‘Martin Ingram’ in shock live TV showdown offer
By Chris Anderson
18 June 2006
The ex-Army intelligence unit handler who claims to have unmasked Martin McGuinness as a British spy has now offered to unmask himself - for a TV debate with the Sinn Fein MP.
The former soldier - who uses the alias ‘Martin Ingram’ - says he will break cover and appear on live TV to discuss his allegations that Mr McGuinness was a tout.
He has thrown down the gauntlet to Mr McGuinness, and also challenged Gerry Adams to join his Sinn Fein colleague for the debate.
The ex-Force Research Unit member (pictured above) dismissed republican claims that he was hiding behind a pseudonym as “nonsense”.
He pointed out to Sunday Life that he’d already entered the public arena some time ago for face-to-face meetings with the family of murdered Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane.
Mr Adams recently completely rubbished allegations that the Mid-Ulster MP was a British agent, saying they were based upon a “shadowy network of anonymous opinions and secret briefings”.
The West Belfast MP said Martin Ingram was a former member of the FRU, a covert British Army unit that had been at the heart of collusion and had a “long and ignoble” history of setting people up for assassination in Ulster.
He added “subversion” and “dirty tricks” were routine for the FRU.
Mr Ingram, who previously ‘outed’ former Provo Freddie Scappaticci as a British spy, said Mr Adams was being “economical with the truth”.
“I notice Gerry Adams avoided raising the Freddie Scappaticci issue,” he said.
“He knows I - along with others - was involved in that exposure. I would have thought Mr Adams would have mentioned that issue, if for no other reason than to be seen as being fair and objective.
“After all, he got it wrong when he described the Scappaticci exposure as a tale of lies and an attempt to wreck the peace process.”
When the Scappaticci affair broke in 2003, Mr Adams said he accepted Scappaticci’s public denials and pointed the finger of blame at the “faceless people” of the British security services, who, he claimed, misled the media.
