SCOTS CUSTOMS BUNGLE GIFTS IRA ECSTASY-MAKING MACHINERY

SCOTTISH customs chiefs botched a crucial terrorist drugs operation and
allowed the Provisional IRA to buy an ecstasy pill-making machine,
according to a former intelligence agent.

The claims are made by Kevin Fulton, a former British soldier who worked
undercover within the IRA. Now turned whistleblower, Fulton claims the
'sting', in 1995, was bungled from the start and resulted in the machine,
which can produce over 7000 ecstasy tablets an hour, being smuggled through
Scotland to Ireland.

Fulton was undercover in the IRA and being handled by a number of agencies,
including Special Branch and MI5, at the time. He said he and another IRA
man bought the machine in Blackpool for UKP5000.

He said the customs side of the sting was being handled by senior customs
intelligence officers -- in particular a former RUC Special Branch officer
working in Scotland for customs. 'He was supposed to be collating all the
information I was sending to customs in Glasgow and preparing the ground
for the seizure of the machine and the arrests of the IRA men involved. It
would have been a huge coup for the British government if they had been
able to finger key IRA men as being involved in the drugs trade at that
time,' he said.

He described his 'disgust' when, after contacting his handlers while at
Stranraer, he and the other man were able to deliver the machine to an IRA
safe house in South Armagh, despite them being shadowed. He said it ended
up in Dublin in the hands of 'a very senior IRA figure still wanted in
Britain for terrorist offences'.

'Let's be very clear about what was happening here: customs either failed
to act or cocked up and allowed a terrorist organisation to get their hands
on a machine which the IRA could use to make thousands upon thousands of
ecstasy pills. The results of that are fairly obvious. Firstly, the IRA
made -- and are still making -- untold sums of money out of the drugs
trade, and secondly the IRA are able to sell drugs, which we all know can
kill kids. Doesn't this imply that the British state is acquiescing in the
drugs trade? It was one of the easiest busts they could have made.

'This whole job was being run by customs in Scotland and they have to bear
the responsibility for putting a money-spinning machine that pumps out tons
of ecstasy into the hands of the Provos.'

Inquiries with customs in Paisley, London and Belfast ended with Belfast
saying the officer, whose identity is known to the Sunday Herald, was
currently on a 'government mission attached to a British embassy in eastern
Europe and may be working for another government agency, perhaps the
Foreign Office'.

A spokesman for HM Customs and Excise said he 'could not confirm or deny
Fulton's claims' as to do so would put in jeopardy the existence of agents
and damage security.