Here’s a shocker:

In public, for far too long, the British
Government likes to operate a convenient political lie when dealing
with the IRA’s leadership. The Prime Minister, and the hollow men he
has in the past installed at Hillsborough Castle, talk of Sinn Fein and
the IRA as if they are two distinct entities. But a lie repeated, even
a thousand times, is still a lie.

The reality, according to Ireland’s Justice Minister, Michael
McDowell, whose intelligence services run a network of informers within
the IRA, is far simpler — Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness are the
IRA.

“The Provisional movement is dominated and has been dominated
up till recently by one body and that is the Army Council of the IRA,”
he says. “The IRA carried out those robberies, serious armed robberies,
and had a separate fund-raising section. And the members of the Army
Council must all have had knowledge of one kind or another of that
campaign of robbery and violence and extortion which has kept the
organisation going. Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness have been members
of the Army Council throughout all of the relevant period we are
talking about and it is inconceivable that as members of the Army
Council they wouldn’t know the finances of their own organisation and
what they are based on.”

According to Mr McDowell, Mr Adams and Mr McGuinness resigned
from the Army Council two months ago and substituted placemen to do
their bidding as part of the backroom deal surrounding the IRA’s July
cessation statement. But nothing has really changed. “They (Adams and
McGuinness) are in overall control of the movement, and there is no
challenge to their authority,” McDowell, who is the equivalent of the
British Home Secretary, says.

Mr Adams and Mr McGuinness continue to maintain that they are
not on the IRA Army Council and have no knowledge of the IRA’s
activities. But it is clear that, according to the Irish Justice
Minister, the orders for the Northern Bank robbery came from the top,
the IRA Army Council, whose two most important leaders are Mr Adams and
Mr McGuinness. It is also inconceivable that the same information and
intelligence was not available to Mr Powell and Mr Blair as they
offered tea and biscuits to Gerry and Martin across the polished tables
in Downing Street.

Nope, no one ever knew that did they? All a complete surprise.