THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY

John Ware questions

the credibility of Colin Wallace

COLIN Wallace, the former army in- formation officer who the Government now admits was engaged in disinformation in Northern Ireland in the early Seventies, is having a very good run. Many of those that knew him then believe he is a 'Walter Mitty' — a kind of military groupie. But since the Government's admission, he has begun to acquire an aura of serious mys- tery, and the status of a martyr and a saint. Mr Wallace says the Government has still not conceded his real role which he says went far beyond spreading black propaganda about paramilitaries and local politicians. Mr Wallace claims he was invited to become part of an MI5 attempt to sabotage Harold Wilson's 1974 Labour government; that since 1972 he had been pressing the authorities to expose a homosexual ring at the Kincora Boys Home in Belfast; that in the first six months of 1975 the security forces assassin- ated 35 Catholics either directly or in league with loyalist terrorists; and that his conviction for manslaughter in 1981 was a set-up by the intelligence services because he knew too much.

Mr Wallace's most vociferous and uncri- tical supporters have been Ken Livingstone MP, and former Private Eye colleagues, Paul Foot and Richard Ingrams. They are confident they have got to grips with Mr Wallace's subterranean mind even though they have never worked in Northern Ire- land. Colleagues who have expressed more scepticism (mostly those who have worked in Northern Ireland) have been accused of either working for or being duped by the intelligence services. Even the BBC seems now to have accepted him. A recent edition of BBC 2's Fifth Column gave him ten minutes of unchallenged time to repeat his claims.

The question of Mr Wallace's credibility has also earned the partial support of the Press Council under Mr Louis Blom- Cooper QC. Recently the Council upheld a complaint by him against a collection of articles in the Independent mostly written by their respected Ireland correspondent David McKittrick, who confirmed that Mr Wallace had been a black propagandist but cast doubt on his claims to have tried to expose Kincora, or that he had known of so many covert assassinations by the secur- ity forces.

Here I should declare an interest. One of the articles was written by me. Since it is almost impossible to get to the bottom of Mr Wallace's allegations because they re- late to the world of intelligence in Ulster where hard fact is submerged in an Irish bog, I chose one of his non-intelligence claims as a general test of his ability — his parachuting exploits.

Mr Wallace claims to have been a display parachutist at public events with two army teams called the Phantoms, whom he says he commanded, and the Black Knights. Now that may seem a trivial point, but it is central to the allegation that he's a Walter Mitty.

On the face of it Mr Wallace's parachut- ing claims are plausible because he was indeed issued with a `D' or display licence by the British Parachute Association in June 1974. However, because the licence system was open to abuse in the early Seventies whereby the requisite number of parachuting manoeuvres entered in a log- book were not always properly checked, we asked Mr Wallace to produce his log-book so we could check it. He said he couldn't find it. So we asked him to provide dates and places where he had display-jumped. Two, he said, 'stand in my mind': the Phantoms at a children's party in Millisle in Co. Down in August 1973; and the Black Knights at a rugby club fete in Lisburn, Co. Antrim, in 1972. He also recalled jumping with the Black Knights in Banbridge, Co. Down.

The Belfast Telegraph does indeed have a picture for the Millisle event captioned: `The Parachutists under Captain Colin Wallace arrive with birthday cards for all the children at the service'. Mr Wallace called himself 'captain' because he was an acting part-time captain in the locally recruited Ulster Defence Regiment.

Nevertheless we were suspicious because the Millisle, Lisburn and Banbridge events all took place before 1974 when Mr Wal- lace got his display licence. So I traced one of the soldiers who jumped that day, a young lieutenant called Arthur Gibson, who found his log-book recording the jump. He said that he, not Wallace, led the display and added, 'I am quite certain Wallace did not jump with us on that day. He may have been commentating on the ground. Wallace used to organise the displays, for example liaising with the local landowners. While I was in Ulster I did about 60 jumps and I never saw Wallace jump once.'

In support of his claim to have jumped with the Black Knights at Lisburn, Mr Wallace pointed to a picture in a local paper, the Ulster Star, of a parachutist whose face was obscured by goggles and helmet jumping out of an aircraft to advertise the team's forthcoming display. It was impossible to tell whether this was Mr Wallace, who again was described as the team leader. The caption said, 'The point of no return for team leader Colin Wallace as he walks on air thousands of feet above the countryside.'

Mr Wallace told us a photographer from the Ulster Star had taken the picture over Long Kesh. The paper's photographer at the time was Mervyn Dowling, who recalls taking a picture of Mr Wallace in jumping gear at Long Kesh — but on the ground, not over it.

We also traced the soldier who led the display at Lisburn, then a captain, now a colonel. He said, 'I am quite certain Wallace did not jump with us on that day. I recall him on the ground being there to meet us. I also remember jumping at Banbridge and Wallace did not jump with us then either.'

None of the members of the Black Knights that we found remembered Mr Wallace jumping with them. No one doubts that Mr Wallace performed some parachute jumps. The question is whether he embroidered that fact with his claims of army display-jumping at public events.

Most of the evidence challenging this was laid before Mr Louis Blom-Cooper and his Press Council colleagues. They did not give it any weight and the Council censured the Independent for disbelieving Mr Wallace's statement that he was an experienced parachutist.

There is all the difference in the world between being a parachute jumper — even an experienced one — and the derring-do of free-fall display with professional sol- diers. There is no comparison between the black propaganda campaign Mr Wallace ran for local Ulster consumption and the authorised MI5 programme he now claims to have been drawn into to destabilise Harold Wilson's government in London. The same goes for Mr Wallace's claim to have alerted the authorities and five jour- nalists to the Kincora scandal. None of the journalists says he did. All they recall is Mr Wallace mentioning a homosexual called McGrath who was close to a politician called Paisley. In other words, Mr Wallace was just doing his job — smearing the locals.

Perhaps some of Mr Wallace's claims will turn out to be true. My guess is that he is having the time of his life playing the field, just as he did 16 years ago in Northern Ireland. For Cohn Wallace's parachuting exploits may just offer a clue to his real modus operandi drawn from his days as a government disinformation agent: that the best propaganda must contain at least a grain of truth. If that is so, will the Wallace inquiries by David Calcutt QC and the Defence Committee pick it up? The point has already been lost on a growing number of uncritical and unsceptical MPs and journalists, and even the Press Council itself.