Table Of ContentMichael
collins
and the anglo-IrIsh War
Related Potomac titles
Flawed Patriot: The Rise and Fall of CIA Legend Bill Harvey
by Bayard Stockton
Ireland’s Most Wanted™: The Top 10 Book of Celtic Pride,
Fantastic Folklore, and Oddities of the Emerald Isle
by Brian M. Thomsen
BRitain’s
counteRinsuRgency
FailuRe
Michael
collins
and the anglo-IrIsh War
J. B. e. hIttle
Potomac Books
Washington, D.C.
Copyright © 2011 by Potomac Books, Inc.
Published in the United States by Potomac Books, Inc. All rights reserved. No
part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written
permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in
critical articles and reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hittle, J. B. E.
Michael Collins and the Anglo-Irish War : Britain’s counterinsurgency failure /
J.B.E. Hittle. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-59797-535-3 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-61234-128-6 (electronic edition)
1. Collins, Michael, 1890–1922—Military leadership. 2. Revolutionaries—Ire-
land—Biography. 3. Ireland—History—War of Independence, 1919–1921. 4. Irish
Republican Army—History. 5. Insurgency—Ireland—History—20th century. 6.
Great Britain. Army—History—20th century. 7. Counterinsurgency—Ireland—
History—20th century. I. Title.
DA965.C6H58 2011
941.5082’1—dc23
2011019988
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper that meets the
American National Standards Institute Z39-48 Standard.
Potomac Books
22841 Quicksilver Drive
Dulles, Virginia 20166
First Edition
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my parents
This page intentionally left blank
contents
Foreword by Michelle Van Cleave ix
Preface xiii
Acknowledgments xxi
Introduction xxiii
1 England’s Troubled Colony 1
2 Colonial Security Policy 10
3 The Irish Nationalist 33
4 The Phoenix 47
5 Revolution in Earnest 60
6 In the Shadow of Gunmen 72
7 Spies at the Window 91
8 Unification by Force 113
9 Within the Gates 141
10 Endgame 185
11 Conclusion 216
Appendix A. Sinn Fein’s Suspicious Cousins 239
Appendix B. On His Majesty’s Secret Service 245
Appendix C. British Intelligence Officers and Other Victims,
November 21, 1920 251
Notes 253
Bibliography 283
Index 289
About the Author 297
This page intentionally left blank
foreWord
In 2005, when I was serving as head of U.S. counterintelligence, I traveled
to London for my first meeting with the director of the British Secret Ser-
vice (MI5). She received me at her formal office, a well-appointed room
with one white orchid on her desk, that provided the perfect backdrop for
intimate conversations. There was much to talk about. The U.S. Depart-
ment of Homeland Security was barely two years old, and already Con-
gress was deliberating yet another major governmental reorganization:
the creation of a new director of national intelligence. What would all of
this mean for American intelligence and counterintelligence?
As we were saying our good-byes, she handed me the following
passage:
We trained hard but it seemed that every time we were beginning
to form up in teams we would be reorganised. I was to learn later
in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganising, and
a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress
while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralisation.1
Her Service had come by those lessons the hard way.
“The Troubles” marked a pivotal point in the history of MI5 and Spe-
cial Branch, and a time when Britain paid the price for its flirtation with
an umbrella homeland security office. In the United States, we are still
[ ix ]
[ x ] FoRewoRd
reaching for better answers to protect against threats to our homeland
and to provide the intelligence insights essential to the nation’s security
and the advancement of freedom, prosperity, and peace. Well-intentioned
proponents of reforming U.S. domestic intelligence along the lines of “the
British model,” which owes so much to the distinctive experiences of
the Anglo-Irish War, would do well first to understand what in fact that
means.
Even today, nine years after its creation, the U.S. Department of
Homeland Security and its intelligence-related responsibilities remain
something presumed (“of course the Homeland Security Department has
an intelligence mission!”) rather than defined, i.e., what is the department
supposed to do by way of collecting, analyzing, and disseminating do-
mestic intelligence and threat information? Ask the congressional over-
sight committees, the director of national intelligence, the secretary of the
Homeland Department, CIA, and the FBI, and you are likely to get as
many different answers as there are voices to be heard.
Indeed, the history of Great Britain’s security services in the post–
World War I years and contemporary American experience in the twenty-
first century share at least one central lesson in common: new organiza-
tions are no substitute for clarity of thought on what needs to be done and
how to do it. Read through the current organizational documents and
directives of the director of national intelligence, and you will unearth a
labyrinth of reporting responsibilities and overlapping jurisdictions that
leave even the most careful student wondering, “Who’s on first?” On that
point, one might cite yet another insightful organizational theorist who
cautioned, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’re likely to wind
up somewhere else.”2
As J. B. E. Hittle makes abundantly clear, Michael Collins never had
that problem. Not only did he know where he was going, but that knowl-
edge was the key to his charismatic leadership as well as his accomplish-
ments as an intelligence strategist. What happened next is an engrossing
case study of an intelligence/counterintelligence war.
Counterintelligence is a contingent discipline, meaning that in or-
der to understand and evaluate counterintelligence activities, one must
start with an understanding and evaluation of the intelligence activities
that are meant to be countered. In other words, one needs to understand
British intelligence and security in order to understand the Irish counter-
