Kevin Fulton

Random entry RSS

  • Posted in:

    Licence to Lie. Freddie Scappaticci, a British agent inside the IRA, sought immunity from prosecution from British legal authorities so he could claim he was not Agent Stakeknife at a secret meeting with a tribunal in Dublin.

    by 0 Comments

    By Deirdre Younge.   Introduction. Freddie Scappaticci became an agent for British Army intelligence in 1978. A member of the IRA in Belfast he worked his way up the IRA hierarchy,  eventually becoming  second in command of the ‘Internal Security Unit”,  known as the feared “nutting squad”. He joined the British Army’s newly-formed Force Research Unit in 1982.  Scappaticci has consistently claimed he is not an agent called ‘Stakeknife’ or ‘Steaknife’ including in his dealings with the Smithwick Tribunal in Dublin. The latter was established to investigate allegations of Garda collusion in the murders of Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan in South Armagh, after they had left a meeting in Dundalk Garda Station in March 1989. Operation Kenova investigating the agent believed to be Scappaticci has  submitted files to the Public Prosecution Service in relation to perjury charges. Scappaticci had an extensive engagement with the Smithwick Tribunal set up in 2005 which reported in 2013. Though he did not give sworn evidence his legal team argued on his behalf that he was not an agent called ‘’Steaknife’ or ‘Stakeknife’. Through letters obtained through Freedom of information requests to the Lord Advocate of Scotland and the Attorney General of England and Wales it is clear that Scappaticci obtained protection from prosecution or immunity in relation to his interactions with Smithwick from the Lord Advocate of Scotland. He did not not receive a similar immunity or amnesty from the Attorney General of the UK despite Smithwick’s assertions that witnesses from the UK and Northern Ireland had received such protection.Documents obtained through Freedom of Information requests to the (Irish) Department of Justice show Scappaticci was paid his full legal costs of 382,270 euro in 2015. The bills were paid by the Department of Justice, signed off by the Department of Public Expenditure. The Letter from the British Attorney General.   The absence of such an amnesty has enormous implications in light of perjury allegations against Scappaticci in relation to his continual denials that he is an agent called ‘Steaknife’ or ‘Stakeknife’. It also calls into question the decision by the Smithwick Tribunal, set up in 2005 by Dail Eireann, not to reveal details of covert meetings with him and the decision by the Irish State to pay Scappaticci  nearly 400,000 in legal costs, primarily to claim he was not a British Military Intelligence and MI5  Agent called Steaknife or Stakeknife. Senior legal sources assert that Scappaticci spent three days in Dublin talking to the Tribunal. Documents released by the Department of Justice under FOI in relation to substantial legal costs paid to him in 2015, indicate extensive interactions between Scappaticci and the Tribunal. Smithwick on amnesty In the opening chapters of his 2013 report Judge Peter Smithwick has a chapter on amnesty for witnesses and the legal cover afforded by the Irish Tribunals of Evidence Act as follows: Any witness before the Tribunal would have protection in this jurisdiction from criminal prosecution on the basis of evidence given before it. The protection is enshrined in section 5 of the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act 1979 which provides as follows: A statement or admission made by a person before a Tribunal or when being examined in pursuance of a commission or request issued under subsection (1) of section 1 of the Principal Act shall not be admissible as evidence against that person in any criminal proceedings (other than proceedings in relation to an offence under subsection (2) ( c ) (as inserted by this Act) of that section) – ( and that is a reference to the offence of providing false testimony to the Tribunal) and subsection (3) of that section shall be construed and have effect accordingly. The Judge went on to explain how witnesses from outside the jurisdiction could be provided with legal cover, particularly those from Northern Ireland and the UK – “However, given the cross-border aspects of the Inquiry, it was equally important to securing the attendance of witnesses that such protection be extended to the United Kingdom. The Tribunal therefore sought and received an undertaking from the then Attorney General of England and Wales, the Right Hon.,The Baroness Scotland Q.C., to similar effect. Subsequent to the devolution of policing and Justice powers to Northern Ireland on the 12th April 2010, Sir Alistair Frasier, the Director of Public Prosecutions for Northern Ireland confirmed that he would continue to honour Baroness Scotland’s undertaking. After the change of Government in the United Kingdom…the new Attorney General of England and Wales..Dominic Grieve Q.C M.P provided the Tribunal with confirmation that Baroness Scotland’s undertaking would continue to apply. The Tribunal subsequently, at the request of Freddie Scappaticci, sought and received a similar undertaking from the Lord Advocate, in relation to Scotland. This was given in terms specific to Mr Scappaticci..”(Page 9, the final Smithwick report, 2013). Judge Smithwick went on to to refer specifically to Scappaticci in the one and only reference to him in the Tribunal report, as follows : The Tribunal subsequently, at the request of Freddie Scappaticci, sought and received a similar undertaking in relation to Scotland. This was given in terms specific to Mr Scappaticci..   The Lord Advocate of Scotland in his role as Crown Prosecutor gave Freddie Scappaticci an amnesty to cover his interactions with the Smithwick Tribunal so that he could provide “a full account” to the Tribunal in 2012. The AG of England and Wales it is now apparent gave no such amnesty to Scappaticci. Other witnesses from the UK and Northern Ireland included Scappaticci’s former FRU, British Army Intelligence handler, retired Major David Moyles, other British army officers, as well as ex RUC and PSNI officers. Witnesses also included representatives of the IRA ASU who talked to the Tribunal from 2008 onwards. First representation Scappaticci’s solicitor first made an application for legal representation in 2006 but this was refused However his legal representative, Belfast solicitor Michael Flanagan submitted his first bill in relation to meetings in 2007. Like all Scappaticci’s covert

    Loading

    Read more

  • Posted in:

    The Libyan weapons trail: How Gaddafi armed the IRA.

    by 1 Comment

    By Deirdre Younge Kingsberry case The High Court in Belfast granted permission in early July for the family of a former member of the UDA, William Kingsberry – shot dead in 1991, to sue Libya for supplying the assault rifle used by the IRA unit that killed him.  New approach The Kingsberry case, which is civil not criminal, is a new approach to gaining compensation for those killed or injured by Libyan-supplied matériel – and will be the first of many. The PSNI initially refused to confirm that Libyan-supplied Semtex was used in explosions after 1986; but a case brought by Belfast solicitors  KRWLaw in Belfast on behalf of a number of victims has established the link to the AKM rifle used in the 1991  Kingsberry case. The  Kingsberry case creates a precedent for many other victims.  Many were killed or injured in bombs made with the powerful Czechoslovakian-manufactured but Libyan-supplied semtex explosive which was used in massive bomb and mortar attacks. The massive increase in lethal bombings  fuelled with  semtex created hundreds of victims killed  or maimed after 1986.  The first so-called ‘spectacular’ was the explosion at the Remembrance Day service in Enniskillen in November 1987 which left eleven dead and others with horrific injuries, causing shock and revulsion. According to Irish Government documents Gerry Adams believed it was an IRA own goal. It also came at a time when Adams was building up Sinn Féin, the  political wing of the movement,  and there were tentative moves towards talks. RUC woman Colleen McMurray was murdered in 1991 when a mortar boosted by semtex was fired at the police car in which she was travelling in Newry. The 1996 Docklands bombings in London were ignited by semtex.  It was also used by so called ‘Dissidents’ to make the Banbridge bomb and the devastating Omagh bomb in 1998. Victims of all these atrocities are pushing for recognition and compensation. British Government reluctance So far, the British Government has refused to directly compensate victims of IRA Libyan-supplied weapons and semtex explosives out of the former overthrown leader General Muammaur Gaddafi’s funds, long frozen in British banks.  It also refuses to publish a report it commissioned on the issue of compensation, from ex-journalist and member of the Charity Commission, William Shawcross. Action in Northern Ireland  Actions in Northern Ireland are aimed at the British-Government-controlled funds in the UK.  In 2011 Solicitor Jason McCue, who represents victims of the  post-ceasefire Docklands bombings of 1996 and who acted for the Omagh Bomb relatives in their compensation case, obtained a letter from the Transitional  Libyan Government. It’s not clear what weight the letter carries.  The issue of compensating victims of the conflict in Northern Ireland has been mired in an argument about definitions. In the case of Libya it’s also entangled with the long and murky history of the various intelligence services’ involvement in Libya and the fractured politics post-Gaddafi.  Libya  Whether the post-Gaddafi state, weak and divided, should be expected to pay reparations may be moot but that is by no means the case with the interest now accruing to the British Government from Gaddafi funds in UK banks which could, in practice, be used to compensate victims. Sovereign Wealth Fund The new Libyan Prime Minister, Abdelhamid Dabaiba, has reportedly reached a deal with the Chairman of the country’s Sovereign Wealth Fund – the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA) – Ali Mahmoud Hassan, whereby Dabaiba will receive €1 billion  via the Central Bank of Libya for his cash-strapped Government. The deal shows the central importance in general terms of the Libyan fund and that the key is its control by Hassan, a former Gaddafi ally. Bahraini bank According to the French-based Africa Intelligence  the LIA  is sourcing the funds from CBL’s Bahraini subsidiary, ABC Bank. Most of the LIA’s assets abroad, amounting to billions of dollars, have been frozen since sanctions were imposed on Gaddafi.  Gaddafi investments in UK and Ireland Gaddafi invested in everything from Pearson Inc to RBS to office blocks to villages he liked when he went on sovereign visits. It has been alleged there is €1.5billion in Irish banks. There is around £11 billion in frozen Gaddafi-era funds in banks in the UK from which the British Government receives substantial interest payments.  It is from these assets in British Banks that lawyers will try to source the money for a compensation  fund.  The Libyan Government itself has been without a budget since  March. Caught up in the internal politics of Libya and competing loyalties of politicians, some loyal to General Haftar the former Gaddafi-era exile and ‘warlord’ are making their support conditional on appointment of Haftar allies from the east of the country, to strategic positions.  The Sovereign Fund is at the centre of allegations of the embezzlement of billions of dollars during the Gaddafi era. The Prime Minister himself has taken control of the Libyan Asset Recovery and Management Office  [LARMO] in an effort to keep control of investigations into corruption in various state organisations. [Africa Intelligence,  02/07/2021]  Hassan was in control of some of the organisations in question during the Gaddafi era and he is also the focus of scrutiny by the international community including the US State Department, for the lack of transparency in management of the Libyan Wealth Fund. It’s in this tangled atmosphere of competing interests and loyalties that the issue of compensation plays out. After Gaddafi The disastrous lack of preparation for the aftermath of the fall of the Gaddafi regime, by the UK and France in particular, left Libya divided in four between a powerless internationally recognised Government of National Accord; General Haftar – a returned exile from the US, who has shifting and tenuous  control of the valuable oil fields; the so called Tobruk administration; and various militias both Islamic and other. Al Qaeda has a presence in the desert regions.  Despite promises made by the Government of National Accord, the administration in Tripoli, it is questionable if the present Government  could implement

    Loading

    Read more

  • Posted in:

    DUP leader Donaldson alleged that a Garda mole was involved in the IRA murder of two RUC officers.

    by 0 Comments

    By Deirdre Younge. In April 2000 Jeffrey Donaldson, the new leader of the DUP, stood up in the House of Commons and made the heinous allegation on live television that former Special Branch sergeant in Dundalk Garda Station, Owen Corrigan, had colluded in the murders of Chief Superintendent Harry Breen, Commander H Division, and Superintendent Bob Buchanan, while they were on a visit to Dundalk Garda Station in 1989. Donaldson alleged Corrigan had tipped off the IRA about the two officers’ arrival at the station. As it happened the IRA operation had started early in the morning before Breen had left Armagh police station where he was based. Harry Breen and Bob Buchanan were shot dead by the South Armagh Brigade on the Edenappa Road in South Armagh a few hundred yards over the border, as they headed to Bessbrook barracks, in the afternoon of the 20th. Breen had received an order from the Chief Constable Sir John Hermon to talk to the Gardai about a joint operation to “do something” about Tom “Slab” Murphy and his smuggling activities. In fact Breen advised the Guards to ignore any such suggestions from newly arrived members of the British army. On the same day as Donaldson made his statement, Charlie Flanagan the former Minister for Justice stood in the Dail and called for an investigation into Garda collusion. At a dinner in Stormont hosted by the Secretary of State Tom King the previous week, Breen and a fellow Chief Superintendent serving on the border, Witness 27 at the Smithwick Tribunal, were joined by two British officers – described as “two Colonels” newly arrived in South Armagh. One of the officers described how on one day 90 lorries went out of Slab Murphy’s yard which straddled the South Armagh border, allegedly on a smuggling operation. King was furious and demanded action against Murphy. Both Breen and his fellow officer were disgusted that a civilian, albeit the Secretary of State, should order an operation on the strength of some loose talk over the dinner table, fuelled by newly arrived officers who had no previous experience of working on the border. Breen requested his then Sergeant Alan Mains to investigate the incidents, and he discovered that the Army monitored only 1 lorry, as he revealed at the Smithwick Tribunal. Donaldson had been convinced by meetings with former informer/agent for the British army and other agencies, Kevin Fulton whose real name was Newry man, Peter Keeley. Fulton aka Keeley had joined the Royal Irish Ranger in 1978 and in 1980 while on duty in Germany, was offered an opportunity to return to Newry as an undercover informant/ agent for Army Intelligence and later FRU. ( He later worked for RUC Special Branch, M15 and lastly CID). Keeley readily agreed to the proposition and was debriefed by Lt Colonel Victor Williams, who later died in the Chinook crash, in Wrexham in Cheshire. The object was to work his way into the IRA in Newry and Dundalk, which he eventually did by becoming the driver and accomplice of Commander Patrick “Mooch” Blair. By 2000 Keeleys varied career as an informant had come to an end. His last handler in CID Economic crimes where he had been a participating informant attempted to get him a resettlement package but it was blocked by M15. Keeley, now an ex agent with a grievance, joined up with other so called whistleblowers and aimed to make as much trouble as possible for his former employers who left him in the lurch. In 1999 Keeley was introduced to Willie Frazer in Armagh. Frazer who was now heading up his own victims group.He started to introduce Keeley as former agent Fulton, to influential unionists including as Frazer said “Lords and people like that”. One of the campaign’s that Frazer and his group started was one looking for an investigation into the murders of Breen and Buchanan. Frazer wanted answers as to why the British army did not intervene in the ambush of Breen and Buchanan. The Royal Fusiliers were carrying out a major bomb clearing operation around the Kilnasaggart/Edenappa Road area for the previous fortnight before the murders, which was due to end as soon as Breen as the RUC Commander gave the go ahead to reopen the railway line . However Frazer became persuaded by some RUC men that the collusion came from Dundalk Garda Station and in particular Owen Corrigan. Fulton was used as the vehicle for the allegations against Corrigan – that he had tipped off the IRA on the afternoon the two RUC men arrived. This was not only fiction but Fulton would completely walk away from the allegations at Smithwick. However, Donaldson stood up in the House of Commons and repeated the allegation that Owen Corrigan was the colluder. As this was broadcast live on BBC Parliament and could be received in Dundalk, the allegations had a devastating effect on Corrigan’s life. In 2003 Fulton/ Keeley was then brought by Willie Frazer to Judge Peter Cory, tasked with looking into collusion in various incidents after the Weston Park Agreement between the two Governments. At a meeting in the Merrion Hotel, Dublin ‘Fulton’ made the allegation that Owen Corrigan had told Patrick “Mooch” Blair, the IRA Commander, outside Dundalk station, that the two officers had arrived there. According to Frazer, who was the only other person in the room when Fulton met Cory in 2003, Judge Cory did not reveal the actual allegation in his report. Frazer also said the so-called Fulton Statement in the report bore little resemblance to the conversation, that there had been no actual statement passed and that Cory had actually done all the writing at the meeting. However ultimately Cory called for a public inquiry into the murders of Breen and Buchanan which resulted in the setting up of the Smithwick Tribunal,in 2005. Public hearings finally began in 2011. Drew Harris, then Assistant Chief Constable in the PSNI, was the liaison between the Security Services,

    Loading

    Read more

  • Posted in:

    SMITHWICK’s SECRET WITNESS

    by 0 Comments

    By Deirdre Younge. The Smithwick Tribunal concealed its relationship with Freddie Scappaticci whom it treated as a credible source of information while the Kenova Inquiry is investigating him for multiple murders. The Smithwick Tribunal found Garda collusion in murder of RUC officers, but couldn’t name the colluder.  This was partly because it allowed a motley band of FRU operatives, informants and agents  like the serial ‘intelligence nuisance’ Fulton and elusive thug Scappaticci endlessly to mislead it on who the colluder was so that, when MI5 conduit Drew Harris gave definitive evidence to the contrary, the Tribunal was forced to give what the authorities, North, South and in the UK wanted: a false finding of collusion that was impossible for anyone, particularly an unnamed colluder, to challenge. Since this article was written the Public Prosecution Service of Northern Ireland has decided not to press charges relating to perjury against three people – two public officials and another, believed to be Freddie Scappaticci, on foot of files submitted by Operation Kenova.  The present DPP N.I Stephen Herron, appears to have accepted that Scappaticci was entitled to rely on the ‘defence of necessity’ in May, 2003 when he took a judicial review against Jane Kennedy, a Minister in the Northern Ireland Office. Scappaticci had asked the Minister to deny allegations in the media that he was the agent called ‘Steaknife’ or ‘Stakeknife’ which she refused to do on the grounds that it was standard policy to give a  ‘neither confirm nor deny’ (NCND) response to  questions related to National Security. The Minister’s decision was upheld in August 2003 when Scappaticci’s application for Judicial Review was dismissed.  An official in the Public Prosecution Service in 2006, reviewing Scappaticci’s sworn statements of 2003 on foot of complaints received, accepted that Scappaticci had committed perjury but that he was justified in claiming that he was not the agent ‘Steaknife’ or ‘Stakeknife’ in the circumstances, as to do otherwise would have put his life in danger – the ‘defence of necessity’. That decision was itself reviewed in 2018 by the then DPP Barra McGrory with the consequences explained below. The latest decision by the DPP Stephen Herron therefore, accepts Scappaticci’s defence.   Freddie Scappaticci, the British spy who came to Dublin to testify. Chief Constable Jon Boutcher, from Bedfordshire Police, is leading operation Kenova whose independent team is investigating a range of activities surrounding an elusive individual intriguingly codenamed Stakeknife, or Steaknife. Kenova detectives arrested and interviewed the British Army agent Freddie Scappaticci, a 72-year-old Belfast man, in early 2018. He is widely suspected of being that individual. A member of the Belfast IRA from the early 1970s, he was recruited as an agent for the Army’s Intelligence Corps in the mid to late 1970s. He moved to British Army intelligence Force Research Unit (FRU) in Northern Ireland which secretly penetrated terrorist organisations in 1982 with his then handler, Major David Moyles, who instructed him and channelled his information.  Scappaticci was observed operating around Dundalk and the Border region North and South from around 1982 until 1990. He is believed to have attempted to take over a unit run by another IRA man in Louth in the early 1980s. He was also described as the co-ordinator of its North-South operations. Later he was second in command to JJ Magee in the Internal Security Unit which conducted IRA interrogations along the border. He is linked to at least 20 murders.  But he fell out with the IRA, and in with MI5 and its emanations which paid him £80.000 a year. Serious allegations have emerged to the effect that, to protect his cover, the British government allowed up to 40 people to be killed via the IRA’s Internal Security Unit or ‘Nutting Squad’ which he led.  It appears Kenova is pursuing several perjury cases against Scappatacci for denying he is Stakeknife or Steaknife.  Some are sceptical whether he will be held to account as it has, for example, been alleged he retains tapes of his dealings with his handlers. A number of individuals connected to the Stakeknife scandal, and keen for an accounting, have claimed perjury is the easiest way to ensure the alleged spy will appear in a court of law. According to Henry McDonald in the Guardian, “The whistleblower who first publicly identified Stakeknife as Scappaticci, the former Force Research Unit soldier Ian Hurst, has described the perjury route as a ‘slam dunk’ if Boutcher and his detectives decide to prosecute on that front”. The focus of this article is on how such an eminently unreliable persona was allowed to elaborately subvert the naïve and misdirected Smithwick Tribunal that reported in the Republic in 2013. One gauge of the unreliability is perhaps that in court in 2019 counsel for Britain’s Ministry of Defence revealed the total number of lawsuits against the alleged spy. Tony McGleenan QC said: “There are 31 claims. Some have taken the form of correspondence [but] 24 writ actions have been issued. All of these name the second defendant (Scappaticci)”. Scappaticci had been outed as the alleged agent Stakeknife or Steaknife at the time of the Stevens Inquiry in London in 2003. The outing is credited to his sometime associate Peter Keeley aka Kevin Fulton. But it is also attributed to a former Sergeant in the Army Intelligence Corps and FRU, Ian Hurst aka Martin Ingram. Scappaticci was also the subject of allegations in relation to the Tom Oliver murder in County Louth in the book ‘Stakenife’ published in 2003 by Journalist Greg Harkin and Ian Hurst under his pseudonym Martin Ingram. That’s three different lineups alleging the identity. Keeley and Hurst are egregiously shadowy figures who were to feature in the Smithwick Tribunal and whose allegations led to Scappaticci being afforded unlikely credence and indeed getting legal representation there.  Members or agents of British Army Intelligence  were to play a huge role in the Smithwick Tribunal which investigated whether there was collusion between the Garda in Dundalk and the IRA killers of two RUC officers, Chief Superintendent Harry Breen  and Superintendent Bob Buchanan, who were shot dead

    Loading

    Read more

  • Posted in:

    Investigation: Killusion

    by 0 Comments

    The Smithwick Tribunal was set up in 2005, by the Irish Government on the advice of Michael McDowell, then Minister for Justice, and sat in public in Blackhall Place from 2011 until 2013, examining the possibility of Garda collusion in the deaths of Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan, of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) who were murdered North of the Border in March 1989, after a brief meeting in Dundalk Garda Station. The purpose of the RUC officers’ visit was to discuss a move against the IRA’s Tom ‘Slab’ Murphy, which had been ordered by then Northern Ireland Secretary of State, Tom King. The Smithwick Tribunal ended up in 2011 with a strange, abstract, finding of ‘collusion’ in the murders of the two RUC men. Though it found “no smoking gun” in Dundalk, the Tribunal weakly decided there was indeed less specific evidence of “collusion by gardaí” in the murders. Dutifully, Enda Kenny described these findings as “shocking” and a public and media jaded in affairs Northern determined rather vaguely to remember that Smithwick was about a search for evidence of collusion which it had somehow found. What is extraordinary is that Smithwick provided no name for the ‘colluder’, though it clearly for a long time thought it was Owen Corrigan – even though it wasn’t. One of the reasons for this is that there may in fact have been no Garda colluder, a big embarrassment for those who felt a tribunal needed to be instigated and, worse, for those who conducted the inquiry without ever drawing attention to the inaccuracy of the premise that led to it but who saved face by continuingly, through the eight years of its existence, pretending there was one, albeit with less and less specificity. Smithwick was swayed into its collusion abstraction by the PSNI (which succeeded the RUC) giving untestable, very-late evidence to the Tribunal privately naming a fourth garda who was more plausible than Owen Corrigan as the colluder. Fulton: the man whose evidence led to a falsely perceived need for the Tribunal Smithwick always focused on Corrigan as the colluder because the Cory Inquiry, which prompted the Smithwick Tribunal, unduly relied on the 2003 evidence of a dissembling double agent known as ‘Kevin Fulton’ – now challenged by a source who spoke to Village – that Corrigan gave deadly information to the IRA about the RUC men. In its report the Smithwick Tribunal stated [at 15.1.2]: “This statement was a key factor in Judge Cory’s decision to recommend the establishment of this Tribunal, and Kevin Fulton was therefore an important witness before this Tribunal”. In any event Fulton actually seems to have later changed his story (when giving evidence to Smithwick in 2011) to say that Corrigan gave information to the IRA only about a 37-year-old Cooley farmer, informant Tom Oliver, who An Phoblacht then accused of passing on information to Garda Special Branch. Oliver was kidnapped, allegedly interrogated by Scappaticci and subsequently murdered. The changed story was that Corrigan gave information about Oliver, not about the doomed RUC men; but even the changed story was expressly and ignominiously disavowed by Smithwick, under pressure in a recent High Court case, to the extent it implied that Corrigan’s information led to Oliver’s death. In other words everything related to Fulton collapsed, despite Smithwick’s paean to him. Kevin Fulton had begun to engage with the Smithwick Tribunal in 2006. In its opening statement in 2011, the Tribunal made it clear that “Mr Fulton has elaborated on and expanded the statement he provided to Judge Cory”. The expanded statement was given to Corrigan’s lawyers in November 2011. For the first time they saw the central allegation made by Fulton which sensationally implicated Freddie Scappaticci, ‘Stakeknife’. It did not concern the murders of the two RUC Officers but instead implicated Sergeant Owen Corrigan in giving information which would lead to the death of an alleged IRA informer, Tom Oliver. The first reason not to believe Fulton is that a book about him makes no mention of any of this. Admittedly Fulton now distances himself from the graphic book called ‘Unsung Hero’ about his life but this is chiefly understandable as an expedient in the face of the, at least nine, PSNI Investigations arising from it, and the many civil actions in the pipeline. He has already had to pay compensation to the family of Eoin Morley, a Newry man shot dead in 1990, after failing even to enter an appearance in the Belfast High Court to proceedings by his mother. Nevertheless it is undeniably notable that at no stage in the book does Fulton mention a garda in Dundalk station passing information to the IRA, though it was scarcely something he’d be expected to omit. Nor is there any other evidence – of any sort – that he passed information about Corrigan or other Dundalk gardaí, to his handlers. Bizarrely Smithwick warmly endorsed Fulton, a man who had made a lifetime “career” of deception, as a highly credible witness, in his final report, even in effect if he completely and absolutely disavowed him in the subsequent legal action. Surprisingly, Smithwick was to say of Fulton: “He sat only metres from me and I observed him throughout. He was a very impressive and credible witness and I have formed the view that his evidence was truthful”. However, clearly there is a shadow over the statement from Fulton which inspired Cory’s call for what became the Smithwick Tribunal. If this is so it rewrites the history of both inquiries. Fulton’s’ similar role in other high-profile investigations will emerge in the coming months. But what exactly was the core allegations that convinced Cory and then hung Smithwick out to dry? This is the Fulton Statement as published originally in the Cory Report in 2003: “In 1979 I enlisted in the British Army. Within months of my posting, I was recruited by a British Intelligence Agency to act as an agent. In this capacity, I

    Loading

    Read more