It was a little reminiscent of that scene in The Godfather when Al Pacino leaves a "mediation" meeting with his father's would-be killers to go to the lavatory in an Italian restaurant in New York chosen for peace talks aimed at averting an all out war. Unknown to those he is dining with the Corleone family have hidden a gun taped to the back of a toilet cistern.
The Real IRA took similar security measures to ensure that the Guardian received answers to a series of questions we had posed to the terror group. This had been the product of several months of contacts through intermediaries who contacted Real IRA members with a view to establishing a link.
It is the first time the terror group has spoken directly to a national UK newspaper.
In our final meeting at a location near the border in northwest Ulster the Guardian was advised to go into a public toilet and search around the back of the bowl for something. A USB memory stick was found wrapped up inside a surgical glove presumably to ensure that those who had passed it on left no finger prints on the device.
The move reflects how security conscious the republican dissidents have become when dealing with the media. This is in part due to an incident several years ago when the Garda Síochána arrested a number of suspected dissidents along with a BBC camera crew in Co Donegal.
The terror group's representative then suggested that the device be plugged into a laptop computer and a file containing a very detailed list of answers from the Real IRA's leadership be copied and pasted.
After the written answers were copied the device was taken out of the laptop, with the surgical glove still covering the USB stick. It was then handed over to someone who had their backs to the Guardian and presumably then taken away and destroyed.
Shortly afterwards the Real IRA representative left the location without another word. At no time during our meeting did the Real IRA representative indicate who they were or where they came from. Nor had the Guardian ever encountered him before. The one striking aspect of this encounter was that the person the Real IRA sent to talk to the Guardian was articulate, thoughtful and politically tuned-in. In our brief discussion they also talked about the latest Eta ceasefire in Spain and the political impact of the public sector cuts being imposed on Northern Ireland by Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition.
Irish trade unionists have warned that a savage cost cutting programme in the north of Ireland could create a new underclass and increase the ranks of the young unemployed. The unions have also issued a warning that such a well of disaffected, alienated young people – particularly in the nationalist community – will be fertile recruiting territory for republican dissidents. In our brief but illuminating conversation the Real IRA leadership's go-between did not disagree with that analysis.
