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Gerry Adams was rumoured to have set up an IRA gang for ambush by the SAS as they tried to blow up a police station, previously secret files have revealed.

Eight members of the Provisionals’ notorious East Tyrone Brigade were shot dead after they loaded a 200lb bomb onto a stolen digger and smashed through the gates of the RUC barracks in Loughgall, Co Armagh , in May 1987.

British Army special forces were lying in wait and killed them all, along with innocent bystander Anthony Hughes.

Declassified documents released through the National Archives in Dublin revealed ballistic tests on weapons found on the dead were used in 40-50 murders, including every republican killing in Fermanagh and Tyrone in 1987.

Three civilian contractors had been murdered in the counties that year along with officers in the RUC and Ulster Defence Regiment.

The rumour about Mr Adams was passed on to Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs by respected cleric Fr Denis Faul around three months after the Loughgall operation.

The priest said the theory doing the rounds was “the IRA team were set up by Gerry Adams himself”.

Fr Faul – who had been at school in St Patrick’s Academy, Dungannon, Co Tyrone, with Padraig McKearney, one of the IRA gang – was “intrigued” by the theory.

Mr Adams declined to comment on the contents of the file when contacted in recent days.

Fr Faul, a school teacher and chaplain in Long Kesh prison, added the rumour was two of the gang – Jim Lynagh, a councillor in Monaghan, and McKearney – “had threatened to execute Adams shortly before the Loughgall event”.

It was being claimed Lynagh and McKearney “disliked Adams’ political policy” and they were leaning towards Republican Sinn Fein.

Three days after the operation, Tanaiste and Foreign Affairs Minister Brian Lenihan wrote to Secretary of State Tom King urging him not to be triumphant over the killings.

Mr Lenihan said: “We asked you through the Secretariat to be mindful of the need to avoid any sense of triumphalism on the part of your authorities.

“It is necessary sensitivity be shown in regard to the funerals which are now taking place and the investigation of the events should pay particular attention to the question of whether such a large number of casualties, including the civilian casualty, could have been avoided.”

Mr King wrote back over a week later and revealed: “My advice is that that [IRA] group had at least 40-50 murders to their score over the years.”

Notes from briefings by the British Government to Irish officials in London revealed the security forces claimed the IRA fired first, the gun battle lasted two to three minutes, the SAS fired “no more rounds than were necessary” and every IRA weapon had been fired.

Along with Lynagh and McKearney, the IRA gang included Gerard O’Callaghan, 29, Tony Gormley, 25, Eugene Kelly, 25, Patrick Kelly, 30, Seamus Donnelly, 19, and 21-year-old Declan Arthurs.

The operation has long been associated with questions of an informer having tipped off the RUC and British Army.

(Image: Alan Lewis - PhotopressBelfast.co.uk)

In the same file, Bishop of Clogher Joseph Duffy told a diplomat Lynagh was a “madman” and was believed to have been responsible for 20 murders, including those of Sir Norman Stronge and his son in 1981.

The state papers also revealed Mr Adams was said to have been working on a peace strategy in early 1987.

The Sinn Fein leader was reported to have privately believed the IRA campaign would not succeed and terrorism was hampering his own personal ambitions and attempts to win support for the party at the ballot box.

The previously unseen report, released under the 30-year rule from the Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin, said Mr Adams viewed the armed struggle as a “political liability”.

The revelation was passed on to a diplomat by senior Catholic cleric Bishop Cahal Daly who was also reported to have spoken with “some vehemence of Adams’ deviousness and fundamental untrustworthiness”.

The confidential report, dated February 4, 1987 and compiled for officials in Iveagh House in Dublin, said: “The bishop has picked up a rumour Gerry Adams is currently trying to put together a set of proposals which would enable the Provisional IRA to call a halt to their paramilitary campaign.

“He has reached the view the armed struggle is getting nowhere, that it has become a political liability to Sinn Fein both North and South and that, as long as it continues, there is little chance he will be able to realise his own political ambitions.

“What he is believed to be working on is some form of declaration of intent to withdraw, with however long a timescale, on the part of the British Government.

“If he managed to negotiate something of this kind, the Provisional IRA would be able to lay down their arms without much loss of face, claiming they had achieved the breakthrough towards which all their efforts had been directed.”

Prior to this file being declassified it had been known that as far back as 1982 Mr Adams had contacts with the West Belfast Redemptorist priest, Fr Alec Reid, about a peace strategy.

Fr Reid, who died in 2013, also wrote a letter to Taoiseach Charles Haughey in May 1987 setting out Mr Adams’ terms for an IRA ceasefire. It would be another seven years before that cessation arrived.

In the file Bishop Daly also revealed he had refused to meet Mr Adams as president of Sinn Fein and, despite some “agonising”, he decided he would only have discussions with him as a “private individual”.

Bishop Daly believed if Sinn Fein won a Westminster seat for West Belfast it would be a “tragedy”.

The file also contained a report on a meeting Mr Adams had with Belfast lawyer PJ McGrory.

The solicitor told an Irish Government official the conversation showed the Sinn Fein leader privately disapproved of “individual IRA atrocities” but he would never say so in public.

Mr McGrory reported Mr Adams as saying: “The Army Council gives me only so much leeway.”

The lawyer also claimed the Sinn Fein leader had the support of “the overwhelming majority of Northern republicans” and the reality is that “whatever Adams says, the Provos will eventually do”.

Mr McGrory added Mr Adams was looking for the British to give a timescale for withdrawal from Northern Ireland “maybe 25, 40 or even 50 years” and if he found it acceptable he would be able to sell it to the Provos.