Author and journalist Joe Tiernan claims that Cleary was part of the three-man IRA unit that ambushed and killed part-time Ulster Defence Regiment ( UDR ) corporal Robert McConnell in the garden of his home at Tullyvallen , near Newtownhamilton . Cleary and his team hid in the bushes and when McConnell appeared , Cleary shot him twice in the head , killing him . McConnell had allegedly been a member of both the UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade and the Glenanne gang , both of which carried out sectarian killings . In 1993 Yorkshire Television aired a programme , '' The Hidden Hand : The Forgotten Massacre '' , which implicated McConnell in the 1974 Dublin car bombings . The narrator also claimed McConnell was an Intelligence Corps agent with links to Captain Robert Nairac . RUC Special Patrol Group officer John Weir affirmed this in an affidavit and named McConnell as the perpetrator of a series of sectarian attacks . He also alleged that McConnell had been set up by the Intelligence Corps who passed on confidential information about McConnell to the IRA , through Nairac , in an attempt to infiltrate the organisation . Upon receiving this information , the IRA ordered the execution of McConnell
Dublin car bombings
Dublin and Monaghan bombings
Peter Cleary