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Sean O'Callaghan
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==Irish Government agent within the IRA== In 1976, aged 22, O'Callaghan ended his involvement with the IRA after becoming disillusioned with its activities. He later recalled that his disenchantment with the IRA began when one of his compatriots openly hoped that a female police officer who had been blown up by an IRA bomb had been pregnant so they could get "two for the price of one."<ref name=Whitey/> He was also concerned with what he perceived was an undercurrent of [[ethnic hatred]] in its rank and file towards the [[Ulster Scots people|Ulster Scots]] population. He left Ireland and moved to London. In May 1978, he married a Scottish woman of Protestant [[Unionism in Scotland|unionist]] descent.<ref>O'Callaghan (1998), pp. 87–89.</ref> During the late 1970s, he ran a successful mobile cleaning business.<ref>O'Callaghan (1998), pp. 88–89.</ref> However, he was unable to fully settle in his new life, later recalling: "In truth there seemed to be no escaping from Ireland. At the strangest of times I would find myself reliving the events of my years in the IRA. As the years went on, I came to believe that the Provisional IRA was the greatest enemy of democracy and decency in Ireland".<ref>O'Callaghan (1998).</ref> In 1979 O'Callaghan was approached by the IRA seeking to recruit him again for its paramilitary campaign.<ref>O'Callaghan (1998), p. 90.</ref> In response, he decided to [[turncoat]] against the organisation and become an agent within its ranks for the [[Government of Ireland|Irish Government]]. In his memoir, O'Callaghan described his reasoning as follows: <blockquote>I had been brought up to believe that you had to take responsibility for your own actions. If you did something wrong then you made amends. I came to believe that individuals taking responsibility for their own actions is the basis for civilisation, without that safety net we have nothing.<ref>O'Callaghan (1998), p. 89.</ref></blockquote> O'Callaghan later told authors [[Kevin Cullen]] and Shelley Murphey that he decided to become a double agent even though he knew that even those who hated the IRA as much as he now did have a low opinion of informers; as he put it, "there is nothing worse in Ireland than being an informer." However, he felt it was the only way to stop the IRA from luring teenagers into their ranks and training them to kill.<ref name=Whitey/> Soon after being approached by the IRA to re-join he returned to [[Tralee]] from London, where he arranged a clandestine meeting with an officer of the [[Special Detective Unit|Garda Special Branch]] in a local cemetery, at which O'Callaghan expressed his willingness to work with it to subvert the IRA from within. At this point, O'Callaghan was still opposed to working with the [[British Government]].<ref>O'Callaghan (1998), pp. 92–93.</ref> A few weeks later, O'Callaghan made contact with Kerry IRA leader [[Martin Ferris]] and attended his first IRA meeting since 1975. Immediately afterwards, he telephoned his Garda contact and said, "We're in".<ref>O'Callaghan (1998), p. 95.</ref> According to O'Callaghan, "Over the next few months plans to carry out various armed robberies were put together by the local IRA. It was relatively easy for me to foil these attempts; an occasional Garda car or roadblock at the 'wrong time'; the routine arrest of Ferris or myself; or simple 'bad planning', such as a car arriving late – a whole series of random stratagems".<ref>O'Callaghan (1998), p. 96.</ref> During the [[1981 Irish hunger strike|1981 hunger strike]] in the [[Maze Prison]], he attempted to start his own hunger strike in support of the Maze prisoners but was told to desist by the IRA for fear it would detract focus from the prisoners. O'Callaghan successfully sabotaged the efforts of republicans in Kerry from staging hunger strikes of their own.<ref>O'Callaghan (1998), pp. 109–12.</ref> In 1984 he notified the Garda of an attempt to smuggle seven tons of [[AK-47]] assault rifles from the United States to Ireland aboard a fishing trawler named ''Valhalla.'' The guns were intended for the arsenal of the Provisional IRA's units.{{cn|date=January 2021}} The shipment had been organised by the [[Winter Hill Gang]], an Irish-American [[crime family]] of [[South Boston, Massachusetts]]. As a result of O'Callaghan's warning, a combined force of the [[Irish Navy]] and Gardaí intercepted the boat that received the weaponry, and the guns were seized.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20070503013124/http://ted.examiner.ie/archives/2000/April/19/current/opinionpage_2.htm The IRA informer who kept Gardaí on track in search for Shergar], ''Irish Examiner'', 20 April 2000.</ref><ref name=Whitey>{{cite book|title=Whitey Bulger: America's Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt That Brought Him to Justice|author1=Kevin Cullen|author-link=Kevin Cullen|author2=Shelley Murphy|author2-link=Shelley Murphy|publisher=[[W. W. Norton]]|date=2016|isbn=9780393087727}}</ref> The seizure marked the complete end of any major attempt by the IRA to smuggle guns out of the United States, which ended three years earlier with the arrest of the primary IRA's gunrunner [[George Harrison (Irish Republican)|George Harrison]] by the American [[Federal Bureau of Investigation]] (FBI).<ref>{{cite book|last=Holland|first=Jack|date=1 February 2001|title=The American Connection, Revised: U.S. Guns, Money, and Influence in Northern Ireland|publisher=Roberts Rinehart Publishers|page=109-111|isbn=9-7815-6833-1843}}</ref> O'Callaghan claimed to have been tasked in 1983 by the IRA with placing 25[[Pound (mass)|lb]] of [[Frangex]] in the [[Dominion Theatre]] in London,<ref name="DM1">Whitaker, James, "John and Norma aghast at wedding", ''[[Daily Mirror]]'', 23 May 1998</ref> to try to kill [[Charles, Prince of Wales|Prince Charles]] and [[Diana, Princess of Wales|Princess Diana]] who were due to attend a charity pop music concert there.<ref>O'Callaghan, p. 197</ref> A warning was phoned into the Garda, and the Royal couple were hurriedly ushered from the theatre by their police bodyguard during the concert. The theatre had been searched before the concert and a second search following the warning revealed no device.<ref name="DM1"/> In 1985, O'Callaghan was elected as a [[Sinn Féin]] councillor for Tralee Urban District Council, and unsuccessfully contested a seat on [[Kerry County Council]].{{Citation needed|date=January 2012}}
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