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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
1 6 April 2017
RUC Chief Superintendent whose
death was Smithwick Tribunal’s focus,
was not as innocent as the tribunal
extraordinarily contrived to believe
by Deirdre Younge
T
he Smithwick Tribunal was instigated in Dublin as a
strategic sop to the British Government while the
Republic was itself seeking various Inquiries from the
UK Authorities. It originated in ultimately unsubstantiated
allegations from journalists Kevin Myers and Toby Harnden.
The Tribunal seems to have been determined to find Garda
collusion in the murder north of
the border of two RUC officers
- one of whom was Chief
Superintendent Harry Breen -
just after they had met gardaí in
Dundalk, but at the last minute
evidence from the PSNI stopped
it finding Special Branch officer
Owen Corrigan to be the colluder,
which he certainly anyway
wasn’t. The Tribunal then made
an abstract, ungrounded finding
of "collusion", which lazy
observers have ubiquitously
accepted.
INVESTIGATION
Nailing
Harry Breen
SMITHWICK TRIBUNAL
NEWS
S
IX PEOPLE were murdered
by UVF paramilitaries, at
the Heights Bar, in Loughin-
island near Downpatrick, in
1994, as Ireland played
Italy in soccer, on the television. Those
murders were the subject of a 2016
report by the Police Ombudsman of
Northern Ireland which found, follow-
ing an earlier whitewash by the same
office, evidence of Royal Ulster Con-
stabulary (RUC) collusion in the
protection of Loyalist paramilitary
informants, who may have carried out
the murders. While he found no evi-
dence that the police knew in advance
about the murder plot, the Ombuds-
man was heavily critical of how the
RUC Special Branch handled inform
-
ers, and failed robustly to disrupt the
activities of UVF paramilitaries operat-
ing in south Down and to share
intelligence with detectives investigat-
ing this UVF gang. He claimed there
was a “hear no evil, see no evil, speak
no evil” approach. The 160-page
report by Dr Michael Maguire also
found police informants at the most
senior levels within loyalist paramili-
tary organisations were involved in the
importation of guns and ammunition.
Importing the arms
Five years earlier in late 1987/early
1988, the arms used at Loughlinisland
had been imported as part of an order
placed with an arms dealer, including
for VZ58 military-grade assault rifles,
by an alliance of the UVF, UDA, and
Ulster Resistance, each of which was
to take a specified allocation. The
weapons which originated with Chris-
tian forces from Lebanon did not
include explosives which were what
Loyalists had keenly wanted. Much of
the - Chinese - ammunition was, appar-
ently, of poor quality. Nevertheless it
is estimated that the rifles alone were
used in at least 70 murders between
March 1988 and May 2005.
Sources from mid-Ulster with knowl-
edge of the entire operation explained
what happened when the weapons
were delivered to Belfast docks.
Knowledge of collection and distri
-
bution was tightly controlled. The UDA
Judge Peter Smithwick
April 2017 1 7
had been asked if they wanted their weapons to
be delivered in Belfast, where they were almost
exclusively based. Unusually they chose to col
-
lect them in Armagh where the UVF and Ulster
Resistance, but not the UDA, were strongest. The
UDA were then instructed not to travel in cars,
the movement of which by outsiders would have
been noted in any rural area. There were also
army and police vehicle checkpoints on the
roads. In the event the UDA ignored the advice
and drove two hired Ford Granadas to collect the
arms. An RUC Tasking and Control Group was
waiting for them by the time, their cars laden
down with weapons, they reached Mahon Road
in Portadown. One of them, Davy Payne, UDA
'Brigadier' for mid and West Belfast, was
arrested and ultimately sentenced to 19 years
imprisonment.
Hiding the arms
With the UDA weapons captured, the Ulster
Resistance and UVF weapons were then stored
in a barn in Tandragee owned by a man who was
a member of the Free Presbyterian Church and
the Orange Order.
The same sources maintain that the original
plan was for the entire cache of Ulster Resistance
arms to be delivered to and held by an Ulster
Resistance man, in Markethill. The plan was that
he would operate as the quartermaster. How-
ever, suspicion, ubiquitous in these affairs, had
begun to grow about the Ulster Resistance man
who, it was rumoured, was working for various
intelligence agencies. Because of this and
because RUC searches were closing in on
Tandragee, Ulster Resistance moved the
weapons which never reached the
intended recipient in Markethill.
John Weir, an RUC Sergeant,
was jailed for murder for 14
years in 1980. He had been
part of the South Armagh
based Special Patrol Group
(SPG), a notorious RUC Unit set
up to combat the South Armagh
IRA. Members of the group were
allegedly used in the 1970s by shad-
owy Army Intelligence figures including
Robert Nairac. The SPG operated as RUC by day
and Loyalist paramilitaries by night. They were
responsible for bombings and shootings in both
the North and the Republic.
The operations centre of these paramilitaries
was a farm owned by an RUC reservist, James
Mitchell, later convicted for possession of weap-
ons on his land, in rural Glennane which is near
the border and south of Markethill. The
description 'Glennane Gang' has been used for
the paramilitaries, but also for shadowy others.
It is not to be confused with the UVF gang which
operated in County Down a decade later and car-
ried out the Loughinisland, and many other,
murders.
The Ombudsman implies that the arms were
stashed in Mitchell's farm but Village can
reveal that Ulster Resistance took
the arms from the barn and trans-
ferred them to a Territorial Army
Ambulance which was then
parked in the Territorial Army
Centre in Armagh City. The
vehicle was locked and the
key held by unnamed individu-
als. The movements of weapons
after that are known only to two
men according to the sources. At
that point the weapons were out of
Ulster Resistance control. Moreover they were
never recovered by the Security Forces.
The weapons were never stored in Glennane,
County Armagh as has been widely accepted,
but in a barn between Tandragee and Markethill
further north. In recent months informed stran-
gers claiming association with Ulster Resistance
have been looking for information about the
arms in Tandragee.
The 2016 NI Ombudsman’s report
criticised how the RUC Special Branch
handled informers and failed to robustly
disrupt the activities of the UVF gang; and found
police informants at the most senior levels within
loyalist paramilitary organisations were involved
in the importation of arms.
Weapons imported by three loyalist paramilitary
groups in 1988 were used in dozens of murders
While the Police Ombudsman of Northern
Ireland emphasised Glenanne as the likely
place where arms were stored, in fact they
were stored on the road between Tandragee
and Markethill
John Weir
1 8 April 2017
After the arrests of the UDA on Mahon Road searches
went on for the Ulster Resistance and UVF weapons and
farms all around the area around Markethill/Tandragee
area. For months and years after the arms importation
the army and the RUC’s Tasking and Support Group,
combed the Armagh countryside “tirelessly to bring
those involved to Justice”: all without success, as the
Ulster Resistance Arms escaped detection.
The big question is why.
RUC failures
The Police Ombudsman was heavily critical of the RUC:
“Throughout my investigation I have identified evi-
dence of the destruction of important police documents
such as the records relating to the arms importation in
late 1987/early 1988 and case-specific material such as
forensic exhibits seized as part of the precursor inci-
dents and the Loughinisland murders”.
The Ombudsman's central finding of RUC collusion
either points to the normal wartime protection of inform-
ants or betrays high-level subversion by members of the
police and civil establishment. This article argues for the
latter.
The Ombudsman’s Report is now being challenged by
the ex-RUC Retired Police Officers Association who are
looking for a Judicial Review of its contents. They say the
Ombudsman treated Special Branch intelligence, some
of which may have been offered tentatively, as fact.
• Ulster Resistance
The DUP leader Ian Paisley had been holding paramili
-
tary-style rallies since the early 1980s but the Anglo-Irish
Agreement of 1985 had spawned a movement which
styled itself 'Ulster Resistance'. It was the brainchild of
the DUP's Paisley and Peter Robinson, of Alan Wright of
Ulster Clubs as well as of Noel Little from Markethill, a
member of the UDR who was to play a prominent role in
it. A 1987 briefing document for the British Government
noted, “Since Ulster Resistance is a DUP creation, we
cannot rule out the possibility of the DUP using it as its
shock troops in any form of protest”. The first invitation-
only meeting in Belfast attracted some of the respectable
middle-classes; Paisley and Robinson donned berets
and flirted with sedition.
The distribution of the Lebanese/Chinese arms would
not have been possible without these links between Loy-
alist paramilitaries (some of whom were military
intelligence and Special Branch agents), senior politi-
cians and 'respectable' middle-class professionals who
manoeuvred from the shadows and may on occasion
have given lethal orders.
Harry Breen
However, it was Chief Superintendent Harry Breen, key
Commander of RUC districts in a large swathe of Armagh
and parts of Down, who may have extended these links,
in the most nefarious way, to the RUC.
Breen chaired wide-ranging RUC meetings at the high-
est level during the period when it was suffering heavy
casualties in shootings and bombings. For the last year
of his life he was Divisional Commander, had access to
high-level intelligence from the British Army and Special
Branch, and kept in constant touch with his men on the
ground in rural RUC stations.
Shockingly, the former-Security-Forces sources say
Harry Breen was sympathetic, and supplied information,
to the Loyalist paramilitaries who were in control of the
shipment, in particular Ulster Resistance.
Perhaps as a result of this, although the UDA and a
part of the UVF arms were seized, the Ulster Resistance
arms were not located. It seems that inside information
resulted in the weapon's movement escaping detection.
Despite the fact that both the security services and army
intelligence had informers on the ground the plotters
managed to play cat-and-mouse around the
countryside.
Loyalist sources have made it clear to Village that
Breen was not 'rogue' but was following what he believed
was an Intelligence agenda. If so, this was one of the
most serious acts of subversion by any member of the
Security Forces. This wasn’t about shielding informants
or covert encouragement but subverting the very State
to which loyalty was professed. After the importation for
the first time Loyalist paramilitaries killed more people
than the IRA did.
Harry Breen was murdered in an IRA ambush in March
Sources formerly in the NI Security
Forces who have knowledge of
the events of the time say RUC
Chief Superintendent Harry Breen
was sympathetic, and supplied
information, to Ulster Resistance
Loyalist paramilitaries who were in
control of the shipment.
NEWS
Nexus of politics
and violence:
the inaugural
meeting of Ulster
Resistance in
1986, attended by
Peter Robinson,
Sammy Wilson and
Ian Paisley of the
DUP.
Ulster Resistance
arms were never
found.
April 2017 1 9
1989 on the Edenappa Road, South Armagh, near the
Border with the South, after he had left a meeting at
Dundalk Garda Station.
Breen of course was at the centre of the Republic’s
Smithwick Tribunal into allegations of Garda collu-
sion in his death. It reported in 2013. Village has
previously shown how the last-minute receipt of
murky evidence from the RUC resulted in Smithwick,
who seemed committed to finding Garda collusion,
being left without anyone upon whom to pin the col
-
lusion. His intention to find collusion by Owen
Corrigan was blown apart by evidence. He neverthe-
less found collusion, in the abstract. Collusion but no
colluder.
• John Weir implicates Breen.
In a long statement in 1999, John Weir, by then out of
prison, alleged that in the 1970s Harry Breen, then a
Chief Inspector in uniform, was aiding Loyalist para
-
militaries by supplying them with weapons and
encouraging their activities. Breen was close to an
RUC Sergeant who was an expert gun-maker for the
UVF, he claimed.
Among the allegations Weir made was that “RUC
Officers from Newry RUC Station - McBride, Breen
and myself…[were supplying] weapons to the UVF in
Portadown”. He claims that when he privately told
Breen about the murder of an innocent Catholic,
Breen told him to “forget about it”. John Weir later
somewhat modified his story and in 2006 com-
mented that while Breen “knew all about our
activities, he was not for one minute directly linked
to the UVF. He was doing his job as a policeman but
could not say that publicly” (Interview with Frank
Connolly, Politico 2006). Weir was later to say that
he was encouraged in the “bad apple” theory in order
to limit the spread of collusion allegations against
more senior RUC Officers.
Liam Clarke, famously well-connected, repeated
most of this in the Sunday Times in the early 2000s.
However, sources formerly in the Security Forces
have recently claimed to Village that Breen was, later,
sympathetic to Ulster Resistance and gave them
information during the searches for the Armagh
weapons in 1988/89 when he was in a pivotal posi-
tion in the RUC.
"If Breen had lived
there would have
been no Ceasefire”
was the opinion of
one former member
of the UDR in Armagh
.. I chaired Divisional meetings with 2 UDR about searches in the
Division. Travelled to Gough Barracks and Newry South RUC
Station and briefed [redacted] re. searches planned for 22.9.’88.
.. Meeting in Armagh with 2 UDR. Directed ops. Liaison with CID,
Special Branch and ACC Rural East.
.. Liaison with Special Branch and CID and Directed Ops.
.. Attended brieng re searches (for Loyalist weapons).
.. Loughgall, Newry, Warrenpoint.
.. Tandragee, Gilford, Banbridge.
.. Duty re searches; liaised with Special Branch, and CID and visited
scenes of nds of arms and ammunition in Loughgilly area.
To Gough met Special Branch and CID and discussed arms nds
etc. Duty to Bessbrook and met 1 para re operation on 22.11.88.
To searches of arms nds in Armagh, and Hamiltonsbawn area.
.. DAC meetings. Duty re searches for arms and munitions. Liaison
with CID and Special Branch.
.. Liaison with Special Branch and CID re searches in the area. Duty
with [redacted] in Armagh, Hamiltonsbawn and Glennane areas re
searches. Duty with [redacted] in same area. (Glennane was
searched for weapons).
.. Duty with CID, Special Branch and Ops Planning re [redacted].
• Breen's RUC Diary
Tending to confirm this, Village has obtained details
of all Breen’s movements between March 1988 and
March 1989, when he was shot dead by the IRA. It is
apparent from that information that Breen had access
to the planning meetings associated with the
searches in Armagh; and that he was on-site for many
of them.
Although based in Armagh, Breen’s itinerary
between mid March 1988 and 1989 shows a high level
of activity on the ground: visiting RUC stations and
the site of searches and carrying out routine admin-
istration. Breen was at the site of searches for both
IRA and Loyalist arms. He also crossed the Border on
a number of occasions to Dublin, Drogheda, Dundalk
and Monaghan.
The diary shows the comprehensive extent of
Breen's involvement in all the arms searches in
Armagh and South Down in the period up to his
death.
Whenever there was a search, Breen as Divisional
Commander would turn up, though his presence was
not necessary. And of course the arms were never
found.
Loyalist and Security sources have told Village that
Breen liaised between the arms-hiders and the arms-
searchers to ensure the arms were moved when
necessary, and so were never found.
The significance of all this is that it shows Breen
spent a lot of time in Tandragee, Hamiltonsbawn,
Richhill and Markethill. This is the Loyalist/Orange
Order heartland and where the arms were - not Glen-
nane which is much further South where less
informed RUC officers believed the arms were stored.
It suggests he had inside information from Loyalists
and that he may have been attempting to defuse the
efficacy of search operations for the arms.
Breen's Diary: i suggess he hd inside informion from Loyliss nd h he my hve
been emping o defuse he efficcy of serch operions for he rms.
2 0 April 2017
NEWS
The Edenappa Road where Breen was shot
• A threat to peace
Around the time of the Anglo-Irish Agreement senior
members of RUC Special Branch are believed to have
made it clear to Officials in the Security Services and
Government, that they were completely opposed to any
new direction that involved appeasement. Harry Breen
was seen as a leader who would stand against the
appeasement. He was so influential and well-connected
that, “If Breen had lived there would have been no
Ceasefire” was the opinion of one former member of the
UDR in Armagh who spoke to Village.
The fate of Breen, the most senior RUC officer to be
killed in the Troubles, was sealed the day he appeared,
apparently reluctantly, on television displaying the IRA
weapons recovered after the SAS ambush at Loughgall
that killed eight IRA members and an innocent civilian.
That was the implicit finding of Judge Peter Smithwick
in his monumental but confused 1,652-page report.
• Smithwick Tribunal fails to scrutinise provenance of
Harry Breen
According to the Irish Times at the time of its publication,
"in terms of fallout it seems unlikely that there will be a
major negative political dimension to the Smithwick
report". This is because, as the Irish Times unquestion-
ingly noted:
"The judge found there was Garda collusion but that
it was localised and, it seems, at a low-ranking level.
Such corruption is hard to come to terms with, but will
hardly damage British-Irish or North-South relations".
Incredibly, not once did the facts surrounding the arms
emerge in the Smithwick Tribunal. The Intelligence Ser-
vices’ plan to keep the focus on Dundalk Gardaí and the
one-hour visit of Harry Breen and Bob Buchanan, alleg
-
edly to discuss ‘Slab’ Murphy, succeeded magnificently.
The plan was drawn up by senior figures and dictated to
key participants who were then used to “shape”
evidence.
While the Ombudsman struggled to get crucial ex-RUC
sources to talk about
events, from 1987-1992
Smithwick had an
embarrassingly rich
array of potential wit
-
nesses, perhaps
because they knew how benign
the forum. Over thirty senior members of the former RUC
and present PSNI came to Dublin to give evidence, most
under a cipher number. A substantial number of officers
were interviewed but not called to give evidence. Among
the witnesses were the (present) Deputy Chief Constable
of the PSNI as well as former RUC Officers including:
Assistant Chief Constables, a Deputy Chief Constable,
Heads of Special Branch Northern Ireland, Chief Super-
intendents who had served in Special Branch in Armagh
and Down, Chief Inspectors in CID who had served on
the Border, Border Chief Superintendents, members of
TSG South, and Army Intelligence Officers from FRU and
the Royal Fusiliers who served on the border. Many of
these men had intimate knowledge of events on the
ground in Armagh in the relevant period.
On the other hand, although some former RUC Special
Branch and CID Officers spoke to the Ombudsman,
important witnesses refused to co-operate with his
investigation. He was hampered by destruction of docu-
ments and “the decision of the only Special Branch
officer identified... not to assist my investigation”. The
Ombudsman also found the treatment of forensic and
ballistic evidence was highly questionable.
Harry Breen was murdered by the IRA. Anyone with an
interest knows that the Smithwick Tribunal failed to
ascertain how and why. Credible sources are now telling
Village why Harry Breen may have been of particular
interest to the IRA.
More interesting still is why Smithwick almost system-
atically failed to address the importance of Harry Breen
to Loyalists and therefore to their enemies.
Gardaí wanted armed
escorts for RUC
personnel attending
meetings in the South
April 2017 2 1
2017 promises to be a challenging year for Irish
SMEs. The uncertainty of what Brexit will bring, as well
as native matters of rising insurance costs, what the
next budget has in store, and changes to commercial
rates all have Irish entrepreneurs looking to the future
and wondering how it will affect their stability and
growth.
In the Irish independent vaping industry, which is
largely made up of retail, distribution and a small
amount of manufacturing (none of which is owned or
operated by tobacco or pharmaceutical companies)
businesses have all this to contend with, and more.
Firstly, is the uncertainty of how implementation of
the EU tobacco products directive and will affect them
and their customers. As responsible companies look to
safeguarding their costly investment in compliance,
they are still left unsure as to how the directive will be
enforced.
In our opinion, a tobacco-style regulation for these
consumer products was ill judged from the beginning.
The EU moved to regulate vaping without due care as
to the negative consequences the regulation would
have on public health, or the independent companies
serving the market. The tagline may have been regulat-
ing the tobacco companies, and while that may have
sounded like a laudable aim, it is happening at the
expense of the consumer led, independent companies
who founded and developed these products to be the
success they are today.
Nonetheless, independent vape companies have
been rising to the challenge of meeting compliance
deadlines and are hopeful that through an interplay of
innovation and standardisation, there will remain a
range of products available to satisfy their customers’
needs for alternatives to smoking.
But at the time of writing, with a little over 6 weeks
until the final deadline of May 19th, the competitive-
ness of Irish independent vape businesses is at a
disadvantage because of the lack of action on the part
of the regulators.
Over four months after putting products through an
expensive testing and notification process, independ
-
ent companies have no indication of whether they can
be sold after May 19th. To put this in perspective, UK
companies are being informed by their regulators
within two to three weeks. This is compounded by the
fact that after May 20th, UK companies can put new
products on the market after the 2-3 week processing
time. Irish companies will have to wait a full 6 months.
Secondly, there is the prospect of yet another tobacco-
style regulation on the product – that of excise duties.
The proposed changes to the EU directive on manufac
-
tured tobacco would apply a tobacco-style ‘’sin tax’’ on
a product that contains no tobacco. Its introduction is
opposed by many in public health who recognise that
such a tax would negatively impact on the opportunity
that smokers switching to vaping represents. Those of
us in the independent industry are only too aware of
the detrimental consequences it would have on smaller
companies versus the large tobacco company
operators.
For all this looming negativity the industry faces
however, there is hope that the government and regu-
lators recognise the value of the independent vape
industry and work with us to get regulation and enforce-
ment right - for the sake of consumer safety as well as
for the longevity of the independent businesses.
This week at a global public health conference in
Australia, a Canadian public health expert in the area
of policy on obesity, Catherine Mah, makes the case for
smaller companies in the food sector; ‘’entrepreneurial
actors are practical innovators, and this is an important
asset for social change in public health’’.
Entrepreneurs who want to grow their companies,
employ more people and contribute more to the excheq-
uer, all by providing adult smokers with safer
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pendent, vaping industry can be allowed to survive
regulatory interventions, it can act as a significant dis-
ruptor to the incumbent tobacco industry.
If government and regulators can work with, rather
than against, the independent vape industry, Ireland
can realise the potential gains in public health that a
massive reduction in smoking prevalence would
bring.
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