Smithwick Tribunal, Monaghan Touts and Provo Scouts

There are interesting days ahead for the Smithwick Tribunal.




Witnesses will be giving evidence till the end of this month before the August break. It promises to shed more light on the claims of collusion and make more headlines.



However, it will be hard to beat what has gone on over the last few weeks.



The row between Minister for Justice the Alan Shatter and Judge Peter Smithwick over a deadline for the work of the Tribunal has dominated coverage since the letters emerged on June 30th.



There had been a meeting between the two men shortly after Deputy Shatter became Minister. Naturally the conversation covered the likely timeframe for the Tribunal to finish its work. The Judge said he believed it could all be done by November but it seems he believed this was just an informal chat to inform the Minister of what was going on.



The Minister, however, decided to bring a motion before the Oireachtas stating that the Tribunal must finish its work by November.



'If the Tribunal needed more time then they could have it,' he said.



That would, in effect, render the deadline pretty much useless and so the question many ask is, why was a deadline set at all?



The Minister said he did it to protect the taxpayer from ever increasing costs of running a Tribunal. The alternative view is that it was done more for appearance than substance - a politician being seen in public to crack down on another expensive Tribunal.



Whatever the intention, the announcement of a deadline sent the Tribunal into a tailspin and letters bounced from one to the other with surprisingly little judicial or political restraint.



RTÉ has published all the letters released by the Department of Justice for people to make up their own minds.



One thing that did strike me in particular was the question mark which surrounded the release of the Judge's first letter in which he made the strongest criticism of the Minister and the 'spin' put out against the Tribunal.



In his reply, Minister Shatter said he would not be making that letter public because it was marked 'private and confidential'.



The Judge's reply said he had no objection to all the correspondence being published to which the Minister effective asked in his next letter, 'are you sure? It might damage the work of the Tribunal.'



The Judge's reply was interesting in that he said it was written with a view to it being published anyway.



It has been wondered aloud was this an attempt to persuade the Judge to remove the most damning letter of all from the chain of correspondence which was to be published. Regardless, the Judge said it should be and the Minister did as promised.



But the wider question remains about the possible impact of this row. The Judge said it had an impact on potential witnesses and the Tribunal would now have to go and reassure them. Will they succeed or will counsel for the Tribunal some day say that Mr X was due to give evidence but has now declined because he feels the Tribunal is being wound down shortly? Time will tell.



The Judge's interim report was also published at the same time as the letters. The best way to describe the contents is like Judge Smithwick giving the 'two fingers' to the Minister.



The Judge said he had 115 witnesses still to call, will have to recall others and there are likely to be other developments along the way in terms of new evidence emerging. That meant, he said, he could not give a definite date for the end of the Tribunal.



It will be interesting to see what happens in November if the Minister's deadline comes along and the Tribunal is still sitting.



Evidence



But lost as a result of that row over the Minister was very important evidence. For the first time, the Tribunal heard direct evidence which, on the face of it, would amount to collusion in the murder of Chief Supt Harry Breen and Supt Bob Buchanan.



It is important to remember that the definition of collusion adopted by Judge Smithwick is wide and covers not only direct actions in support of the Provisional IRA in the murder of the two RUC men but also inactions by others which led to the men's death.



Retired Chief Superintendent Tom Curran was in Monaghan for over 20 years. He regularly met Bob Buchanan on his cross border visits. The witness told the Tribunal that the RUC man never seemed concerned about his own security, a view echoed by many other witnesses.



However, what this witness said was the Buchanan told him in 1987 about RUC concerns relating to then Det. Sgt. Owen Corrigan who was based in Dundalk and that he was assisting the IRA. Chief Supt Curran said he believed RUC Special Branch had asked Supt. Buchanan to raise the matter with the gardaí.



This was two years before Supt. Buchanan was killed in the IRA ambush on the Edenappa Road.



When he met then Assistant Commissioner Eugene Crowley in Garda HQ a short time later he told him of the RUC concerns and some hearsay evidence the Chief Supt had got from other gardaí about the Dundalk detective. Mr Curran said the Assistant Commissioner seemed disinterested while he spoke, didn't raise his eyes from a file he was reading and never discussed the RUC concerns with him.



'I got the impression he didn't want to hear,' said the retired garda.



When Chief Superintendent Curran met Supt Buchanan next he was asked about the meeting and he said he had raised the issue with the head of the Crime and Security Branch. They were looking into it, he said. That wasn't true, he acknowledged, and the retired garda said he felt he was covering up a bit for the Assistant Commissioner.



Then again nine months before the two RUC men were murdered, the witness said he got information from a reliable IRA source that Supt Buchanan was being targeted. Chief Supt Curran wrote to Crime and Security branch in garda HQ to inform them but heard nothing more afterwards. That letter hasn't been found.



He admitted he did not know if an investigation was carried out into the allegations against Det Sgt Corrigan who has always strenuously denied claims of collusion with the IRA.



The Tribunal was told that while former Garda Commissioner Crowley did make statements to the Tribunal he passed away before these allegations could be put to him.



Another retired senior garda, Tom Connolly who was a Superintendent in Dundalk at the time of the murders told the Tribunal he was made aware of concerns about a garda who worked in the station may have been a mole for the IRA.



He said there was unease in the Station about this although other garda witnesses have disagreed with this.



The other piece of significant evidence given so far this month related to British Army intelligence reports. Following the murder of the two RUC men, they did a check on every car that passed through permanent checkpoints around the same time as Supt. Buchanan's car did over a period of several months.



That revealed that one car in particular, driven by a man with links to the Provisional IRA, followed the RUC Superintendent on several occasions across the border. Following the IRA ambush, that car was never seen again.



That is undoubtedly the clearest evidence yet that the IRA had targeted Supt. Buchanan for sometime.



The question for the Tribunal is whether gardai assisted them in the fatal attack on March 20th by actions or inactions.