The Bloody Sunday Inquiry has been told that British intelligence officers
have obstructed and misled its six-year investigation into the Derry killings.
In closing submissions to the Tribunal under Lord Saville, solicitors Madden
and Finucane (M&F) argue that a pattern of manipulation and misrepresentation,
begun at the Widgery Tribunal 32 years ago, has continued into the
proceedings of the present Inquiry.
The firm, representing a majority of the Bloody Sunday families and wounded,
declares that, "It may well be that the...Cabinet fully intended that all
relevant official documentation would be available to the Inquiry:" but if so,
"this intention has been frustrated."
M&F suggests that "vital documents...have been deliberately destroyed and/or
suppressed," and that "Intelligence material has been supplied by the
Government in a manner designed to mislead the Tribunal." M&F argues that the apparent
disappearance of more than 1,000 British Army photographs of the Bloody
Sunday events "gives rise to the inference that they have been deliberately
destroyed and/or concealed by the Army or the MoD in order to suppress damaging
evidence."
The Tribunal, established in January 1998, adjourned in February after
hearing more than 900 witnesses. It will reconvene at Derry Guildhall on June 6th,
when legal teams will comment on each other's submissions. Expectations that
Saville would deliver his report early next year have been thrown into doubt by
a Tribunal request 10 days ago for lawyers to produce documents relating to
their clients which had previously been considered confidential. It is not now
known when Saville will publish his findings.
M&F bases its allegations on the testimony of serving and former military and
intelligence officers, including "psyops" (psychological operations) officer
Colin Wallace and the former member of the Force Reaction Unit (FRU) known as
Martin Ingram. The firm says the evidence shows that around the time of Bloody
Sunday, the intelligence agencies MI5 and MI6 and psy-ops unit, the
Information Research Department (IRD), effectively controlled the dissemination of
political and military information in Northern Ireland and dictated what material
was released to the Widgery Inquiry. These agencies, it says, "still are
engaged in what may euphemistically be described as shaping perceptions of the
truth in a manner favourable to the Government and Army."
M&F say that the intelligence services had a wider role and greater influence
in the North in 1972 than has generally been acknowledged. "All the
information put out by the Army (on Bloody Sunday) was put put by psyops personnel,"
the firm suggests. More broadly, the lawyers say that the UK Government's
operation in the North was effectively an intelligence operation. "The UK
Representative, Howard Smith, later became head of MI5. His deputy, Frank Steele, was a
member of MI6. Clifford Hill (the senior Foreign Office official based in
Belfast) and Mr. (Hugh) Mooney (Information Adviser to the General Officer
Commanding) were seconded from IRD. The Director of Intelligence at HQNI was also a
member of MI5."
The claim is that these agencies moved into action immediately after the
Bloody Sunday shootings and have been involved in concealing the truth about the
incident and their own role in a cover-up ever since.
Wallace was the only witness openly to admit involvement in psyops. Col.
Maurice Tugwell claimed not to have been involved---but was identified by Wallace
in evidence as head of the psyops unit he served in at Army HQ in Lisburn. A
witness code-named INQ 1873 denied playing a role in psyops and said that it
was "wrong in principle to practice psyops against one's own people." However,
says M&F, "We now know that he was the former Head of Psyops at the Joint
Warfare Establishment at Old Sarum and was a member of the psyops staff in N.
Ireland."
Hugh Mooney denied that he had played any part in psyops. But, says M&F,
"according to the documentation, he was a member of the psyops staff and of the
Psyops Committee; and he referred in his own reports to attending psyops
meetings."
The fact that these and other witnesses denied involvement in psyops despite
evidence to the contrary, M&F argues, "gives rise to the inference that (a)
they were involved in such activity, (b) this activity related to Bloody Sunday
and (c) it was so discreditable that they had to deny it."
Wallace, a member of the Army's team at the Widgery Inquiry, was the only
witness to admit seeing a large number of Army photographs of Bloody Sunday. M&F
says that "It is simply not credible" that none of Wallace's colleagues could
recall the photographs, and suggests that this implies a concerted effort to
conceal evidence from Saville.
The firm quotes Ingram's evidence that he had had access to and saw
"hundreds" of documents relating to Bloody Sunday which have not been produced to the
Inquiry. According to Ingram, these included documents indicating that Martin
McGuinness had been under surveillance throughout Bloody Sunday; intelligence
reports prior to Bloody Sunday that neither the Official nor Provisional IRA
intended to attack troops on the day; and documents written after Bloody Sunday
suggesting that the IRA had not fired first.
M&F say that the failure to produce these documents reveals a continuing
determination to conceal facts which might damage the Army's case.
The submission points out that it wasn't until March 2003 that MI5 admitted
to Saville---as a result of a series of questions from Inquiry lawyers---that
much of its information about in Bogside in 1972 had come from an informant
code-named Observer C, an agent so reliable, the Inquiry was told, that his
reports had once been brought directly to the attention of Prime Minister Edward
Heath. There was evidence that on the day after Bloody Sunday, Observer C was
tasked to find out what the Bogside knew about the shootings. But no account of
what he reported can apparently now be found. M&F comment: "If he had
provided information that supported the Army's account of events, it is likely that
this would not only have been retained...but passed on...to agencies including
the Army's legal team at Widgery....The likely explanation is that Observer
C's report contradicted the Army's account of events and the relevant source
reports have either been excised from Security Service records or have been
withheld from the Inquiry."
The M&F submission observes that in one document, "Col. Tugwell...comments
that 'the indigenous Irish, once convinced that their cause is just, possess a
breathtaking ability to lie with absolute conviction, not just in support of
something they believe to be true, but to put across a story they know very well
is untrue.'"
