The difficulties in the way of a public inquiry into issues raised by the
Stevens Report will be highlighted by developments at the Bloody Sunday
Inquiry under Lord Saville this week.
The relevance of the Inquiry into the Derry deaths to a possible inquiry into
the Stevens findings does not, as has been suggested over the past seven
days, arise from the length or likely cost of a new inquiry, but from
restrictions imposed by the Saville Tribunal on the categories of
intelligence and security evidence which can be divulged.
Under a ruling on April 14th by Saville and his colleagues, Canadian judge
William Hoyt and Australian judge John Toohey, lawyers for the Bloody Sunday
families will tomorrow (Monday) submit synopses of the questions they want to put to
members of the security services. The lawyers will also supply a written
explanation of why they want to raise these questions. The synopses and
explanations will then be shown to the security services who will be allowed,
in private, to raise objections with the Tribunal before the witnesses are
called to testify.
Security witnesses will begin evidence when oral hearings resume in nine days
time at the Methodist Central Hall, Westminster. Among those scheduled to
appear are the former Force Research Unit officer known as "Martin Ingram",
former MI5 officers "A" , David Shayler and Annie Machon, the former head of
Military Intelligence, "David", and a number of other operatives identified
only by letter. David will testify by video-link from an undisclosed foreign
country.
The effect of the restrictions will become clearer when it is known what
objections the security services choose to make to the lines of questioning
notified tomorrow, and the Tribunal's response to these objections. This will
provide a direct pointer to the likely constraints on evidence to any Inquiry
into the Stevens findings. The practical effects on an inquiry into Stevens,
however, would be more severe. Security information forms less than five
percent of the evidence relating to Bloody Sunday but would constitute the
great bulk of evidence relevant to the killings investigated by Stervens.
The families' lawyers will tell Saville tomorrow say that they want to
question Shayler and Machon about claims they have made that a Bogside
informer code-named "Infliction"---who is said to have reported that he heard
Martin McGuinness admit to firing the first shot on Bloody Sunday---was
regarded within MI5 as a "bull-shitter". They also want to examine a MI5
officer, "A", who has made a statement and produced 37 documents which it is
believed contradict Shayler and Machon's estimation of Infliction. (Neither
A's statement nor any of the 37 documents has been supplied to the families'
lawyers, the Tribunal's April 14th ruling having held that to do so would
risk exposing Infliction's identity.) The lawyers want to examine Ingram
about his statement that agents were drafted into Derry from both Northern
and southern Ireland prior to Bloody Sunday and that McGuinness was under
surveillance throughout the day and wasn't noted as having handled or fired a
gun. They are also anxious to question David about a signal he sent from
London three days before Bloody Sunday to the man in overall command of
British forces in Derry, Brigadier Pat MacLellan, citing sources in the
Bogside warning that the IRA planned to ambush soldiers if they entered the
area on the day.
The April 14th ruling laid down that no question could be asked which was
designed to elicit information the disclosure of which "would do real harm to
the public interest in the form of seriously damaging the work of the
security services." The categories of information ruled out were specified to
include "information relating to methods, techniques or equipment deployed by
the security and intelligence services (and) the operations and capabilities
of these services."
It would appear on the face of it that these are just the categories of
information on which an inquiry into Stevens would have to focus.
The applications to Saville for the restrictions came from the security
services and individual members of the services, but were also in the name of
the three government departments under whose aegis the various services were
operating, the Ministry of Defence, the Home Office and the Northern Ireland
Office. Each of the ministries sent legal teams onto the floor of the Inquiry
to make the case for the restrictions. These are also the departments
relevant to, respectively, the FRU, MI5 and the RUC Special Branch, the
agencies alleged to have colluded in the kilings investigated by Stevens.
It would appear from these circumstances that a minimum condition for a
meaningful inquiry into the Stevens findings would be an undertaking from the
British Government not to intervene to seek the sort of restrictions on
evidence which it has sought and obtained at the Bloody Sunday Inquiry.
