ADAIR'S MAN SETTING UP DRUGS EMPIRE; UDA pair to push narcotics from Scotland.

Byline: SINEAD KING

ONE OF Mad Dog Johnny Adair's top lieutenants is building a drugs empire in Scotland - and refusing to share the spoils with former pals who became Shankill exiles.

Gary Smith, who once rang in a bomb warning to the Holy Cross Primary School, has hooked up with ex-UDA gangster Sam McCrory, 36, to push narcotics from Glasgow to Belfast.

The People revealed two weeks ago how Smith, 38 , along with his girlfriend and young child had left Bolton after a bust-up with C Company comrades 'Fat' Jackie Thompson and Herbie and Sham Millar.

They had all been put under the microscope by local police and drug deals had collapsed around them.

Now Smith, who fled Ulster during the Shankill purge, has hooked up with an old pal in Glasgow and is starting anew - and has no intentions of working with the Bolton gang again.

Strathclyde police sources say the pair have approached a number of drugs contacts and that their most likely plan is to begin using Rangers games as a way to ferry drugs across the Irish Sea.

"They have met in a number of different places, aware that they do not want to do anything which might appear as if it's creating a pattern," we were told.

"They're establishing a drugs network by pooling their resources. At least that's what they hope to do."

Smith established himself as a leading UDA gunman in west Belfast in the mid-1990s.

In 1995 he was jailed for 16 years for conspiracy to murder and gun possession. He was part of a gang of UDA gunmen linked to 20 sectarian murders in west Belfast.

Smith was freed four years later as part of the Good Friday peace agreement. But within two years he was returned to prison by then Northern Ireland secretary John Reid over his continued links to terrorism.

Just before he was returned to jail, Smith had made bomb threats to the Holy Cross Catholic Primary School which was at the centre of a bitter sectarian dispute in 2001.

McCrory and Adair served time for conspiracy to murder, with McCrory walking free in 1998, under the Good Friday Agreement terms, and moving to Scotland.

CAPTION(S):

ON THE BALL: Gary Smith and Sam McCrory (right) plan to ferry drugs to Ulster during Rangers matches; Jonny Adair to be sourced