Northern Ireland

David Rupert: MI5 did not want to arrest alleged Real IRA boss Mickey McKevitt

Former MI5 and FBI agent David Rupert. Picture by BBC.
Former MI5 and FBI agent David Rupert. Picture by BBC. Former MI5 and FBI agent David Rupert. Picture by BBC.

A BRITISH and US agent who infiltrated the Real IRA has claimed MI5 did not want the group’s leader prosecuted.

American citizen David Rupert spied on both the Continuity and Real IRA before providing evidence against senior republican Michael McKevitt in 2003.

A former Provisional IRA quartermaster, McKevitt, who died in 2021, was later convicted of directing terrorism by a Dublin court.

The 71-year-old was married to Bernadette Sands, a sister of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands.

Mr Rupert initially gained the trust of the Continuity IRA while working as an FBI asset.

A regular visitor to Ireland in the early 1990s he eventually moved to Co Leitrim and set up a bar there bank rolled by US authorities.

He was later recruited by MI5 and used his trusted position to spy on the Real IRA, which emerged after a split with the Provisionals in 1997.

The Real IRA, which merged with other republicans to form the New IRA in 2012, was responsible for the Omagh bomb, which claimed the lives of 29 civilians and two unborn babies in 1998.

Mr Rupert, who ran a trucking firm in Chicago, has now claimed that MI5 did not want McKevitt arrested.

In a rare interview has claimed how Mr McKevitt revealed plans to launch a bombing campaign in Britain in 1999.

"Their first hit is going to be directed specifically at something like troops or London centre financial district," Mr Rupert told a handler in an email.

"To make a big enough splash to overshadow anything that could have happened at Omagh."

The former agent claims he was eventually selected to join the Real IRAs ‘Army Council’, a development welcomed by MI5.

"MI5 were wonderful to work with," he said.

"I would call them on my way to a meeting with McKevitt and they would tell me that he's probably going to ask you this or that and when he does, here's what we want you to tell him, and they were pretty accurate."

Mr Rupert has now revealed that both MI5 and the FBI had different priorities when it came to dealing with Mr McKevitt with the British intelligence agency focused on continuing to gather intelligence over pursuing court action.

"MI5 wanted to keep it going forever," he said.

"The FBI won.

“I mean they won the argument.

“It was more important to MI5 to have a thumb on the pulse than it is to go arrest a couple of people and prosecute them,” he told BBC Spotlight.

In 2001 Mr Rupert made a detailed statement to gardai who at the time were trying to build a case against McKevitt.

In August Mr McKevitt was sentenced to 20 years behind bars for directing the activities of the Real IRA.