SMITHWICK DEBACLE - DEIRDRE YOUNGE EXPLAINS

https://coverthistory.ie/2024/02/17/deception-and-a-death-foretold-by-deirdre-younge/

© Deirdre Younge February, 2024.

AUTHOR - JOHN O'BRIEN

The Smithwick Tribunal was a massive insult to intelligence and reason. Long past time that this OUTRAGE should be expunged.

Judge Smithwick made an extraordinary admission regarding collusion. There was no evidence of collusion.

Smithwick determined after 8 Years that;

(1) “Absent a phone call or incriminating bank transfer, if collusion has occurred, the evidence of it will almost certainly be difficult to find. In the instant case, leaving to one side the question of intelligence, the Tribunal has not uncovered direct evidence of collusion. There is no record of a phone call, no traceable payment, no smoking gun”.

(2) The intelligence material is in no way conclusive or determinative of the issues before me, but nor is it something which I can, in good conscience, ignore. It is an element to which I believe regard must be had in my ultimate analysis, set out in Chapter 23, of the question of whether or not there was collusion.

NOR COULD ACC DREW HARRIS NAME HIS ALLEGED FOURTH MAN COLLUDER.

Please read on for Deirdre Younge's brilliant summation.

Covert History Ireland & UK Magazine.

Life and Death in South Armagh. Deception – and a death foretold. By Deirdre Younge.

Deirdre Younge is a former journalist and Current Affairs Programmes Editor in RTE Television. She is now a writer and media production consultant.

Part 1. Garda Sergeant Owen Corrigan, a victim of conflicting – and false – claims he was an IRA mole.

This is a story about deception that runs through decades. It shows that anything from lies to murder, can be permitted for ‘Reasons of State’.

Owen Corrigan was a central figure in the Special Branch in Dundalk Garda Station from the beginning of the Troubles until 1989. He was involved in some of the most high profile incidents including the ‘Flagstaff incident’ where two groups of heavily armed SAS men crossed the border in May 1976. 

They were arrested by Garda from Omeath and taken to Dundalk Garda Station. Sergeant Corrigan interrogated and charged  the men and they were sentenced by the Special Criminal Court.

He was also involved in the murder investigation after Robert Nairac’s abduction.

He became the central figure in the Smithwick Tribunal which investigated the controversial murder of two senior RUC officers in 1989, Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan.

Harry Breen with IRA assault rifles, left at the scene of a joint SAS, RUC and UDR operation at Loughgall in 1988.

Harry Breen, foresaw his own death. He is seen in the photograph above, with IRA assault rifles, left at the scene of a joint SAS, RUC and UDR operation at Loughgall, in 1988, led by Chief Inspector Ian Phoenix. The IRA unit was wiped out.

RUC TCG South ambushed eight members of the East Tyrone ISU as they attempted to bomb a police station in Loughgall. None of IRA men survived.

After members of the IRA drove a digger holding a bomb towards the RUC station, the TCG including the SAS, UDR and HMSU, opened fire on the rest of the unit while in the van and trying to escape. This picture, albeit indistinct, shows the hand of one of the IRA men in the van holding a weapon

An armalite lying in the back of the van.

Breen received an order to be photographed with the weapons. He believed this made him a target for the IRA and he was right. The photographs were used by the IRA to identify him and he was shot dead in March 1989.

Breen left orders that Jack Hermon, the Chief Constable, should not attend his funeral in the event of his assassination.

As darkness falls, a soldier from the 1RR Fusiliers, guards the scene of the ambush of Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan on the Edenappa Road, South Armagh, on the 20th, March 1989.

2. MI5 revelations

Chief Superintendent Harry Breen, Commander H Division, was involved in some of the darkest episodes of the Troubles, including the activities of the infamous Glenanne Gang.

Ulster Resistance (UR) was an organisation made up of Loyalist paramilitaries and was connected to the gang.

It has recently emerged that, in 1988, an unnamed RUC Officer alerted a member of the Glenanne Gang, James Mitchell of Glennane, Co Armagh, of imminent searches for UR weapons after they had been driven to Armagh. These warnings and leaks allowed the weapons to be moved to avoid detection throughout 1988.

This revelation emerged at a closed hearing in the High Court in Belfast.

These revelations contained in MI5 intelligence documents were disclosed in the case of Patrick Frizell v PSNI, MOD and Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

The remaining cache of UR weapons has never been discovered despite recent statements to the contrary.

MI5 knew about the help the RUC officer provided to the Glenanne Gang since 1988 and probably much earlier.

According to sources in Armagh, it was Harry Breen who rang James Mitchell about the planned searches.

Brian Frizzell was murdered by Loyalists in 1991. His brother Patrick has instructed KRW Law Solicitors in Belfast to sue the PSNI, MOD, the Secretary of State and named loyalists, for the murder of his brother. The killing took place at the Drumbeg Estate, Craigavon, Co Armagh, in 1991. Brian Frizzell was shot with one of the VZ58 assault rifles imported into Armagh, via Belfast port, by Ulster Resistance.

Alan Oliver, a Portadown loyalist, was believed to be the UVF gunman.

(Above) The De Silva Report  published in 2012, quotes a Security Service Memo dated July 1988. It refers to a senior RUC Officer leaking information about weapons searches after another failed attempt to seize Ulster Resistance Weapons in Armagh by the TCG – the Armagh Tasking and Coordinating Group, led by RUC Special Branch. The report talks about the shocked reaction of the DHSB (Brian Fitzsimons) and a Chief  Inspector, head of TCG South, Ian Phoenix. MI5 were keeping police  officers under surveillance. The MI5 report describes  informal attempts to ‘warn off’ certain officers. Some senior officers were sacked in 1989.

Willie Fraser, a Loyalist paramilitary revealed in 2017 that: “There were only three people who knew the whereabouts of the Ulster Resistance weapons, after Harry Breen died there were two” .

The PSNI is not prepared to reveal what it knows about the true role played by Harry Breen during his service as an officer of the RUC.

The circumstances surrounding Breen’s death have been obscured by lies and deception. A man called Peter Keeley is responsible for much of the deceit.

3. Peter Keeley – agent/deflector.

Peter Keeley, also known as Kevin Fulton, was an agent and participating informant  (CHIS) for British Army Intelligence, RUC Special Branch, MI5, HMRC Customs and the Financial Crimes / Economic Crimes Bureau of RUC CID, from 1980 to 2001. According to his own statements, he was first recruited by British Army Intelligence in 1979, while serving as a Corporal in Berlin.

Keeley worked for one intelligence agency or another in Northern Ireland for over 20 years. As a Catholic from Newry, Co Down, he was in position to burrow into Republican circles in a border town. Throughout his ‘career’ he admits, he was involved in numerous bombings and shootings, some of which resulted in the deaths of RUC officers and British soldiers.

 Though many of Keeley’s victims have received compensation from the MOD, and PSNI, he has never been formally acknowledged as an undercover agent or CHIS by British Army Intelligence or MI5. That stance is to be challenged in the courts in Belfast.

Peter Keeley (left) who used the pseudonym Kevin Fulton at the Smithwick Tribunal, with David Shayler, a former MI5 officer.

Praised by Judge Peter Smithwick, chairman of the eponymous Tribunal, as a highly credible witness, Keeley’s allegations of collusion against retired Sergeant Owen Corrigan in the ambush and murder of Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan, were not only untrue, they were also cast aside as a result of a late appearance by the present Garda Commissioner, Drew Harris, then Deputy Commissioner of the PSNI.

In fact there was a practical operational reason why Breen and Buchannon would have considered the route they took on the day they died safe, though it is unlikely that there was any safe route for Breen, especially after the Loughall photographs had been published.

The then Assistant Chief Constable, Drew Harris, in a late appearance at the Tribunal in Dublin, told Judge Smithwick that he had focused on the wrong man, that there was another Garda, a “Fourth Man“ who had not featured in evidence at the Tribunal. This Garda has never been identified. Drew Harris, who is now Garda Commissioner, said he had no further information about the identify of the alleged “4th man”. (It was in fact, a piece of intelligence picked up as part of an MI5 operation against dissident Republicans).

Peter Keeley is now the subject of an application for a Judicial Review which aims to have Keeley’s agent status acknowledged by MI5 and British Army Intelligence.

Further background details about the career of Keeley can be found in the article ‘Killusion’ by Deirdre Younge, written in November 2016, for Village magazine: Killusion by Deirdre Younge

4. Death on a country road.

Harry Breen and Bob Buchanan were shot dead by the South Armagh Brigade of the IRA under the Command of the late Patrick O’Callaghan, the ‘right hand man’ of IRA Commander Tom ‘Slab’ Murphy.

A map given to the Smithwick Tribunal by three representatives of the  South Armagh Brigade who carried out the ambush of Commander H Division Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan. One of the three described himself as having a ‘Command role’. The map showed the location of IRA units on the 20th of March 1989.  There were approximately thirty men involved in the operation

The ambush of the two officers happened as they were returning over the border from a meeting in Dundalk Garda Station. They went via the Edenappa Road. The choice of this dangerous route was alleged to have been motivated by Bob Buchanan’s belief in God’s “providence”.

That day, Commander Breen had a double mission – a two week operation by the 1RRF based at Bessbrook Barracks to clear explosives devices from the Dublin-Belfast railway line, which ran just over the border into South Armagh, was due to end. A wide area around the railway track was declared “out of bounds” by the Chief Superintendent in Newry. This was to avoid ‘blue on blue’ incidents between Army or police personnel. “Out of bounds” notices were distributed to all police stations in H Division. Harry Breen, as Commander H Division, would have been aware of this fact.

1RRF on the Edenappa Road in the day after the ambush of the two police officers.

Breen, as Commander, was responsible for the continued operation of the rail service as it ran over the border and through Armagh. The IRA however, prioritised disrupting the rail link by leaving IEDs and bombs on the track of the Newry to Portadown leg of the journey. The Irish Government believed in the symbolic and practical necessity to keep the train service operating.

Representatives of the IRA unit who carried out the ambush of the two police officers had a number of meetings with Judge Peter Smithwick and his legal team in 2008. According to them, Bob Buchanan’s  car had been attracting the IRA’s attention due to the frequency of his visits to Garda stations, and his driving over and back across the border. He had been warned by the guards that he was attracting attention.

But it was Harry Breen’s being sighted in the car with Bob Buchanan, as it drove through Meigh in South Armagh, that was the start of an operation specifically to target Breen.

The aim, according to the IRA representatives, was to capture and interrogate him about the wipe out of the East Tyrone unit at Loughgall in 1987, and discover the identity of a suspected informer. He was instead shot dead by one of the IRA men.

Colm Murphy.

It’s been suggested the man who shot him was Colm Murphy who had allegedly been recruited by MI5. He had a long history stretching from Kingsmills to the Omagh bomb in 1998, after he had joined the ‘dissidents’. One of the weapons used at Kingsmills were used in the Breen and Buchanan murders. It was destroyed in 1996 by the RUC for unknown reasons.

The IRA OC of the operation on the 20th March had been under pressure to ‘take action’ over Loughgall. In the event Harry Breen died after he was shot in the head  with an armalite assault rifle as he lay on the road.

The IRA representatives who met Smithwick could not explain why he had been shot and not taken away for questioning.

“ Q – The intention was to take away and question the occupants?.

A – The intention was to take away and question the occupants.

Q – Why did that change?.

A – If we could take a short break.

The interview resumed but the question was never answered.

Breen had previously been targeted by the IRA in 1978 at Sturgeon Brae.

 Weapon B (below) used to shoot Harry Breen was also used at Kingsmills in 1976. Both officers were shot dead by armalite assault rifles.

The recent Coroner’s report into the Kingsmills massacre in 1976, gives an account of the long history of weapon B/2 a .220 Colt Armalite rifle, used in the ambush of officers Breen and Buchanan in 1989.

(Above) ‘Logs kept by the Fusiliers on March 20th.

At 11.35 on the morning of the 20th of March, 1RRF picked up ESD – electrostatic discharge – from observation  of the senior IRA leaders in South Armagh. Their activities were closely monitored twenty four hours a day and it was obvious things were stirring from early morning. The use of radios and walkie-talkies between Paddy O’Callaghan and other IRA men,  indicated that an IRA operation was in progress  This information was passed on to the Head of Special Branch in Armagh Frank Murray, according to the evidence of witness 27, a senior RUC Officer based at Gough  Barracks.

(Above) Retired Brigadier Ian Liles gave evidence to Smithwick. He took up the post as intelligence officer for 3 Brigade based in Gough Barracks, Armagh in the rank of Major. Though he first arrived some weeks after the IRA ambush, he confirmed that the ‘intelligence traffic’ indicated the IRA operation proper started at 11.30, with preparation much earlier that morning.

5. Keeping the lines open in 1989.

The Dublin-Belfast railway line ran through Newry and on to Portadown, crossing the border over the Kilnasaggart Bridge, at the entrance to the Edenappa Road in South Armagh. Edenappa was one of the smugglers routes controlled by Tom ‘Slab’ Murphy. 1 RRF Fusiliers had been ‘dug-in’ in the area to protect soldiers examining the rail tracks for bombs. A unit from Y Company 1RRF was on Feede Mountain which directly overlooked the road.

The army was also using electronic and infrared surveillance and looming watchtowers oversaw the countryside. Breen’s  police journal shows he attended numerous meetings about the railway line including on the 7th of March, the start of a two week operation to clear the track.

On the 14th of March,1989, the Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs made a statement condemning the IRA’s campaign against the railway line. He pointed out the line had been closed for 40 days.

Unionists demanded that the Secretary of State increase surveillance to keep the railway line open. From the ‘Portadown Times’, 1989.

Breen’s police journal showed how his time was taken up with clearing the railway line:

3.3.1989

Duty to Bessbrook Mill, liaised with 1RRF Ré railway line and incidents at Kilnasaggart.

6.3.1989

Duty to Bessbrook Mill and liaison re railway line.

7.3.1989

Discussion with 1 RRF and 2 UDR re problems on railway line.

This marked the start date of a two week  operation carried out by 1RRF to clear the track. Breen was heading back to Bessbrook Mill when he was shot.

6. Taking on Slab Murphy.

Breen’s visit to Dundalk however had another more important purpose. At a meeting with the Secretary of State Tom King and senior Army officers in Stormont a week earlier, an officer, newly arrived to the border on a short roulemont had given the Secretary of State a dramatic account of the numbers of oil tankers coming out of Murphy’s yard on a particular day. King was furious and demanded immediate action to close down Murphy’s operation.

Tom King.

Harry Breen was instructed by fax on Friday the 17th of March to write a report,  which included the views of the Gardaí in Dundalk, by the following Tuesday the 21st.

A following page to the order to Breen contained the instruction that a report was to be prepared by the 24th of March.

The order of the Chief Constable Jack Hermon had come via the Senior  Assistant Chief Constable Operations, David Cushley. Breen was therefore ordered to travel to Dundalk Garda Station on Monday the 20th, a day which dovetailed with the proposed reopening of the railway line, and a journey to Bessbrook Army barracks for a meeting with Army officers.

John Hermon

The order to Breen which was sent from Belfast to Armagh, came from the SPM, the Security Policy Meeting, which comprised the Secretary of State, the GOC, the DCI (MI5) and other very senior officials. It would have been impossible for him to ignore the command. There was clearly widespread knowledge of Breen’s ‘mission’ to Dundalk. (Definition of the SPM is from the Maclean Report, 2006)

Breen was said to be furious that the Chief Constable would take orders from  a civilian, albeit the Secretary of State. In a meeting the night before he travelled, he told his friend RUC Sergeant Billy McBride how anxious he was. McBride advised him not to go but Breen said he had no choice but to obey the order from the Chief Constable.

Breen was later to tell Chief Superintendent Nolan in Dundalk that the number of tankers exiting Murphy’s yard in the period referred to by the officer was 1 not 90.

(Above) In evidence to Smithwick in 2011, retired PSNI Chief Superintendent Alan Mains, who has been  Chief Superintendent Harry’s Breen’s Staff Sergeant in Armagh in 1989, described being asked by Breen to check the newly arrived Army officer’s account of the number of lorries leaving Murphy’s yard on the day referred to by the Army officer. Mains did so and said he discovered  that it was “much less” than the Army Officer had claimed.

But the real issue was that the Chief Constable was issuing orders on the basis of an impetuous decision of a civilian, no matter if it was the Secretary of State.

 Breen was now fearful and angry he knew he was a target for the IRA. Also the AGS had written to the RUC in Newry sharing  Garda intelligence that the IRA were actively targeting RUC officers travelling over the border.

At the meeting with the Chief Superintendent in Dundalk, J. J Nolan, Harry Breen described a social occasion held by the Secretary of State Tom King which included Harry Breen, witness 27 and a number of Army officers :

“During the course of the evening a senior British Army Officer told the Secretary of State that in a recent period of 60 hours, British Army personnel in an observation post close to the border observed ninety (90) oil tankers entering the yard of Patrick “Slab” Murphy at Ballybinaby, Hackballscross, from Northern Ireland. As a result of this information the Secretary of State wrote to the RUC Chief Constable and the matter came down the line to Chief Superintendent Breen to investigate. He did this and established that over this period only one (1) oil tanker was observed by the Army Observation Post.

I was left in no doubt that the inference to be drawn from this information was that reports of this type coming from the British Army were exaggerated and should be treated accordingly”.

But the British exchequer was losing hundreds of millions of pounds in taxation on fuel smuggled over the border. Tom Murphy was believed to control the trade from his yard at Ballybinaby and Larkin Road. Action had to be taken according to  the Secretary of State.

While Harry Breen was making arrangements to travel to Dundalk senior RUC Officers were attempting to damp down the Secretary of States exasperation over the Army officer’s report which showed Murphy openly flaunting the law: a report about Murphy for an official in the NIO read as follows : “The point behind this ( explanation) is that the survey was not designed for immediate Executive Action – Murphy’s expertise has moved well beyond the point of being disturbed by periodic interception of fuel lorries. It will require a plan of considerable depth and subtlety, possibly involving additional legislation and certainly much cooperation from the South, finally to remove Murphy from the map”.

Senior Garda officers on the Border say that the British Army set up numerous operations to “tackle” Murphy which they observed from South of the Border but which generally ended with the army withdrawing to base.

7. Ambush.

On the  route Harry Breen and Bob Buchanan chose to take to Bessbrook, the  Edenappa road, both men were shot dead by a group of IRA men as they crested a hill a short distance from the border.

An IRA man was said to have ‘panicked’ after Bob Buchanan reversed a few yards into a ditch. That was the reason given why Harry Breen was shot dead.

 No one has been charged with the murders.

Intelligence material relating to the murders was heavily redacted though it was obvious there was considerable information gathered by the British Army and RUC. Some of the weapons were retrieved during a search in Crossmaglen in 1990 including two assault rifles which had been used at Kingsmills in 1976.

8. Keeley tasked to divert.

Peter Keeley played a crucial role as a witness in the Smithwick Tribunal from 2006, by alleging that he had direct evidence of Garda collusion in the murders of the two senior police officers. According to his own account, he was an ‘embedded’ Army Intelligence agent in South Down IRA since the early ‘80s. Keeley’s longevity was remarkable and he worked for British Intelligence including two future Director Generals, in different capacities until 2000.

Keeley’s allegations were to divert attention away from the late Chief Superintendent Harry Breen, who was directly linked to the “Glennane Gang” of the 1970’s and Ulster Resistance of the 1980s. They instead thrust suspicion onto the Gardaí in Dundalk. This corroborated allegations in journalist Toby Harnden’s book ‘Bandit Country’.  RUC officer Alan Mains, Harnden’s liaison in writing the book, was Alan Mains who had been the source of allegations about Garda X.

 The sensational allegations in Harnden’s book caused the Breen family to look for a reinvestigation of the murders. The exact sequence of events will be detailed further on in this piece.

9. Harry Breen.

Harry Breen had featured in John Weir’s statement written in 1999. Weir was a former member of a notorious SPG, Special Patrol Group, based in South Armagh in the 1970’s. He was arrested in 1979 and served ten years in jail for his involvement in the  murder of a Catholic.  In a statement drawn up in 1999 describing the activities of what became known as the ‘Glennane Gang’ in the 1970s, he described a number of meetings with Harry Breen, then a Chief Inspector  based in Newry RUC station, and Breen’s longtime friend, Sergeant Billy McBride (mentioned earlier). McBride was a gun maker for Down Orange Welfare and other loyalist paramilitaries.

Brian Fitzsimons who was later to become Head of RUC Special Branch served in Special Branch in Newry in the 1970’s. He took part in a joint operation with Sgt Owen Corrigan anf Dundalk Garda Station after the kidnapping of Robert Nairac in 1976. Owen Corrigan said Brian Fitzsimons told him that Harry Breen was “gathering up weapons” for Loyalists.

(Above) From John Weir’s 1999 statement given to the Barron Tribunal in Dublin. Billy McBride mentioned in the statement was one of the last people to speak to Harry Breen before he died.

In an interview in 2002, Weir said that Breen was not a “rogue“ officer but was carrying out his duty. This may be true as the ‘Glenanne Gang’ and their associates  – Robin Jackson’s UVF – were no doubt used as a ‘counter gang’ by the NI State when it served a purpose.

 At least three of the most active Loyalist assassins in mid Ulster were State Agents:

Robin Jackson was protected at various times since the early 1970’s, by the RUC, British Army Intelligence and MI5. The British Army in a recent case, said Jackson was the RUC’s asset not theirs, but he was originally recruited as a member of the UDR and trained by Army Intelligence. Senior police sources say he was run by “different agencies at different times”. Jackson died in 1998.

An Army Intelligence report from 1973 details weapons, ammunition and lists of names of Republicans found in Robin Jackson’s house after it was searched. He only served one short prison sentence in the late 1970s.

Billy Wright was shot in the Maze Prison by the INLA in late 1997 in suspicious circumstances. Wright had set up in LVF in opposition to the peace moves of the Belfast UVF. According to the report of the Maclean Inquiry into Wright’s death, he was still ordering murders from his prison cell to be carried out by his LVF Lieutenant Mark Fulton. He was also recruiting disaffected UVF members in Belfast. It’s probable Sean Brown was shot dead in early 1997, on the orders of Wright. Wright himself was shot dead by an INLA gunman allegedly recruited by MI5, while in prison in December 1997.

In 1992 Robin Jackson made a number of allegations about Billy Wright to the leadership of the UVF in Belfast. He accused Wright of being a Special branch agent, a drug dealer and the owner of a house, bought by the RUC Special Branch, on the Mahon Road in Portadown. According to Jackson the house was bugged and wired. A court marshall was held on the Shankill Road in Belfast, presided over by David Ervine. Robin Jackson did not turn up so the charges against Wright were dropped.

Alan Oliver, gunman in a number of the murders of Catholics in the 1990’s is now a Christian who says will not talk without an amnesty. He took his orders only from Robin Jackson. He has been called as a witness at upcoming inquests of Catholics shot dead in Tyrone. Oliver featured in intelligence material from the late ‘80s, but was never convicted of a crime.

Evidence pointing to Alan Oliver’s involvement in a number of murders in Mid-Ulster was withheld from three investigations.

Any senior officer therefore, like Breen or Frank Murray the longtime senior Special Branch Head in Armagh, possibly had a role in protecting and enabling these men. Notably, neither Murray nor Breen were moved from Armagh for any length of time during their careers.

Irish News, 9 February, 2024: Information about Robin Jackson continues to emerge. MI5 has released intelligence documents linking Jackson to two double murders in Tyrone in 1992. Jack and Kevin McKearney were shot in Moy, in January 1992. Eight months later Charles and Tess Fox were shot dead in their farmhouse near Moy.

These victims, and many others, were attacked by gunmen using VZ58 assault rifles which were part of the Ulster Resistance weapons cache, imported in early 1988.

10. Glennane.

Willie Frazer was a link between the group known as the Glennane Gang (a term he himself rejected believing it was used as too convenient a front for what were in fact UVF actions) and later ‘Ulster Resistance’ in Armagh. Frazer was in his early teens when the Troubles in Armagh began in the early ‘70s. His father, a member of the UDR, was shot dead by an IRA man, a neighbour in Whitecross. Albert Frazer had ‘worked with’ Robert Nairac, which his son believed led to his murder. As a teenager he was warned by the SAS not to get involved with Nairac.

From ‘Bandit Country’, photographs of Robert Nairac and the men who were convicted of his murder.

According to Frazer, Harry Breen was only one of three people who knew where the remaining cache of Ulster Resistance weapons were held in Armagh. When he was shot he said there were only two remaining. In 2014 two people had come to Armagh to make inquiries about the location of the weapons. One described himself as a former RUC officer who had worked closely with Harry Breen, another was a pastor who had befriended Billy Wright in the Maze Prison. They didn’t get the information.

Whether Harry Breen believed himself part of a ‘Deep State’ agenda, running State agents, like the notorious Robin Jackson, to “poison the water” the IRA swam in, or by the mid 1980’s was acting in opposition to  ‘dangerous’ moves by the British Government towards appeasement of the IRA, is moot.

The enigmatic Breen’s secrets died with him.

If a public inquiry into Breen’s murder in Armagh in March 1989 had been held in Northern Ireland, it could have been a revelation. The present Garda Commissioner Drew Harris has been the “lock keeper” on the vault of secrets North, and now South, of the border. As Assistant Chief Constable the Deputy Chief Constable PSNI, Harris was the liaison between MI5, the PSNI and the Smithwick Tribunal from its inception in 2005 to its reporting in 2014.

By 1988/9 Breen was in a powerful position as the new  Commander H Division which included much of Armagh and parts of South Down. He had been promoted after his predecessor had stepped down as a result of an attempted demotion by the Chief Constable, Jack Hermon.

It is clear from the de Silva report (2012) that by the late 1980’s certain RUC officers in Armagh were under surveillance, after  details of search operations were leaked. Some officers were believed to be actively leaking information to Loyalist paramilitaries.

(See below the de Silva Report referencing MI5 memos.)

“ The scale and nature of the “leaks” from the Security Forces to Loyalist paramilitaries during the late 1980’s has never properly been acknowledged”.

MI5’s loss of control of Ulster Resistance weapons in Armagh, despite having agents in place and despite extensive searches, signified that there was a very serious breach of security at a high level. In the ongoing Frizzell case. a sensitive and important piece of intelligence was revealed  in a closed court. Confirmation that an RUC officer was tipping off James Mitchell of Glennane. Mitchell was then part of the Ulster Resistance group around Markethill, who held, hid and distributed the weapons from 1988.

11. Sequence of events.

Toby Harnden, author of ‘Bandit Country’.

In 1998 the journalist Toby Harnden published a book called  ‘Bandit Country‘,  a detailed analysis of the South Armagh Brigade of the IRA. He was given unofficial access to RUC Special Branch files, intelligence, documents and affidavits and had sight of British Army classified documents, photographs and intelligence. His analysis of the American connections to PIRA, as part of the IRA’s bomb and weapons procurement programme, was based on FBI and CIA  intelligence and transcripts.

Harnden was interviewed about the book by the RUC in Washington on the 6th of June 2000. A memo by an RUC Officer says “Harnden made use of official documents when he had no official access”. Harnden explained he had attended the ‘sniper trial’ every day and the RUC contacts he made there gave him montages ( see below) of South Armagh IRA figures but  ‘he would not say from whom’.

From ‘Bandit Country’ featuring pictures of Tom Murphy, Seán Gerard Hughes and the late Paddy O’Callaghan. Also included an RUC ‘sighting list’.

In the book Harnden referred to the ambush and murders of Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan as they returned from Dundalk Garda Station on 20th March 1989. The book explosively “revealed” that there was suspected  Garda collusion in the murders and  specifically referred to a Garda ‘X’ and ‘Y’ in Dundalk Garda Station. Retired Special Branch officer Sergeant Owen Corrigan, was identified – wrongly – as ‘X’, the “colluder”, in statements in the House of Commons made by Jeffrey Donaldson in 1999 and 2000.

References to the alleged colluder ‘Garda X’ in Harnden’s book ‘Bandit Country.

It was the reference to Garda ‘X’ in Harnden’s book, Donaldson’s statement, another in the Dáil made by TD Charlie Flanagan on the same day in June 2000, and a follow up article in ‘The Irish Times’ that triggered demands from the Breen family for further examination of the murders. Retired RUC/PSNI officer Alan Mains, who had been Breen’s Staff Sergeant for four months in Armagh, before he was shot, was, at the Chief Constable Ronnie Flanagans request, the RUC liaison/aide to Harnden while he wrote the book. He was also a source for the allegations about ‘Garda X’.

Mains had heard of Owen Corrigan in 1994 when he was contacted during Garda searches after Corrigan was kidnapped by a group of IRA men from South Armagh. Lurid rumours surrounded the event after Corrigan was brutally assaulted. In 2016/17, Corrigan told me the IRA men were looking for information about suspected collusion between certain guards in Dundalk and Loyalists who carried out an attack on the Widow Scallan’s pub in Dublin in May1994. Corrigan had left Dundalk Garda Station in 1989 and formally retired in 1991.

After Corrigan’s retirement in 1991, he was asked by the then Garda Commissioner, Noel Conroy, to help find paintings stolen from the priceless collection of Lord and Lady Beit in Russborough, Co Wicklow. The theft was a cause of severe embarrassment to the Government.

The burglary had been carried out by a notorious criminal Martin Cahill and the paintings disposed of by a notorious “fence” who lived in Drogheda. He was rumoured to have sold them to Loyalists in Portadown. Cahill was shot dead by the IRA in 1994.

In 1998 Alan Mains, while helping Harnden, was the Chief Inspector in the RUC Economic Crimes Bureau while Peter Keeley, aka Kevin  Fulton, was a participating informant for the Bureau and MI5. Mains was effectively Keeley’s boss and the senior officer to Keeley’s handler, a Sergeant who first recruited Keeley while he was in the drugs squad in Belfast. Harnden’s book with its allegations about Garda X and Keeley’s simultaneous assertions, were the trigger for the subsequent Cory and Smithwick inquiries into Garda collusion .

In August 2000, after the publication of ‘Bandit Country’, the RUC conducted an inquiry into the information in Harnden’s book and questioned how he obtained sensitive security documentation and photographs. Writing to Assistant Chief Constable CID, the Regional Head of CID South, Maynard McBurney, concluded “... no evidence exists nor can any document be located which evidences Garda collusion with subversives”.

Chief Superintendent McBurney, asked to search for the source of what appeared to be high level leaks to Harnden, concluded that an investigation was a waste of time. It was obvious that Harnden had in fact received a high level of cooperation from within the RUC.

Harnden met and became friendly with Willie Frazer in Armagh in 1998 and ‘99. Frazer had also been  contacted by Peter Keeley who claimed to have been deprived of his pension and a resettlement package by the British Army. Keeley worked with Frazer, who now described himself  a ‘Victims Campaigner’, over the years and gave information to families of victims of the IRA about how their relatives died. Keeley was now a “whistleblower” claiming to be abandoned by the British Army after years risking his life undercover. But Keeley was also a well paid participating informant for the RUC Financial Crimes / Economic Crimes Bureau where Alan Mains was Chief Inspector, a fact which did not emerge during the Smithwick  Tribunal.

Harnden refused to appear at the Smithwick inquiry and informed the judge  in late 2011 he would not give evidence.

The Edenappa Road where two RUC officers were ambushed and shot dead.

Keeley and Willie Frazer met on the suggestion of Liam Clarke. The Northern editor of The Sunday Times, Frazer had been campaigning for an investigation/inquiry into the Breen and Buchanan murders in South Armagh, in March 1989. He questioned why the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, who were carrying out the bomb clearing operation on the railway line in the area  around Kilnasaggart Bridge / Edenappa Road, didn’t intervene to save Harry Breen’s life. According to Frazer, he was influenced by certain RUC officers who convinced him that Dundalk Garda in particular Owen Corrigan, had colluded with the IRA in the murders of the two police officers.

12. Alleged Garda Collusion.

The sequence of events

1999/2000 – Peter Keeley, now a paid informant for the Economic Crimes Bureau, was brought to meetings with MPs in the House of Commons by Willie Frazer. The meetings, including one with Jeffrey Donaldson MP, were to voice Keeley’s allegations about Garda collusion in Dundalk Garda Station and Owen Corrigan in particular. The allegations were repeated in the House of Commons, on live parliamentary TV, by Jeffrey Donaldson.

2000 – Alan Mains (as mentioned earlier was Harry Breens staff Sergeant in Armagh for 4 months before he was shot) now  changed a statement he made eleven years earlier, after Harry Breen’s murder. For the first time he named Owen Corrigan as a Garda in Dundalk station who Breen suspected was close to Slab Murphy, IRA Commander in South Armagh. The new statement was made on foot of a new police investigation into the late Harry Breen and Bob Buchanans murder ironically triggered by Toby Harndens book and the allegation made by an RUC Officer – Alan Mains.

Alan Mains original statement made on the 22nd March 1989.  

Main’s second statement in which he gave his rank as Chief Inspector in the RUC’s Economic Crimes Bureau, referred to Sergeant Owen Corrigan as the Garda Breen had feared was on Slab Murphy’s payroll.

According to Willie Frazer’s detailed account of a conversation with Breen’s close friend Sgt Billy McBride, who had a visit from Breen the night before he travelled to Dundalk. Breen was fearful as he had been warned by “a Republican source” that he was in imminent danger from the IRA. Frazer said McBride’s account of his conversation with Breen did not refer to any Garda in Dundalk Garda station.  Frazer referred to this conversation with McBride on a number of occasions as McBride had been disturbed by what he saw as distortions in accounts of Breen’s death and, as a gravely ill man, had ‘entrusted’ Frazer with the truth as he saw it.

2001 – The Weston Park intergovernmental Conference was held.

 The British and Irish Government agreed that a range of unsolved ‘Troubles’ cases would be examined by retired Canadian Judge Cory. Among them the murders of Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan. The new allegations of Garda collusion in the murders were to be examined. Cory set to work to consider whether public inquiries should be held into the murders of Rosemary Nelson, Billy Wright, Pat Finucane, and the Breen and Buchanan murders.

Now in London Keeley was the source of a number of stories which were highly embarrassing for MI5 and the British Army. The People Newspaper carried a story about intelligence Keeley had given to his handler’s in CID leading up to the Omagh Bomb. It was this story that triggered the Police Ombudsman’s Report into the Omagh Bomb.

2003 – Willie Frazer brought  Peter Keeley to meet Judge Cory in the Merrion Hotel in Dublin. Frazer described * how Keeley was  provided with ‘lines to take’ but said Keeley did not provide Cory with a written statement. According to Frazer the allegation provided to Keeley was that Sgt Owen Corrigan walked out of Dundalk Garda Station to tell IRA man Patrick Mooch Blair that “they are here”, i.e., that Breen and Buchannan were inside Dundalk Garda station.

Frazer asked Judge Cory if he was going to call for an inquiry. The judge replied that he was being put under huge pressure not to call for a public Inquiry into the Breen and Buchanan case by Tony Blair and Security Service in the UK adding – “Willie you would not believe the pressure I am under not to hold a public inquiry”.

*personal conversations with Willie Frazer.

Not only was the allegation of Garda collusion an invention, a fact which Frazer willingly volunteered, but Keeley’s lie didn’t work as evidence of collusion, as the IRA operation had started much earlier than Keeley’s description of Corrigan’s alleged act of collusion. It was to be one of many allegations dropped or changed before and during Keeley’s evidence at the Smithwick Tribunal in December 2011.

However, in 2001, Judge Cory was swayed at the eleventh hour by the visit of Frazer and Keeley in Dublin.

He called for a public inquiry citing the influence Keeley’s “statement” had in his decision.

The Irish Government agreed to hold the Tribunal in Dublin despite the fact the two men were shot in Northern Ireland. For Frazer that was an immediate disadvantage as the Judge of an Irish Inquiry would be entirely beholden to the UK intelligence services.

2005 –  The Smithwick Tribunal Inquiry was set up by Dáil Éireann. The  Minister for Justice Michael McDowell cited Judge Cory’s reliance on Keeley aka Kevin Fulton’s evidence.

The then PSNI Head of Legacy Investigation, ACC Drew Harris, was appointed liaison between MI5, the PSNI and the Dublin based Tribunal. It was, as predicted, now dependent on the British Government, the NIO and the PSNI, to hand over intelligence documents.

13. Star Witness.

2006  – Keeley met Judge Smithwick. His wilderness years which had started in 2001 when he fled to London continued. After his usefulness as an informant in Northern Ireland had ended, he was part of the peace process flotsam, washed up, with no money or acknowledgement. He was arrested in London by the Metropolitan police Special Branch after the publication of his book called “Unsung Hero” and later “Double Agent “which described his life undercover for FRU and MI5.

Sent to Belfast, Keeley was told by the PSNI Special Branch that he was under investigation over the murder of a British soldier Corporal Cyril Smith who was killed in one of the ‘Human bomb ‘ incidents in 1990. Keeley gave a graphic description of the incident, and his involvement, in his book.

Keeley told Judge Smithwick he would not give evidence unless and until he got a guarantee of full immunity against prosecution for any evidence he would give. The British Government initially refused to extend such immunity.

Protracted negotiations were to follow in 2007 after which Keeley was ‘repackaged’ by the intelligence agencies from nuisance to valuable asset. His blackmail potential against his handlers was also neutralised.

2008 – Keeley submitted a preliminary statement to the Smithwick Tribunal. He had now received immunity from the Attorney General Baroness Scotland.  When his statement to the Tribunal was finally distributed to other lawyers at the Tribunal in mid 2011, it was clear that Keeley had pointed the finger at ex-Special Branch Sergeant in Dundalk, Garda Station Owen Corrigan, with his allegations of collusion in the murder of the officers Breen and Buchanan. The focus of the inquiry was now pivoted to the South. Bizarrely, by the end of his cross examination in 2011, Keeley had to admit that he had no actual knowledge of Corrigan’s involvement in the murders. That he “thought” Corrigan was the Garda who an IRA man had referred to as “our friend “.

Keeley aka Fulton submitted a statement to the Tribunal dated January 2008 and May 2010.

2008 – Keeley received a gold embossed  invitation to a ceremony marking the end of ‘Operation Banner’, the British Army’s campaign in Northern Ireland, in Westminster Abbey. Two years after interrogation in Castlereagh police station he was mingling with the Army top brass and the Prince of Wales.

Keeley was being rewarded by the British State. He had spent 2007 in negotiations led by his Solicitor John McAtamney, with Judge Smithwick, the PSNI and MI5. He had now become a ‘National Asset’ for a purpose. Supplied with a home, and an income paid through the PSNI – he was a protected species. Keeley was to be the pivot by which the Dublin inquiry into a highly sensitive murder in South Armagh of the two most senior officers shot in the Troubles, was turned into a multi-year  collusion “mole hunt” in Dundalk Garda Station.

In an early Tribunal document Judge  Smithwick stated that Baroness Scotland, the AG of England and Wales, undertook that witnesses from England and Wales would receive similar immunity as applied in Ireland under the Tribunal Acts. Freddie Scappaticci received immunity from the then Lord Advocate of Scotland, Frank Mulholland. In response to an FOI request for details of Keeley’s immunity deal the AG’s office replied as follows:

14. The Department pays up.

 In 2015, the Department of Justice in Dublin in response to an FOI released details of the legal costs awarded to Keeley aka Fulton In 2015 (nine pages in total).

 Documents showing the legal costs awarded to ‘Kevin Fulton ‘ aka Peter Keeley. They included this report from the States Claims Agency.

The Department withheld Record Two consisting of 260 pages which dealt with details of Keeleys costs between 2006 and 2013.

Record 2 as an A4 page actually representing 260 pages has been withheld.

 On appeal the Department claimed the documents in the ‘Record 2’  would reveal personal details about Keeley which could breach his security and also impinge on the client confidentiality that existed  between Keeley and his solicitor John McAtamney.  Record 2, in fact, represents  the negotiations between the British authorities and Judge Smithwick over Keeley’s immunity from prosecution and reveals his exact status. It is clear that Keeley had obtained immunity by January 2008, the date of a statement he gave to the Tribunal  [the final version of the statement is actually dated 2008 and 2010].

 By 2010 Smithwick had conducted private investigations/meetings for over 5 years, including with Freddie Scappaticci in 2006 in the UK and Dublin in 2012. No public sessions were held from 2005 to 2011. The Minister for Justice Alan Shatter said in the Dáil that it was not acceptable to have a Public Inquiry conduct secret meetings in private for years. Michéal Martin of Fianna Fail accused Shatter of attempting to interfere with the inquiry.

15. Public sessions 2011.

Note: c35 RUC and PSNI witnesses gave evidence to Smithwick in public : many used a cipher number rather than their names. Some used their own names. In total 82 cipher numbers appear on a witness list. The ‘missing’ numbers represent witnesses who spoke to Smithwick in private.

The Smithwick Tribunal finally started public sessions in June, 2011.

Keeley was to be the only witness, apart from former RUC officer Alan Mains, who had a direct allegation of Garda collusion or suspicion of collusion, involving Garda Owen Corrigan of Dundalk Garda Station. Keeley’s solicitor John McAtamney, in a cross examination of a former RUC officer, gave a foretaste of what his client Keeley would say when he gave evidence. He would allege, said McAtamney, that IRA man Patrick ‘Mooch’ Blair told him (Keeley) that Sgt Corrigan collusively gave the IRA information about the two officers’ movements immediately after they were shot dead. McAtamney referred to Keeley’s ‘statement’ mentioned earlier, that none of the other lawyers had yet received.

Corrigan’s Senior Counsel Jim O’Callaghan demanded to get a copy of  the statement. It was handed over to Corrigan’s legal team with the proviso that it still has to be ‘passed’ by the (British) Army and the PSNI.

16. An Important Witness.

 On September 8th, 2011 Witness 27 gave evidence at the tribunal and, like many others, he had also given a statement years earlier which gave important context in relation to Breen and Buchanan’s journey to Dundalk. His role in 1989 was Acting Assistant Chief Constable stationed at Gough Barracks but his official rank was Chief Superintendent and Deputy to the Assistant Chief Constable, Border Zone. This involved advising the British Army on the border, liaising with the Gardaí and communicating with uniform Police Commanders.

On the 15th of March 1989 witness 27 and Breen, as Commander H Division, were invited to a dinner hosted by the Secretary for State Tom King. The dinner was also attended by two Colonels based along the border, one of whom had just arrived a few weeks earlier. The conversation focused on border security and one of the officers managed to touch a very sensitive nerve with the Secretary of State, Tom King. According to Witness 27 the newly arrived army officer “regaled the Secretary of State with gossip about the activities of one Provisional IRA Godfather. King became agitated, started banging the table and demanded we collectively mount an operation against this PIRA individual”.

Witness 27 said both he and Breen were  concerned that King did not appreciate the ‘security difficulties’ of operations in the border area and told the Secretary of State that, “his perception of the nuances which did exist was flawed”. King’s anger was fuelled by the fact that Murphy’s  smuggling operations were depriving the British exchequer of millions of pounds in tax each year and that Murphy appeared to act with impunity from his base just on the border.

Later that evening, after the dinner, Witness 27 sat with Harry Breen in his car and discussed their concerns at the idea of conducting such an operation at that time: “Our opinions were based upon the lack of actionable intelligence information available to us, and that we considered the comments made by the Army officer to be based on mere gossip”. [Breen was to later tell the Gardaí in Dundalk that the  Army officer, who had so influenced Tom King, had grossly exaggerated the number of suspect lorries leaving Murphy’s yard].

According to witness 27, a meeting was held in Armagh on Thursday the 16th, which was attended by Harry Breen, his superior officer, Assistant Chief Constable Rural East, and Superintendent Bob Buchanan. At the meeting the officers poured over aerial photographs, maps and files. It was obvious, as Murphy’s farm was operated from just South of the Border, that the Guards had to have a role. In fact Breen received an order late on Friday to that effect from the Chief Constable Jack Hermon, via the Senior ACC Operations David Cushley. Time was short, it was clear that the meeting in Dundalk had to take place on the following Monday the 20th. Breen would make the arrangements.

According to witness 27:  “Chief Superintendent Breen and I both expressed serious concern at the notion of conducting an operation against the named individual at that specific time. Our opinions were based upon the lack of actionable intelligence information available to us, and that we considered the comments made by the Army officer to be based on mere gossip.

Although we both agreed on the inadvisability of the operation, neither of us had any additional or undue worry about the practicalities of working with A Garda Síochána in connection with it”.

But witness 27 was not to go to Dundalk. After receiving a call from Harry Breen at 9.25am on Monday morning and arranging to meet up at Newry RUC station at 11.45 to travel together to Dundalk, witness 27  had a visit to his office in Gough Barracks, from a 3 Brigade (Intelligence) Major two minutes later, at 9.27. The Major told witness 27 that the monthly Brigade conference, due to be held on the 24th of March, had been brought forward to that day and witness 27 was now required to attend in place of the Assistant Chief Constable who was ill. The Brigade meeting went on until 1.30 that afternoon so Breen and Buchanan travelled to Dundalk without witness 27.

 Later that afternoon a telex relayed the devastating news that his two colleagues were lying dead on a road in South Armagh, as darkness fell around them. (Below) the Edenappa Road on the evening Harry Breen and Bob Buchanan were shot. The two bodies could not be removed until the following day.

The bodies of the RUC officers were left on the road at the scene of the attack for fear of a secondary device.

 Witness 27 in evidence described a conversation he had soon after the murders with the Head of Special Branch in Armagh, Detective Chief Superintendent Armagh Frank Murray:

“I was subsequently told by my late colleague, Detective Chief Superintendent Frank Murray, that from about midday on the day of the murders, a high level of radio activity known to have been generated by paramilitary groups, was recorded in the South Armagh area”.

The Fusiliers were picking up the ‘ESD, ’ electrostatic discharge, from IRA radio communications, indicating that an IRA operation was taking place. This was recorded on 1 RRF Fusiliers logs. It had started at around 9. 30 in the morning.

On June 9th, 2011  Witness 18, who had been Harry Breen’s immediate superior as Assistant Chief Constable Rural East, gave evidence. He described being instructed by the Chief Constable Jack Hermon to meet Harry Breen and order him to collate all available information about the smuggling activity of a “particular individual” aka Tom Murphy. Witness 18 claimed the Chief Constable Jack Hermon said that: “no one was to cross the border, there was no necessity or no one should cross the border to obtain such information. While any available similar operational information should be sought from the Garda, on no account was any officer to go across the border to get it”.

At the meetings with Breen in Armagh on the 16th, witness 18 said he reiterated that order “When Mr Breen came back into the office, I addressed my remarks and my directions to him and I included both of them (Breen and Bob Buchanan who was travelling with Breen) in the direction that they were not to go across the border for the purpose of this. There was no necessity to do it.. It was low level and there was no point in creating a situation”.

Witness 18 could not explain why he and the Chief Constable, were so adamant the two officers should not cross the border. He was asked by Counsel for the Tribunal if he was he aware of a heightened risk that put the two officers’ lives in danger:

Q – Was there any particular reason to give them that direction?

A – because it was not necessary to cross the border.

A – No, that is not quite the point I am dealing with. Leave aside whether it was necessary or not to cross the border ?

A – Because the Chief Constable told me there was no necessity to cross the border and I conveyed his message.

A -Well, I think you told us it was also your view ?

A -Yes I reinforced it myself ..

Q – Now why did you share that view ?

A – Simply because there was no need to do it.

Q – Were you aware of a heightened risk ?

A – No. There was always a heightened risk along the Border.

Q  – Well the reality is there was a heightened risk, because as it happens the officers were murdered.

Witness 18 was to make the extraordinary assertion that the two men had disobeyed an order and had been killed.

2011 – On June 10th, retired Senior Assistant Chief Constable Operations, David Cushley, gave evidence. The written  order to ACC Rural East (witness 18 above) that Harry Breen was to get the views of the Gardai and to have a report ready, early the following week, had come through his office in Belfast, down to Armagh and onto Breen late on Friday evening. He completely disagreed with witness 18 that the two men could have been ordered by the Chief Constable not to go over the border to Dundalk. He said it would have been essential to have face to face meetings with the Gardaí on foot of the Chief Constables order.

(Above) The order that came from  the Chief Constable via ACC Cushley to Harry Breen in Armagh, referred to the meeting of the SPM – the Senior Political Meeting – and the Chief Constable’s direction which followed, that a report on a possible cross border operation, targeting Tom “Slab” Murphy’s multi million pound fuel smuggling business, be compiled. There was also an accompanying note from ACC Cushley which said the report was to be delivered by the 24th of March, after Breen’s personal consultation with the Gardaí in Dundalk. This left Breen under time pressure.

In evidence ACC Cushley described how the order to Chief Superintendent Breen came about and why it was essential Breen travel to Dundalk to have a face to face meeting with the Guards.

The cross examination of ACC Cushley continued. He was asked by Counsel for the Tribunal to respond to the previous witness 18, ACC Rural East, and his assertion that Breen had been ordered not to cross the border, that it on a simple operation:

Q – Witness 18 described this as a simple low-level operation..that did not require any crossing of the Border. Do you agree with this analysis that it was a low level operation

A – No Sir.

Q – Why not?

A – This was a direction from the Secretary of State, had gone to the Chief Constable, it had gone to the GOC. And it had the.. Chief Constable’s imprimatur to require a report and detail and that, certainly, was not low level in my mind.

ACC Cushley was asked to respond to some more of ACC Rural East – witness 18’s – evidence:

Q – Arising from the evidence of witness 18.. yesterday:

ACC Rural East told you that Chief Superintendent Breen’s widow Mrs Breen would have to be told that he disobeyed an order. Do you recall that conversation ?

A – No.

Q – ( Barrister then quotes ACC Rural East’s evidence to ACC Cushley to refresh his memory as follows)

Q – “When did you say that to him?

A – To who?

Q – To witness 55 (Cushley)

A – Oh, I said that at the time, I said “look Mrs Breen will have to be told””.

Cushley responded to Witness 17’s evidence

A – Why would he be telling me that ?

So far as directing either from the Chief Constable or.. the Assistant Chief Constable East that they were not to cross the border to carry out their function, if that had ever been mentioned in my presence, I do believe it would be etched in my memory to this day and to my dying day, along with several other fatal incidents that I was on close proximity to. It would have been etched on my mind like – “where were you on the day that President Kennedy died”…. I find it quite surprising that I have no recall that this happened. If it had happened, I do believe that I would have recalled it.

ACC Cushley was questioned by Jim O’Callaghan SC for Owen Corrigan:

Q – Sir Do you recall in the aftermath of the murders whether retired Detective Superintendent Alan Mains identified a named officer in Dundalk about whom Superintendent Breen was allegedly concerned? Do you have any recollection of that ?

A – No Sir.

17. The Star witness appears.

2011 – December 14th

 The moment Smithwick had been working towards since 2006 had arrived. His central witness Peter Keeley whose pseudonym Kevin Fulton was used at the Tribunal, appeared in Dublin. He had an assurance of immunity from prosecution given by the Attorney General of England and Wales and was in an apartment, with an income, provided by the British State

 It quickly became apparent that Keeley’s main collusion allegation had changed again  – from the Breen and Buchanan murders to the murder of Louth farmer Tom Oliver by the IRA in 1991. Incredibly, and despite the fact that he had left Dundalk Garda Station in 1989, ex Sgt Owen Corrigan was now accused of giving an IRA man Patrick “Mooch” Blair information that Louth Farmer Tom Oliver was an Garda informant, thereby allegedly setting him up  for his murder in 1991.

Oliver found a cache of weapons on his farm and reported it to Dundalk Gardaí.

Keeley in evidence described his own role in what he called the “first abduction” of Mr Oliver. He described hiring the van used to transport Oliver to his interrogation.

Reliable sources say Keeley was directly involved in the brutal interrogation of Tom Oliver in an IRA safe house in Cooley, near the border where he was shot dead.  Keeley also  appears to have driven Mr Oliver’s body to South Armagh to be dumped outside Belleeks.

In the course of his evidence Keeley also gave considerable detail of his undercover life in the IRA.

Bizarrely, after two days of giving evidence, he admitted at the end of a cross examination by Owen Corrigan’s SC Jim O’Callaghan, that he had no evidence at all to link Owen Corrigan to the Breen and Buchanan murders.

18. Mains.

2011 – Former RUC/PSNI Chief Superintendent Alan Mains gave evidence to the Tribunal, solely in the role of former Sergeant to Harry Breen in Armagh in 1989. He described Breen’s fears of travelling to Dundalk and his suspicion of Garda collusion with Tom ‘Slab’ Murphy, South Armagh.

Mains was questioned about his additional statement made in 2000 which named former Sergeant Owen Corrigan as the Gardai who Breen had suspected of close links to Tom Murphy. An assertion which neither witness 21 or any other senior officer corroborated.

(Above) Alan Main’s statement made in September 2000 while he was the Chief Inspector in the Economics Crime Bureau of the RUC. Kevin Fulton aka Peter Keeley was a participating informant for the Bureau since 1997. In 1999/2000 Keeley had been involved in a complex operation with Customs, MI5 and RUC CID.

Mains was cross examined about his statements by Counsel for Owen Corrigan:

Q – Now, at the time you signed this statement on the 15th of September, 2000, a number of events had occurred, Mr Mains, and I just want to identify them for you and ask you some questions about it. First in 1999, a book had been published by a journalist called Toby Harnden called ‘Bandit Country’. Were you aware of this book when you signed this statement ?

A – I would have been yes.

In fact Mains, as stated earlier, had been the liaison with the author Toby Harnden, apparently at the request of the then Chief Constable Ronnie Flanagan. In a letter to the Garda Commissioner Noel Conroy, Deputy Chief Constable of the RUC Colin Cramphorn in September 2000,identified Alan Mains as the RUC Sergeant quoted in page 157 of ‘Bandit Country’.

The  confluence of events – in June 2000, a meeting with Keeley in the House of Commons, had inspired Jeffrey Donaldson to name Owen Corrigan publicly as colluder in the murders of Breen and Buchanan. Keeley, years later in 2011, admitted at the Smithwick Tribunal that he had no evidence to connect Corrigan to the murders.

Toby Harnden refused to give evidence to the Tribunal. In relation to allegations of  Garda collusion in his book, he said he had stated what was a hypothesis as a fact.

Mains was asked about the differences between his two statements made 11 years apart.

Q – So are we to take it, and is the Chairman to take it, that Chief Superintendent Breen said to you he has concerns about members of A Garda Síochána who had contacts with ‘Slab’ Murphy ?

A – If that is the way it reads, that is the way it reads…

Q – But would you agree with me that according to this statement, Mr Breen was complaining about Gardaí plural, not one Garda ?

A – He made that statement then qualified it by stating Owen Corrigan..

Q – So this is, I think, broader evidence than I thought you were giving, Mr Mains. I now want to deal with the fact that nowhere in this (first) statement..do you mention my client Owen Corrigan and in your evidence yesterday you said the reason you didn’t mention him was because a member of CID advised you not to include Corrigan’s name, is that correct

A – That’s correct.

The officer Mains claimed had directed him not to name Corrigan was the late CID Regional Head, Chief Superintendent Maynard McBurney who wrote the reports on Harnden’s book when it was published in 1998. [See earlier documents].

Mains wrote McBurney’s name on a piece of paper for the Judge.

Q… So the person you mentioned is not available to give evidence because, tragically, he has passed away.

A – (Witness nods.)

Alan Mains claimed to have been scheduled to travel to Dundalk with Chief Superintendent Breen and to have been at a meeting with Chief Constable Hermon in Newry after the two officers were killed. His senior officers disagreed that Mains was to go to Dundalk or that he was at a meeting with the Chief Constable.

19. The Catholic RUC Officer.

February 13th – as the Tribunal public sittings drew to a close, a number of documents were read into the record at a sitting of the Tribunal held in the Criminal Courts, as the lease to Tribunal Offices had ended. A lawyer for the Tribunal read part of a document given to the Tribunal By the NIO. Numbered HMG 151 and dated August 2002, it  was written by the then private secretary to the Secretary of State, Peter Waterworth. The document was put up on a wide screen for ease of reading. Only what was described as the ‘relevant paragraph’ was read out. The document was addressed to a member of MI5 and concerned a conversation between the author Peter Waterworth, a former official in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office then newly appointed Private Secretary to the Secretary of State, and Lady Sylvia Hermon, the widow of the former RUC Chief Constable, Jack Hermon, who was by then a UUP MP. The paragraph describing the conversation which occurred on the 14th of August, 2002, read as follows:

“What seems to have inspired (Sylvia) Hermon to speak out was Trimble almost divulging in front of Donaldson and Burnside at the parliamentary party meeting [of the UUP] information that she had given to Campbell a year ago, that the likely source of collusion in the Breen and Buchanan case was a ‘senior Catholic RUC officer’. She did not have any more specific information about the individual’s identity, but was sufficiently impressed by the evidence that she had sought and failed to persuade Trimble not to include the case in the Weston Park list. She feared the consequences for the PSNI, if the story was to emerge from a review, and she had talked Trimble down when he had come close to blurting it out”

The document was signed Peter Waterworth, Principal Private Secretary to the Secretary of State, Northern Ireland.

Lady Hermon did not give evidence but did give an affidavit to the Tribunal. She accepted that she was the person referred to in the Waterworth memo, but emphatically denied almost everything else:

“It is wholly untrue for paragraph 5 of the NIO document to assert that I had ‘sought and failed’ to persuade the UUP leadership not to include the Breen and Buchanan case in the Weston Park list because the likely source of collusion in the Breen and Buchanan case was a senior Catholic officer…

It is also wholly untrue for paragraph 5 of the NIO document to claim that ‘ a year ago that I had given to a prominent member of the UUP [ David Campbell, Chair UUP ] information that the likely source of collusion in the Breen and Buchanan case was ‘a senior Catholic officer’.

Furthermore it is entirely untrue to claim that I had been ‘sufficiently impressed by the evidence of collusion’ by a senior Catholic officer in the murder of Chief Superintendent Breen and Superintendent Buchanan. On the contrary  I have never seen or been given evidence of collusion by a ‘senior Catholic RUC officer’ in the murders of Chief Superintendent Breen and Superintendent Buchanan “.

On the 20th January 2013 Mr Waterworth who lived abroad, ‘far away’ ( as described by a Tribunal lawyer) wrote to Judge Smithwick addressing himself to the contents of HMG 151 as follows:

“I can recall a conversation with Lady Hermon on the 14th of August 2002 because it took place shortly after I moved from the position of Head of Public Affairs Division in the NIO to become Principal Private Secretary to the Secretary of State”.

Mr Waterworth went on to state that at no time did he work for any intelligence agency and, despite the fact his role had changed, he agreed to meet Lady Hermon “because she had not had the opportunity to develop a relationship with my successor and valuable information might otherwise have been lost”.

 Mr Waterworth continued:

“My recollection of the conversation is limited to the minute, except I do recall Lady Hermon saying that Mr Trimble raised the Breen and Buchanan murders at the Weston Park conference as disincentive for the investigation of alleged collusion cases in Northern Ireland.

While paragraph 5 is a summary, it is relatively detailed and, as an experienced notetaker I would not have reported on the substance or used quotation marks unless I was sure that I was accurately reflecting what I had been told.

Concerning Paragraph 5, while the circumstances surrounding the murders were important, the key to Lady Hermon’s referring to them at all was Mr Trimble’s near revelation to Donaldson and Burnside..

I do not know of any evidence that supported the theory expressed by Lady Hermon as to the alleged role of an RUC officer in the events, nor did I ever know of any evidence supporting any allegation of complicity or collusion in these murders..Once I had recorded and reported the meeting the matter did not come to my attention again”.

Peter Waterworth.

Lady Hermon responded to an email asking for further comment by saying she stood by her statement (above) and did not want to add to it.

David Campbell, the former Chairman of the UUP, denied that he received any information about a Catholic officer as described by Mr Waterworth.

He submitted an affidavit to that effect.

Jeffrey Donaldson, David Burnside and Ken Meginess said they had no knowledge of a Catholic officer, as described in Waterworths note, or of any of the matters at issue.

The contradictions in this strange episode remain. How a former senior NIO and Foreign Office official could have such a difference in their narrative of events with senior politicians and former senior political officials is inexplicable.

20. Harris turns the tables.

2012 September  – the then PSNI Deputy Chief Constable, Drew Harris, who had been  the liaison between MI5, the PSNI and the Smithwick Tribunal since 2006, arrived to give evidence. The most important item on his agenda had been flagged some weeks earlier by a former senior RUC and PSNI Officer, Roy McComb. He had sensationally revealed intelligence relating to a “Fourth Garda”, an alleged Garda colluder who had not been revealed to, or featured in, the Tribunal.

Some weeks after McComb’s devastating intervention Drew Harris arrived in Dublin to formally reiterate this new, “live and of the moment” intelligence seemingly gleaned as a result of MI5 surveillance of dissident IRA groups. Harris reiterated that the real Garda colluder in Dundalk in the case of both Breen and Buchanan and Tom Oliver, was a Garda who “had not been identified at the Tribunal”. There was  no name available nor was there any grading given to the intelligence. The implication being that the intelligence was too sensitive to grade.

The Tribunal legal team were devastated at Drew Harris’ intervention. At a meeting called to discuss what had happened, one senior member of the Smithwick legal team said “how could the Brits do this to us we were getting on so well”.

21. Willie Frazer.

 Willie Frazer also gave evidence to Smithwick on the same day as Drew  Harris. (He said he had been effectively told to stay away from the proceedings at Smithwick by a senior politician).

 Accusations made by Owen Corrigan that Fraser had been in the ‘Red Hand Commandos” a Loyalist sub group gave him the opening to insist to Judge Smithwick that he be allowed to give evidence in public. In his evidence he wondered aloud why the Tribunal team hadn’t asked the British Army about their actions on the day of Breen and Buchanan’s murder. He claimed there had been a concealed camera on the exact shot the two officers were ambushed. He referred to ‘Billy’ (McBride)* and his conversation with Breen. He was closed down quickly but not before he said to Judge Smithwick that “British intelligence has not put all the facts before you”.

Frazer told me that he had been approached by a soldier who claimed to have put a camera on the exact  “blind spot” on the Edenappa Road, where the bush took place.

He also described three meetings with Judge Smithwick on the Edenappa Road which ended in a shouting match over the Army’s actions on the day of the ambush of officers Breen and Buchanan and Smithwick’s lack of curiosity.

*On a number of occasions Frazer also described the conversations he had with a former RUC Sergeant, Billy McBride, who was Breen’s long term friend, which he regarded as highly significant. McBride had been one of the last people to talk to Harry Breen in his home, on the Sunday night before travelling to Dundalk on the following day. According to McBride, Breen was, highly unusually, in a state of extreme anxiety, fearful for his life and deeply worried about travelling to the border.

McBride told Frazer that Breen had been warned that he was a target and to stay away from the border, by what Frazer described as  a “republican” source. Breen said to McBride ‘something bad is happening’ but he felt he had no choice but to do as ordered by the Chief Constable Jack Hermon, which was to have a meeting with the guards in Dundalk and report back within two days.

Frazer repeated this conversation to me a number of times in the belief that he owed the “debt” of finding the truth, a promise to Billy McBride as a dying man, that made him question the outcome of the Tribunal. I told him I intended to use the information he had given me and he agreed. Frazer himself died in June 2019.

Willie Frazer was buried on the 1st of July 2019 in Fivemilehill, Co Armagh. His funeral service was attended by Arlene Foster, the former First Minister and Emma Little Pengelly the present Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland.

*Based on a number of conversations with Willie Frazer between 2016 and 2018.

The night before he died Harry Breen spent time organising his personal documents such was his sense of foreboding. He had instructed his wife on a number of occasions that the Chief Constable Jack Hermon was not to attend his funeral.

The Edenappa road looking up to the hill top where the two police officers were ambushed.

 Willie Frazer also described how it came about that Keeley’s collusion statements, naming Corrigan, were “written up” for Keeley “in order to get Cory (in the first instance) to call for an inquiry”. He said he was influenced by a number of RUC men. A former garda Special Branch officer in Dundalk also said he received calls from some RUC men saying they were targeting Corrigan, the implication being that he should get in their way.

 Frazer was adamant that the allegations made by Keeley about Corrigan’s meetings with Patrick “Mooch” Blair were untrue. He was astounded that Keeley had  completely changed his collusion allegation from the Breen and Buchanan killings to the murder of Tom Oliver which, Frazer said, he knew nothing about. After all, it was Keeley’s assertion that he had direct knowledge of collusion in the Breen and Buchanan murders that persuaded Cory to call for an inquiry in the first place. This  allegation had evaporated on the witness stand.

22. A blogger takes an interest.

In 2015, just as the final bill for Keeley’s legal costs was signed off by the Department of Justice, there was a new twist in the narrative. Evidence given at Smithwick began to be analysed by one Jamie Bryson, then an obscure loyalist blogger from Co Down.

Bryson’s blog became the unlikely publisher of major revelations about NAMA’s Northern Ireland property portfolio ‘Project Eagle’.

For an Irish state owned property company to have  responsibility for disposing of distressed property loans in Northern Ireland was fraught with political difficulties. Unionist politicians were used as leverage by developers in the scramble for the lucrative but indebted property portfolios being sold off by the Irish State.

Bryson was now to be the recipient of the research and insights of a well informed property ‘Deep throat’. It was to prove an inspired choice for both Bryson and his source(s).

The revelations started after Cerberus, part of a huge American conglomerate, was the successful bidder for the ‘Project Eagle’ Northern Ireland property portfolio (to the almost audible relief of NAMA executives in Dublin). Cerberus in Northern Ireland was headed by Ron A. Coggle who was described in Bryson’s blog as a former UK ‘Scotland Yard’/ MI5 Intelligence officer specialising in Financial Crime. As smuggling and money laundering were very much part of MI5’s remit, any operative in Special Branch and MI5 would have had contacts in the corresponding RUC Financial Crimes Unit.

The Smithwick Tribunal and the NAMA hearings had caused former RUC and PSNI officers to sit up and take notice, particularly when the now retired Chief Superintendent Alan Mains made his first public appearance as a property advisor and deal maker.

Alan Mains and Paddy Kearney at Stormont.

Mains arrived to give evidence at Stormont during televised public hearings on ‘Project Eagle’ with his client, the property developer Paddy Kearney. Kearney in evidence, praised the way the new owners of his distressed properties, Cerberus, had dealt with his commercial problems and compared them favourably to the treatment by NAMA. He had also had the comfort of the advice and property wisdom of former DUP leader Peter Robinson.

Bryson’s intelligence sources for his blog and book, former members of the Security forces, shared intelligence and information about Peter Keeley and his handlers in CID. (Reminder: Keeley had been an informant in Financial Crimes, from 1996 to 2000)

 Bryson referred to Mains and Keeley in his blog and his new book  ‘The Three Headed Dog’:

The ‘Three Headed Dog’ about NAMA’s disposal of their Project Eagle Portfolio, also delved into other subjects including Unionist politics, Ulster Resistance and the Northern Ireland connections to the  Iran Contra Affair. The book was published on Amazon in 2015 but was removed after correspondence with a solicitor who specialised in defamation, representing a number of unidentified clients.

 There was still simmering resentment among former RUC Special Branch over Keeley’s evidence to the Police Ombudsman during the investigation into the  Omagh bomb of 1998. That intelligence had, in the first instance, been given to his CID handlers to be inputted into the RUC’s intelligence system, but significant pieces had gone missing somewhere between CID and Special Branch’s computers. The Police Ombudsman Nuala O’Loan, laid the blame firmly on the Special Branch for what she considered significant failures. The implication was that they had suppressed the information. 

See ‘Running with Wolves’ @coverthistory.ie for full details of Keeley and the Omagh Bomb. Running With Wolves. Britain’s Northern Ireland Secretary of State is setting up a full judicial inquiry into the Omagh bombing. This ebook explains the background to the atrocity, and outlines the questions the former RUC will face over their failure to prevent the massacre. MI5 appears undaunted. By Deirdre Younge.

The fact that Keeley’s handlers in CID Economic Crimes Bureau in the late ‘90’s, came to Dublin to sing his praises as an informant, was a sickener for the former Special Branch officers who had done the opposite, and damned Keeley or tried to. Their resentment surfaced in Bryson’s blog posts and ‘The Three Headed Dog’, published in 2015.

The fact was that Judge Smithwick was unaware that Keeley/Bryson had been a paid informant in CID Economic Crimes C1(6) while Alan Mains was a Chief Inspector.

Bryson’s blog also carried allegations that MI5 had been protecting an agent who had been one of the gunmen that shot Harry Breen and Bob Buchanan in 1989 and was also involved in the Omagh bomb in 1998. Bryson named Colm Murphy as the agent.

(Above) From Jamie Bryson’s blog.

According to Bryson, Alan Mains made a complaint to the Police Ombudsman of Northern Ireland about him, claiming he had received leaked documents from senior PSNI officers, who were therefore breaking the official Secrets Acts. This was based on the fact that Bryson had tweeted Main’s statement of September 2000 which showed he was Chief Superintendent in the Economic Crimes Bureau in 2000.

Bryson was to continue tweeting about Mains and Keeley. He confirmed that the complaint had been made. PONI has not responded to requests for further information.

The British Government has appointed a Judge Lord Turnbull to chair a new inquiry into the Omagh Bomb. The British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has recently criticised the Irish Government on its ‘legacy failings ‘ in relation to Omagh.

23. Ombudsman’s Report.

In 2016 The Police Ombudsman of Northern Ireland published a report on murders in the Heights Bar in Loughinisland, Co Down in 1994. Six men watching the World Cup on television were shot dead with an assault rifle while other people in the bar were injured. The first part of the PONI  report dealt with the origin of the weapons used by Loyalist gunmen in the attack. A VZ58 assault rifle which sprayed the bar with bullets, was from a large consignment of weapons imported by Ulster Resistance in 1988. The consignment came from Lebanon after a deal made between Armscor the South African conglomerate and the UVF, USA and Ulster Resistance. They arrived in a container ship which docked at  Belfast port and were subsequently driven to Armagh in a forty foot articulate truck to be hidden by Ulster Resistance. The ‘Resistance’ mens share, unlike those of the  UDA and UVF, successfully evaded searches by the Tasking and Support group in Armagh led by Special Branch officer Ian Phoenix. One major search across Armagh in November happened as a result of a chance arrest. According to sources much of the cache stayed intact. There was at least one highly placed member of the RUC warning Resistance. 

Part one of the PONI report quoted extensively from the de Silva report (2012) which published information from contemporaneous (1988) MI5 memos about leaks and tip offs by RUC officers to Loyalists during 1988. The documents included intelligence about a senior officer alerting a Loyalists to arms searches.

(Above) The PONI report on Loughinisland Part 1 dealing with searches for Ulster Resistance weapons in Armagh in 1988 quoted extensively from MI5 memos in the de Silva Report. The memos detailed intelligence about leaks to Loyalists and warnings about upcoming weapons searches.

The PONI report effectively situated the officer in Armagh in 1988.

 In 2019 a BBC Spotlight programme, “Spotlight on the Troubles”, revealed that Willie Frazer was a weapons distributor and transporter for Ulster Resistance weapons.

Frazer was a useful conduit between senior unionist politicians and loyalists, with links to Robin Jackson, Billy Wright and Johnny Adair.   

Recently in the High Court in Belfast in  a closed hearing in the continuing case of Frizzell and Lundy V MOD and the PSNI, MI5 intelligence was release which revealed that a senior RUC Officer rang James Mitchell, at his  Glennane farm in 1988 to warn him of upcoming searches for Ulster Resistance weapons. The officer was not named. Loyalist sources in Armagh say Chief Superintendent Breen was believed to be in contact with James Mitchell of Glennane at this time.

“I would love your Honour to be sitting in Newtownhamilton and doing this inquiry, because I would guarantee that you would get at the truth. The problem is the British Government have not put all the facts in front of you”

Willie Frazer at the Smithwick Tribunal in Dublin, September 2012.

24. The man who never was.

One of the advantages of men like Keeley – who can meld into the dark side where their handlers will not go – is their deniability. As Keeley, or his alter ego Kevin Fulton, said in a video in his ‘wilderness years’:  

 “when things go wrong, your handlers will abandon you, they will deny that you  exist, no one will help you, you are on your own”.

The essence of their usefulness is that they can be ‘Neither Confirmed nor Denied’ – the mantra adopted by the British intelligence services to avoid responsibility for the actions of their agents.

In 2003 Freddie Scappaticci obtained a judicial review against a Northern Ireland Minister Jane Kennedy in an effort to  force her to resile from the use of NCND in his case and deny he was an agent. He was unsuccessful.

Scappaticci’s case was the last taken on the matter. But Jon Boutcher, the present Chief Constable, in a reply to the Cabinet Office response to his protocol for a first ‘Operation Kenova’ report, said there were other ways of protecting intelligence  besides the use of NCND. The Cabinet Office described itself as “owning” the formula.

In the next few months the use of that convenient formula will be challenged by solicitors KRWLaw, in Belfast in a case taken against the MOD, MI5 and the PSNI. In Keeley’s own account of his life he described being recruited by the British Army Intelligence Corps in Berlin in 1979. From then on he has been a creature of one of the British intelligence services or the other.

He was an acknowledged agent of RUC Special Branch and MI5 from 1992 to 1994. He then worked as an agent or  CHIS for HM Customs, RUC CID Financial Crimes Unit and MI5. He was handled at different times by two future directors of the Security Service. His lack of acknowledgement by the British Army is belied by the honour bestowed on him – an invitation to the ceremony marking the end of the British Army’s campaign in Northern Ireland, Operation Banner  in 2008.

The British army and PSNI had the right of veto over his statements made to the Smithwick Tribunal. He still meets with his British Army contacts.

Peter Keeley is the subject of multiple civil cases being brought by numerous victims of his actions as an undercover CHIS/Agent through solicitors KRWLaw, led by Kevin Winters. Many of these cases are being settled by the MOD and PSNI without admission of liability. He is also the subject of investigations by ‘Operation Kenova’.

It is obvious Keeley feels he is above the law, that his life of shooting, bombings, kidnapping, and, that all important role of deceiver for the State, is immune from the judgement meted out to those on the other side of the mirror.

Time will tell.

While the Irish Government is challenging the British Government’s new Legacy Legislation – The Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act  2023 – at the European Court of Human Rights, it must also act to open investigations into agents like Keeley and Scappaticci in the Republic – where they kidnapped, tortured and murdered.

With thanks to Paddy H and Echo 1.

© Deirdre Younge February, 2024.