Word: lennons
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...Them On. A native of Newry in County Down, Lennon, 30, told the N.C.C.L. that he had been approached by two Scotland Yard detectives one day last April when he was leaving a London hospital where his wife was being treated for a brain tumor. The detectives knew about his wife's illness ("All the boys at the Yard are sympathetic," said one). They also knew that his sister Bernadette was active in politics in Newry, and showed him photos of a 1969 civil rights demonstration in Ulster during which Lennon had helped to throw metal crowd-control barricades...
After the detectives threatened to arrest both him and his sister, Lennon agreed to work as an undercover agent for $50 a month. He was told to get into the branch of Sinn Fein (the I.R. A.'s political arm) in Luton, a north London industrial suburb. More specifically, he was to do his drinking at a pub called The Foresters, where he met several Irish militants. "I was told to get in on everything they were up to," Lennon recalled. "I cannot remember the exact words [the detectives] used, but one of them said that I should...
Eventually, Lennon helped form a unit with four I.R.A. sympathizers. "It was a unit of nothing specifically," Lennon said. "This was not an official branch of the military wing of the I.R.A. No one in Ireland was aware that there was a group of this nature in Luton. We had no real plan, although we decided to organize to get weapons. We managed to get some old shotguns. They were bloody antiques...
...reported regularly by phone to his contact, Scotland Yard Detective Inspector Ron Wicken. Said Lennon: "He was kept aware at every stage of the group's activities." One such activity was an abortive payroll heist at a sewage works, which went awry when the payroll messenger did not show up. Later the group planned to raise money for the cause by staging another payroll robbery at a construction site. One of the unit's members, Pat O'Brien, was on holiday in Ireland, and Lennon was ordered by Wicken to steer clear of the caper. The three...
...told to lie low for a couple of weeks and carry on as normal, which I did," Lennon related. When O'Brien, 18, returned from Ireland, he "said he was thinking about how he could get them out. He was only a young kid and a bit of a romantic." Inspector Wicken was taken with the idea, on the theory that this might widen the net: "He told me to play along with it." In January Lennon and O'Brien drove to Birmingham to reconnoiter the Winson Green prison, where one of the prisoners was held. "I told...