Smithwick

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:

    A murky affair: the Garda made no progress into the IRA murder of Tom Oliver until an intervention by Drew Harris, then with the PSNI, now Garda Commissioner.

    by 0 Comments

      By Deirdre Younge. Tom Oliver, a farmer from Riverstown, on the Cooley peninsula, was kidnapped, interrogated and murdered by the IRA in July 1991. They alleged he was a Garda informant. The murder by the IRA’s punishment squad didn’t only cause devastation for his family but split the tight-knit community in which he lived. IRA men living in the area were ostracised and barred from local pubs and GAA clubs  while gardaí were told to stay away from the area. The Garda were attacked for their failure to protect Mr Oliver who had given information to them about IRA weapons found on his land. Local IRA men were believed to have been strongly opposed to the murder of the popular family man but were reportedly overruled by Belfast leaders.   Oliver was abducted by a group which included FRU/ MI5 agent Kevin Fulton aka Peter Keeley and there are allegations that Freddie Scappaticci was among those who carried out the interrogations though he has denied it. Keeley gave a vivid description of the night Oliver was snatched and named some of those allegedly  involved, at the Smithwick Tribunal in December 2011.   Drew Harris the present Garda Commissioner, then PSNI Head of Legacy, arrived at the Smithwick Tribunal in October 2012 with “new and of the moment” intelligence that a garda who had not been identified to the Smithwick Tribunal after years of private and public investigations was the ‘colluder’ who had betrayed Oliver to the IRA. Operation Kenova took up Oliver’s case and has discovered new DNA evidence. Oliver’s battered body was found a day later in Belleeks, Co Armagh. The Oliver case has been investigated and reinvestigated by the Garda in Dundalk. The latest reinvestigation just completed has found multiple flaws in the handling of the case.   Operation Kenova under Jon Boutcher took the Oliver case as part of its remit. It has now apparently found new evidence after DNA analysis was done on clothing, which appears to advance the case.  The Tom Oliver case became a central issue in the Smithwick Tribunal in Dublin which reported in 2013. FRU (British military intelligence), Special Branch and MI5 agent and informer Kevin Fulton whose real name is Peter Keeley described what he called the “abduction” of Tom Oliver, in his evidence. He gave a vivid description of the night of the abduction and of how Oliver was carried in the boot of a car to his interrogators. The cross-examining barrister, Jim O’Callaghan, acting for Garda Owen Corrigan, said of the evidence   – “you are describing the last moments of a man’s life”.  Keeley was the driver for the IRA’s  ‘Nutting Squad’ on the night Tom Oliver was kidnapped and took him to his final destination. Keeley as Fulton also implicated Fred Scappaticci in Tom Oliver’s interrogation at Smithwick. Scappaticci got legal representation to deny both that he was  involved in Oliver’s murder and that he was Agent Stakeknife! See also: Investigation: Killusion The present Garda Commissioner Drew Harris, as Head of Legacy in the PSNI, had a crucial role at Smithwick as the gatekeeper for intelligence and information from the various UK Security Services. He made a last- minute dramatic intervention  to present intelligence  emanating from M15, of the involvement of a garda who had not been identified to the Tribunal, in setting up Oliver for murder. No name has so far emerged. Drew Harris also named the senior IRA figure he claimed had ordered that Tom Oliver be shot.  See also: How Drew Harris diverted the Smithwick Tribunal. Operation Kenova and Chief Superintendent Jon Boutcher are interviewing former Gardai and others who may have evidence or intelligence about Tom Oliver’s abduction and murder. Mr Oliver was taken from near his home in Castlecarra Cooley late on the evening of the 18th July while tending cattle. His interrogation, carried out by the Internal Security Squad, was finally ‘adjudicated’ on by a senior member of the Army Council who arrived at a ‘safe house’ in Cooley after breaking off a holiday. He is believed to have overruled the local IRA officer commanding and decided that Tom  Oliver must be shot. He was then transported into South Armagh where his battered body was found the next day.  Will Operation Kenova and Jon Boutcher  finally achieve justice for Tom Oliver and his family?   OTHER STORIES ABOUT GARDA-RUC-PSNI AFFAIRS ON THIS WEBSITE BY DEIRDRE YOUNGE: How Drew Harris diverted the Smithwick Tribunal. Nailing Harry Breen Investigation: Killusion Drew Harris Drawn in. SMITHWICK’s SECRET WITNESS MI5 FLIES A FALSE FLAG. New DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson alleged that a Garda mole was involved in the IRA murder of two RUC officers.    

    Loading

    Read more

  • Posted in:

    MI5 FLIES A FALSE FLAG.

    by 0 Comments

    MI5 faked a Loyalist arms importation to manipulate Dublin in the run-up to an IRA ceasefire. A few months later the cream of NI Intelligence were dead in the Chinook helicopter crash. Shortly afterward, the ceasefire was called. The Chinook crash files are embargoed until 2094. By Deirdre Younge. Introduction 1994 was the year of living dangerously for Northern Ireland’s spymasters. The prospect of an imminent IRA ceasefire had the intelligence community in a spin. M15 was gaining the upper hand in the battle with the RUC Special Branch for the control and flow of intelligence. Some believed the watchers were being watched. It was the year M15 attempted to pull a foolhardy false flag operation. Initially lauded as a massive coup it was quickly buried under D notices when sceptical journalists blew a hole in the story. Fronted by an Ulster Resistance leader with links to the UVF, but by now suspected by other ‘Resistance’ members of being an agent, M15 arranged a massive arms importation from Poland, aided by some members of Polish intelligence.  The shipment, seized by customs at Teesport docks in a prearranged operation, was hailed as a massive success for the security services.  The aim of the phony operation was to put pressure on the Irish Government and to ‘even up’ the threat levels in negotiations.  June 2, 1994 – The crash of a Chinook helicopter carrying 24 of  the elite of the intelligence community in Northern Ireland: senior RUC officers like Brian Fitzsimons Assistant Chief Constable and Head of Special Branch; Army Intelligence Head and founder of FRU,Lt Colonel Victor Williams; Director and Coordinator of Intelligence, M15’s John Deverall; Michael Maltby, an M15 specialist in money laundering who had spent a career investigating IRA finances; Anne James, M15, among those who died on the side of a mountain on the Mull of Kintyre when the RAF Chinook helicopter, piloted by  special forces pilots crashed in fog. The other passengers, RUC officers Detective Superintendent Ian Phoenix, Detective Chief Superintendent Des Conroy were regarded as having a mastery of the intelligence files, a vital asset in a largely non computerised system. The helicopter was heading, not towards the stated destination of Fort George, Inverness but, according to high level security sources, to Machrihanish airbase minutes away from the crash site, on the other side of the Mull of Kintyre. The purpose of the carefully arranged flight was a meeting with American Intelligence counterparts in the CIA and FBI  for an annual ‘summit’.   Machrihanish, then a top secret base which hosted high level meetings, was also used by the American Navy as a base, a training centre for Navy Seals, and for top secret flights. Just before the crash the American intelligence contingent had landed at Machrihanish in a private jet with American markings which was literally flying under the radar. After the crash  documents were strewn around the impact area which was protected by a seven mile cordon. Files relating to the Chinook are embargoed until 2094 apart from a small number of  files containing a few pages released in 2019. Immediately after the disaster on the Mull the spinning began about the destination and the purpose of the meeting. The truth got lost in the fog of disinformation. Newspapers were briefed by the RUC that the intelligence specialists were meeting to discuss a threatened bombing campaign against Dublin, the evidence of which was the importation of weapons and explosives from Poland which had been seized by customs at Teesport seven months earlier in a seeming ‘coup’ for M15. The false flag operation was being linked to the dead officers. The Sunday World covered the Chinook helicopter crash extensively three days later and detailed the RUC brief about Teesport However, the importation had been arranged by MI5 to influence the Dublin government. [Author’s note: for the avoidance of confusion: MI5 (which is attached to the Home Office) often works in co-operation with MI6 (which is attached to the Foreign Office). Both organisations appear in this story, although the primary moving party here was MI5.) Stella Rimmington, the Director-General of MI5 at the time of MI5’s false flag operation involving commercial bomb materials imported from Poland. TEESPORT RENDEZVOUS In early November 1993 a senior RUC officer was surveying the docking area of a container ship in Teesport, Cleveland, north-east England. ‘The Inowroclaw’ was sailing from Gdynia in Poland to Teesport and from there to its declared final destination of Belfast Port and into the hands of the UVF. It was jammed with armaments. Later that month the RUC officer returned with a battalion of UK Customs officers to Teesport docks to ‘intercept’ the shipment before it reached its declared destination. The RUC officer was working with MI5. He had been in Teesport  weeks in advance  to ensure that nothing could go wrong. This time the weapons would not be distributed as had happened six years previously. If the arms were added to the UVF arsenal it would match anything imported from Libya by the IRA. The Inowroclaw This is not the plot of a Northern Ireland  ‘noir’ novel, but a ‘false flag’ operation at the tail end of the undercover war in Northern Ireland. By the time it sailed from the Baltic Port, the container-load of weapons included 300 assault rifles, grenades, pistols and detonators as well as two tonnes of plastic explosives. The importation, Loyalist sources in mid-Ulster told Village, was instigated by a man linked to Ulster Resistance, an Ulster loyalist paramilitary movement established in opposition to the Anglo-Irish Agreement,  in Armagh. He was also closely aligned to some members of the  UVF  –  and the Security Services. He had apparently convinced a Loyalist faction that he could source weapons from contacts in the Polish arms industry which, perennially economically challenged, was anxious to make deals to keep factories in business. Ironically, suspicions about this man among local Ulster Resistance activists – the ‘small men’ in Armagh – had  led to the RUC’s disastrous loss of control

    Loading

    Read more

  • Posted in:

    Drew Harris Drawn in.

    by 0 Comments

    As allegations continue to be made about the involvement of Robert Nairac in the Miami Showband massacre, how compromised is Garda Commissioner Harris who was PSNI liaison with Britain’s intelligence services? By Deirdre Younge. In the High Court in Belfast the British Government’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) and British Army are applying to have cases relating to the Dublin and Monaghan bombing atrocity of 1974 dismissed, alleging they are out of time. The bombings were carried out by the Glennane gang also known as the Portadown UVF who were also at the heart of an organisation that came into existence in the 1980s called Ulster Resistance. A recent BBC ‘Spotlight’ programme dealing with Ulster Resistance confirmed extensive collusion across the loyalist spectrum from DUP to UVF, UDA, UFF to MI5. Members of Ulster Resistance (UR) became aware that some of its members were MI5 agents. The key MI5 agent inside UR was carved out of the distribution of the weapons it had procured in late 1987 by those who were not under the control of the intelligence services. At the same time, information was leaked from RUC and the UDR which provided them with details of ‘suspected republicans’. The BBC NI Spotlight programme showed images of RUC intelligence that ended up in the  hands of the UFF/UDA. It  was used to target suspected republicans, including Loughlin Maginn, shot in Rathfriland in August 1989. His death, following that of solicitor Pat Finucane in February 1989, sparked the decades-long investigations by Sir John Stevens into collusion by the Security forces. Stevens was not shown evidence of RUC collusion. (BBC Spotlight on the Troubles, October 2019.) The fact that the UDA were receiving large volumes of  intelligence material from RUC sources was known to the agent Brian Nelson,  his Army Intelligence handlers and M15. That intelligence also, no doubt, informs the de Silva Report into Pat Finucane’s murder. De Silva was given access to British Army and MI5 intelligence that RUC officers at every level were leaking information to Loyalists. That intelligence is also integrated into the Ombudsman’s report on the Loughinisland murders as it relates to RUC ‘tip-offs’ about surveillance operations carried out in an attempt to seize UR weapons in Armagh in 1987 and 1988.  Awareness among members of UR that some of its members were M15 agents led to a disastrous loss of control by the Security Services and Special Branch  – and multiple murders Part 1: Commissioner Harris Drew Harris, the Garda Commissioner, didn’t leave the ‘Troubles’ of Northern Ireland behind him on entering Garda HQ. Drew Harris As former Assistant and Deputy Chief Constable of the PSNI and its former interface with the Security Services (UK), Harris has been accused of  fighting attempts to get information about the perpetrators of atrocities like the Miami Showband murders and of blocking access to  files about the many murders carried out by the Mid-Ulster, UVF ‘Brigadier’ Robin  Jackson. In 2011 the Historical Inquiries Team found Jackson had been connected to a weapon used in the Miami Showband murders by fingerprint evidence. In the High Court in Belfast in 2017 Judge Seamus Treacy ruled that there should be an overarching investigation into State collusion with the ‘Glenanne Gang’ and asked the PSNI to respond. In the Court of Appeal in Belfast the Lord Chief Justice ruled in July 9 [2019] against an appeal and said there must be an independent investigation carried out by the PSNI. Chief Superintendent Jon Boutcher has started an investigation into the Glennane series of killings as part of Operation Kenova. In an extraordinary development, Eugene Reavey whose three brothers were murdered in Whitecross in Co Armagh in 1976, has been told by the Police Ombudsman of Northern Ireland that a file has been sent to the Public Prosecution Service in the case. It is believed to recommend prosecution of a former RUC man, who was a member as ‘The Glennane Gang’. With the signing into law in Ireland of the Criminal Justice (International Cooperation)  Act  2019, the Garda can now give evidence and share intelligence with Coroners’ Courts in Northern Ireland. In an interesting twist of circumstances, Commissioner Harris  now has charge of the legacy files of secret Garda intelligence. Clearly how ambitious he’d want to be in sharing this information with authorities in the North is uncertain. As Assistant Chief Constable of the PSNI Drew Harris was the liaison between the Security Services (UK) , the PSNI and the Smithwick Tribunal from 2006 to 2014. (See also https://villagemagazine.ie/how-smithwick-got-diverted/ )The Tribunal was inquiring into alleged Garda collusion in the murders of Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan. (See also https://villagemagazine.ie/investigation-killusion/http://Killusion ) He confirmed that he had spoken to the Security Service before he gave evidence to the Tribunal in October 2012. Drew confirms his consultation with the ‘British Security Service’ In 1989 MI5 reported the overall picture seems to be one of RUC collusion and links with the Loyalists which is similar in scale to that of the UDR, but the latter is much more likely to become involved in very serious crimes Dealing with the past is also causing problems for some retired RUC men – members of the Northern Ireland Retired Police Officers’ Association (NIRPOA). They now apparently  believe a policy of  non-co-operation with bodies like the Police Ombudsman of Northern Ireland  has been counterproductive. The Miami Showband Part 2: Ombudsman confirms collusion NIPROA took a Judicial Review against the Police Ombudsman of Northern Ireland and his 2016 report on the 1994 Heights Bar murders in Loughinisland. Former Head of Special Branch and Assistant Chief Constable Ray White often acts as its spokesman. In 1989 MI5 reported the overall picture seems to be one of RUC collusion and links with the Loyalists which is similar in scale to that of the UDR, but the latter is much more likely to become involved in very serious crimes Their affidavit was submitted in the names of Ray White and retired Chief Superintendent Thomas Hawthorne, the former Sub Divisional Commander in Co Down and chief investigator of the Loughinisland

    Loading

    Read more

  • Posted in:

    Nailing Harry Breen

    by 5 Comments

    RUC Chief Superintendent whose death was the Smithwick Tribunal’s focus, was not as innocent as the tribunal extraordinarily contrived to believe. Smithwick failed to ascertain how and why he was murdered and credible sources are now telling Village why Harry Breen may have been of particular interest to the IRA.

    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