By Kit Klarenberg

Leaked emails expose how British military-intel officials deliberately provoked riots among occupied Ireland’s Catholic and Protestant communities, which they then exploited to justify repression. In private diatribes, veterans of occupied Ireland who later became MI6 officers still obsess over “keeping Northern Ireland British” and mock the death of Bobby Sands.

Leaked emails reviewed by The Grayzone offer an extraordinary insight into the covert activities of prominent British military and intelligence veterans posted to occupied Ireland during the 1980s. Still possessed of enduring contempt for Catholics and visceral hatred for prominent Irish Republican freedom fighters, these men believe to this day that their patriotic duty remains to “keep Northern Ireland British.”

Several British veterans of the so-called Troubles have found employment at a private spying firm called Hakluyt, which has been referred to as a “rest home for spies.” Founded by longtime MI6 officers, including the former spy who inspired Ian Fleming’s James Bond character, the firm has been plausibly accused of serving as a cutout for the agency.

Keith Craig is another MI6 journeyman who joined Hakluyt, serving as its CEO for ten years. While public details on Craig’s time in the British Army are scarce, the leaked Hakluyt communications place him on the frontline of the Troubles as part of the military’s elite Black Watch unit.

The leaks contain several revealing exchanges between Craig and Pablo Miller, a veteran MI6 officer suspected to have served as the handler for the now-missing Russian turncoat Sergei Skripal. At the time of the Skripal poisoning affair, Miller maintained an address in Salisbury, UK, not far from the Skripals’ home, and worked for Orbis Business Intelligence, the private firm established by Christopher Steele, his former MI6 colleague and the author of the fabrication-filled “Steele Dossier.” (The British government placed Miller’s name under a D Notice immediately after Skripal’s alleged poisoning, preventing the country’s press from mentioning him directly).

In leaked emails, Miller and his Hakluyt colleagues unite around their vitriolic resentment of Irish Catholics, and delight in rehashing the schemes they hatched to push the local Republican population toward violence during the Troubles. These twisted machinations included placing a sandwich on the tombstone of the martyred hunger striker Bobby Sands.

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