Michael Oatley

Michael Oatley is a former Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) officer, involved in the resolution of "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland. He became MI6's chief of counterterrorism in Europe.

Oatley and a Northern Irish businessman, Brendan Duddy, formed a "crucial" back-channel link between the British Government and the Irish Republican Army (IRA) from 1973 until the 1990s. Peter Taylor's "Behind the Mask: The IRA and Sinn Fein," describes Oatley as the most important British agent to have worked in Northern Ireland.

Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair's former Chief of Staff, described the three major times the back-channel was used; the negotiation of the IRA ceasefire in the mid-1970s; during the first IRA hunger strike in 1980; and in the early stages of the peace process in the 1990s.

Michael Oatley met Martin McGuiness for the first time in 1991 in a "crucial meeting in the lead-up to the first IRA ceasefire in 1994."