The British anti-terrorist police assassinate a well known member of the Irish resistance in order to blame it on members of his own organization to create an internal fight. But they also kill an American journalist who is along for the ride. Now, more than ever, they need to blame the IRA. An investigator is sent from London to "find out the truth." Unfortunately for him he is an honest cop who wrongly believes he bosses really do want him to find the truth. When he gets close he is warned to back off. He refuses and the same people out to destroy the IRA set out to destroy him. Too late he learns pawns are not allowed to have the courage of their convictions.

One one level, this is a good movie, with excellent acting by McDormand and Brian Cox. Cox reminds me sometimes of Brando and other times Richard Burton. In this, he is more Burton-esquire and very believable as a fair minded investigator who gets into something very deep.It's that "something" that bothers me. Loach is a socialist who throws in a lot of leftie-conspiracy stuff as fact. Here he takes shots at Thatcher, Kissinger, the US, etc., and the documentary style of the film might let these opinions pass as fact.Made in '90, it is a relevant look at how a democratic government should deal with terrorism. The British then were dealing with many of the issues we face now in the US.

***SPOILERS*** Top notch political thriller set in Northern Ireland that goes well beyond the conflict in that troubled British controlled province and into the heart and policy making of the British Government itself. After American human rights activist Paul Sullivan, Brad Dourif, was gunned down together with his Irish contact Molloy, Brian McCann,by the British police outside of Dungannon an official inquiry is brought in on the case with high ranking British law enforcement officers Kerrigan & Maxwell, Brian Cox & John Benfield.Kerrigan getting in touch with Sullivan's friend and colleague in the American human rights group Ingrid Jessner, Frances McDormand,finds out from her that Sullivan together with Molloy were to meet with this mysterious stranger Harris, Maurice Roeves. The meeting with Harris was to be about the authenticity of a tape he had made that was in the possession of Sullivan that seemed to have disappeared from the shooting sight.Jessner get's some information from a secret I.R.A, which it turns out that the late Molloy was a member of,source that the tape contained such explosive information that if made public can unseat the Thatcher regime and bring a number of very high government officials to the bar of justice on charges of treason against the state. Jessner together with Kerrigan gets in touch with the author, Harris, of the incriminating tape at a secret I.R.A meeting hall in Belfast. It turns out that Harris is not only British but a former member of the super-secret UK intelligence agency M15. Harris tells both Jessner and Kerrigan that the deaths of Sullivan and Molloy wasn't, as the official report states, self-defense on the polices part but cold-blooded murder. Harris goes on with what was on the missing tape that Sullivan had on him, that was not in the report. Harris revelations are so shocking that it get's the usual by the book Kerrigan to not only risk his career as a police officer but his life to uncover it. Top members of the British Government had created a shadow/agency answerable only to themselves. This secret agency helped to destroy the previous Edward Heath left to center Conservative Party that controlled Britian during the 1970's and had it replaced, by defeating Heath in the 1975 Conservative party's election, with the ultra-right wing Conservative Margerat Tatcher who's completely under their control. Forming secret death-squads these usurpers behind the throne, or Tatcher Regime, have been pulling off a number of political assassinations all over Britian, as well as in the Irish Republic. Their main purpose was to silence anyone they feel threatened by and if murder doesn't do the trick, like in the case of Officer Kerrigan, personal or political blackmail will.The movie "Secret Agenda" get's a bit unbelievable with Kerrigan agreeing to go all the way in retrieving the important tape, that Harris duplicated, with Jessner. Kerrigan in effect chickens out at the last moment and leaves her out in the cold as he goes to his superiors in the British Police. Kerrigan tells them everything about his and Jessner's, who Kerrigan kept in the dark about all this, upcoming meeting with Harris who's to hand over the secret tape to them the next day at Dublin's O'Connell Bridge!Jessner's meeting with Harris turns into a disaster with him being grabbed by M15 agents who were tipped off, in his being unknowingly double-crossed, by a very naive Kerrigan who should have known better! Beaten and handcuffed Harris is quickly put in a van where he's later shot and killed and his murder made to look like the work of the I.R.A. During all this confusion Jessner gets away from the perusing M15 agents and is later confronted at the Belfast Airport, where she plans to get out of the country, by Kerrigan. Asking Jessner if she has the tape that Harris was to give to her Kerrigan get an unequivocal no answer from her and as both he and his partner Maxwell leave and Jessner goes on her flight back to the US the film goes into freeze-frame and ends. Irgrid Jessner learned a lot from what she herself saw in Northern Ireland and heard from Harris & Co. The most important revelation that Jessner got from all that is never to trust anybody in government, including the very helpful at times Kerrigan. Jessner in fact did have Harris' tape and listening to it in her car on the way to the airport made up her mind that the British people had been hoodwinked long enough. Whats more they deserves to know the truth about what their government is doing in their name and will make sure that they'll find that out by making the contents of Harris' tape public through the free and open American media: that's if they'll have both the guts and foresight to print or broadcast it!

Not top-drawer Ken Loach; the "thriller" elements are well-done, but the warmth and depth Loach brings to his working-class stories has no place here. There's a structural flaw in the script, too--it presents itself as a film about Northern Ireland but then jumps headlong into something equally involving but quite different. It is, all the same, a well-crafted, atmospheric film that never lacks excitement and raises some substantial issues. More importantly, the entire film is sadly prescient. The opening torture narratives could have been translated from accounts of Abu Ghraib prison. Change a couple of proper names and the scenery, and this would be the best film around on the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Even the second half of the story (no spoiler warning, so I give no details) rings truer and truer as time goes by.Richly deserves reissue.