The Nazi hunter and the lost IRA documentary

Image caption, Zwy Aldouby (left) interviewing IRA member Rita O’Hare

A Nazi hunter with ties to Israeli intelligence was given access to some of the IRA’s most sensitive secrets just when the group believed it was about to drive Britain out of Northern Ireland.

An upcoming BBC documentary follows the story of Zwy Aldouby, who was monitored by the CIA and was once jailed for attempting to kidnap a Nazi in Spain.

He then turned up as the unlikely director of an American documentary about the IRA that, once completed, disappeared for almost 50 years.

Former IRA members who have spoken to the BBC say it was a huge mistake to allow Aldouby to meet most of the group’s leadership at the time.

Making an IRA documentary

Zwy Aldouby appeared in Ireland in March 1972 as the director of an US crew making a film about the IRA called “The Secret Army” – despite having no apparent track record as a filmmaker.

The team had unprecedented access to the IRA at a time when it was carrying out daily attacks and many in the organisation believed Britain could be forced to withdraw.

Image caption, Zwy Aldouby (right) was the unlikely director of the US documentary

The 1972 film recorded IRA members planning and carrying out attacks while unmasked.

The subsequent disappearance of the potentially incriminating footage is the subject of a feature-length BBC documentary, also called “The Secret Army”, which is appearing on the BBC iPlayer on 27 March.

While filming between March and June 1972, Aldouby met and filmed the majority of the IRA’s secret leadership, known as the Army Council.

Also among those filmed handling guns and bombs was Martin McGuinness, then a rising young IRA leader.

Decades later, as a Sinn Féin politician he became the deputy first minister of Northern Ireland and, in that capacity, met Queen Elizabeth on several occasions. He died in 2017.

Image source, PA Media

Image caption, Martin McGuinness met the Queen for the first time in June 2012

Former IRA members who took part in the film and spoke to the BBC said they were unaware of Aldouby’s intelligence connections.

“I find myself wishing that I really knew more about my own father,” his son, Ilan Aldouby told the BBC.

“He’s really – I’m tempted to say, like Austin Powers, the international man of mystery.”

Who was Zwy Aldouby?

Born Herbert Dubinsky in Romania in 1931, Aldouby lost family members to the Nazis but escaped to Palestine after the Second World War.

There he joined the Haganah, the paramilitary organisation fighting the British to set up the state of Israel.

“He was in the Palmach,” Israeli historian Prof Michael Bar-Zohar told the BBC.

“The Palmach were the shock, the elite troops of the Haganah, and he was commander of a small unit, as far as I know.

“He was one of these guys who were taken out of high school at the age of 17 and recruited to the army in order to fight in the War of Independence, and he was very proud of that.”

According to declassified American files, after Israel gained independence, Aldouby joined Shin Bet, the country’s internal intelligence agency.

Image caption, Aldouby is named in several declassified US government documents

A source later told the CIA that Aldouby was hunting former Nazis as part of a Jewish group based in Vienna “under the guidance of Israeli intelligence”.

Nazi war criminals were tried in Germany and Israel after the war.

Aldouby later became a journalist and moved to the US in the 1950s.

In 1961, he came up with an audacious plan – to kidnap a Belgian Nazi Leon Degrelle.

Degrelle had been sentenced to death in his own country but was living openly in Spain, under the protection of the dictatorship there.

“Degrelle was called the Quisling of Belgium,” said Prof Bar-Zohar.

“He was the top Nazi official in Belgium.

“And according to the information which was published, Hitler said that `if I had a son I would have loved him to be like you’.”

Image caption, Leon Degrelle (left) pictured with Adolf Hitler

The plot failed when Aldouby and an accomplice were captured with guns by Spanish police.

Aldouby spent the next three years in jail, with Israel denying being behind the plot.

The whole affair was monitored by US intelligence.

Long-time Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director J Edgar Hoover even sent a memo about Aldouby to his counterpart in the CIA, famed spy James Jesus Angleton.

Ireland and the IRA

Aldouby surfaced in Ireland at a key moment – just as Israel’s enemy in Libya, Colonel Muammar Gadaffi announced his support for the IRA.

Within a short time Libya was supplying weapons to men filmed by Aldouby.

“At that point Gaddafi was selling or giving arms to terrorists that were attacking Israel and Gaddafi was also giving arms to the IRA, and Israel at this point was in a very precarious state,” Ilan Aldouby said.

“So my father, if he worked with or collaborated with the Mossad, or Israeli intelligence, it would be a clear fit.”

Image caption, Ilan Aldouby said he wished he knew more about his father’s life

Prof Bar-Zorhar said that, from what he knew of Aldouby, Mossad wouldn’t have relied on him.

For their part, Mossad denied that he was a member of their organisation.

But Richard Kerr, a retired deputy director of the CIA, told the BBC team that Aldouby was “almost certainly” feeding intelligence to his former comrades.

“Mossad, they have long ties and connections,” Mr Kerr said.

“They maintain those. I don’t think many of them have left it totally.

“They’re still involved, supporting Israel.”

The Secret Army will be available on the BBC iPlayer on Wednesday, 27 March, and will be shown on BBC Two Northern Ireland. It will also be shown on BBC Four on 02 April.