who self-funded a series of books and pamphlets about the alleged ancient origins of Ulster people as a separate ethnic group to the rest of the Irish. By 1979 he had emerged as the leading figure within the UDA and the organisation's most charismatic senior member. According to the Belfast Telegraph, he drew up a 'shopping list' of targets (mostly members of Sinn Féin and other republican groups) that he felt the UDA should eliminate. Information about the individuals had been supplied to the UDA by individuals within the security forces who leaked the information. McMichael hand-picked his own squad for this task and throughout 1980 a number of the targets were assassinated. The new commando unit, which was known internally in the UDA as the Ulster Defence Force, carried out four murders in 1979, three of which were from the "shopping list". McMichael then turned his attention to members of the Relatives' Action Committee and on his orders Irish Independence Party leader John Turnley and Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) activist Miriam Daly, both prominent within this republican prisoners' rights group, were killed. Rodney McCormick, a less prominent IRSP member, was killed in Larne soon afterwards before McMichael's team struck again, killing Irish republican Ronnie Bunting and his friend Noel Lyttle at Bunting's Turf Lodge home on 15 October 1980. However the attacks came to an end in 1981, following an ambush by the Parachute Regiment after a failed attempt by the UFF on the lives of former MP Bernadette Devlin McAliskey and her husband, Michael McAliskey, at their home in Coalisland, County Tyrone, during which the three-man unit (including Ray Smallwoods who acted as the getaway driver) were captured and later imprisoned. Devlin McAliskey, who was shot seven times in front of her children, survived, as did her husband. McMichael himself was arrested in April 1981 in the wake of a Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) raid on UDA headquarters. He was brought before the court as it was alleged he and his men had organised the McAliskey shootings. Raymond Murray in his book SAS in Ireland claimed that the McAliskey shootings were planned in a room above McMichael's "Admiral Benbow"pub. Ultimately charges relating to McMichael's involvement, as well as his possession of classified information in the form of the details of republican activists leaked to him, were dropped along with similar charges against fellow arrestees Sammy McCormick, John