Northern
Ireland
Inside Castlereagh: Files stolen from Special Branch HQ
On 14 June the Guardian published a front-page story on a report being prepared by Sir John Stevens, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in London, on policing and undercover units in Northern Ireland. The newspaper says that the Stevens report finds that the relationship between Special Branch officers, British army intelligence officers (especially in the Force Research Unit, FRU, now renamed Joint Support Group, JSG) and loyalist paramilitaries was so unprincipled and unaccountable that it borders on "institutionalised collusion". This allowed officers to "create a climate in which Catholics could be murdered with near impunity" (Guardian, 14.6.02). A detective in the Stevens’ investigation team comments that the agencies are so obsessed with gathering intelligence that:
"There’s no attempt to keep law and order. That is the story of what is going on in Northern Ireland at the moment, not what happened more than ten years ago."
A month ago, in mid-May, Statewatch bulletin carried a special analysis detailing the state of policing in Northern Ireland, the role of the Special Branch and of British army intelligence agencies like the FRU, now JSG.
Statewatch bulletin, vol 12 no 2
Inside Castlereagh: Files stolen from Special Branch HQ
Shortly after 10.00 pm on 17 March, three people entered Special Branch headquarters, overpowered the only police officer on duty in "Room 220" and left some 20-30 minutes later with a number of files and documents, and possibly computerised information. The incident happened at the notorious Castlereagh police complex which is not only home of the 800-strong Special Branch and the interrogation centre (closed in December 1999), but also housed the British Army’s Joint Support Group (JSG), formerly called the Force Research Unit (FRU). It has long been assumed that Castlereagh was one of the most secure police stations on these islands.
This is not the first time there has been a raid on offices belonging to the security services and in apparently secure compounds. In January 1990 the office used by the inquiry team investigating alleged collusion between the security forces, including FRU, Special Branch and loyalist paramilitaries, under Sir John Stevens, was burnt down. The office was within a police base at Carrickfergus, Co Antrim and contained documents and statements linked to the murder of solicitor Pat Finucane. Unlike the current incident, the Carrickfergus fire received no publicity at the time, even though it was reported in 1998 that Stevens thought the RUC investigation of the fire was "a travesty and a disgrace" (Sunday Telegraph 29 March 1998). It was strongly suspected that the fire was arson perpetrated by a CME (covert method of entry) unit of FRU (Sunday Times, 21.11.99).
The Castlereagh raid was a huge embarrassment for Chief Constable Sir Ronnie Flanagan, who retired in March, himself a former head of Special Branch, and comes on top of sharp public criticism from Nuala O’Loan, the Police Ombudsman, of both Special Branch and Flanagan for their handling of the investigation of the "Real IRA" bombing of Omagh in August 1998 which killed 29 people and injured 200.
Room 220 is the main reception point for incoming calls from Special Branch informers. It is known as such because "220" was the telephone extension of the reception point where duty officers verify callers’ code names and route information to their Special Branch handlers. It is believed that Room 220 had been relocated to temporary accommodation shortly before the raid. The intruders were able to bluff their way into the complex and to penetrate highly sensitive and secure areas of the complex. Clearly they knew where the new room was and had sufficient knowledge of Castlereagh security systems to move about the complex and escape with relative ease. Apparently there are no video tapes of the incident from the numerous surveillance cameras which cover the complex.
Official sources have released very little information about the raid although unofficial briefings to journalists have provided a multitude of contradictory scenarios, all of which have effectively taken the focus off Special Branch, the Intelligence Services and associated special units such as JSG. PSNI’s two press releases to date (mid-April) amounted to less than 250 words in total. It has acknowledged that the duty officer was assaulted and incapacitated and that "some documentation is missing". Detective Chief Superintendent Phil Wright, the head of criminal investigation for the Belfast metropolitan area, is leading the criminal investigation into the raid. PSNI has also set up "a high level team" to assess "the possible impact" of the missing information. It may be that this team was responsible for initiating a series of aggressive police raids and the arrests of nine people on 31 March and 4 April.
Three days after the break-in, Northern Ireland Secretary of State John Reid announced in the House of Commons a "review to proceed in parallel with the criminal investigation" to be conducted by Sir John Chilcot with the assistance of Colin Smith. In his statement, Reid repeatedly referred to the incident as "a breach of national security" and in the brief debate which followed, claimed that it was "hugely important for the peace process that we get to the bottom of what went on". (Hansard 20 March col. 309) Reid acknowledged that there was prima facie evidence that the intruders had "inside knowledge". Trimble linked the raid directly to "the very significant demoralisation among present and particularly former members of the police" and asked for reassurances that "the capacity of the police with regard to special branch is increased".
Sir John Chilcot and Sir Colin Smith
The choice of Chilcot and Smith is significant. Chilcot, a graduate from Cambridge, was, until his retirement in 1997, a ’career’ civil servant. In the early 1980s he worked as an adviser to William Whitelaw. In February 1987 he became Deputy Under Secretary of State in charge of the Home Office Police Department succeeding Mr Partridge. He took over the Department only a matter of months into the so-called Stalker/Taylor affair. Stalker was suspended from duty in May 1986 and removed from heading up the Northern Ireland inquiry into the deaths of six men at the hands of the RUC’s HMSUs (see Statewatch vol 5 no 3). The principal allegation against him was that during the 1970s and 1980s he “associated with Kevin Taylor and known criminals in a manner likely to bring discredit upon the Greater Manchester Police”.
Taylor had been extensively investigated by the police during the previous eighteen months. Many informed observers considered that there was a high-level conspiracy to get rid of Stalker but the official line has always been that there was a coincidence of two parallel sets of events in Northern Ireland and Manchester. There has never been any public inquiry to establish the truth of these two versions of events.
In September 1986 Taylor began a series of legal actions in an attempt to find out why he was being investigated. Through one of his companies, Taylor brought a summons against James Anderton, the Chief Constable of the Greater Manchester police, and a number of his officers on the charge of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. Anderton and his fellow officers sought to have the summonses quashed. The hearing, in front of Lord Justice May and Mr Justice Nolan, took place in the same month as Chilcot was appointed to the Police Department. They found in favour of the police.
In July 1987 Taylor took another action this time seeking a judicial review of a Judge’s decision in relation to the granting of Access Orders to his bank accounts. This injunction also failed. In September 1987 Taylor was arrested on a conspiracy charge to defraud one of his banks. A successful conviction would show that there was ample evidence to remove Stalker, while his friend was being investigated. Taylor went for trial in October 1989. To the considerable embarrassment of the authorities, the case against him collapsed after the police admitted committing perjury and losing important documents.
Stalker was highly critical of the role of the Special Branch in Northern Ireland and described it as "a force-within-a-force". Patten, some thirteen years later, also described it in exactly the same way. Thus notwithstanding Stalker’s interim report and Sampson’s final report, neither of which were ever published, little appeared to have changed in the RUC.
During the time Chilcot was in the Police Department, the Sunday Times (22 October, 2000) alleges that he was asked by Michael Palmer, a senior partner in a London law firm, to intervene in a police inquiry into a series of frauds involving one of his clients and from which the police suspected Palmer had benefited. The article alleges that Chilcot took the ’most unusual’ step of raising the matter with Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary. The inquiry was subsequently dropped. However, it was reopened four years later and resulted in the conviction of Palmer, who had been best man at Chilcot’s wedding.
In October 1990 Chilcot was appointed Permanent Under-Secretary of State to the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) and was heavily involved in the Major government’s secret talks with the IRA in the early 1990s. His time at the NIO coincided with the widespread allegations of collusion between the security forces and loyalist groups. In 1993 he travelled to San Francisco to appear as the first witness for the British Government in its attempt to extradite the Maze escaper Jimmy Smyth (Statewatch vol 3 no 5). He was asked sixteen times by Karen Snell, Smyth’s lawyer, about the contents of the Stalker/Sampson reports into whether the security forces were guilty of shooting to kill suspects. But he refused to answer.
In 1997 Mo Mowlan asked him to investigate a number of leaks over the Drumcree issue which were then highly damaging to the Secretary of State. Once again his report was never made public.
He retired from the NIO in the same year and now works part-time for the Cabinet Office as a "staff counsellor" for the Security and Intelligence Services. But he appears to be a key resource to draw upon when some aspect of the secret service needs investigating. In 2000 Jack Straw appointed him to carry out a review of existing arrangements of Special Operations 14 (SO14) – the Department responsible for overseeing the 189 royal body guards, costing some £30 million a year. It was later reported in the Daily Telegraph that Sir David Spedding, the head of the Secret Intelligence Service, has been asked to implement his report. Chilcot is also on a number of important bodies including the Lord Chancellor’s Advisory Council on Public Records, the Institute of Contemporary British History, and the Police Foundation.
Sir Colin Smith was Chief Constable of Thames Valley police
before joining Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary in
1991. Appointments to the HMIC are made by the Crown on the recommendation
of the Secretary of State. There is no open public competition
for the posts. Traditionally, all appointments were drawn from
the senior ranks of the police, but since 1993 there have been
some non-police officers appointed. Sir Ronnie Flanagan, on his
retirement, was the most recent appointment to be made to the
HMIC, notwithstanding the Police Ombudsman’s criticisms of his
judgement as "flawed". The Chief Inspector of the HMIC
is the most powerful official in British policing after the Head
of the Police Department in the Home Office. The role of the
HMIC is to examine and improve the efficiency of the police service.
It also has a responsibility for making sure that any recommendations
made following an inquiry, such as the Stalker/Sampson inquiry,
would be fully implemented. Each of Her Majesty’s Inspectors
is responsible for a number of police forces. Since his appointment
in 1991 Smith has had responsibility for the RUC for at least
seven years.
Chilcot and Smith’s terms of reference are to establish a) how
unauthorised access was gained to Castlereagh, b) the extent
of any damage caused to national security, c) the adequacy of
action subsequently taken to mitigate any such damage and to
prevent unauthorised access there and in similar buildings elsewhere,
and d) any wider lessons to be learnt. The Chilcot/Smith review
will report directly to Reid who is already cautioning that "it
is not easy to get answers in Northern Ireland" and that
"no one can guarantee anything in Northern Ireland".
The prospects of the report being published are remote. The government
has yet to acknowledge the existence of FRU or similar units
and Reid himself when at the Defence Ministry refused to answer
parliamentary questions on FRU. The last parliamentary question
on FRU (13 December 1999) drew the response that the "Force
intelligence Unit" (!) provides "analytical and security
advice to assist the RUC in defeating terrorism".
Arrests
At 7.00 am on 30 March armed members of the PSNI forcibly entered
the building in which the Pat Finucane Centre is based (the Pat
Finucane Centre runs a major website on Northern Ireland policing
controversies and can be found at www.serve.com/pfc/).
The purpose allegedly was to search the offices of Tar Abhaile,
on the floor above the PFC. A private flat on the ground floor
was also entered. PFC, when they arrived at work at 9.00 am,
were denied access to their office. They contacted two members
of the management committee who were also denied access to the
building on the grounds that they were “likely to interfere
with the search”. Later that day it emerged that the offices
of Cúnamh, a victims support group which has helped numerous
families of those killed or wounded on Bloody Sunday, were also
raided and personal and confidential information relating to
the families were taken. Other raids were carried out in Belfast
leading to the arrest of four men and one woman. One of those
arrested was a civilian worker from a loyalist estate in East
Belfast. A West Belfast Sinn Féin MLA member immediately
condemned the arrests and raids as “ridiculous” and
“highly” provocative. There were more arrests on 4
April and PSNI have threatened further raids.
Eight of the nine people detained were subsequently released.
One man from the New Lodge area of Belfast was subsequently charged
with possessing documents containing information which could
be useful to terrorists planning or carry out an act of violence,
contrary to the Terrorism Act 2000. For a couple of weeks, no
details were given about the documents and police sources briefed
that they were not linked to the Castlereagh break-in. This changed
when unofficial police briefings said that the documents contained
an "IRA hitlist" of Tory politicians (even though one
such politician subsequently spent a day wandering around Crossmaglen
in order to prove that there were "no no-go areas in the
UK".) Following the arrests, a story began to circulate
that an American man who previously worked in Castlereagh as
a chef had republican connections. He had moved from the US to
Belfast several years ago. Initially, he worked in a Belfast
restaurant and then was employed as a chef in Antrim Road Police
station before moving to the Castlereagh police complex. He returned
to the US sometime before the raid and PSNI detectives have travelled
to the United States to interview him. According to the Irish
Times (10 April 2002) "senior police sources are now following
one line of inquiry only and that is one of IRA involvement".
Police reportedly told Trimble that the IRA was responsible within
24 hours of the break-in (Irish Times, 10.4.02).
Police demoralisation?
The Castlereagh burglary and subsequent police raids come at
a time when great attention is being paid to police reform. On
5 April, the first batch of 44 PSNI trainees, including 13 women,
recruited under the 50/50 Protestant/Catholic requirements of
the Police Act, graduated from their initial training. On the
same day, the new police uniforms and badge were introduced.
In the government’s eyes, much of the credibility of the re-branding
of the RUC rests on attracting Catholics into the PSNI so that
the conservative target of the Patten Report can be met. Patten
presented a detailed model of RUC downsizing and new recruitment,
designed to achieve a 30% Catholic PSNI by 2011.
A private consortium of companies including Deloitte & Touche,
Pearn Kandola, AV Browne and BMI Health Services, operating under
the name of Consensia, began advertising for new police recruits
in February 2001. It has spent over £540,000 on advertising
and claims to have received 20,000 requests for application forms,
40% of which have been returned as applications. The selection
process takes about five months. Applicants are first of all
screened for age and nationality requirements before going through
a series of selection tests, including medical, physical competence
and firearms handling tests. Those who get through all these
tests join a pool of "qualified candidates" and it
is from this pool that the 50/50 recruitment takes place. Initially,
much publicity was given to the level of interest from Catholics,
but the crucial issue is how many Catholics make it to the qualified
candidate pool. This is what determines whether the Patten targets
can be met or not. In the first recruitment round, 550 applicants
made it to the pool (less than 7% of applicants) of whom 154
(or 28%) were described as Catholics. 33% of the total were women.
These 154 "Catholics" were joined by 154 Protestants
to become trainee police officers. The total of 308 for the first
round is in fact 17% below the Patten model of 370 new recruits
each year. Of the 47 who began training in November, one was
transferred due to injury and two were expelled on disciplinary
grounds. This suggests a trainee drop-out rate of 6 per cent.
The second round of recruitment attracted 4,700 applicants, but
1,200 of these were repeats from the first round. 14% of the
applications were from people living outside of Northern Ireland,
more than three-quarters of whom are said to be "Catholics".
This suggests that up to 40% of the "Catholics" who
make it to the qualified candidate pool are from outside of Northern
Ireland. Although Consensia collects post code information from
candidates, it has not revealed what proportion of the qualified
candidate pool are Catholics from Northern Ireland or indeed
if the recruitment exercise is succeeding in getting significant
and proportionate numbers from republican communities into the
pool.
Recruitment is one side of the coin. Downsizing is the other.
In the past few months, there have been increasing claims that
police numbers are falling to "dangerously" low levels.
This tends to be associated with the police role in North Belfast
where on-street conflict has been a daily feature since loyalists
began barring school children and their parents from walking
to Holy Cross primary school in September 2001. £26m has
been added to the police budget since last August, ostensibly
to police North Belfast. Reports of the violence typically begin
with the numbers of police officers injured – the Police Federation
says that over 800 officers have been injured in the last six
months. Certainly, rates of absenteeism through injury and/or
sickness have risen substantially in the period since the 1994
ceasefires and there is some anecdotal evidence from the insurance
industry and elsewhere that many claims are exaggerated, if not
bogus. This is linked in some officers’ eyes to the police reform
process and the loss of the primary objective of counter-terrorism.
For instance, one officer has claimed that:
"The morale in this organisation is lower now than it
was during the worst days of the Troubles, absolutely rock bottom.
Then everyone was completely dedicated in trying to create circumstances
in which it was more difficult for terrorists. You had a goal,
you had something to work towards. I was slightly injured myself
in a bomb attack some years back and I didn’t take a day’s sick
then. The next day I was back at work because I was still able
to walk and talk and I didn’t want to put any further pressure
on my colleagues. That’s all changed now. If someone threw a
stone at me now I’d take six months on the sick." (Ulster Gazette, 8 November 2001)
Police sickness rates have reached very high levels in Northern
Ireland. In 1992, the average days absence through sickness per
year per officer was 14 days (almost three working weeks). This
rose to 22 days in 2000 and the current figure is 24 (the figure
in Britain is around 12). A "sickness management policy"
was introduced for the first time in December 2000 which included
a provision barring people from promotion if their sickness level
exceeded 14 days per year (the legitimacy of which was recently
upheld in a judicial review case, then overturned by the Appeal
Court). The management target is to bring the figure down from
24 to 16 days.
On the day the RUC changed its name to PSNI there were 7,173
regular police officers and 2,279 in the full-time reserve –
a total of 9,452. These were supplemented by 1,032 part-time
reservists. The uniformed officers were supported by a total
of 3,465 other staff. As of 6 March, the number of regular PSNI
officers had fallen to 7,091 (not including full- and part-time
reservists) compared to the Patten target for 2002 of 7,215,
but this will be supplemented before the end of the year by the
308 new recruits. Patten projected 2,106 leavers in year one
of police reform (the year 2001): the actual number of leavers
was 1,069 regulars and 129 full-time reservists. The police continue
to be supported by 14,500 troops (2,000 less than in 1998).
While the idea of a numbers crisis is, therefore, less than convincing,
there is evidently some division within the police service between
traditionalists and modernisers. The former, with considerable
political support in Ireland and Britain, seek to maximise the
public order and counter terrorist roles. For example, it was
revealed in January that the police continued until very recently
to purchase vast quantities of plastic bullets. 22 of these were
used operationally in the year 2000 while 76,320 were purchased
(46,000 in 2001) (Hansard 9 Jan 2002, WA col. 878). At an estimated
cost of £6.80 per bullet, this means that the RUC spent
over £2.5m on plastic bullets from 1995 to 2001. Regarding
counter-terrorism, it is not surprising to find that changes
to Special Branch have been minimal. The second report from the
Oversight Commissioner (appointed to monitor progress on the
implementation of Patten) stated that no systematic plan for
the reduction of Special Branch was available, the amalgamation
of support units had not begun and that "documentary evidence
of administrative progress on issues involving Special Branch
was not available as of 1 October, 2001". About 80 out 850
Special Branch officers are thought to have retired. The latest
complaint comes from a group of officers at inspector level who
say that Special Branch are taking advantage of the unusual number
of vacancies at superintendent level to move their people into
senior positions (Irish News 20 March 2002).
IRA or JSG?
Institutional and political tensions over police reform may provide
part of the background for the Castlereagh break-in, but they
do not provide an immediate explanation. From all the speculation
so far, two main scenarios emerge. The first is that the IRA
were responsible, although it has denied involvement. The initial
police position was that Castlereagh was an "inside job":
Flanagan himself said he would be "most surprised"
if "paramilitaries or civilians" were responsible for
the break-in (Independent 25 March 2002). However it was not
long after Flanagan retired that police sources then decided
that the IRA were the prime suspects.
The Castlereagh documents had been taken to Derry and then across
the border, so the story ran. There is no question that the IRA
would have an interest in the identities of informers and their
handlers, particularly since security sources have, in recent
years, played up the role of a "double agent" within
the IRA known as "steaknife" (or stakeknife – spellings
vary). It would also relish any disruption of Special Branch.
There have been reports of up to 250 Special Branch officers
being told to move house and of general panic among informers.
On the other hand, the house and office raids, which might in
some people’s minds lend credibility to the idea of IRA responsibility,
seem to have been "show raids". Some reports have pointed
out that computer disks were arbitrarily selected, that children’s
clothes and videos were seized and that the questioning of those
detained lacked purpose and seriousness. Unusually, some of the
seized property was returned within days. The disinterested nature
of the questioning points towards the raids having other purposes,
including the planting or removing of listening devices. A Sunday
Times article (14 April, 2002) claimed the removal of covert
bugs was the motive behind the raids.
The police have pushed the idea that some of those detained had
links with the American employed as a chef at the Castlereagh
complex, and it is possible that this man was in a position to
pass on Castlereagh canteen gossip to republicans. On the other
hand, one detainee complained to the Irish News that he was arrested
because the police had access to the American’s mobile phone
records which showed the American had his number. This was because
he worked as a voluntary counsellor with an organisation which
the American had approached for help. His only contact was over
the phone – he never met the man. This account does suggest that
police are prepared to carry out raids solely on the basis of
telephone billing records. But none of this explains how a chef
would have access to, and knowledge of, core Special Branch intelligence
facilities within the Castlereagh complex. A further police briefing
claimed to the BBC that they were "interested in a number
of mobile phones that were being used in west Belfast in the
period leading up to the break-in and on the night of the robbery
itself", phones which had since gone quiet. Calls to a number
of public telephone boxes in west Belfast were also reported
top be part of the investigation, suggesting widespread use of
telephone taps and connection data monitoring.
The second scenario is that the Castlereagh break-in was designed
to remove and conceal documents in order to protect intelligence
interests. This would be entirely consistent with past patterns
and practice. If FRU could, as has been suggested, set fire to
the Stevens Inquiry office once, it could certainly thwart the
inquiry again. "Stevens 3" is poised to report, notwithstanding
continuing delays caused by "on-going criminal investigations"
into the murder of solicitor Pat Finucane and the recent murder
of a key loyalist involved in the affair, William Stobie. When
Stevens was appointed Metropolitan Police Commissioner in 1999,
Hugh Orde was put in charge of the day-to-day running of the
Stevens inquiry. Orde is deputy assistant commissioner in the
London Metropolitan Police and was one of the detectives who
investigated the Stephen Lawrence murder. He has applied for
the post of PSNI Chief Constable.
Orde is reportedly waiting to interview Brigadier Gordon Kerr,
currently the British military attaché in Beijing. Kerr
was head of FRU at the time of the Finucane murder which involved
British Army agent Brian Nelson. Stevens’ first collusion inquiry
netted Nelson and Kerr gave evidence at Nelson’s trial in camera
as "Colonel J". Kerr’s evidence was that Nelson’s ten
year service as an agent had saved many lives.
There is little doubt that British intelligence has been fighting
hard to prevent an independent public inquiry into Finucane’s
murder. An example of this appeared in the Dublin-based Sunday
Tribune recently when the newspaper published extracts of an
affidavit to the London High Court sworn by Brigadier Arundell
David Leakey, Director of Military Operations in the MoD (from
1997) and in overall charge of all military operations in Northern
Ireland including covert intelligence gathering and the work
of Joint Support Group (formerly known as the Force Research
Unit) (Sunday Tribune 14 April, 2002). The affidavit was presented
as part of a court hearing held in camera in February 1998 to
consider an application by MoD for an injunction to prevent the
publication of Nicolas Davies’ book "Ten-Thirty-Three: the
inside story of Britain’s secret killing machine in Northern
Ireland" (Mainstream Publishing 1999). The book, whose title
comes from Brian Nelson’s code number, confirms collusion between
British Army intelligence units and loyalist paramilitaries at
the highest level, including two attempts to assassinate Alex
Maskey (Sinn Fein MLA and leader of the SF local councillors
in Belfast). It also confirms what many observers strongly suspected
was an official policy of withdrawing police and army patrols
from areas prior to the entry of loyalist murder squads, using
"restriction orders" (see for example Amnesty International’s
Report on Political Killings in Northern Ireland).
In the High Court challenge the MoD succeeded in getting control
of the manuscript and Davies’ computer, deleting around 10,000
words before allowing the heavily censored version to be published.
The Sunday Tribune story was written by Ed Moloney and Lin Solomon.
Moloney is the journalist to whom UDA activist William Stobie
gave details of loyalist collaboration with Special Branch and
military intelligence at the time of Finucane’s murder. Stobie
was arrested soon after the murder but charges were dropped.
He told his story to Moloney as a safeguard against further arrest.
Moloney was instructed to keep the testimony secret unless Stobie
found himself in court again over Finucane, which he did last
year as a result of further investigations by the Stevens inquiry.
Moloney released the testimony and the RUC responded by pursuing
Moloney through the courts for his original notes. They were
not successful on this occasion. A key witness for the new Stobie
trial withdrew evidence on grounds of ill-health and the trial
collapsed. Shortly after his release and call for an independent
inquiry, Stobie himself was murdered (12 December 2001). Although
claimed by the "Red Hand Defenders" it is widely assumed
that ulterior motives of Special Branch and British intelligence
are not far in the background. Shortly after Stobie’s murder
another senior loyalist, Ken Barrett, disappeared and is now
thought to be under the protective custody of the Stevens team.
Barrett is alleged to have confessed to shooting Finucane, a
confession which was taped by two CID officers in 1991 but he
was never charged because Special Branch intervened and subsequently
"lost" the tape.
Leakey’s affidavit provides direct evidence of how military intelligence
views any possible inquiry into the work of Brian Nelson and
the murder of Pat Finucane. It is based on a doctrine of total
secrecy: "the effectiveness of the unit would be seriously
damaged if the confidence of serving personnel and current agents
in the complete secrecy which surrounds their operations were
in any way impaired". The affidavit goes on: "the fact
that Nelson pleaded guilty prevented the disclosure of large
quantities of highly sensitive information in the course of the
trial" [since many charges were dropped and no cross examination
of witnesses occurred]. The Davies book, based on the experience
of one of Nelson’s former handlers, threatened to reveal what
was prevented from coming out by Nelson’s guilty plea. Leakey
states:
"the disclosure of such information would be extremely
damaging to national security and to the public interest as well
as to the security of Nelson and his family. it could seriously
damage the confidence which agents or potential agents have or
would have in the ability of the Army and the Government to protect
their identity and thus their safety" (Sunday
Tribune 14 April, 2002, p12).
Another example of planning for cover-ups concerned the civil
action threatened by the families of victims of the Dublin/Monaghan
bombings of 1974 around which allegations of collusion are currently
under investigation by Justice Henry Barron on behalf of the
Irish government. A letter from the Treasury Solicitor dated
24 September 1999 showed that the British government considered
a defence of "sovereign immunity" (Sunday Tribune 21
April 2002).
If one possibility is that the break-in was is some way concerned
with damaging Stevens 3 and preventing an independent inquiry
into Pat Finucane’s murder, another is that the raid was designed
to remove very specific evidence concerning an informer or contact
records. An intriguing report in the Sunday Tribune (24 March
2002) by Sunday Herald journalist Neil Mackay suggested the Castlereagh
raid was about removing evidence of agent "Stakeknife’s"
existence. The immediate threat comes from disaffected agents
and informers (some linked to the "mole" group) who
have been seeking better treatment from the government. One of
these, "Kevin Fulton" an agent planted inside the Real
IRA, has threatened to name Stakeknife (an IRA member turned
informer). Fulton has irritated his former handlers by alleging
in the Sunday People that information supplied by himself could
have prevented the Omagh bombing. It was these reports which
led to O’Loan’s embarrassing investigation. So a further possibility
is that the break-in was designed to remove material relating
to the Omagh bombing, notably concerning an alleged second informer
(in addition to Fulton) who may have been part of the bomb team.
The weekend of the Castlereagh raid, rumours flew through the
intelligence community that Fulton’s true identity was to be
revealed in the Sunday Tribune, which had told distributors that
it was doubling the normal print run (because of a paedophile
story, in fact). Fulton was not "outed" but the raid
went ahead as a precautionary measure in any event. Mackay further
alleges that Stevens has been "sniffing around" Stakeknife,
to the annoyance of military intelligence.
When Stevens reports, the political case for a full-blown independent
judicial inquiry into collusion between security forces and loyalists,
involving targeted murders, may become irresistible. The latest
attempts to stall such an inquiry – the appointment of a judge
(not yet named) to look into whether or not an inquiry is merited
(!), and the insulting offer of £10,000 to Geraldine Finucane
(Pat Finucane’s widow) – have not impressed the UN’s Human Rights
Committee, lawyers within Britain, Ireland and the US, and the
United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges
and Lawyers. Whatever the outcome of the Castlereagh break-in,
the pressure is on Special Branch and the intelligence services.
During April and following the Castlereagh break-in, the number
of unattributed, unsubstantiated stories claiming that the IRA
had broken the cease fire, was re-arming (with Russian guns)
and was engaged in training "narco-terrorists" in Colombia
and even helping Palestinians to make crude pipe bombs, reached
fever pitch. Coinciding with congressional hearings on the IRA
and Colombia, commentators began to report that "leaking
and spinning" from anti-Agreement, anti-police reform Special
Branch and intelligence sources was getting out of hand and worrying
the government. It had accelerated since Flanagan’s departure
and, as the Guardian and ndependent speculated, appeared increasingly
to be aimed at damaging Sinn Fein’s election efforts in the May
general election in the Irish Republic. This pattern of leak
and spin has many historical precedents.
From a broader perspective, the break-in provides another incident
which appears to suggest that the Special Branch and sections
of the security services operate outside of the law. Notwithstanding
numerous internal police inquiries – Stalker, Sampson, Stevens
1, Stevens 2, Stevens 3 – and one major external enquiry by the
Ombudsman, the secret services appear to have been able to thwart
all these and continue to operate as a fifth column with their
own agenda within British and Irish politics. The establishment
of an internal police inquiry into the raid, whose report, like
all the other reports, will never be made public, will not increase
the public’s confidence in the police service. Similarly,
the Chilcot/Smith inquiry will do little to enhance public accountability.
Both men are far too closely associated with these services over
many years and, if there is evidence that intelligence personnel
have acted beyond the law, this is unlikely to be made public.
The Labour government will no doubt continue to make sure that
state secrets are never revealed. The intriguing question is
why?
"Exposed: security force links to loyalist killer gangs", Guardian, 14.6.02
Collusion at the heart of Finucane killing, Guardian, 14.6.02
Shadowy unit’s infiltration role, Guardian, 14.6.02 (note: the FRU is now the Joint Support Group, JSG)
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