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Showing posts with label Smithwick Tribunal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Smithwick Tribunal. Show all posts
The much vaunted Operation Kenova has seen the air let out of expectations over the Stakenife investigation. Are  all  inquiries into events in the North's violent conflict destined to get lost in the fog of British  'National Security'? 

Deirdre Younge in a 2016 Village piece provides crucial insight which resonates today in the context of the ongoing dirty cover up of the North's Dirty War. 

The investigation into the deaths of the most senior RUC officers shot dead during the North's violent conflict saw Drew Harris, former ACC PSNI in charge of legacy investigations and representative of M15, throw a log across the runaway train that was the Smithwick Tribunal. 

 This raises misgivings that the current much publicised historical investigation, Operation Kenova, has a sort of 'here we go again' inevitability ingrained into its function and ultimate purpose. The Jon Boutcher led inquiry has found no evidence to support Fulton's statements implicating Scappaticci in the Tom Oliver murder or in Fulton's own interrogation, which was another of Fulton's assertions at Smithwick.

 Deirdre Younge shows that the investigation into Breen and Buchanan came to a dead end. Is it realistic to expect a different outcome to flow from Kenova? Like Smithwick, like the PONI investigation into the Loughinisland murders, Kenova, already on the same track, seems to be heading for another case of collusion but no colluder.

A new source tells Village that Smithwick Tribunal unduly relied on double agent Fulton’s evidence that Corrigan was the colluder. Confusingly, the PSNI named someone else as the colluder.

Concentrate Now: Smithwick Tribunal ended up with strange finding of ‘collusion’ but no name for the ‘colluder’ in murders of RUC men – apparently because Smithwick was swayed by the successor to the RUC (PSNI) giving untestable very late evidence privately naming someone more plausible than Owen Corrigan as the colluder. Smithwick always focused on Corrigan because the Cory Inquiry, which prompted the Smithwick Tribunal, unduly relied on 2003 evidence of dissembling double agent ‘Fulton’, now challenged by a Village source, that Corrigan gave relevant information to the IRA about the RUC men, though Fulton 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 informant Tom Oliver, and even the changed story was expressly and ignominiously disavowed by Smithwick in a recent High Court judgment to the extent it implied that Corrigan’s information led to Oliver’s death.

The Smithwick Tribunal was set up in 2005 and sat in public from 2011 until 2013, to examine the possibility of 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 their 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.
Breen and Buchanan shot on the Edenappa Road
about 500 yards from the border crossing
In 1999 John Weir, a former RUC Sergeant who had been convicted of murder as part of a loyalist gang, drew up an affidavit for a defamation case which was published by the Barron Inquiry investigating the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, which asserted he personally knew that senior RUC Officers had colluded with the UVF. He alleged that Harry Breen supplied arms to the UVF in Portadown.

Smithwick implicitly accepted only that Breen was targeted by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) because he was photographed in 1987 with weapons taken from Loughgall where eight IRA men were killed after British secret services got advanced warning of an ambush there.

The Tribunal spent years investigating alleged collusion of a different kind, between very different agents: by three gardaí in Dundalk Garda Station with the IRA. Confusingly, the PSNI arrived at the eleventh hour, with news of a ‘Fourth Man’, so defusing the allegations against the first three.

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”.

Key figures in the Smithwick Tribunal
The central figure in the Tribunal was retired Garda Detective Sergeant Owen Corrigan, who had served along the Border for his entire career. Corrigan was a pivotal figure in Special Branch in Dundalk until 1985.

Corrigan became the target of allegations ten years after the murders of Breen and Buchanan, in Bandit Country, a vivid account of the IRA in South Armagh, written by top British journalist Toby Harnden in 1999.

Corrigan was identified as ‘Garda X’ who was alleged to have furnished information to the IRA about Breen and Buchanan. Harnden was later to say that he had received information from an unidentified source in the RUC Special Branch claiming this. Kevin Myers, in the Irish Times, repeated these allegations unadulterated. Corrigan denies any wrongdoing and no finding of collusion with the IRA in relation to Breen and Buchanan was made against him despite the most thorough scrutiny by the Smithwick Tribunal.
Toby Harnden: top journalist
In 2003 a Canadian Supreme Court judge, Peter Cory, was asked by the British and Irish governments, jointly, to look into whether there should be independent public inquiries into a number of Northern murders, including those of Pat Finucane and Breen and Buchanan.

In its report on the Breen and Buchanan case in 2003, the Cory Collusion Inquiry details verbatim an interview with Harnden conducted in 2000. Cory damningly commented that:

The interviews revealed how little these gentlemen relied upon fact and how much they relied on suspicion and hypothesis. 

Cory quotes Harnden as conceding:

A lot of what was told to him was circumstantial and that he did not believe he was in possession of evidence that could result in any charges. 

Not surprisingly, Harnden did not give evidence to Smithwick.

Alan Mains, who had been Chief Superintendent Breen’s Sergeant in Armagh for three months before Breen’s death, had been assigned to help Harnden when he was writing his book. He changed his statement more than ten years after the murder to say Breen was fearful of going to Dundalk because he suspected Corrigan’s links to the IRA, though in fact it is clear that Breen was justifiably fearful on a number of grounds. Corrigan plausibly and consistently denies such links.

On recent visits north of the border, reliable loyalist and Unionist sources revealed to Village some details of Breen’s state of mind. They claim that, the night before he died, Breen met a close friend and revealed his fear of travelling to the border. He knew that an IRA action of some kind was being planned and, as a high-profile target, he feared for his life. The order to go to Dundalk, however, had come from the Chief Constable, Jack Hermon, based on the determination of then-Northern Secretary of State, Tom King, to tackle ‘Slab’ Murphy’s smuggling empire.

Owen Corrigan
Apart altogether from the Breen and Buchanan murders, the Smithwick Tribunal heard an allegation made about the murder of a small farmer, Tom Oliver in July 1991. He was abducted from his home in Riverstown on the Cooley Peninsula by a group including double agent ‘Kevin Fulton’ aka Peter Keeley, a Newry man recruited from the British Army in 1979 to infiltrate the South Down IRA.

Kevin Fulton gave evidence over three days in December 2012 to the Smithwick Tribunal. In the course of his evidence Fulton said he was being paid a living allowance and accommodation by MI5 as part of its duty of care to him. He denied being involved in the kidnapping that led to Oliver’s death, and Smithwick accepted that.

Oliver was interrogated and murdered in Belleek in County Armagh. The allegation of murder was regarded as particularly important by Smithwick, being the one piece of direct evidence of collusion against a member of Dundalk station.

The problem is that under proper scrutiny allegations of collusion here – as absolutely elsewhere else – are contested and, in the end, unproven.

Fulton’s specific and momentous allegation was that in 1991 Corrigan met Patrick ‘Mooch’ Blair, a senior IRA member, in the car-park of Fintan’s Céilí House near Dundalk, and told Blair that Oliver was passing information about the IRA to the Garda Síochána. Blair is then alleged to have threatened to murder Tom Oliver, who was indeed killed soon afterwards. Fulton had become Blair’s driver. Fulton was a professionally trained dissembler and kept his handlers in MI5 and Army intelligence supplied with information for well over a decade.

Kevin Fulton / Peter Keeley
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.

Fulton now distances himself from Unsung Hero, a graphic book about his life. Nevertheless it is notable that at no stage in the book does Fulton mention a garda in Dundalk station passing information to the IRA. Nor is there any evidence that he passed information about Corrigan or other Dundalk gardaí, to his handlers.

Just weeks before his final report Cory came to Dundalk and met campaigners who were looking for an inquiry into the murders of Breen and Buchanan. When they asked if he was going to call for an inquiry he said: “I know something happened here but I have no evidence to call for an inquiry”. When asked “What do you need?” (He obviously needed direct evidence of collusion), normally reliable sources told Village: “They [the campaigners] wrote up a statement and gave it to Fulton to sign”. The statement said Owen Corrigan had passed information to Patrick ‘Mooch’ Blair in a car with Fulton.

Ultimately, for whatever reason, Cory was convinced after meeting Fulton and, according to sources, receiving a statement from Fulton. He cited Fulton’s evidence as a major reason for calling for a public inquiry into the Breen and Buchanan murders, focusing on Dundalk Garda station. That inquiry became the Smithwick Tribunal.

However, clearly there is a shadow over the statement which inspired Cory’s call for what became the Smithwick Tribunal. If this is so it rewrites the history of both inquiries.

Soon after that, Fulton went to Cory and read the statement. Village‘s sources, however, are adamant that the initial statement as given to Cory concerned Corrigan giving information to IRA member Patrick ‘Mooch’ Blair about the arrival of Breen and Buchanan at Dundalk Garda station. Village‘s sources insists that the statement described how Detective Sergeant Corrigan came out of Dundalk Station and said to ‘Mooch’ Blair – who was supposedly sitting in a car with Fulton – “they’re here”, after Breen and Buchanan had entered Dundalk.

Crucially, by the time Fulton reached Smithwick the alleged collusion had morphed into allegations about Corrigan’s passing ‘Mooch’ Blair information about Tom Oliver. Not having access to the original Cory documents it has not been possible to verify – and Patrick Blair and Corrigan utterly deny – the allegations. A description of this scandalous contradiction appeared in a 2007 story by Suzanne Breen in the Sunday Tribune.

Suzanne Breen did not name Fulton but reported: 

An IRA informer also alleged Garda collusion in the Breen and Buchanan murders. A source told the Sunday Tribune that this informer claimed that he and ‘M’, a senior IRA figure, travelled to Dundalk on 20th March 1989. While Breen and Buchanan were inside the Garda station, a garda left the building and told the two IRA men that the two men would be leaving shortly.

Among the pieces of evidence accepted by Smithwick in a chapter devoted to Fulton’s evidence was firstly that Corrigan had been known as “our friend” to the IRA, someone who gave information to the South Armagh brigade. Fulton initially said he knew Corrigan was “our friend” but under cross-examination admitted he just “believed” he was. He alleged that on the day of the Breen and Buchanan murders a member of the local IRA unit told ‘Mooch’ Blair and Fulton that “our friend” gave information about Breen and Buchanan.

Patrick ‘Mooch’ Blair
He gave a second piece of hearsay evidence: that Corrigan managed to destroy evidence of bomb-making in a house in Omeath in 1989. In fact Corrigan had been on sick leave from Dundalk and played no part in the investigation into the Omeath incident. The third and most serious allegation made by Fulton concerned the alleged meeting, described above and first mentioned in Cory, between Corrigan and ‘Mooch’ Blair outside Fintan’s Céilí House in which Corrigan is alleged to have passed information about how Tom Oliver informed to the Garda about IRA weapons found on his land.

The first two pieces of Fulton’s evidence were hearsay, but the Oliver allegation was Smithwick’s only piece of direct evidence of collusion of any sort, by anybody, with the IRA after years of public and private hearings. It is this evidence, vehemently denied by Corrigan, which was the subject of the statement by the Tribunal that brought the Judicial Review to a halt and removes the taint of involvement from Corrigan.

But Smithwicks’ initial acceptance of Fulton’s evidence, about Corrigan and Oliver, ran directly contrary to evidence delivered to Smithwick from the PSNI and the UK Security Services, in May and October 2012. Smithwick stated, with apparent satisfaction, that the Tribunal was in a unique position as it was receiving evidence and co-operation from the Northern and UK authorities. However, he ignored or downplayed this evidence in his report. Anyone reading the report must work hard to find the details of this.

Everyone, including probably you dear reader, thinks the Smithwick Tribunal was about collusion, which everybody thinks it found, but ultimately not one allegation of collusion remained solid and firm at the conclusion of proceedings.

In a dramatic last-minute intervention, on 2 May 2012 PSNI Chief Inspector Roy McComb attested the following to the Tribunal:

The IRA had received information regarding Breen and Buchanan from a detective Garda officer who had not been publicly identified to the Smithwick Tribunal and that this individual had been paid a considerable amount of money for this information.

Intelligence indicated that this officer also provided information about Tom Oliver and continued to provide information to the IRA for a number of years.

This extraordinary information was underpinned by the then Assistant Chief Constable, now Deputy Head of the PSNI, Drew Harris, an officer significantly senior to McComb, who gave further evidence to the Tribunal, in October 2012. Harris stated:

I would make the point that the inquiry was provided with all the information which related to the murders of Breen and Buchanan. What has happened now is that more information has become available to the Police Service and, as I have said, that is live information and of the moment. The initial provision of information was both by ourselves and the Security Services, and… was a full disclosure of the information that we felt able to give. 

Smithwick was being assailed by last-minute, game-changing new evidence.

Harris was cross-examined by Owen Corrigan’s Senior Council, Jim O’Callaghan SC:

Q “Were you aware, Mr Harris, when you read these five pieces of intelligence…that they were beneficial to my client, Mr Corrigan, who has been the focus of this Tribunal inquiry for a number of years”.
A “Yes”.
Q “Did you see any unfairness in the fact that the PSNI hadn’t released this information earlier?”.
A “This material, no, because this material was released as quickly as we could manage to release, given our other responsibilities”.

But who is the Fourth Man about whom the two pieces of intelligence relate who was just revealed in 2012?”.

Counsel for the Tribunal Mary Laverty SC and Drew Harris had the following exchange (led by Laverty):

Q. “Do you believe Mr Harris that there is any information that you could obtain for the Tribunal in the near future” ?
A. “Well contact with an individual, and hopefully other individuals is ongoing and hopefully within a few days to a week I will know whether I have further information which will be of assistance”.

The cross-examination of Corrigan was overshadowed by the new information. When Roy McComb arrived with new intelligence, Owen Corrigan had been in the witness box for just one day; the cross- examination by the Tribunal hadn’t begun.

But while McComb and later Harris provided succour to the three gardaí who had been the relentless focus of the Tribunal, Senior Garda and their lawyers went on the offensive against the quality of this new intelligence. Diarmaid McGuinness SC fumed that he regarded the information as “nonsense on stilts”.

As it was impossible to “get behind” the intelligence, it was impossible to assess it. The concentration on methodology therefore distracted from the extraordinary content and the possibility it posed of identifying the ‘Fourth Man’.

In February 2013, counsel for the Tribunal Mary Laverty SC announced that the Tribunal had gone on to check out the new information with some PSNI and Garda Síochána members, but the inquiries had run into the ground.

The Tribunal unsurprisingly declared that the murder of Tom Oliver was not part of its remit, but then accepted evidence that Corrigan had given information that set him up for murder. This was an unusual approach and of course Corrigan took legal action by way of Judicial Review. Following discussions between the parties, on 25 May 2016, the Tribunal confirmed, in a statement read to the High Court, that, whatever evidence it had heard, its final report had made no finding that the killing of Oliver was as a result of information the ex-garda provided to the Provisional IRA.

The action was then struck out by the High Court on the following terms:

While the Tribunal accepted the evidence of Kevin Fulton there was no finding in the Tribunal’s report that the killing of Mr Oliver was as a result of the information provided by Mr Corrigan to the IRA.

The Smithwick Inquiry ended with an enigmatic conclusion: a collusion – which this article has shown was not satisfactorily proven, with no named colluder.

⏩ Deirdre Younge is a writer/producer/director.

How Smithwick Got Diverted

Kevin Fulton aka Peter Keeley was the Central witness at the Smithwick Tribunal. 'Killusion' written in 2016 Village by Deirdre Younge explains his role. It provides useful background to a lengthy article by her which featured in TPQ earlier this month.

Full-time for ‘Fulton’ whose changing and inaccurate evidence sparked the Smithwick Tribunal and whose wide-ranging role is beginning to emerge in other Tribunals. 

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/Peter Keeley

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 became a member of the Provisional IRA. On one occasion in the late 1980s, I was with my senior IRA Commander, Joseph Patrick Blair and another individual in my car. I knew the other individual to be [Owen] Corrigan, a member of Special Branch of the Gardai. I was introduced by Blair to Corrigan. I knew that Corrigan, who was stationed in Dundalk, was passing information to the Provisional IRA. I was in Dundalk on the day of the ambush of Superintendent Buchanan and Chief Superintendent Breen. I am aware that, after the ambush took place, Joseph Patrick Blair was told by a member of PIRA that Sergeant Corrigan had telephoned the Provisional IRA to tell them that officers Breen and Buchanan were at Dundalk Station.. I should add that I know nothing about the murder of Lord Justice and Lady Gibson. I have read this statement and its contents are true and accurate. – Kevin Fulton

Judge Cory redacted parts of his report so – extraordinarily – it’s not possible to know whether any parts of this particular statement were withheld. Corrigan’s legal team was only given access to the unredacted report on 17 May 2011 according to an affidavit drawn up by the Tribunal solicitor in 2014. This gave notice to Corrigan’s legal team that Fulton’s statement would be an issue, as it turns out a crucial and determining issue, for the Tribunal. However, the core allegation of collusion i.e. precisely what exact information passed from Corrigan to a PIRA member was not in the Cory statement. Nor was the Smithwick version of the statement released until November 2011.

The statement as published, in what the Tribunal says is the unredacted version of Cory, contains one description of an event – an alleged meeting in a car between a Special Branch man and a member of PIRA. However, Corrigan emphatically denies this ever happened – as did Patrick Blair, the PIRA man who he allegedly met. As this is the kind of meeting policemen have regularly organised for information gathering purposes the paragraph itself is meaningless without knowing the content of the conversation. The rest of the statement is a hearsay allegation, that Owen Corrigan was a man known as “our friend” who passed information to PIRA. Fulton on cross-examination substantially resiled from even this and actually changed his evidence under cross-examination.

However Fulton’s one piece of direct evidence, which he accepted was at the core of his allegations of collusion was an alleged meeting between PIRA South Down ASU Commander Patrick ‘Mooch’ Blair and former Special Branch Sergeant Owen Corrigan outside Fintan Callan’s Céili House – a busy roadhouse on the main road, open to public view. Mooch Blair couldn’t drive at this point which is why Fulton, as his driver, says he was in the car. But for the first time (insofar as can be ascertained) in March 2011, after interacting with campaigners, politicians and security forces about his knowledge of PIRA since 1999, Fulton “revealed” the contents of the conversation between Blair and Corrigan. He alleged that Corrigan told Blair that a Cooley Farmer, Tom Oliver, was giving information to the Garda about PIRA weapons and their movements.

After the meeting with Corrigan, Blair was then alleged to have threatened to murder Oliver. Fulton then alleged that soon after the meeting Tom Oliver was picked up at his home by a PIRA team, and handed over to Freddie Scappaticci for interrogation. Oliver was subsequently murdered, it is believed, in the Cooley Mountains. Fulton said the date of the alleged meeting between Blair and Corrigan was sometime in early 1991 though he couldn’t be pinned down to a precise day. He was certain however that weeks after the date of this alleged meeting in July 1991 Tom Oliver was interrogated and shot dead.

His body was found with a number of bullets in the back of the head in Belleeks, Co Armagh. But the date of the alleged meeting outside the Céili House, in the crucial Fulton statement, changed from late 1989 in Cory to 1991 in Smithwick. This is a curious jump considering a senior Judge like Peter Cory would have been punctilious about the accuracy of his reporting of statements. Fulton’s statement changed between Cory and Smithwick. Though Fulton had been interacting with the Tribunal since 2006, Judge Smithwick in December 2011 gave personal assurances to Corrigan’s legal representatives that the Fulton statement hadn’t changed beyond minor corrections.

While cross-examining a witness in 2011 Fulton’s lawyer revealed that Fulton would say that he was at a meeting in Blair’s house on the 20th March when he and Blair were told by a PIRA member who came into the house after the shootings that the Garda had given info about Breen and Buchanan. Senior counsel for Owen Corrigan, Jim O’Callaghan, then says that this is a change of evidence and the first he has heard of this meeting, occasioning the following exchange:

O’Callaghan: Why did you mislead Judge Cory?
Fulton: I would not have purposely misled Judge Cory.

Even a benign interpretation suggests Fulton misled Cory.

Fulton talks to campaigners in 1999 
Under-researched pieces by Myers and Harndon caused havoc in the RUC

In late 1999 Fulton began interacting with campaigners along the border after being introduced, he said, by the Northern Editor of a British newspaper who he described as a Registered Special Branch informant. He gave information to them about his first activities in Newry and Dundalk.

Cory in Dundalk

Reliable sources describe what happened. At a meeting in Dundalk in 2003 Cory is said to have remarked to campaigners looking for an investigation into the Breen and Buchanan murders, that while he believed there were questions to answer he had no direct evidence to argue for a Tribunal of Inquiry. According to sources the “Fulton statement” was written up for Fulton including a direct allegation against Corrigan, he signed it and subsequently appeared before Cory just weeks before Cory’s final report. This normally reliable source is adamant that what became seen as Fulton’s central allegation — the passing of information from Corrigan to Mooch Blair about Oliver, was not made and that, in fact, the allegation was rather that Corrigan had tipped off Blair about Breen and Buchanan’s arrival at Dundalk station.

Village‘s sources, however, are adamant that the initial statement as given to Cory concerned Corrigan giving information to IRA member Patrick ‘Mooch’ Blair about the arrival of Breen and Buchanan at Dundalk Garda station. Village‘s sources insists that the statement described how Detective Sergeant Corrigan came out of Dundalk Station and said to ‘Mooch’ Blair – who was supposedly sitting in a car with Fulton – “they’re here”, after Breen and Buchanan had entered Dundalk.

Crucially, by the time Fulton reached Smithwick the alleged collusion had morphed into allegations about Corrigan’s passing ‘Mooch’ Blair information about Tom Oliver. Not having access to the original Cory documents it has not been possible to verify — and Patrick Blair and Corrigan utterly deny — the allegations. The Tribunal unsurprisingly declared that the murder of Tom Oliver was not part of its remit, but then accepted evidence that Corrigan had given information that set him up for murder.

This was an unusual approach and of course Corrigan took legal action by way of Judicial Review. Following discussions between the parties, on 25 May 2016, the Tribunal confirmed, in a statement read to the High Court, that, whatever evidence it had heard, its final report had made no finding that the killing of Oliver was as a result of information the ex-garda provided to the Provisional IRA. The action was then struck out by the High Court on the following terms:

While the Tribunal accepted the evidence of Kevin Fulton there was no finding in the Tribunal’s report that the killing of Mr Oliver was as a result of the information provided by Mr Corrigan to the IRA.

The Smithwick Inquiry ended with an enigmatic conclusion: a collusion — which this article has shown was not satisfactorily proven, with no named colluder. It is important that it is registered by anyone concerned with the truth that Smithwick had to close down the judicial review — it risked exposing the mess, the confusion and the contradictions that lie at the heart of its final report.

The problem with Smithwick is that it was bedevilled by its dependence on the UK ‘Security Services’ which determined how little intelligence the Tribunal Team would receive, and it was badly chaired. The Tribunal was instigated largely as a sop to Unionists to maximise pressure on the British Government to carry out inquiries into the likes of Pat Finucane’s murder and Bloody Sunday. The exercise was tainted in its conception and in its application.

Smithwick Tribunal: Enter Freddie Scappaticci

In 2006 Smithwick received an application from Freddie Scappaticci for legal representation though this was turned down. By May 2011, however, the Tribunal informed Scappaticci’s solicitor that as he now “appeared to be a person whose reputation was at risk, i.e. a person against whom allegations may be made”, he would be allowed limited representation and information.

In a decision made on 6th June 2011 Smithwick allowed his lawyers limited access to Tribunal statements as they applied to him. After a further application heard in July 2011, that legal right was extended to limited legal representation at the Tribunal on specified occasions on matters that concerned him. Scappaticci’s lawyers were alerted to at least some of the contents of Fulton’s statement before it was distributed to other parties: Corrigan’s lawyers did not receive the final Fulton statement with its extraordinary allegations involving Tom Oliver, until November 2011 five months after it was received and just two weeks before the evidence of former PIRA man, Mooch Patrick Blair, a crucial witness.

Operation Kenova is an investigation into the executions of suspected informants by the Army agent Stakeknife. It notes that “many are concerned at the involvement of this alleged State agent in kidnap, torture and murder by the Provisional IRA during ‘the troubles’ and believe they were preventable”. It will also “look at whether there is evidence of criminal offences having been committed by members of the British Army, the Security Services or other government personnel”. The overriding priority of the investigation is to discover the circumstances of how and why people died, to establish the truth regarding those offences covered within the Terms of Reference.

According to Eamon Mallie:


A question screaming out for an answer is how the Army and MI5 explain and justify the alleged role of Stakeknife – an agent in that part of the IRA that interrogated and tortured other suspected agents, steps often leading to execution. Under what rules of intelligence gathering or agent handling was that possible? Were other agents sacrificed in those places where Stakeknife was at play?.


From an Italian immigrant family and originally from the Markets area of Belfast builder Freddie Scappaticci was fined for riotous assembly in 1970 after being caught up in “the Troubles” and, one year later, was interned without trial with, among others, Gerry Adams. He became deputy head of the IRA’s internal security, its so-called nutting squad. In 1978 he was apparently beaten by a fellow high-ranking member of the Provisional IRA, prompting him to offer his services to the British security services; he eventually came under the control of the British army’s shadowy FRU “force research unit”. Sir John Wilsey, at one time the most senior army officer in Northern Ireland, was secretly recorded in 2012 by a military intelligence whistleblower claiming to be a television news researcher.

Wilsey described Stakeknife as “our most important secret”, “a golden egg”…“We were terribly cagey about Fred”. Scappaticci was named in the press as Stakeknife – Britain’s top agent inside the IRA in 2003 and soon resurfaced at a press conference in Belfast, denying that he had ever worked for Army intelligence or been involved in terrorism. However, shortly afterwards he fled Belfast.

In his book Killing Rage former IRA man Eamon Collins, himself killed by the IRA, characterised Scappaticci as “small and barrel-chested with classic Mediterranean looks – olive-skinned with tight black curly hair”. He described him as a cold-hearted killer and conveyed graphic details of his viciousness. Scap is now in his late 60s and living in hiding under security-service protection. The media is not allowed to report anything that could suggest where he is living or to show images of what he now looks like.

His activities as agent ‘Stakenife’ are now the subject of a major investigation in Northern Ireland involving over 50 officers, Operation Kenova.

The Northern Ireland Director of Public Prosecutions, Barra McGrory, announced in 2015 that he had asked the chief constable of the PSNI, George Hamilton, to investigate allegations that Scappaticci was involved in at least 24 murders. It is speculated that he could be responsible for up to 40, some of his victims allegedly sacrificed to protect his identity. McGrory also asked Hamilton to investigate the British security-service controllers who handled him. Operation Kenova is headed by Chief Constable Jon Boutcher of Bedfordshire Constabulary has already begun to talk to victims’ families. It is not yet clear if the investigation will extend to the murder of Tom Oliver, and examine the allegations of Fulton made to the Smithwick Tribunal in Dublin that Scappaticci was involved in the kidnap and interrogation of Oliver who was subsequently murdered in Louth before his body was dumped in South Armagh in July1991. Scappaticci was an important, though unseen presence, at the Tribunal – his interests represented by his lawyers, paid by the Irish taxpayer.

Scappaticci sought legal representation to counter claims by Fulton that he was involved in the Tom Oliver abduction and murder.

At one stage Scappaticci’s senior counsel put it to Fulton:

You see, what I am suggesting to you Mr Fulton is that you are desperate for attention…and naming Mr Scappaticci is an attempt to get the Spotlight back on you? …… And I suggest [to] you that you evidence that he was involved in any matter concerning you or Tom Oliver, or indeed in 1994, is a fabrication for that reason.

Scappaticci enjoyed increasing levels of representation at the Tribunal and unsuccessfully pursued a Judicial Review of Smithwick’s decision to allow Fulton to give evidence behind a screen. His barrister described him as an attention-seeker who lied about Scappaticci. Fulton, of course, denied this. Credible sources maintain that he spoke to Tribunal personnel privately for three days in Dublin and some sources say he denied having anything to do with the Tom Oliver murder. but the Tribunal has denied that Scappaticci engaged with them.

If he did give evidence the legal teams were not informed. The Tribunal was so confused that such anomalies were the least of its problems.

Scappaticci’s final handler, an Army Intelligence Major and one of the most important Army Intelligence Officers based in Northern Ireland, gave evidence to the Tribunal in April 2012 that, contrary to Fulton’s’ claims, Scappaticci had never given any information about Owen Corrigan colluding with PIRA nor was there any evidence, whatever, to that effect.

Fulton’s specific and momentous allegation was that in 1991 Corrigan met Patrick ‘Mooch’ Blair, a senior IRA member, in the car-park of Fintan’s Céilí House near Dundalk, and told Blair that Oliver was passing information about the IRA to the Garda Síochána. Blair is then alleged to have threatened to murder Tom Oliver, who was indeed killed soon afterwards. Fulton had become Blair’s driver.

Fulton was a professionally trained dissembler and kept his handlers in MI5 and Army intelligence supplied with information for well over a decade.

The arrival in 2012 of the (now) Deputy Head of the PSNI Drew Harris with his evidence not only served to exonerate Corrigan but also to overshadow Fulton’s allegations against Scappaticci.

Certainly the Smithwick Tribunal made no useful findings but almost certainly there was no reason for the Smithwick Tribunal in the first place.

Justice and Truth demand that the truth of why Tom Oliver was killed, and the role of one of the most brutal double agents, Stakeknife in it, are ascertained.

Postscript: Since the above article was written Kenova has found no evidence to support Keeley/Fulton's allegations that Scappaticci was involved in the Tom Oliver murder (still unsolved) or his interrogation.

⏩Deirdre Younge is a writer/producer/director.

Killusion

🔺Since this article was written the Public Prosecution Service of Northern Ireland has decided not to press charges relating to perjury against three people - two public officials and another, believed to be Freddie Scappaticci, on foot of files submitted by Operation Kenova. The present DPP N.I Stephen Herron, appears to have accepted that Scappaticci was entitled to rely on the ‘defence of necessity’ in May, 2003 when he took a judicial review against Jane Kennedy, a Minister in the Northern Ireland Office. Scappaticci had asked the Minister to deny allegations in the media that he was the agent called ‘Steaknife’ or ‘Stakeknife’ which she refused to do on the grounds that it was standard policy to give a ‘neither confirm nor deny’ (NCND) response to questions related to National Security. The Minister's decision was upheld in August 2003 when Scappaticci’s application for Judicial Review was dismissed. 
An official in the Public Prosecution Service in 2006, reviewing Scappaticci’s sworn statements of 2003 on foot of complaints received, accepted that Scappaticci had committed perjury but that he was justified in claiming that he was not the agent ‘Steaknife’ or ‘Stakeknife’ in the circumstances, as to do otherwise would have put his life in danger - the ‘defence of necessity’. That decision was itself reviewed in 2018 by the then DPP Barra McGrory with the consequences explained below. The latest decision by the DPP Stephen Herron therefore, accepts Scappaticci’s defence.

By Deirdre Younge 

From the Village ➤ Smithwick Tribunal found Garda collusion in murder of RUC officers, but couldn’t name the colluder. 

This was partly because it allowed a motley band of FRU operatives, informants and agents like the serial ‘intelligence nuisance’ Fulton and elusive thug Scappaticci endlessly to mislead it on who the colluder was so that, when MI5 conduit Drew Harris gave definitive evidence to the contrary, the Tribunal was forced to give what the authorities, North, South and in the UK wanted: a false finding of collusion that was impossible for anyone, particularly an unnamed colluder, to challenge.

‘He was the Golden Egg, something that was very important to the Army. We were terribly cagey about Fred’ – General Sir John Wilsey ex GOC N.I 2012.

Chief Constable Jon Boutcher, from Bedfordshire Police, is leading operation Kenova whose independent team is investigating a range of activities surrounding an elusive individual intriguingly codenamed Stakeknife, or Steaknife.

Freddie Scappaticci/Stakeknife/Steaknife
Its detectives arrested and interviewed the British Army agent Freddie Scappaticci, a 72-year-old Belfast man, in early 2018. He is widely suspected of being that individual. A member of the Belfast IRA from the early 1970s, he was recruited as an agent for the Army’s Intelligence Corps in the mid to late 1970s. He moved to British Army intelligence Force Research Unit (FRU) in Northern Ireland which secretly penetrated terrorist organisations in 1982 with his then handler, Major David Moyles, who instructed him and channelled his information. 

Scappaticci was observed operating around Dundalk and the Border region North and South from around 1982 until 1990. He is believed to have attempted to take over a unit run by another IRA man in Louth in the early 1980s. He was also described as the co-ordinator of its North-South operations. Later he was second in command to JJ Magee in the Internal Security Unit which conducted IRA interrogations along the border.

He is linked to at least 20 murders.

But he fell out with the IRA, and in with MI5 and its emanations which paid him £80.000 a year. Serious allegations have emerged to the effect that, to protect his cover, the British government allowed up to 40 people to be killed via the IRA’s Internal Security Unit or ‘Nutting Squad’ which he led.

It appears Kenova is pursuing several perjury cases against Scappatacci for denying he is Stakeknife or Steaknife. Some are sceptical whether he will be held to account as it has, for example, been alleged he retains tapes of his dealings with his handlers.

A number of individuals connected to the Stakeknife scandal, and keen for an accounting, have claimed perjury is the easiest way to ensure the alleged spy will appear in a court of law.

According to Henry McDonald in the Guardian:

The whistleblower who first publicly identified Stakeknife as Scappaticci, the former Force Research Unit soldier Ian Hurst, has described the perjury route as a ‘slam dunk’ if Boutcher and his detectives decide to prosecute on that front.

The focus of this article is on how such an eminently unreliable persona was allowed to elaborately subvert the naïve and misdirected Smithwick Tribunal that reported in the Republic in 2013.

One gauge of the unreliability is perhaps that in court in 2019 counsel for Britain’s Ministry of Defence revealed the total number of lawsuits against the alleged spy.

Tony McGleenan QC said: “There are 31 claims. Some have taken the form of correspondence [but] 24 writ actions have been issued. All of these name the second defendant (Scappaticci)”.

Scappaticci had been outed as the alleged agent Stakeknife or Steaknife at the time of the Stevens Inquiry in London in 2003. The outing is credited to his sometime associate Peter Keeley aka Kevin Fulton. But it is also attributed to a former Sergeant in the Army Intelligence Corps and FRU, Ian Hurst aka Martin Ingram. Scappaticci was also the subject of allegations in relation to the Tom Oliver murder in County Louth in the book Stakenknife published in 2003 by Journalist Greg Harkin and Ian Hurst under his pseudonym Martin Ingram. That’s three different line-ups alleging the identity.

Keeley and Hurst are egregiously shadowy figures who were to feature in the Smithwick Tribunal and whose allegations led to Scappaticci being afforded unlikely credence and indeed getting legal representation there.

Members or agents of British Army Intelligence were to play a huge role in the Smithwick Tribunal which investigated whether there was collusion between the Garda in Dundalk and the IRA killers of two RUC officers, Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan, who were shot dead in South Armagh in March 1989, shortly after leaving a meeting in Dundalk Garda station. 


BBC ‘Spotlight’ (October 1, 2019) revealed that Scappaticci conducted the IRA debrief assessment after its East Tyrone active service unit, led by Patrick Kelly and Jim Lynagh, were shot dead by forces including RUC Special Branch /TCG, SAS and UDR soldiers, at Loughgall in 1987. RUC Detective Chief Inspector Ian Phoenix led the operation against the IRA unit. His reaction to the deaths at Loughgall was described in a book ‘Phoenix: Policing the Shadows’ (1997), compiled after his death in 1994.

Harry Breen became a target for the IRA after Loughgall. He was believed to have been in charge of the armed members of the RUC Divisional Mobile Unit at the Co Armagh RUC station, when it came under attack by the IRA in 1987. After the fatal operation he was photographed with weapons retrieved from the dead IRA men.

The IRA representatives who talked to Smithwick said those published pictures were used to identify Breen.

The IRA plan was that Breen would be captured and interrogated about an alleged informer who betrayed that operation but instead he was shot dead.

Village has elsewhere reported credible if shocking allegations that Breen supplied weapons and information to Loyalist terrorists.


Smithwick found, incoherently, that there had been collusion but, partly due to a last-minute intervention which seems to have thrown him, never stated who the colluder was. Most lawyers would say that if you do not know who the colluder is it is unlikely you would pass the standard of proof necessary to make a finding of collusion.

Drew Harris, now – extraordinarily – the Republic’s Garda Commissioner, compounded Smithwick’s problems when he arrived, as the PSNI’s liaison officer with MI5 (!), to whisk the rug from under the Tribunal at the very last minute, in October 2012, with his evidence of a new Garda not identified to the Tribunal who had been the ‘real’ colluder in the murders of Breen and Buchanan and a man called Tom Oliver.

This man, on whom so much should have rested, has not yet been identified and while the Garda Commissioner stands by his evidence he has not elaborated further in public.

Most of the establishment, and the media, in Ireland and the UK have played down or failed to understand the significance of Harris’s intervention, or the discrediting anomaly of a judge making a decision that anybody can see was inept, that there had been collusion but not by anybody in particular.


The whole evolution of the Smithwick Tribunal, and the selection of a Circuit Court judge with known links to Britain, who was determined to find the desired conclusion of collusion, to chair it, merits sustained investigation.

This article looks at the villains who misled the Tribunal, enabling it to come to such an unlikely conclusion. It focuses in particular on Freddie Scappaticci’s role in diverting it at enormous cost, and on whether perhaps imminent perjury prosecutions in Northern Ireland may finally frame some of the stranger calls on the facts made by Mr Justice Smithwick. 

Scappaticci got full legal representation, paid for by the Irish Government to allow him to disprove the allegations “once and for all” (in the words of Judge Smithwick) that he was Agent Steaknife or Stakeknife, despite the fact that his handler, Major David Moyles, who obviously would have known, effectively corroborated that he was. Clearly observing army protocols, indeed he gave evidence unnamed as ‘Witness 82’, Moyles would only refer to an agent called Steaknife but he knew that everyone understood he was referring to Scappaticci.

In 2013 lawyers for Scappaticci submitted a written statement to Smithwick vigorously denying the reality that Scappaticci was Stakeknife. The following extract shows what was at steak:


The statement noted allegations from:

Kevin Fulton (aka Peter Keeley) and Ian Hurst (aka Martin Ingram) that Mr Scappaticci worked as an agent for the Force Research Unit (FRU) of the British Army under the codename ‘Stakeknife’…Both have a history of headline-grabbing and sensationalist publications. It has become clear from evidence given to this Tribunal that the sole source of the allegation is Mr Hurst…who told the Tribunal that ‘Kevin Fulton knew nothing of Scappaticci’s role until I told him..’….Mr Hurst has persisted in repeating the ‘Stakeknife’ allegation since 1999 and this allegation has fed into a more general claim that for much of the Troubles in the North of Ireland, the number of informers was so great and so highly placed within both Loyalist and Republican organisations that the British Government effectively controlled or were in a position to prevent many of the tragic incidents which occurred at that time. This allegation has been and continues to be denied by Mr Scappaticci.


The Smithwick Tribunal, set up in 2005, began consideration of applications for legal representation in 2006 and Scappaticci’s solicitor applied at this point, but was refused.

It is now clear that by 2007 the Tribunal lawyers had made contact with Scappaticci and his Belfast solicitor, Michael Flanigan. 


By 2011 he had gained full legal representation at the Tribunal. The PSNI and the British Army liaised with the Tribunal over the appearances of RUC and Military officers and in dealings with Scappaticci and other agents or handlers. Information contained in a statement obtained by Village in the response to an FOI request, throws light on how Scappaticci wended his way into the Tribunal and finally got a full legal team at public sessions. The Tribunal detailed the three allegations now being made against Scappaticci –

1. That Mr Scappaticci was the agent “Steaknife” — also spelt Stakeknife — working with the IRA on behalf of British Security services
2. That Mr Scappaticci, as a member of the IRA, was the handler of Garda Sergeant Owen Corrigan and
3. That Mr Scappaticci was involved in the abduction and interrogation of Mr Tom Oliver, a man murdered by the IRA. 

Judge Smithwick continued:

“He has consistently denied these allegations and maintains that denial. Nevertheless the public may identify him with ‘Stakeknife’. Mr Flanagan [sic] argues cogently that he should be represented and receive all documentation in relation to the ‘Stakeknife’ allegation so that his client may disprove the allegation once and for all and secondly, so that his client has the opportunity to test such evidence as that could impact on the credibility which the Tribunal ultimately attaches to the witnesses who made this allegation.

The Tribunal accordingly extends the right of Mr Scappaticci to limited representation on those occasions when either Mr Scappaticci or “Stakeknife” is mentioned”.

After the awarding of costs Cyril O’Neill, cost accountant, submitted a statement on behalf of  Scappaticci and his lawyers to the State Claims Agency.

Throughout the Tribunal Judge Smithwick referred to unsworn statements or conversations as ‘evidence’ but – contrariwise – the Tribunal, despite holding meetings with Scappaticci privately and granting him legal representation, emphatically denied, in judicial review proceedings taken by the man who was (falsely) alleged to have been the Garda informer who informed the IRA, Owen Corrigan, in November 2015, that Scappaticci had ever given ‘evidence’:

“Without predjudice to its relevance…we can confirm that Mr Scappaticci did not provide evidence to the Smithwick Tribunal. Mr Scappaticci (who is outside the jurisdiction) would not cooperate in providing evidence. He declined to provide a signed statement to the Tribunal and declined to give oral evidence”. The Tribunal went out of its way to deny Scappaticci had the formality of involvement necessary to constitute his contribution as ‘evidence’. Much of the Tribunal’s time was taken up by discussions with Scappatticci of which there is no record except the extraordinary bill for the public.


However, documents exclusively obtained by Village from the Department of Justice under Freedom of Information show that Scappaticci met the Tribunal’s lawyers in the UK. A high-level source has told Village that Scappaticci also had meetings with the Tribunal over three days in Dublin. The Tribunal clearly went out of its way, also, to engage Scappaticci.

In part reflecting this behind the scenes and unofficial activity, the investigatory phase of Smithwick was three times longer than the public hearings. This is contrary to the spirit and intentions of the Tribunals Act.

Remarkably then, Scappaticci gets one cursory mention in the Smithwick Report published in 2013 and only in connection with the subject of amnesty for witnesses. The brevity is deceptive. It’s now apparent through material revealed through FOI and through informed sources, that Scappaticci had extensive covert engagement with the Tribunal and that by the end of the Tribunal Scappaticci’s lawyers including his Solicitor, QC and Junior Counsel, were paid nearly 400,000 euro, ostensibly for less than two years representation at the Tribunal, principally in order that he could rebut accusations that he was the notorious agent.

Normally third-party costs are not granted. However, Judge Smithwick explains why this case was different:

There are, however, other costs which are incurred. Potential witnesses have to be sought out by the Tribunal and encouraged to make a statement. Some of them have concerns about doing so lest they breach the Official Secrets Act in their jurisdiction or expose themselves to conviction for criminal offences there. I have several cases of this kind and Mr Flanagan’s client is one. It is a matter of very great delicacy and in order to persuade his client to help us his client needs to have Mr Flanagan’s assurance that it will be safe for him to do so.

Is it conceivable in 2015 when legal fees were authorised, that the Department of Justice or the Smithwick legal team were unaware that Scappaticci was in fact beyond all reasonable doubt this notorious agent or that it was open to endless entertainment of the doubt? Or is it more likely much of his evidence was not about who he was but concerned Corrigan?

The fact that the Tribunal withheld all the information of their dealings with Scappaticci was a grave omission and may have heavily, and illegally, disadvantaged Corrigan.


In a judgment by Justice O’Neill in the High Court in October 2005 – Owen O’Callaghan v Judge Alan Mahon – dealing with disclosure disputes, he asserted (concerning the Planning Tribunal) that the applicant’s right to defend his good name prevails over others right to privacy, in relation to the obligation of a tribunal to properly disclose documents or information, Mr Justice O’Neill quoted passages from Mr Justice Geoghegan in an associated Supreme Court Judgment of March 9th, 2005, as follows:

Whereas the Tribunal undoubtedly has the latitude which may not be available to a court of law, it is always bound to ensure, as far as possible, compliance with Constitutional rights and obligations and that, of course, includes the vindication of a person’s good name. It was absolutely essential that the documents and materials which were sought for the purpose of carrying out a worthwhile cross-examination in the extraordinary circumstances where wild allegations were flying around the Tribunal against Mr O’Callaghan and of which he had not prior notice, be duly produced.

There is a serious danger that the fundamentally questionable approach of the Smithwick Tribunal – collusion without colluder, which was inexplicable and therefore appeared to have come from nowhere, was in fact driven by the upshot of its undue reliance on the utterly unreliable Scappaticci. The fact is that the source of the allegations was never “duly produced”. All of this may have made it more difficult for Smithwick too to name a colluder since the allegation about both collusion and colluder was manufactured.

This all seems analogous to the evidence given by James Gogarty to the Planning Tribunal. The Supreme Court overturned most of the findings based on his evidence, including serious findings against Ray Burke and Joe Murphy, on the basis there had never been an opportunity for their lawyers to cross-examine Gogarty in circumstances where among the plausible allegations he made were some that were deemed utterly unsustainable about Fine Gael TD Nora Owen and former Supreme Court judge Seamus Henchy. If Gogarty had been cross-examined this implausible evidence would have been used to subvert his credibility.

Is it possible Scappaticci’s centrality to the Tribunal’s thinking was suppressed to avoid his being cross-examined and discredited?

Smithwick’s unshakeable reliance on his deeply flawed witness, Keeley, the covert nature of his relationship with Scappaticci, the non-sharing of possibly exculpatory Intelligence and reliance on untestable hearsay assertions allow for uncomfortable comparisons.

Did Smithwick have legal advice that he could not name the person he wanted to name as colluder because the process involving Scappaticci was illicit? 


Peter Keeley joined FRU in 1981 and was sent to Northern Ireland. He gave evidence to Smithwick under the alias ‘Kevin Fulton’. Without Keeley there would have been no inquiry. A preliminary inquiry by a former Canadian Supreme Court judge, Peter Cory, made it clear he was the last-minute witness that persuaded him to recommend a public inquiry. The last-minute witness seems to be an unfortunate pattern in this benighted sphere. That inquiry was to be the Smithwick Tribunal.

It seems to have been an essential policy agreed between the UK and Ireland that there would be such an inquiry, perhaps as a quid pro quo for other inquiries that the Irish Government wanted conducted by the British government into murky murders in the North. What they hadn’t reckoned on however, was that the Inquiry would be held in the South and therefore be hobbled from the start, by having no authority or jurisdiction over the RUC, PSNI or British army and just ‘grace and favour’ access to their intelligence files. 


Still, many managed not to focus too much on the dramatic legal dysfunctionalities obvious both in its genesis and its conclusions. According to the Irish Times at the time of publication of the Tribunal’s considered but incoherent report: “in terms of fallout it seems unlikely that there will be a major negative political dimension to the Smithwick report”. This was because, as the Irish Times unquestioningly noted:

The judge found there was Garda collusion but that it was localised and, it seems, at a low-ranking level. Such corruption is hard to come to terms with, but will hardly damage British-Irish or North-South relations. 

And that, against the background of nasty but murky murder, was the entire purpose of the exercise.

Anyway, impelled in part by the conclusions of the Canadian judge, as far as Smithwick was concerned Keeley was his star witness and no amount of inconsistency or changed stories dented that premise.

In November 2011 Keeley was cross-examined by Scappaticci’s barrister whose central focus was that Keeley dragged Scappaticci into his narrative for publicity and to pressurise the State over his financial package. The Queen’s Counsel also questioned Keeley about his role in a legal claim being pursued by his wife against Scappaticci. When asked why Scappaticci did not feature in his book in relation to the Tom Oliver case Keeley washed his hands of editorial responsibility, blamed the ghost writers and denied the relevance: “Scappaticci, to me …you are saying he is relevant because he is your client but to everybody else he is not that relevant”.

Indeed sources close to Keeley have told Village that the statement was invented or “written up” and given to Keeley so as to kick-start an inquiry into the murders of Breen and Buchanan.

Senior security sources say the RUC Special Branch and M15 spent years desperately trying to put the ‘Fulton’ genie back in the bottle and only succeeded after offering him an apartment and expenses around 2005. He still operates under their watchful eye and under threat of arrest.

Keeley’s so-called ‘Fulton statement’ to Cory in 2003 said a Garda tipped off IRA man Patrick ‘Mooch’ Blair that Breen and Buchanan had arrived at Dundalk Garda Station. Fulton alleged he was in a car with Blair when the Garda told them that “they” had arrived at Dundalk Garda station, thus triggering the ambush of the two men. 

The allegation later changed in 2006 at Smithwich to centre on an alleged conversation between Blair and Corrigan in a car in the car park of a pub. This time the collusion involved the passing of information about Tom Oliver. The subject of the conversation, the location and the year changed between Cory and Smithwick. So, in 2006 when Fulton aka Keeley was under the ‘protection’ of M15 his central allegation changed completely from the murders of Chief Superintendent Harry Breen in South Armagh in 1989 to that of Tom Oliver in Co Louth in 1991. 


Patrick “Mooch” Blair adamantly denied that he ever had such a meeting and said his life would have been in danger if a meeting had taken place. Corrigan vehemently denied all Fulton’s allegations and sources close to Keeley, who had an insight into everything that happened at the time, confirmed to Village that no such meeting had ever happened.

This change of story is something that is extraordinarily important in assessing the performance of the Smithwick Tribunal.

In any event, the changed story and statement brought Scappaticci into the frame. By the time the statement made its way to Smithwick the central collusion allegation had transmogrified into one not about Breen and Buchanan but about the murder of farmer Tom Oliver. Bizarrely, nevertheless, the Smithwick Tribunal’s lead SC declared at a public sitting that the Oliver murder was not part of the Tribunal’s remit, even though Scappaticci was to get legal representation partly to counter accusations implicating him in the Tom Oliver murder.

Tom Oliver, murdered by the IRA in 1991
The case of Tom Oliver, who was abducted from his home, on the Cooley Peninsula in Louth, murdered and dumped in County Armagh, was brought into evidence by three former members of the British Army Intelligence Corps. Scappaticci was alleged to have been part of the IRA Interrogation Unit which abducted Oliver. In fact it would appear that after 1990 and events surrounding the interrogation of another informer, Alexander Lynch in Belfast, designed to entrap a senior Sinn Féin spokesperson, Danny Morrison, Scappaticci had become persona non grata for a time, and was not part of the interrogation team at the date of Oliver’s murder.

Ian Hurst first contacted the Smithwick Tribunal after it was set up in 2005. He claimed that he was being prevented from giving relevant information because of a ‘gagging order’ imposed by the UK Ministry of Defence. The Tribunal wrote to the UK Treasury Solicitor, the Ministry of Defence and the Northern Ireland Office about his possible appearance.

Hurst had made a number of assertions in the co-authored book Stakeknife published in 2004.

One was that an agent in the IRA had made recordings of Tom Oliver’s conversations with gardaí in Dundalk which led to Oliver’s murder.


In his statement to Smithwick in June 2011 he made the key allegation that there was Intelligence implicating retired Special Branch Sergeant Owen Corrigan in passing information to Scappaticci. These allegations were published by some credulous reporters and Corrigan has sued successfully on a number of occasions.

However, Hurst’s heinous and untrue allegations gained him access to the Tribunal. They were also to ensure that Scappaticci was granted full legal representation paid for by the Irish State. 

Hurst’s allegations ensured that both Hurst and Scappaticci were witnesses at the Tribunal. Even with Hurst discredited, he had opened the door for Scappaticci to corroborate Keeley. He had served his purpose.

Moyles was emphatic that Steaknife, who he handled, was not aware of the procurement of information from Corrigan or any other member of the Garda and that he had not seen any intelligence generated by Scappaticci suggesting he had.

He also said that Steaknife had no advance knowledge of the IRA ambush of Breen and Buchanan, nor did he ever indicate that it was based on information provided by a member of the Garda.


Despite Moyle’s emphatic evidence that he had seen no secret store of Army intelligence about Garda collusion, Smithwick chose to believe Keeley because without him there was no evidence of collusion.

That was a momentous mistake. Much of the Tribunal’s time was taken up by discussions with Scappatticci of which there is no record except the extraordinary bill for the public.

Operation Kenova too has found no intelligence or evidence linking Scappaticci with Oliver, according to reliable sources.

It is submitted that the evidence of Mr Hurst must be disregarded by the Tribunal of Inquiry on the basis that both he and his evidence are lacking in any credibility. For the following reasons.

↦ Mr Hurst has admitted under oath to being a liar.
↦ Mr Hurst by reason of his training within the FRU and elsewhere, is trained, to an exceptional level, in deceit.
↦ In the context of his report on Bloody Sunday, Lord Saville of Newdigate came to the following conclusions about the evidence given to him by Mr Hurst”.

In fact Hurst had left the Army in 1991 in good standing on full pension and with an “exemplary record”. Nonetheless, even Smithwick rejected Hurst, noting in his report:

We formed the view that Martin Ingram (Hurst) had, at best, an imperfect recollection of events and that it would be unwise to rely on his evidence.
We are of the view that Martin Ingram to a substantial degree exaggerated the importance of his role at HQNI and the level of knowledge and access in intelligence. I attach no weight to the evidence given by Ian Hurst.

Hurst had wilted under cross examination at the Tribunal but his statement along with Keeley’s levered Scappaticci into the Tribunal by his obtaining expensive legal representation if not in person.

Hurst is credited with first revealing that Scappaticci was agent Steaknife.

Keeley’s wife and he also allege they were interrogated by Scappaticci in 1994 after an attempt on the life of a senior RUC officer failed. Reliable sources tell Village Scappaticci had in fact been stood down as an enforcer by this time. She has taken a case against the Chief Constable to which she has attempted to join Scappaticci.

Doubting Keeley’s authenticity Scappaticci noted in his statement that no Military Intelligence handlers appeared before the Tribunal to give evidence or verify Keeley’s account of himself. 

Again damagingly, in one of a number of actions before the courts dealing with alleged entrapment in 1985, (R v Patrick Quinn) the British Army has refused to engage with Keeley as they maintained he wasn’t working for them then.


It remains to be seen if they will maintain this stance in future civil actions.

Chief Superintendent Boutcher has submitted 12 files to the Public Prosecution Service in Northern Ireland for its consideration. Three of those files have reportedly been in relation to perjury. We may speculate what they concern.

For example, Belfast man Joe Mulhern was shot dead by the IRA in 1993; his body was left on the road in Castlederg, County Tyrone. After his death Joe’s father, Frank Mulhern, was told by Scappaticci how his son had died.

Frank Mulhern’s campaign for Justice was central to the setting up of Operation Kenova despite the fact that Kenova has found no evidence to connect Scappaticci to his death.

In 2017 Frank Mulhern initiated a judicial review action against a decision of the PPS (NI) not to bring a prosecution against Scappaticci for the offence of perjury in denying he was Stakeknife in relation to a 2003 case brought by Scappaticci, against a Northern Ireland Minister, Jane Kennedy. Mulhern’s lawyers referred to a 2017 Panorama television programme, ‘A Spy in the IRA’, which alleged that Scappaticci was agent Stakeknife and disclosed the PPS decision not to prosecute.

Frank Mulhern’s court actions revealed a letter from the then Director of Public Prosecutions Northern Ireland, Barra McGrory, to this effect. The letter from the DPP’s office read as follows:

The Director has asked me to reply to your letter of 16th May 2017.
You will appreciate that the PPS is unable to make any comment on the suggestions in your letter as to the identity of the agent codenamed Stakeknife.
It is correct however that an individual was reported to the PPS in 2006 for the alleged offence of perjury during court proceedings in 2003 involving the individual referred to in your letter. While it was considered on the evidence that perjury was committed, the view was taken that the individual concerned had a viable defence of necessity and a ‘no prosecution’ decision issued. These matters are now the subject of investigation by Operation Kenova and it would be inappropriate to comment further.

It was clear that, if Kenova had not been investigating, the PPS would have considered initiating a prosecution itself:

I have serious concerns in relation to this decision [not to prosecute]. Having reviewed all of the available evidence I consider that the original decision did not take into account relevant considerations, and also took into account irrelevant factors. I have concluded that the original decision was not within the range of decisions that could reasonably be taken in the circumstances. This decision has been set aside.


Another possible case for perjury was strangely revealed in a final legal written submission made to the Smithwick Tribunal on Scappaticci’s behalf in 2013 which referred to the 2003 case taken against Minister Jane Kennedy, which unsuccessfully sought to force her, in the wake of publication of the Harkin and Hurst book ‘Stakeknife’, to deny allegations he was the eponymous ‘mole’ in the IRA. Scappaticci’s denials in this case were considered as possible grounds for his prosecution for perjury. Scappaticci retained the same solicitor who had acted for him in the Kennedy case, to represent him at Smithwick. 

In September 1989 journalist Martin O’Hagan was interrogated by the South Armagh Brigade of the IRA. His name had been found in a notebook taken from the car in which Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan had been travelling when they were shot. The ‘internal security unit’ carried out the questioning of O’Hagan.


But the extraordinary outcome of the Smithwick Tribunal was that by awarding Freddie Scappaticci legal representation to defend his reputation and prove “once and for all” that he wasn’t Agent ‘Stakeknife’ or ‘Steaknife’, the Irish State was forced to hand over hundreds of thousands of pounds for a man believed to be a notorious British Army Agent. An agent who is under investigation for perjury in relation to his denials, and his alleged involvement in multiple murders.

Scappaticci ended his final submission with a final denial and a reminder of the role of the two FRU operatives Fulton and Hurst:

Mr Scappaticci is represented because he made the point that there was an allegation, which he denies, that he is a person under the sobriquet of ‘Stakeknife’… The only people who assert this position are Mr Fulton and Mr Hurst. ..It is contended that both of these men have proven to be unreliable witnesses. Their allegations concerning Mr Scappaticci are wholly inaccurate. They have abused their opportunity to give evidence to the Tribunal and used it as a platform on which to make sensationalist claims and further their campaign against Mr Scappaticci. They are both individuals who have been trained in deceit and it is submitted they have both used those skills in an attempt to deceive the Tribunal. 


Operation Kenova, led by Chief Superintendent Boutcher, looks likely to attempt “once and for all” to prosecute Freddie Scappaticci for perjury, so framing the Smithwick Tribunal’s decision to give him credence and pay his legal fees.

If Kenova finishes up identifying the person who perpetrated the Stakenife horrors and further undermining the Smithwick Tribunal’s implausible report it would have significantly advanced the fragile cause of justice in benighted Northern Ireland.



See Killusion By Deirdre Younge - the backstory of how Freddie Scappaticci got "pulled" into the Smitwhwick Tribunal.

⏩Deirdre Younge is a writer/producer/director. 

MI5 High Steaks ➤ The Kenova Investigation Could Nail Scappaticci For Perjury So Why Did Smithwick Pay His Legal Bills?

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