46 Facts About Colin Wallace

John Colin Wallace was born on June 1943 and is a British former member of Army Intelligence in Northern Ireland and a psychological warfare specialist.

Colin Wallace refused to become involved in the Intelligence-led 'Clockwork Orange' project, which was an attempt to smear various individuals including a number of senior British politicians in the early 1970s.

Colin Wallace was wrongly convicted of manslaughter in 1981, for which he spent six years in prison, until 1987.

The Court of Appeal heard that scientific evidence used to convict Colin Wallace was false and that the Home Office pathologist involved in the case admitted that he had received it from an anonymous American security source.

Colin Wallace was born in Randalstown, Northern Ireland, in 1943 and educated at Ballymena Academy.

Colin Wallace was initially commissioned into the Territorial Army in 1961, and later became a marksman in the Ulster Special Constabulary, or 'B Specials'.

Colin Wallace was seconded to the New Zealand SAS before working for British Intelligence as a psychological warfare officer.

Colin Wallace joined the Ministry of Defence on 15 March 1968 as an assistant information officer for the British Army at its Northern Ireland headquarters at Thiepval Barracks in Lisburn.

Colin Wallace became an established information officer from 14 December 1971, and a senior information officer with effect from 27 September 1974, having first held this latter post on temporary promotion from 1972.

Colin Wallace was undoubtedly permitted considerable latitude in regard to the manner in which he presented these themes in the course of his briefings and he participated in the dissemination of printed IP material.

In 1973 and 1974, Colin Wallace was involved with an operation called Clockwork Orange.

Colin Wallace alleges that this involved right-wing members of the security services in a disinformation campaign aimed not at paramilitary organisations in Northern Ireland, but at British MPs.

Colin Wallace was supported by a covert specialist military troop.

Colin Wallace told the reporters that he believed members of MI5 had been involved in a plot to undermine his Government.

Colin Wallace said that he had called in the head of MI6, Sir Maurice Oldfield, who told him that there was a section of MI5 that "was unreliable" and that he was "going to bring it out".

The information appears to bear a striking similarity to some of the material contained in the notes which Colin Wallace had been instructed two years earlier as part of the 'Clockwork Orange' project.

Colin Wallace was dropping it in and feeling his way.

On 21 February 2019, Colin Wallace wrote to the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Karen Bradley MP, and provided her with documentary evidence that three of the official inquiries into the abuses at Kincora had deliberately misled Parliament.

Colin Wallace queried why the investigations had failed to interview key, identified witnesses from the Intelligence Services.

Colin Wallace resigned from the Ministry of Defence in 1975 in order to avoid disciplinary action, ostensibly for privately briefing journalists with classified information.

Colin Wallace always claimed that this action was consistent with his secret duties as a member of the Intelligence Services and that the real reasons for his dismissal were related to his refusal to continue working on the Clockwork Orange project in October 1974, and his exposure of a child abuse scandal at the Kincora Boys' Home.

Colin Wallace claimed his allegations were blocked because the leading perpetrator was both a leading member of a loyalist paramilitary group and an undercover agent for MI5.

The government later admitted that Colin Wallace had the authority to take decisions on the release of classified information in support of psychological operations.

Colin Wallace pointed out that the man was "a known homosexual" who blackmailed people into homosexual activities which he himself initiated.

Several commentators have pointed to the coincidence that the events which led to Colin Wallace being wrongly convicted of manslaughter took place shortly after Kincora was finally exposed in the Irish Independent.

Colin Wallace then referred to a number of people as having been interviewed by British Army people for British military intelligence about McGrath and Kincora.

Colin Wallace had a encyclopaedic memory, which he occasionally refreshed with calls made on his personal scrambler telephone to the headquarters intelligence section a few floors above his office.

Colin Wallace lived in the Officers Mess and regarded himself as always on duty.

Colin Wallace had a knowledge of the Irish situation which was totally unique in the Headquarters and surpassed that even of most of the Intelligence Branch.

In 1980, shortly after the Kincora story appeared in the press, Colin Wallace was arrested and subsequently convicted of the manslaughter of the husband of one of his colleagues.

Later that night, Colin Wallace was alleged to have dumped the body in the River Arun.

Colin Wallace served six years in prison, from 1981 to 1987.

Colin Wallace himself suggested that Lewis had been murdered by 'rivals in the antiques trade' and that the police had suppressed evidence to that effect.

In June 1998, a former Special Branch officer who was familiar with the Colin Wallace case wrote to Paul Foot saying:.

In 1987 Wallace appeared on the first programme of the Channel 4 discussion series After Dark alongside Clive Ponting, T E Utley, Peter Hain and others.

The Secretary of State must know that the piddling little inquiry that he has set up is to determine whether Mr Colin Wallace was fairly or unfairly dismissed in the light of the new evidence - but that just will not do.

The Armed Forces Minister, Mr Archie Hamilton admitted that several key allegations consistently made by Colin Wallace were in fact true.

The inquiry undertaken by Calcutt confirmed that Colin Wallace had, indeed, been working for the intelligence services during the 1970s and that his enforced resignation from the Ministry of Defence had been made on the basis of a false job description designed to conceal his covert role in psychological warfare.

Evidence from Colin Wallace was used by the Barron Report, an Irish government inquiry into the 1974 Dublin and Monaghan bombings.

In person, Colin Wallace comes across as intelligent, self-assured, and possessed of a quiet yet unwavering moral conviction.

Colin Wallace remains intensely loyal to his country and to the Army: insofar as he has a quarrel, it is with individuals rather than the institutions concerned.

Colin Wallace says he believes that much of the propaganda work undertaken by Information Policy was justifiable in the interests of defeating subversives and promoting a political solution to the Troubles.

The intelligence world in which Colin Wallace operated in Northern Ireland was graphically described by Lord Stevens, former Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.

Former members of the Special Forces admit that Colin Wallace worked with them as far afield as Berlin and the Oman during the Cold War, but the Ministry of Defence and the Intelligence Services still try to distance themselves from what Colin Wallace was doing in Northern Ireland.

Colin Wallace had been part of the Army team preparing for the Widgery Tribunal into the Bloody Sunday killings of protesters in Derry, and in 2002 he testified at the Saville Inquiry into the events.

Colin Wallace was terrific - way ahead of us all in his knowledge and his readiness to work.