so how are you able to get it to martin mcguinness's head?e in the early 80s there was the election and anybody that was anybody, not even the people in sinn fein, were recruited to help with voting and stealing votes and stuff to get this man elected. so that was my introduction to working with sinn fein people. back in derry, a year later, the british government decided that they would be a northern ireland assembly and it was decided that martin mcguinness would stand. so they needed canvas teams, they needed people who knew what they needed people who knew what they were doing. i had experience from bobby sands's election. from there i was recruited as one of the people, it was myjob to get martin mcguinness elected to the northern assembly in 1982 and even my handlers told me, and i have read it in the book, they said to me, look, it is vital that he gets elected to stop you do whatever you need to do. now, when you tell me that, that your british intelligence handlers we re your british intelligence handlers were telling you to ensure t

martin mcguinness had authorisation from the army council, way back as early as the mid—70s, to dealle who were looking for an alternative way to solve this problem. and do you think that's why the british saw mcguinness as somebody that ultimately, from a very early stage, they could do business with? yes, of course they could. you see, you have to understand something. there's a famous quote. and you think, well, why were they trying to deal with mcguinness? gerry adams was the man. well, in weston park in 2001, all the parties were gathered there, including tony blair, and mark durkan, the leader of the sdlp at the time, complained about the amount of attention that martin was getting and he told them, he says, "listen, mark, you've got no guns". the most famous quote that i rememberfrom mcguinness was, "the ballot box will never deliver our freedom, only the cutting—edge of the ira will bring our freedom". that's absolutely right. in 1982, when we were trying to get him elected, we used to put up posters, martin's photograph was on it, saying, "we will never achieve united irelan