Ireland ‘hired British army intelligence officer’ after Rugby World Cup leaks
It’s been claimed that Ireland’s rugby government was so concerned about media leaks after a disastrous World Cup marketing campaign that it hired a former British naval intelligence officer to look for insects it thinks have been planted inside its Dublin headquarters.
A new book using Seán Hartnett, the pseudonym of a former navy spy, claims to expose the volume of the concern within the Irish Rugby Football Union over the Irish media’s potential to report on dressing-room rows and plans to update managers inside the 2000s. However, the IRFU responded that Hartnett’s claims have been “fictionalized.”
Hartnett stated he was embroiled in Irish rugby’s internal squabbles after Ireland failed to enhance into the last levels of the 2007 World Cup in France, a marketing campaign ending with a surprising 15-30 loss to Argentina Paris within the remaining group game.
In the e-book Client Confidential, Hartnett says the IRFU asked him to warn its board members that he might use expert monitoring gadgets to discover whether any of them had been covertly recording meetings with their cell phones.
When he became employed by the IRFU, the writer moved from a secret counter-terrorism navy unit in Northern Ireland to a private commercial espionage enterprise inside the Republic.
Hartnett also claims he was asked to instruct the newly appointed Irish head on Declan Kidney quickly. “Officially, the briefing changed, telling them about the dangers of information safety. Unofficially, it becomes to tell him that not all his enemies had been outside the walls of the IRFU HQ.”
The British Ministry of Defence tried to ban Hartnett’s preceding e-book detailing his role in the JACUNI (Joint Action Unit). This undercover British army force bugged and secretly filmed IRA and dissident republican suspects.
Hartnett, born in County Cork, says he was introduced to analyze leaks after the contents of an autopsy assembly about the 2007 World Cup, which took place in 2008 at the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin, had been reported “nearly word for word” via the Irish media. He concluded the leak on the Shelbourne Hotel was probably the result of recordings on a mobile cellphone.
Hartnett says Phillip Browne, the then chief government of the IRFU, became so involved that the assembly was bugged that he finally called upon Hartnett to search for listening devices and deploy other gadgets to look for viable covert mobile telephone recordings of their headquarters.
Hartnett says he tested security by effortlessly breaking into their HQ in Dublin’s Ballsbridge district. He took an employee’s electronic pass card and returned to the building through the underground automobile park. The former counter-terrorism operative says from there, he turned to walk instantly into the IRFU’s CEO’s office and rifled through.
“From there, I moved to a room around the corner where player records, including salaries, become overtly displayed. I now knew how much Paul O’Connell [the former Ireland captain] turned into earning. As I walked across the construction that morning, selecting up facts as I went, no longer one single person requested who I changed into or what I turned into doing.”
After issuing his safety report, Hartnett says he addressed IRFU board individuals, telling them the following press leak would be investigated. “Before this meeting began, I did a full sweep of this room … If each person a lot activates a cell telephone, I’ll realize about it.”
He claims he seems he got from Irish rugby bosses were “less than high-quality; in reality, they had been downright adverse.”
An IRFU spokesman said Hartnett had “fictionalized” their dealings with a good and credible hazard assessment employer. The IRFU hired an employer, RMI, to ” conduct an extensive-ranging danger assessment of the then newly occupied IRFU headquarters constructing, IT systems, in lodging, assembly centers being utilized by the Irish crew and IRFU.”