It is interesting the Telegraph.co.uk, “Lord” Conrad Black’s online version of a neocon newspaper, would publish a story admitting that the Joint Support Group, described as “a cell from a small and anonymous British Army unit,” manages “covert human intelligence sources or agents,” including double agents, that is to say the Brits are engaged in terrorist operations, as long suspected.

“During the [Irish] Troubles, the JSG operated under the cover name of the Force Research Unit (FRU), which between the early 1980s and the late 1990s managed to penetrate the very heart of the IRA. By targeting and then ‘turning’ members of the paramilitary organization with a variety of ‘inducements’” ranging from blackmail to bribes, the FRU operators developed agents at virtually every command level within the IRA,” explains Sean Rayment.

Even a dullard, armed with the appropriate search criteria and Google, can put two and two together in short order and discover that much of the terrorism in Northern Ireland was orchestrated by FRU and the British government, including the despicable “human bomb” technique, that is to say “forcing civilians to drive vehicles laden with explosives into army checkpoints,” according to the Guardian.

Naturally, all of this shines a new light on the two British SAS operatives caught in Basra, driving around in a car loaded with explosives and disguised as Arabs back in 2005.

Assassinating Irish civilians was part and parcel of “an intelligence operation which had been sanctioned at the highest levels of the British Army and the British Security Service, MI5,” according to Ed Moloney, writing for the Sunday Tribune.

In addition to outright murder, British intelligence encouraged torture. Robert Stevens describes the UDA as “a fascistic, loyalist paramilitary organization,” infamous for running death squads.

Sunday Telegraph documents “confirm that as the UDA’s primary intelligence officer [Brian] Nelson passed on the names, photographs and addresses of suspected IRA members from Army Intelligence records to UDA gunmen and that he carried out assassinations under army direction.” Patrick Finucane was apparently murdered by a FRU sanctioned death squad. The Belfast solicitor was gunned down before his wife and children.

“Beginning in the 1980s the highly secretive FRU was sent into Northern Ireland to recruit and train double agents to work inside the paramilitary groups,” writes Michael S. Rose. “The FRU combated IRA terrorism by the use of paid informers, blackmail, ambushes, and other methods not approved by the Geneva Convention. In the worst case, British officers decided that in cases when it would be difficult to bring suspected IRA terrorists to justice by legitimate means, the FRU would enlist outlawed guerilla groups that possessed both the desire and the means to murder the IRA men. According to Stevens Three, the FRU assisted Protestant terrorists in carrying out what were, in effect, proxy assassinations of Catholics. In order to forge such alliances, the British officers had to overlook the fact that the interests of the Protestant death squads were not those of the United Kingdom and its government.”

In Iraq, the “JSG is the coalition’s secret weapon,” a defense source told the Telegraph. “Their job is to recruit and run covert human intelligence sources or agents—we never use the term informer. The Americans are in awe of the unit because they have nothing like them within their military.”