By Sean O’Driscoll

A BRITISH agent who infiltrated the IRA has claimed that his British agent handlers sent him to New York to buy sophisticated bomb making equipment for the IRA.

The agent, who goes by the pseudonym Kevin Fulton, also claims that he arranged to have a prominent Republican in Queens, New York deported on behalf of British agents.

He made his claims in this month’s edition of the U.S. current affairs magazine, Atlantic.

The magazine’s reporter, Matthew Teague, said he had verified details of Fulton’s trip to New York and was satisfied that he was telling the truth after verifying details with the FBI and deportation records.

The interview comes just as the Irish government launched an independent public inquiry into the murder of two Northern Ireland police officers in 1989, based on Fulton’s claims that there was collusion between the IRA and rogue members of the Irish Republic’s police force, the Gardai.

Fulton’s name also featured very prominently in the public inquiry into the Omagh bombing in 1998, in which 29 people were killed in a Real IRA attack.

Fulton claimed at the time that he had met some of the bomb makers as they were preparing the bomb and had alerted his British intelligence handlers.

In the new interview, which took place in London, Fulton claims that the British wanted to keep his cover in the IRA by encouraging him to make more sophisticated and deadly bombs.

He said that they arranged for him to travel to New York to buy infrared triggers for bombs and that they arranged for him to stay at the Murray Hill Inn in Midtown Manhattan.

While there, he was instructed to set up a man living in Queens for deportation as he was considered a danger by the British.

Teague, known for his writing in GQ and Atlantic, said in an online interview that he was initially suspicious of Fulton’s claims.

“As a reporter, I kind of kept one eyebrow cocked until I started tracking down the details. And every single detail checked out, down to the most minute peripheral details, such as his trip to New York. Everything was confirmed,” he said.

Teague said he checked out the Murray Hill Inn where Fulton claims to have stayed, and also confirmed some details with an FBI agent.

INS records also showed that the Queens man was deported at the exact time Fulton claimed it had happened.

“He referred to an FBI agent as being involved. So I called the agent and he confirmed his involvement, although he couldn’t discuss details or accuracy...He (also) described the deportation of an Irish man in Queens which had resulted from a meeting with him during that trip.

“And the INS records show that the man was deported exactly the way Fulton described. So everything sort of triangulates. It really happened,” Teague said.

The revelations could throw some light on Fulton’s credibility, as his claims of garda collusion as the basis for The Smithwick Tribunal into the murders of Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Robert Buchanan, which opened in Dublin this week.

The pair were murdered in Armagh after traveling back from Louth in the Irish Republic, where they had a meeting with senior Gardai. Fulton is adamant that there was Garda collusion in the killing.