James Andrew Hanna (c. 1947 – 1 April 1974), also known as Red Setter,[1] was a senior member of the Northern Irish loyalist paramilitary organisation, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) until he was shot dead by his subordinates, allegedly for being a criminal informant for British military intelligence.
Tiernan has also alleged that Hanna's primary handlers were four British Army Intelligence Corps officers, who frequently visited his home in Lisburn.
[3] He joined the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) on an unknown date, although he had come to prominence in the gun battles that took place between the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and UVF that took place during the early 1970s at Springmartin Road (an interface marking the approximate boundary between the loyalist Highfield estate area of the Greater Shankill and the republican Ballymurphy/New Barnsley areas).
These bombings were carried out on 1 December 1972 and 20 January 1973 and caused explosions near Liberty Hall on Eden Quay and Sackville Place, in the city centre, leaving a total of three people dead and 144 injured.
These men were frequent visitors to Hanna's home in Lisburn and they brought him to Army Headquarters for regular briefings on how to conduct the UVF campaign.
Mitchell further explained that Hanna's wife Susan unsuccessfully tried to persuade him to emigrate to the United States with the aim of removing him from the paramilitary violence of The Troubles and his equally dangerous association as an informant for the British Army.
Tiernan conducted an interview with Cathal Goulding, the former Chief of Staff of the Official IRA before his death in 1998 and the following allegation was made in regards to Hanna: Throughout 1972/73 he [Goulding] and a number of his Official IRA colleagues held a series of meetings with UVF men, both in Belfast and Dublin, to discuss mutual working-class issues such as poverty, unemployment and bad housing.
He said Army Intelligence officers he was in contact with in the North had asked him to put the proposition to us as they were anxious to bring about a situation in the South where the Dublin government would be forced to introduce internment.
It is possible it was a reference to the Garda officer in Drogheda who took note of the 20 January 1973 bomb car's registration number as it passed through on the way to Dublin where it detonated in Sackville Place, killing one man.
[7] A fortnight after this Myers arranged for Hanna and Mitchell to attend a meeting at Lough Sheelin with Provisional IRA Army Council members Dáithí Ó Conaill and Brian Keenan.