer park in the Irish border village of Drumquin. There, Rupert housed IRA men on the run from authorities in the neighboring British territory of Northern Ireland. "I referred to it as my IRA theme park," he said during his second day of testimony at Dublin's Special Criminal Court. Rupert, under questioning from state prosecutor George Birmingham, explained how he came into contact in 1999 with Michael McKevitt, the reputed founder of the breakaway Real IRA, which opposes the Northern Ireland peace process. The splinter group admitted responsibility for the deadliest terrorist strike in the province's history, the 1998 car bombing of Omagh that claimed 29 lives. McKevitt has been held without bail since his March 2001 arrest on a charge of "directing terrorism." He could face a life sentence if the three judges who handle IRA-related cases in Ireland believe Rupert's allegations. Tuesday's testimony concerned growing involvement by Rupert - a 51-year-old native of Potsdam, N.Y. - in dissident IRA circles in Chicago and northwest Ireland from 1995 to 1997. He became acquainted with Joe O'Neill, director of finance for a fringe party called Republican Sinn Fein. Irish police consider this party the political front for the Continuity IRA, which began bombing Northern Ireland targets in 1995. Rupert said O'Neill asked him in 1997 to acquire weapons and ship them to an elementary school in the Irish border town of Ballyshannon. Rupert said O'Neill specified that plastic explosive could be hidden in teddy bears, detonating cord in jump-ropes, and detonators inside radios. These instructions "deeply upset me," Rupert said, adding that it made him worry whether "fools were actually putting this stuff in luggage on the plane that I was flying on." After the FBI gave him the down-payment money for the pub, Rupert said he was supposed to have been handed over as "an intelligence asset" to Ireland's own police force, the Garda Siochana. But at his first meeting with his Irish contact, then-Chief Superintendent Dermot Jennings, Rupert said the officer was willing only to reimburse him for his car mileage costs - about $15. He returned to the United States to negotiate a contract with the FBI on Feb. 24, 1997, that would pay him $2,500 a month plus "reasonable expenses." The contract - which was presented as a prosecution exhibit - permitted him to participate in illegal activities only if "the FBI determines that participation is necessary to further the investigation." Later in 1997, Rupert said, the FBI arranged a meeting in Chicago with an agent from Britain's MI5 agency, which wanted to develop him as a source. Rupert said he soon was sending encrypted e-mails simultaneously to his FBI and MI5 handlers after gathering intelligence on targeted Irish extremists in Ireland, the United States and Canada. --
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