Shadows - Alan Barker

In the early hours of 30 April 2003, three police Land-Rovers arrived at the door of Alan Barker. Twelve armed and uniformed officers accompanied by four plain-clothes detectives entered the house. They stayed for four hours, turning over rooms, seizing bundles of documents, impounding computers, disks, files and anything else that interested them. The family subjected to this dawn raid were treated as common criminals, the operation resembling so many others in Northern Ireland over the Troubles when police and troops swooped on the homes of terrorist suspects. But Alan Barker was and is no terrorist. In fact, he has spent his adult life fighting terrorism on the streets of his native province.Alan Barker belonged to Special Branch, the RUC's elite unit dedicated to fighting the IRA, the INLA and loyalist terrorists. From the first days of his career in the RUC, when he was almost lured to his death by an IRA Mata-Hari, to his running of agents who inflicted major damage on the Provisionals in Derry, Barker gives a gripping inside account from the front-line struggle against terrorism. He demonstrates how the RUC had inside knowledge of IRA political and military thinking in the build-up to and after the historic 1994 ceasefire, using not only informants but also sophisticated listening devices. The book also details how one of Barker's key intelligence assets, Raymond Gilmour, caused chaos within the ranks of first the Derry INLA and later the IRA. Alan Barker faces the wrath of the State for detailing how the war on terrorism in Britain's backyard resulted ultimately in those who waged that war left feeling betrayed and let down. Shadows will have an explosive impact on the Northern Ireland peace process and those who have shaped its direction for the last decade.