Assume Nothing: The Stormont Spy Ring and a Murder That Still Haunts Northern Ireland

Image: BBC Press

By Jon Donnis

Assume Nothing: The Stormont Spy Ring is a new eight-part documentary series for BBC Sounds and BBC Radio Ulster that revisits one of the most unsettling stories to emerge from the post-conflict years in Northern Ireland.

At its centre is Denis Donaldson, a long-standing Sinn Féin figure who was exposed in 2005 as having worked as an informer for the police and MI5 for two decades. The revelation sent shockwaves through politics and republicanism alike. Months later, in 2006, Donaldson was found shot dead at a remote cottage in Donegal.

The series is narrated by actor Martin McCann, known for his role in Blue Lights, and begins not with the murder but with events leading up to it. It opens months earlier, when a break-in at the Belfast headquarters of Special Branch triggered a major criminal investigation. At the time, suspicion quickly fell on the IRA.

Police inquiries eventually led officers to Denis Donaldson's home, where they recovered material believed to have been taken from government offices. Some documents were missing or incomplete. Attempts by police to trace and recover them transformed what had been a covert inquiry into a full political crisis, one that threatened the stability of Stormont's power-sharing government.

Donaldson was arrested along with three others, accused of operating a republican spy ring at the heart of government. What followed was a complex and drawn-out legal process that ended in a way few expected. Prosecutors dropped all charges.

Soon after, Denis Donaldson publicly admitted that he had been passing information to the police and MI5. He then vanished from public life. He resurfaced months later living alone in a whitewashed stone cottage in rural Donegal. It was there that he was murdered.

In 2009, the Real IRA claimed responsibility for killing him, yet no one has ever been convicted. Two decades on, the case remains unresolved and surrounded by unanswered questions.

One possible piece of evidence continues to cast a long shadow. A journal Donaldson was believed to be writing around the time of his death is held by Irish police. His family has repeatedly sought its return, but without success.

The series draws on voices from journalists, members of the security services, and people with close knowledge of the events, piecing together a story that remains deeply contested and politically sensitive.

Assume Nothing: The Stormont Spy Ring is available now on BBC Sounds.