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Thursday 21 June 2007

A VERY BUSY BACK CHANNEL

The issue of back channels between the NewDupe Lundies and IRA/MI5 surfaced briefly before the recent election. A "humble" Londonderry businessman has admitted to the Bel Tel failed politician and mediocre journaist Brian Rowan that he was motivated by his "Christian faith" to be a "back channel".

From the Bel Tel interview.
On his role in the secret contacts, Duddy said his "mission" from day one, back in the 1970s, "was replacing violence with dialogue" . He was driven by his "Christian faith".

Mr Duddy`s "Christian faith" has mysteriously lead him to be involved in everything that has gone on in N.Ireland over the past 30 years or more.

The following is an exert from Niall O Dochartaigh.net website.

"It is possible to trace a direct line from the secret channels of communication which developed in Derry in the months and years before Bloody Sunday and which were utilised in attempts to reduce confrontation on the day, and the channel of communication central to the brokering of the IRA ceasefire of 1994.
As violence escalated in Derry in 1970 and 1971Brendan Duddy, a Derry businessman who had been deeply involved in the intense political debate and activity around the civil rights movement, developed a close cooperative relationship with the RUC chief in Derry, Chief Superintendent Frank Lagan, a Catholic from Co. Derry who was unhappy with the Stormont government policies of internment and rearming the RUC and who was prepared to make efforts to avert or reduce confrontation by restraining security force activity. At the same time Duddy had extensive contacts in the Official Republican movement, with Catholic moderates and Nationalist party politicians and with two senior figures in the Provisional Republican leadership, Daithí O Conaill and Ruairi O Brádaigh.
Duddy has testified credibly to the Bloody Sunday Inquiry that Chief Superintendent Lagan asked him to request assurances from the Provisional and Official IRA about their behaviour on Bloody Sunday. Duddy's credibility derives to a great extent from the fact that for the following two decades he was the central figure in a closely-guarded channel of communication facilitating secret contact between the British government and the leadership of the Provisional IRA. Dealing with MI6 and later MI5 agents on one side and the Provisional Republican leadership on the other, Duddy played a central role in the secret communication and negotiation around the IRA ceasefire of 1974/75, in the secret negotiations between the British government and the Provisional Republican leadership in 1990-1993, and at several other key junctures in the conflict. The channels used in attempts to avert confrontation on Bloody Sunday were the embryonic form of perhaps the most important, long-lasting and secretive channel of communication between the British government and the Provisional Republican leadership.I expand on these arguments in 'Bloody Sunday in Context', a new chapter in the second edition of
From Civil Rights to Armalites which draws on extensive interviews with Brendan Duddy, who spoke on the record for the first time in thirty years about the origins of these contacts."


How did a simple "businessman" from Londonderry ever develope all the political contacts within N.Ireland as well as the UK "political and intelligence service realm?". After reading the full details of the stories in the BT you will probably come to the same conclusion as me........ Mr Duddy is a modern day Ahithophel, I wonder what he will be up to next?

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