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23 - 26 SEPTEMBER 2002
SUMMARY OF EVIDENCE
This week, the Tribunal reconvened in Westminster Central Hall in London, where Colin Wallace concluded his evidence, begun in Derry in Week 65. Brigadier Frank Kitson told the Tribunal that he had been in England on Bloody Sunday and had no input into the army operational plans for the day.
The Tribunal also heard from William Smyth, Secretary to the Widgery Tribunal and from Hugh Mooney who worked for the Information Research Department at the time of Bloody Sunday. Mr Mooney will complete his evidence in Week 67.
A full transcript of the proceedings is available at http://www.bloody-sunday-inquiry.org.uk.
1. Frank kitson’s evidence
General Kitson (as he is now) was posted to Northern Ireland in 1970. At the time of Bloody Sunday, he was the Brigadier in command of the 39th Air Portable Brigade, with eight battalions under his command in Belfast and two battalions on two-year tours, namely the 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment and the King’s Own Border Regiment. He reported to the Commander of Land Forces (CLF), General Ford whom he knew before being posted to Northern Ireland. For the purposes of clarity, he will be referred to as Brigadier, the rank he held at the time of Bloody Sunday.
1.1 questions on behalf of the tribunal
1.1.1 Overall security policy for Northern Ireland
Brigadier Kitson told the Tribunal that he had never been asked for his views on security policy outside his own Brigade area and knew little of the security situation elsewhere in Northern Ireland. He also said that he knew nothing of the political decisions governing security policy.
Since he had written a book entitled Low Intensity Operations, containing a forward written by General Michael Carver, the then Chief of the General Staff (CGS), which stated that nobody would be better qualified than him to write a book on the topic and that the book was “written for the soldier of today to help him prepare for the operations of tomorrow”, Counsel asked him whether he would not have been the one person in Northern Ireland whom it would have been appropriate to consult on security policy in the area as a whole.
He was adamant that he had not been consulted, stating that the GOC did not consult the Brigade commanders about policy for the whole of Northern Ireland, as that was solely the remit of the GOC and the CLF.
1.1.2 General Ford’s Memo of 7th January 1972
Brigadier Kitson said that he had never been aware of the contents of the memo written by General Ford to General Tuzo in which he stated: “I am coming to the conclusion that the minimum force necessary to achieve a restoration of law and order is to shoot selected ring leaders amongst the DYH [Derry Young Hooligans], after clear warnings have been issued” and in which he mooted the suggestion of adapting army rifles to use .22 inch ammunition (ammunition he deemed less lethal than that being used by the army at the time) to deal with rioting situations. Brigadier Kitson also could not recall any adapted weapons being delivered to 39th Brigade.
He did not believe that when the General justified the possibility of shooting rioters by stating “we would be reverting to the methods of internal security found successful on many occasions overseas”, he had in fact been making a reference to the Low Intensity Operations book. The Brigadier said that this was the general system for dealing with riots in the British colonies, when a banner would be extended in the native language saying ‘disperse or we fire’, prior to an army rifle man being directed to shoot one of the rioters, but added that it was not used in Northern Ireland.
1.1.3 Magilligan march
Brigadier Kitson said that he could not recall the Magilligan march and did not think that he would have been aware of complaints made against the Parachute Regiment that they had used excessive force, had fired bullets at point blank range and had beaten people up on the day.
1.1.4 General Kitson’s contemporaneous views concerning Derry
The Tribunal is in possession of a document purporting to be an interview of General Ford by a journalist by the name of Hamill. General Ford is recorded as having said: “You could dominate Belfast. Frank Kitson never understood this. He used to say to me ‘why can you not sort out Londonderry?’…” Brigadier Kitson said that he could not recall ever having spoken about the security situation in Derry with General Ford and added that he would not have attempted to urge the CLF to deal with the situation in any given way.
1.1.5 Decision to use 1 Para as the arresting force on Bloody Sunday
The Brigadier said that he would never have been aware of the operational plans for Bloody Sunday, save that 1 Para, a battalion under his command, was to be used on the day. He said that he would have told the Paratroopers that they were required in Derry but that their orders would have come directly from their commander designate for the operation rather than from him. He also said that he was not party to the decision-making process to put in place an arrest operation nor to the decision to use 1 Para as the arresting force.
The interview of General Ford by Mr Hamill also quotes the CLF as having said: “I agree that when I chose them [1 Para]—and I did choose them—I had in mind… the fact that their reputation in Belfast must have spread to Londonderry… The terrorists were frightened of 1 Para. That was another factor… their reputation. But the main factor was that they were available and uncommitted… 1 Para had been deliberately trained by Frank Kitson to develop this reputation…”. Brigadier Kitson said that he could not recall 1 Para having been selected due to their reputation and added that they had not been trained to develop a particular reputation.
He told the Tribunal that he had no recollection of commanding officers of a number of other regiments having spoken to him to request that the Paras not be sent to their patches in future, due to the problems in the community created by their actions, as reported in Sunday Times and Guardian articles in early 1972. He said that he would be extremely surprised if any such requests had been made and did not find the articles convincing.
1.1.6 Unpublished Sunday Times article
Brigadier Kitson was shown an unpublished article written by two Sunday Times journalists in the week after Bloody Sunday, which read: “the Parachute Regiment staff planners believed they had the answer in the last weeks of the old year—a solution which in fact produced the massacre. The idea—worked out, we believe, by Lieutenant Colonel Derek Wilford on lines of thinking propounded by Brigadier Frank Kitson, British Army counter-insurgency expert, was based on the military principle that the way to bring your enemy to battle is to attack something that, for prestige reasons he will have to defend—the Germans attacking Verdun in the First World War of the same firm attacking Stalingrad in the second. Brought to battle, he will then be annihilated by superior strength. The civil rights march, the Parachute Regiment planners believed, was just such an objective which the IRA would have to defend or lose its popular support in the Bogside—and either way, the IRA would be finished”. Brigadier Kitson said that the article was total rubbish and that he could understand why it had not been published. He said that there was nothing in his book which represented such a plan.
1.2 questions on behalf of the soldiers
1.2.1 Arrest operations
Brigadier Kitson agreed with Counsel’s suggestion that, in a situation where the army was confronted with rioters and other people who were not participating in any unlawful activity, it would have been important to isolate the rioters from bystanders. However, he said that the main part of an arrest operation would be to get the people whom the army wanted to arrest as quickly as possible. He also agreed that, in general principle, soldiers would attempt to contain a riot in an area long enough to seal off the side roads, in order to then go in and arrest the main agitators who would be unable to escape, but said that he could not comment as to whether these were the tactics followed by the army on Bloody Sunday.
1.3 questions on behalf of the families and wounded
1.3.1 Counter-insurgency
1.3.1.1 Counter-insurgency expertise
Brigadier Kitson was put forward by General Mogg for a defence fellowship in Oxford in 1969, where he specialised in low-intensity operations and counter-insurgency. He told the Inquiry that he had made the case that the army might be engaged in quite a lot of counter-insurgency in the years to come in various parts of the world, along with fighting conventional wars, and agreed that it would have been useful to the army to have somebody with a degree of expertise in the subject.
He acknowledged that there was a state of insurgency in Northern Ireland by the time of the introduction of internment, saying that this coexisted with inter-communal rioting which the army was engaged in stopping.
1.3.1.2 Defining insurgents
Brigadier Kitson said that insurgents were people who were trying to use force to push the Government to do something it did not want or to change the Government altogether. He said that, in Northern Ireland, any people who were helping those insurgents would also have been deemed to be insurgents in a certain sense.
1.3.1.3 Methods for dealing with insurgents
Counsel read a section of Brigadier Kitson’s work entitled Directing Operations which states: “it often seems that public opinion will only accept a level of force being used against insurgents if it is related to the amount of force that the insurgents themselves are using… This is illogical, because anyone who is prepared to use illegal force against his own country has no right to expect anything other than total extermination, as fast as possible, by any legal means, regardless of how much force he is using”. Counsel then asked him if, applying this to the IRA, he would have regarded only total extermination within the law as a strategy for dealing with them. Brigadier Kitson responded that what he had been attempting to say was that, although legally it might be right and possible to do one thing, the political background and the general feeling of the world may demand that you do something else. He said that he had not been intending to say that you ought to immediately exterminate everyone as fast as possible by legal means.
The work continued: “But after so extended a period of comparative peace, people in the West at least, have become soft and gullible, which is one of the reasons why insurgency campaigns last so long. It now seems politically impossible for sufficiently strong Government measures to be taken against insurgents for any length of time, before being assailed by popular outcry at home or abroad. The answer to the problem is not to ignore the protest, but to attack the sources of adverse opinion using the Government’s public relations machine together with such legal sanctions as may be available, since the outcry is not usually a spontaneous reaction originating from the public, but is carefully orchestrated by sympathisers of the insurgents”.
Brigadier Kitson said that it had neither been a matter of regret or of ‘unregret’ to him that the West had become “soft and gullible”, and that it was very lucky that there were few opportunities within a democracy for exterminating people within the law. He also added that he had not been talking about the IRA when writing the book or about any other specific group.
1.3.1.4 IRA as insurgents
Counsel asked Brigadier Kitson whether he had ever heard soldiers in Northern Ireland in 1971 or 1972 expressing the opinion that they thought the IRA should be exterminated. He responded that the soldiers did not want to exterminate the IRA, but rather to neutralise them by arresting or interning them, or killing them if they were engaged in a gun battle.
Counsel also suggested that the Brigadier was making a moral judgment in deeming the IRA to have been using illegal force against their own country, as the IRA would not have perceived Britain as their own country. He responded that it was a fact that IRA members were British subjects, trying to make the governments of Britain and Northern Ireland to do something which they did not want to do or to change the system entirely. He said that their own belief that they were fighting a war of liberation did not affect his attitude or his belief that they were in fact insurgents.
1.3.2 Attitude towards no-go areas in Derry
1.3.2.1 Attitude of the Parachute Regiment
Brigadier Kitson said that he would have not have known in any detail what his soldiers were thinking at the time about the no-go areas in Derry, but did not think that they would have been perturbed in any way by their existence. However, in an interview conducted by the Sunday Times on 4th February 1972, Captain Michael Jackson of the Parachute Regiment allegedly stated that the 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment “had helped to ensure that there were no no-go areas in Belfast, and that a certain contempt was felt for such areas existing elsewhere in the province”. Counsel suggested that, although the statement was made a few days after Bloody Sunday, the sentiments described by Captain Jackson would apply equally to the attitude of the soldiers on Bloody Sunday itself.
The Brigadier was also shown the transcription of a press interview conducted with Colonel Wilford some years after Bloody Sunday during the course of which the Colonel described how he and other Paras had been affronted by the tactics adopted prior to Bloody Sunday whereby soldiers merely stood behind plastic shields whilst rioters attacked them, without retaliating.
Brigadier Kitson acknowledged that as a human being, a soldier’s actions were bound to be coloured by his personal opinion towards a given situation.
1.3.2.2 Personal attitude
Brigadier Kitson reiterated that he had not been perturbed in any way by the existence of no-go areas in Derry, but had been curious as to how the army would deal with them. He did not think that there had been any sense of urgency to bring them to an end.
1.3.2.3 Attitude from some ranks of the Foreign Office
He was read a document written by somebody within the Foreign Office on 27th June 1972, which states: “If the no-go areas do not end of their own accord, we can finally make use of one option. As you know, I have always been in favour of encouraging the no-go areas to rot from within. There is no reason why we should not encourage the breakdown of even health service and the spread of disease et cetera”. The Brigadier agreed that the suggestion appeared nonsensical.
1.3.3 Attitude of the British Army towards soldiers’ wrongdoings
He was read a passage from the statement prepared by a major in the Special Investigations Branch of the Royal Military Police (RMP) which read: “back in 1970, a decision was reached between the GOC and the Chief Constable whereby RMP would tend to military witnesses and the RUC to civilian witnesses in the investigation of offences and incidents. With both RMP and RUC sympathetic to the soldier, who after all was doing an incredibly difficult job, he was highly unlikely to make a statement incriminating himself”.
Brigadier Kitson responded that it was true that the army would not want a soldier prosecuted unless there was a clear case that he had acted illegally, but said that if a soldier had clearly done something wrong, the army would want him prosecuted and, if the civilian authorities did not pursue this route, the army itself would possibly court martial the offending soldier.
Michael Lavery QC asked the Brigadier whether, at the time of Bloody Sunday, he had any knowledge that soldiers engaged in Northern Ireland took the view that they could shoot anybody with impunity and would not be prosecuted for it. He also asked whether the army’s attitude that the comfort and morale of soldiers is more important than the life of an Irish person was an attitude that the army only arrived at in the decade following Bloody Sunday or whether is had been prevalent at the time of Bloody Sunday itself. Counsel’s question was predicated on the fact that the British Army has welcomed back into its ranks soldiers convicted and imprisoned for murdering people in Northern Ireland.
The Brigadier responded that he knew nothing about convicted murderers being accepted back into the army and said that the army would never have protected a case from being properly investigated. He denied the suggestion that, in 1972, the general attitude in the army towards the insurgents was that soldiers could shoot and kill people with impunity, adding that the Yellow Card was in place as much to protect soldiers as to protect civilians.
1.3.4 Operational plan for Bloody Sunday
Counsel told Brigadier Kitson that a number soldier witnesses, albeit not of a particularly high rank, have told the Inquiry that there were some shortcomings in the planning and execution of the Bloody Sunday operation. Counsel suggested that this might indicate that the military planners had in fact not been particularly concerned about the success of the arrest operation, since this was not the main purpose of the operation. The Brigadier responded that he was unable to comment on the plan as he had had no involvement in it.
He was also asked whether, as a counter-insurgency expert, he would have seen the Bloody Sunday march as an opportunity for the Security Forces to make contact with an otherwise elusive enemy. He responded that he would have personally chosen to make contact in such circumstances, adding that he was not anymore of a counter-insurgency expert than anybody else in the army in Northern Ireland at that stage.
1.3.5 Human Rights Convention
Given that the United Kingdom subscribed to the European Convention of Human Rights in 1950, Counsel asked the Brigadier whether it was a topic of conversation between the various authorities in Northern Ireland and the Government at the time of Bloody Sunday. He responded that he could not recall it having been discussed. However, he agreed that he personally would have realised that steps should be taken to minimise the risk of casualties to innocent civilians.
He did not think that, in an operation such as Bloody Sunday where gunmen were expected to be present and engaged in a gun battle in a crowd situation, soldiers would have needed any specific instructions concerning the minimising of the risk of casualties, stating that it would have gone without saying as everybody would have been well aware of it. He also said that he had no reason to believe that the soldiers would have been told to operation the Yellow Card more restrictively due to the risk of civilians being caught in the cross-fire, but that they might have been informed of the risk.
1.3.6 Information received concerning Bloody Sunday
Brigadier Kitson was on leave in England on Bloody Sunday and believed that he would have found out about the casualties via the media. He agreed that he would have naturally assumed that the 13 dead were terrorists. Although he had no recollection of discussing the day’s events with Colonel Wilford or General Ford, he said that there was no doubt that he would have done so, albeit not in any great detail. He said that he would have been primarily interested in the impact upon the strength of his reserve due to the soldiers’ participation in the Widgery Inquiry and in any morale problems amongst the Paras following their involvement on Bloody Sunday. However, it was his recollection that he had been told that the Paras had not been adversely affected from a moral point of view.
He confirmed that neither General Ford nor Colonel Wilford had ever suggested to him that the 27 people shot on the day had been shot by accident and that the intended targets had got away.
1.3.7 Action taken as a result of Bloody Sunday
Given Lord Widgery’s conclusions that some of the soldiers’ actions “bordered on the reckless”, Counsel him to comment on why no disciplinary action had been taken against any of the soldiers concerned. He responded that he did not know what, if anything, had happened to the implicated soldiers following Lord Widgery’s report, but that it would have been perfectly proper for their Commanding Officer to have got rid of them if they had behaved in a doubtful manner.
Counsel suggested that, if, as it appears to be the case, no action had been taken against any of the soldiers and they were allowed to resume normal duties, this was demonstrative of the army’s protective attitude towards soldiers responsible for killings in Northern Ireland. The Brigadier reiterated that he did not know what had happened to individual soldiers, but that he would have expected the Commanding Officer to have prevented anybody who had done wrong from getting involved in a similar situation again.
1.3.8 Training soldiers for riot situations
In his supplementary statement to the Inquiry, Brigadier Kitson wrote: “the question of converting soldiers from being ready for high intensity war to low intensity operations is important and was an issue that applied to all battalions sent to Ireland… At the start of the Troubles, no such retraining was available, but soon afterwards, units were sent to training areas set up in both England and Germany where exercises involving the handling of shooting incidents and riots took place”. He told the Tribunal that such exercises were considered important for soldiers who were going to be involved in handling shooting incidents and riots, but did not think that the Parachute Regiment had received any such training as they arrived in Northern Ireland before these exercises had been set up.
1.3.9 Previous controversial incidents involving 1 Para
1.3.9.1 Ballymurphy
Brigadier Kitson could not recall the incident at Ballymurphy in Belfast, on the night of the introduction of internment in August 1971, when 1 Para killed five people, including Father Hugh Mullan, a Catholic priest, and Joan Connolly, a 50-year old mother. He was told that the five deaths were a matter of considerable public controversy and that it had been alleged that the members of 1 Para had improperly shot and killed the five victims. He responded that, as in every shooting incident, there would have been an inquiry, although he had no specific knowledge of this having happened on this occasion. He was told that there was no prosecution in the ordinary courts and could not help as to whether there had been any court martial following the incident.
1.3.9.2 Falls Road Curfew
The Brigadier also had no specific recollection of the Falls Road Curfew in Belfast in 1970, during which a large amount of CS gas was pumped into the area in order to deal with rioters, the after-effects of which led to fatalities. He said that the strategy of pumping gas into an area had been abandoned by the army as a riot tactic, due to the fact that it fact it gassed all people in the vicinity. He said that CS gas was not entirely abandoned and was still carried in small patrols in case the patrol was encircled by attackers, but that from early 1971 it had been abandoned as a tactic for dealing with riots and had been replaced with the tactic of snatch squads.
1.3.10 Scoop up operation
Brigadier Kitson agreed that it would have been the aim of any scoop-up operation for the soldiers to be in a position to clearly identify those behaving in a riotous manner, but that if people suddenly stopped rioting as soon as the soldiers arrived on the scene but were obviously people who had been rioting, then they too would have been arrested. Given that response, Counsel asked how the soldiers could have been sure that they were arresting the appropriate people and whether soldiers were in fact trained to arrest anybody in the vicinity of a riot. He responded that, on occasion, soldiers would undoubtedly arrest the wrong person, but that such mix-ups would be sorted out at the police station as the RUC would not have prosecuted innocent people.
The Brigadier did not think that any key importance should be attached to the terms ‘snatch operation’ and ‘scoop-up operation’, stating that soldiers would merely have been given details of what they should do, rather than the specific title of what the plan was.
2. Colin Wallace’s evidence (continued)
2.1 questions on behalf of the tribunal (continued)
2.1.1 Story of stolen army uniforms
A substantial number of Parachute Regiment uniforms were stolen approximately three weeks before Bloody Sunday. Various allegations surfaced surrounding the use of these uniforms, including one to the effect that the IRA had posed as Paratroopers on Bloody Sunday, which Hugh Mooney claims was aired by Mr Wallace. Mr Wallace said that he had never suggested to Colonel Tugwell that the IRA had posed as Paras on the day, saying that no such information had ever come to his attention.
Mr Wallace was asked about the warning issued by the army prior to the Newry march which took place after Bloody Sunday to the effect that the IRA was claiming to have the uniforms and to have distributed them. Counsel questioned why the army had not deemed it necessary to issue this warning prior to the Bloody Sunday march, given that this information was available to the army on 20th January, ten days before the Derry march. He responded that the reason for the lack of warning prior to the Bloody Sunday march was probably due to the fact that the army did not believe that the IRA would be involved in the Bloody Sunday march and that, therefore, the warning would not have been relevant to the event.
2.2 questions on behalf of the families and wounded
2.2.1 Role of PsyOps
Mr Wallace confirmed that, in 1970, psychological operations in Northern Ireland took a variety of forms, including harmless PR work, deception, dirty tricks, disinformation (false information), black propaganda, falsifying and forging documents and spreading false rumours, in order to invent and distort facts or to prevent truthful matters in such a way as they would cast the army in a good light and the enemy in a bad light. He said that the ‘enemy’ would have included the IRA, loyalist paramilitaries and some NICRA leaders.
He acknowledged that some of the black propaganda stories which he supplied as part of his role were partly true and that others were entirely fabricated. He also stood by a statement which he made to an Irish Times journalist saying that manufactured atrocity stories, often featuring women, children and animals were common.
Barry Macdonald QC walked Mr Wallace through a number of black propaganda stories which surfaced in the years surrounding Bloody Sunday. He explained that the purpose of the exercise was to attempt to demonstrate to the Tribunal how extensive PsyOps operations were at the time of Bloody Sunday and that, therefore, all information and documentation coming from official sources which could have been influenced by PsyOps personnel was liable to be false and misleading. He said that such a demonstration was designed to enable the Tribunal to evaluate the documentation and information supplied from the army and the Government both in 1972 and more recently. Counsel contended that the Tribunal would only be in a position to assess the weight to be placed on all publicly provided information if it had a full and proper understanding of the extent of PsyOps at the time and the capabilities of PsyOps to fabricate documents, falsify official statistics, produce faked photographs and produce all the intelligence required to put out a convincing story.
2.2.1.2 Black propaganda designed to influence Westminster
Mr Wallace confirmed the accuracy of a passage of Liz Curtis’s book Ireland the Propaganda War which reported: “In July 1974, reporters were given a briefing at Lisburn at which the army blamed a recent upsurge in violence directly on the release of 65 internees. An army spokesperson said that intelligence reports suggested that well over half of all released internees became reinvolved in violence within a couple of months. As Colin Wallace later admitted to David McKittrick [Irish Times reporter], Army intelligence had falsified the figures in an attempt to change Reece’s [British Secretary of State] policy of phasing out internment. The true figure was less than 20 per cent”.
Mr Wallace acknowledged that the IRD (Information Research Department) and Information Policy had not only distorted the political and public understanding of events in Northern Ireland, but had also distorted facts and official statistics. He also said that, due to poor co-ordination in 1972 and 1973, disinformation put out by Information Policy actually coloured their own intelligence operations as intelligence officers would often come back to the unit with falsified stories that the unit itself had invented. He said that this led to Information Policy disinformation appearing on intelligence summaries graded as A1 (grading indicating intelligence of the utmost reliability).
He clarified that any black propaganda had to be authorised by INQ1873 or by Colonel Tugwell.
2.2.1.3 Unreliability of intelligence information
Mr Wallace told the Tribunal that PsyOps worked closely with the Intelligence Services and the Secret Service. He acknowledged Counsel’s suggestion that, due to the disinformation being disseminating, all documentation emanating from or influenced by PsyOps or by the Intelligence service was inherently unreliable and potentially false.
2.2.2 Mr Wallace’s role within PsyOps
Having initially denied that Mr Wallace had been authorised by the Government or by senior officials to carry out PsyOps operations, Margaret Thatcher admitted to Parliament in 1990 that the Minister of State at the MoD and the Secretary of State had inadvertently misled the House of Commons concerning Mr Wallace’s role. The ministers said that documents had been discovered which proved that Mr Wallace had in fact been working on psychological operations in Northern Ireland. As a result of the admission, an inquiry was set up under Sir David Calcott QC who found that Mr Wallace had in fact been working for the Intelligence and Security Services and the matter was then referred to the Defence Select Committee which requested a copy of Mr Wallace’s job description. However, the MoD refused to give the Committee access to those documents, and the Minister of State, Mr Hamilton went on to allege that Mr Wallace’s job description had never existed in a written format.
Mr Wallace said that his job description was deniable because the Ministry did not want to admit the nature of his work in the 1970s, which had included an actual policy to “disseminate disinformation in Northern Ireland in ways designed to denigrate individuals and / or organisations for propaganda purposes”.
Mr Macdonald contended that this refusal served to establish that the MoD and other agencies of the Government had a track record of concealing and withholding relevant documentation. He said that, if it was the case that army and Government officials were prepared to mislead the Government and Parliament about the issues concerning PsyOps and the authorisation for the conduct of such operations, then it followed that they might also be prepared and able to withhold documentation about Bloody Sunday. He also said that the issue demonstrated that much of the official material provided to the Tribunal from official sources could be unreliable or completely false, such as information relating to intelligence of planned IRA activities for Bloody Sunday.
2.2.3 PsyOps relating to Bloody Sunday
Mr Wallace was assigned to the Widgery Tribunal on 1st February 1972, two days after Bloody Sunday. He said that for the duration of his involvement in the Tribunal he had been isolated from Information Policy activities and therefore would not have known what, if any, psychological operations were conducted in relation to Bloody Sunday.
2.2.4 Composition of the Psychological Operations unit
2.2.4.1 Those working in PsyOps
The Tribunal is in possession of a 1971 document which lists the PsyOps staff (also called Liaison staff). The document states that the Director of Psychological Operations was General Ford, CLF, and that the staff would consist of GSO1 Liaison (known to the Inquiry as INQ1873) and of the information advisor to GOC from the Foreign Commonwealth Office, Hugh Mooney.
Although both INQ1873 and Colonel Tugwell have denied working in PsyOps, Mr Wallace remained adamant that they were both involved, saying that INQ1873 would have reported directly to Colonel Tugwell. He also denied Hugh Mooney’s suggestion that PsyOps ceased in September 1971.
He was shown a recent document supplied to the Inquiry by the MoD, purporting to explain the structure and inter-relationship between HQNI and MoD press and public relations organisations, but does not mention PsyOps in any way. Mr Wallace said that the document was not complete and was not accurate in the way that it was presented.
2.2.4.2 PsyOps Committee
The 1971 document also mentions the setting up of a ‘PsyOps Committee’ which was to consist of, amongst others, General Ford, General Tuzo, the UK Representative, INQ1873, Hugh Mooney and Mr Staughton. Mr Wallace did not think that such a committee had existed in 1971. He said that a Military Information Policy Committee had been set up in 1972, comprising far fewer people than listed in the document. He claimed that this committee would in reality have been the PsyOps committee, but that the term PsyOps would not have been used in its title, due to the sensitivity surrounding its use.
It was Mr Wallace’s belief that minutes would have existed relating to the Military Information Policy Committee meetings but could shed no light on why they had not been produced to the Inquiry or on what might have happened to them. He said that each department had its own method for dealing with classified documents, but added that if classified documents had been destroyed, there should have been a destruction certificate produced, giving the circumstances in which they had been got rid of.
2.2.5 Knowledge of operational plans for Bloody Sunday
Mr Wallace confirmed that he had been aware of a plan to arrest a large number of what the army called the Derry Young Hooligans, in order to demonstrate that the army could deal resolutely with troublemakers in Derry. He acknowledged that the ability to get behind the rioters in order to arrest them would have been a key part in the plan’s success. However, he said that he could recall no discussion concerning a potential contingency plan to be put in place if the original plan failed and the rioters ran away.
2.2.5.1 Special courts
Mr Wallace told the Tribunal that provision had been made to set up special Courts in order to deal efficiently and speedily with up to 300 arrests on the day. Despite the fact that these special Courts did not sit and that police evidence suggests that they did not even expect as many as 50 arrests, Mr Wallace was adamant that the plan for special Courts had been made.
2.2.5.2 Use of the Parachute Regiment as the arrest force
Mr Wallace acknowledged that the army plan for Bloody Sunday had been politically motivated, due to the pressure from the Derry traders on Stormont, and the pressure from Stormont on the UK Government. He said that the Paras were, to a certain extent, sent in in order to placate the unionists.
2.2.5.3 Suggestion of a plan within a plan
Mr Wallace said that, prior to Bloody Sunday, he had been aware that consideration was being given to a policy or plan to shoot selected ring-leaders of the Derry Young Hooligans. He said that the issue of using high velocity ammunition and the problems of shooting people in a riot situation using high-velocity rounds had been discussed within Information Policy, but added that he was not aware of a specific plan having been put in place for any occasion. He said that both Colonel Tugwell and INQ1873 would have been aware of the discussions. Counsel suggested that one could either give soldiers direct orders to shoot civilians or could create conditions in which that was likely to happen, by, for example using trigger happy soldiers or manipulating them or giving them a special briefing prior to the event. Mr Wallace agreed that this was a possibility.
2.2.6 Book written by officer of 1 Para
In the year following Bloody Sunday, an officer from 1 Para brought a draft chapter from a book he was in the process of writing concerning his experiences in Northern Ireland to the Information Policy Unit. Mr Wallace explained that Information Policy had to vet all material for publication if it related to the army’s activities in Northern Ireland and that the officer in question had been instructed to take the book to Information Policy by Captain Michael Jackson.
The chapter read: “one of our company seconds-in-command came rushing excitedly into his office after the Commanding Officer’s orders group. ‘We are really going to have a go at them this time’. He then went on to describe with considerable relish how the hooligan element of the march was going to be ‘dealt with’, the idea of ‘scoop force’ and our own role. The intelligence part of the operational order predicted gunmen in the area of the Rossville Flats…. Later that day, the captain briefly explained to his wife what the weekend’s operations would be. He explained about Scoop Force, the Paras and the gunmen. ‘I can just see the headlines’, she said, ‘Londonderry’s Sharpeville’”.
Mr Wallace agreed that he narrative indicated that the officer must have been given a briefing which led not only him but his wife to understand that soldiers were going to shoot civilians on a massive scale (thereby suggesting the existence of a ‘plan within a plan’), but added that this was at odds with the intelligence assessment that Information Policy had received concerning the perceived threat from the IRA.
2.2.7 Press statements issued following Bloody Sunday
Mr Wallace agreed that all of the information presented on behalf of the army in the immediate aftermath of Bloody Sunday had been presented by people responsible for PsyOps as opposed to regular army PR staff who would usually have assumed such a role.
Although Mr Wallace was effectively isolated from the activities of Information Policy in relation to Bloody Sunday, having been posted to the Widgery Tribunal, he said that he believed that Army PR, PsyOps and Information Policy resources would have been deployed extensively in order to counter the information that was coming out regarding Bloody Sunday that was damaging to the army’s image. However, he said that once the Widgery Inquiry was announced, they would technically have been prevented from making any comment to the press, due to the press injunction imposed by Lord Widgery.
2.2.8 Role on the Widgery Tribunal
Mr Wallace said that he did not know whether he and Colonel Tugwell had been appointed by the MoD to the Widgery Tribunal due to their roles within PsyOps.
He explained that his primary job had been to assess statements made by non-army witnesses to identify whether they had any connections with paramilitary or political groups, and that, therefore, he worked closely with Army Intelligence and had access to their intelligence materials and intelligence materials from other sources pertaining to Bloody Sunday. He confirmed that none of the material he saw indicated that there had been any IRA plans to shoot soldiers on the day, that the IRA had been drilling in the Rossville Flats in the week preceding Bloody Sunday or that any of the victims were members of the IRA. He also confirmed that he had not heard of any informant from the Bogside who had allegedly given information relevant to Bloody Sunday and added that no such information had been supplied to the Widgery Tribunal.
He said that he had seen no evidence of a general conspiracy to contrive evidence on the part of the soldiers involved. His personal opinion was that some of the soldier witnesses had been very compelling and others not so credible.
2.2.9 Army photographs
Mr Wallace agreed that there would have been a comprehensive index system to catalogue the 1,000 or so army photographs taken by the numerous army photographers present on Bloody Sunday. He said that he found it hard to understand how the photographs could have all disappeared, as it was his belief that all of the materials used at the Widgery Tribunal had been archived. He could not remember any photographs that would have been damaging to the army’s case and could not understand why they had not been disclosed to the representatives of the families and wounded at the Widgery Tribunal. He also could not recall any photographs that would have supported the soldiers’ claims that they had come under fire and that he had not seen any depicting a civilian gunman, a nail bomber or any such activity.
2.2.10 Army helicopter video footage
INQ2030, the cameraman responsible for taking army video footage from a helicopter on Bloody Sunday, was answerable to Mr Wallace. He had originally been instructed by Mr Wallace to bring the film back to him at army HQNI where there were facilities for processing it. However, a direct order was issued to INQ2030 during the course of the day to send the film directly to London. Mr Wallace said that this order must have come from somebody of a higher rank than Colonel in order to have countermanded the original order given by him and Colonel Tugwell, and acknowledged that it was highly irregular.
The order issued was for the tape to be taken to the UK for ‘security processing’. Mr Wallace could shed no light on what was meant by the term and could neither confirm or reject the suggestion made by Counsel that it could have been a euphemism for editing or doctoring. He said that, having seen the film, the sequence of events did appear wrong and that the shortness of the footage and the fact that it did not record the shootings was highly odd. He said that HQNI would not have had the facilities to doctor a cine-film but said that he imagined that the MoD in London could have edited a film quite easily.
2.2.11 Suppression of evidence
Mr Wallace said that, given his own experience in attempting to establish the truth about his own role in PsyOps when army and Government authorities had concealed documents and suppressed evidence and information, misrepresenting the situation to Parliament, he would not be surprised if Army Secret Services and Government Officials had suppressed documents relevant to Bloody Sunday. However, he added that he had no evidence of it having happened.
2.2.12 Intelligence concerning IRA plans for Bloody Sunday
Mr Wallace confirmed that not only was there no specific intelligence prior to Bloody Sunday to indicate that the IRA would be active, Information Policy had actually received positive information that the IRA would not engage the army on the day. He qualified this by stating that there was always the possibility that maverick gunmen would open fire, due to the difficulties in leadership within both wings of the IRA.
He said that Information Policy would have studied each march and demonstration closely to assess the disturbances and to look at the tactics used, and confirmed that Brigade commanders would have known by January 30th 1972 that IRA gunmen had not been involved in a single march in the six months prior to Bloody Sunday. There would therefore have been no high level need to have snipers and armed arrest forces at the ready on Bloody Sunday.
2.3 questions on behalf of the soldiers
2.3.1 Clockwork Orange
Mr Wallace explained that his role in relation to the Clockwork Orange project had been to collate the various sources of information into a series of narratives using Irish phraseology in order that they might be credibly attributable to an IRA informer. One of the sources of information was a person known as Witness X who allegedly gave details concerning IRA members’ involvement in Bloody Sunday whilst under interrogation. He told the Tribunal that the information included in the Clockwork Orange had been supplied to him on the basis that it would be credible from the IRA’s point of view. He said that he could not vouch for the accuracy of the information with which he had been provided, but that he had believed it to be accurate at the time. He said that he could not confirm whether the story had been designed to corroborate the soldiers’ version of the events of Bloody Sunday or whether the information stemmed from a genuine admission on behalf of a reliable source.
2.3.2 PsyOps
Mr Wallace reiterated that Information Policy Unit was a cover name for Psychological Operations and said that the fact that it was called by another name did not alter the nature of the work undertaken by the unit. He also confirmed that both PsyOps and Army Intelligence formed part of the G Branch of the army, alongside the Information Research Department (IRD), Information Liaison and Public Relations.
Mr Wallace said that the Unit had changed names, becoming Information Policy rather than Information Liaison towards the end of August 1971, with the appointment of Colonel Tugwell to the unit. He said that until the Colonel’s appointment, INQ1873 had been the only PsyOps operative, under the title ‘Liaison’, and that INQ1873 had subsequently assumed the role of Colonel Tugwell’s deputy within Information Policy. He said that INQ1873 had been responsible for PsyOps for the duration of his time in Northern Ireland.
Contrary to Counsel’s suggestions, Mr Wallace insisted that he worked closely with Army Intelligence and the Security Service from the end of 1971, whilst he was still officially working within Army PR, before transferring to Information Policy in 1973.
Mr Wallace said that, after the arrival of Colonel Tugwell, his role had included feeding stories to the media, forging IRA posters and forging or doctoring documents captured by paramilitary groups. He said that INQ1873 and Colonel Tugwell’s assertions that PsyOps ceased with the formation of Information Policy were untrue.
2.3.3 Intelligence concerning IRA plans for Bloody Sunday
Mr Wallace was shown the transcript of a signal sent by the Director of Intelligence, known to the Inquiry as ‘David’, to the Commander of 8 Brigade, which read: “source believes that the marchers will be armed with sticks and stones and he expects that the IRA will use the crowd as cover”. Though Counsel pointed out that the source did not distinguish between rioters and marchers and merely spoke of the IRA using the ‘crowd’ as cover, Mr Wallace reiterated that the information amounted only to a routine warning that gunmen might use rioters as cover. He said that there had been no special intelligence to suggest that the IRA would use the march for major armed conflict with the troops and that the signal did not support that suggestion.
He was also read a section from the draft chapter of a book prepared by an officer in 1 Para which stated that “the intelligence part of the operational order predicted gunmen in the Rossville Flats”. Counsel contended that this suggested that intelligence concerning the presence of gunmen had been passed down through the chain of command to the soldiers who would be deployed on the day. Mr Wallace disagreed with Counsel’s suggestion, saying that the IRA would only have positioned gunmen in the Rossville Flats if they had prior knowledge of the army’s plan to conduct a scoop-up operation. He said that the basic army plan on the day had been for the troops to block the march some distance away from the Rossville Flats and that, therefore, the presence of gunmen in the Flats themselves would have been almost irrelevant to the soldiers.
He told the Tribunal that all of the briefings he had attended at HQNI in the lead up to Bloody Sunday concerning the operational plans for the scoop-up operation were predicated on the basis that the soldiers would not be attacked by the IRA. He reiterated that, had they had any intelligence to the contrary, they would not have gone ahead with the PR campaign, encouraging journalists to go to Derry to witness a successful arrest operation.
2.3.4 Role on the Widgery Tribunal
Mr Wallace said that he had occasion to meet all of the soldiers who testified before Lord Widgery for the purpose of showing them the layout of the Tribunal. He said that he had never discussed individual soldiers’ evidence with them either before or after the Widgery proceedings.
He confirmed that, in the lead up to the Widgery Tribunal, Colin Overbury’s task had been to prepare the army’s case, whereas his own role was to deal with finding intelligence concerning non-army witnesses. However, he added that he was also tasked with finding material that Mr Overbury could use to support the army’s case.
He said that once the Tribunal was up and running, both he and Mr Overbury had been responsible for providing answers to questions and requests made by Counsel for the soldiers. He said that, for this purpose, he had to all intents and purposes pretended to be a barrister so that he could sit with Counsel without raising any suspicions. He explained that it had been felt that the presence of any members of the army in uniform sitting on the front bench beside Counsel would not have given a very good signal to the independent nature of the Tribunal and that therefore he had dressed in civilian clothes to blend in with Counsel for the soldiers.
3. William smyth’s evidence
Mr Smyth was Secretary to the Widgery Inquiry in 1972, having previously served as Assistant Secretary to the Ministry of Overseas Development, First Secretary in the UK High Commission in South Africa and as the UK representative to UNESCO.
3.1 questions on behalf of the tribunal
3.1.1 Material evidence before Lord Widgery
Mr Smyth said that the distribution of documents and photographs to the various Counsel teams on the Widgery Tribunal was dealt with by non-legal officers of the Treasury Solicitors’ team and that he played no part in it.
He could not recall seeing video footage taken from a helicopter on Bloody Sunday, nor could he recall a large number of army photographs having been presented to Lord Widgery.
3.2 questions on behalf of the families and wounded
3.2.1 Army photographs and cine-film
Mr Smyth told the Tribunal that neither he nor his colleague David Dewick had been responsible for the care, custody or control of any material evidence presented to Lord Widgery. He was therefore asked how it had come to pass that Mr Dewick had taken the copy of the army film footage back to his office at the Home Office in London, following the completion of the Widgery Inquiry. He responded that the proceedings of the Widgery Tribunal were thinly staffed and informally run and that perhaps, Mr Dewick, as a conscientious civil servant, might have taken it upon himself to bring the film back to a location where it would have been safe and easy to find if needed.
He said that he found nothing surprising in Mr Dewick’s actions. In response to Counsel’s questions, he said that he found it highly unlikely that Mr Dewick would have any further photographic evidence lying around elsewhere, stating that Mr Dewick was a retired civil servant of great experience and would not be hanging on to material belonging to the Crown, the only result of which would be to embarrass him and cause him difficulties.
Mr Smyth reiterated that he had no recollection of over 1,000 army photographs taken on Bloody Sunday and could not shed any light on their disappearance. He added that he was confident that Mr Dewick would have been straightforward in all his dealings, and would only have been concerned with the discharge of his duty. Mr Smyth also confirmed that he had no recollection of any discussion concerning the non-production in evidence of army photographs nor of any discussion concerning the brevity of the army film footage.
3.2.2 James Porter’s tapes
In his evidence to the Tribunal, James Porter, who was responsible for recording army and RUC communications on Bloody Sunday, said that he had been intimidated by and had received veiled threats from staff on the Widgery Tribunal (including Lord Widgery himself) when he offered his tapes as evidence to the Inquiry. Although Mr Porter could not recall everybody who had been present when this had transpired, it was his belief that Tribunal staff had been in the room and mentioned Mr Smyth’s name as having possibly been present.
Mr Macdonald said that, had Mr Smyth been present, it would raise the possibility of his having been involved in the suppression of evidence and might indicate that he could have been involved in a similar exercise in relation to the army photographs. Lord Saville disallowed the line of questioning, stating that it would not help the current Inquiry in any way.
3.2.3 Memorandum written to Lord Widgery
The Tribunal is in possession of an undated memo written by Mr Smyth to Lord Widgery, entitled ‘Provisional list of important points still to be covered in drafting the report’. Counsel for the families questioned him regarding two points made therein.
3.2.3.1 Brigadier MacLellan
The third point listed by Mr Smyth reads: “The question of whether the snatch operation was bungled. Brigadier MacLellan loyally covered up for his subordinates, but Colonel Wilford’s activities surely need some explaining”. He was asked how he had come to the conclusion that Brigadier MacLellan had covered up for his troops.
Mr Smyth said that he had no recollection of having written the memo and that the inclusion of the sentence relating to the Brigadier had caused him to doubt whether he was in fact the author (although he now accepted that he was). He said that the sentence, though perhaps misguided, would have been entirely based on evidence before the Tribunal as opposed to any other evidence. Counsel suggested that the clause was so damning that it had prompted him to attempt to cast doubt on his authorship of the document. He responded that, although he now accepted that he wrote the memo he had no recollection of having done so and could not account any further for the sentiments contained within it.
3.2.3.2 Bias of the report
A further section of the memo reads: “LCJ [Lord Chief Justice] will pile up the case against the deceased, including forensic coincidence and the readiness of local people to remove guns, but will conclude that he cannot find with certainty that any one of the 13 was a gunman”. Counsel asked whether there was a general view from the outset of the Inquiry that one of the tasks of the Inquiry was to pile up the case against the deceased, suggesting that it was unlikely that such a statement would emerge out of the blue at the end of the Inquiry. Mr Smyth responded that he had not formed any such impression at any time during the course of the Widgery Inquiry.
3.2.4 Role at the Widgery Tribunal
Counsel contented that, whilst it was Mr Smyth’s evidence that his role was limited to administrative and secretarial functions, evidence before the Tribunal indicated that he had in fact helped to draft sections of the Widgery Report. Counsel said that the question related to Mr Smyth’s credibility on all issues before the Inquiry, such as whether or not there was any suppression of photographic evidence, for if he was prepared to mislead the Tribunal on the nature of his role, he could equally mislead them on other issues.
Lord Saville responded that he did not personally care whether Mr Smyth had drafted the entire Widgery Report, as such matters were not within the remit of the current Inquiry. He did not agree that the issue reflected upon Mr Smyth’s overall credibility.
3.3 questions on behalf of the soldiers
3.3.1 NICRA statements
Mr Smyth had no recollection of seeing approximately 700 NICRA statements submitted to Lord Widgery and could not assist with the issue of what happened to them following the conclusion of the Inquiry. He added that, if witness statements came in to the Tribunal, they would have gone directly to the solicitors and barristers and that he would have played no part in their distribution.
4. hugh mooney’s evidence
Mr Mooney was employed by the Information Research Department of the Foreign Office and worked at Army HQNI at the time of Bloody Sunday.
4.1 questions on behalf of the Tribunal
4.1.1 Defining psychological operations
Mr Mooney agreed with the NATO definition of psychological operations as “planned psychological activities in peace and war, directed towards enemy, friendly and neutral audiences, in order to create attitudes and behaviour favourable to the achievement of political and military objectives”. He said that he understood ‘psychological’ to mean directed at the mind, designed to change opinions, alter people’s perceptions, deceive, etc. He agreed that psychological operations would range from PR stunts to untrue information being disseminated.
4.1.2 Experience / role in relation to PsyOps
Mr Mooney was sent on a military PsyOps course in February 1971. It was his belief that he had been sent on the course as the IRD had felt that it would be useful for him to have some knowledge about military PsyOps. In response to Counsel’s question as to whether he had been sent on the course because it was envisaged that he would actually be involved in PsyOps, he responded that he did not know; he had been sent on the course and had found it interesting.
Official documents discussing the posting of an IRD officer to Belfast indicate that the officer would have a PsyOps role. However, it was Mr Mooney’s evidence that, although it had been initially planned that he would have a PsyOps role, this had never in fact formed part of his function in Northern Ireland as there had been no need for such a role and he was not trained to perform PsyOps work. He agreed that he had been involved in some forms of counter-propaganda, which could be deemed to form part of PsyOps, but that his general role had been to conduct PR work that would support the position of the army and the Government.
The first progress report written by Mr Mooney from Northern Ireland to his superiors in London states: “the whole question of nomenclature is now being re-examined by the recently set-up PsyOps working committee, of which I am now a member”. He said that his membership of a PsyOps working committee did not mean that he was involved in PsyOps and that he had not been discussing the name to be given to PsyOps, but rather the whole issue of nomenclature in Northern Ireland, such as whether to use the term terrorist, whether to speak of Ulster or of Northern Ireland, etc.
Although this and other documents in the possession of the Tribunal also list Mr Mooney as being part of the PsyOps staff in 1971, he said that he did not think that he knew at the time that he was being regarded as part of PsyOps staff. He said that he never took any directions or orders from INQ1873 and that his direct superior in Northern Ireland had been the UK Representative, Howard Smith. It was Mr Mooney’s testimony that PsyOps came to an end in September 1971, with the switch made from Information Liaison to Information Policy. Although he still worked in INQ1873’s office, he said that he had no knowledge of PsyOps of any kind after the arrival of Colonel Tugwell in September 1971 and that he himself had never had any role in the planning or implementation of any PsyOps activity.
4.1.3 IRD role
Mr Mooney was read a document dating from the time of his appointment to Northern Ireland, listing what his roles and responsibilities should be. These included liaising with non-military parties concerning PsyOps concerning non-security related matters, advising the GOC on specialised information matters, assisting with the implementation of PsyOps affecting non-military mattes, establishing contacts with people of influence for the dissemination of specialised information helpful to the role of the Security Forces in Northern Ireland and drawing up a procedure for the gathering and securing of intelligence in support of long term Information Policy. It was his testimony that he had not performed these functions as listed in the document.
4.1.4 Role in relation to Bloody Sunday
Mr Mooney told the Tribunal that he had arranged Colonel Tugwell’s interview with the BBC in the immediate aftermath of Bloody Sunday, but said that he did not know the source of the Colonel’s statement that four of the victims had been on the ‘wanted list’.
He said that, prior to Bloody Sunday, he had not been made aware of any intelligence indicating that the IRA would use the march as cover to attack the Security Forces. He said that he was not aware of any false information having been put out by the army or by IRD before or after the march.
4.1.5 ‘Hindsight on Insight’ article
Mr Mooney wrote a document entitled ‘Hindsight on Insight’ in response to the Sunday Times Insight Team’s article concerning Bloody Sunday. He explained that he had very little recollection of his article or of his sources for it as Colonel Tugwell had sent away his only copy of it.
Amongst other things, the document discusses the case of Gerald Donaghy and reads: “was Insight unaware that one of the dead, Gerald Donaghy, was seen earlier in the day to be carrying a nail bomb? No mention. Nor is any mention made of his being named after the events in Londonderry as a member of the Provisional IRA by their Chief of Staff, John Stevenson”. He told the Tribunal that he could not recall the source for this or any of the other statements contained within the document, adding that he had reportedly accurately what he had been told.
4.2 questions on behalf of the families and wounded
4.2.1 The IRD
Mr Mooney denied Counsel’s suggestion that the IRD had been involved around the world in deception and disinformation and that IRD activity in Northern Ireland had been regarded as exceptionally sinister at the time. Counsel contended that a memo written by Clifford Hill, the deputy head of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s Guidance and Information Policy Department, in which Mr Hill told the personnel department that anything done by IRD staff in Northern Ireland should not be held against them, supported this view. He responded that the memo had not just concerned IRD staff but also Foreign Office staff, including Mr Hill himself and that it had been a jokey remark.
Counsel for the Tribunal having already taken Mr Mooney through those parts of his evidence which appeared to indicate that he was in Northern Ireland under deep cover and that the chief of Army Public Relations wanted to be disassociated from him in an organisational sense, Counsel for the families asked him about the view of the Home Secretary in relation to his role. Mr Mooney agreed that the Home Secretary had been particularly concerned about the involvement of IRD in Northern Ireland and had wanted to be kept well-informed of Mr Mooney’s activities.
Mr Mooney said that the IRD only engaged in dirty tricks, involving deception or disinformation under the strictest control of the Government. It was his belief that such operations would have to have been sanctioned by the Prime Minister. However, he said that there were no dirty tricks in Northern Ireland at the time of Bloody Sunday and that he had never been involved in deception operations in Northern Ireland.
4.2.2 Mr Mooney’s role
Mr Mooney said that his role was to help the army in its operation task in aiding it to effectively present its operations to the public. He said that this presentation involved putting out information that could damage the extremists and help the army. Although Mr Mooney, in a report to his superiors, described his brief as being to ‘identify, isolate and eliminate extremists’, he now took issue with his own use of the term, saying that he had not used the word in the sense of ‘to kill’. He explained that he was merely a specialist writer and that words did not kill. He said that, as far as he was aware, he had never been involved in any activities that could have led to people being killed.
In response to this statement, Counsel read him a section of one of his reports to his superiors in which he described the emerging use of bazookas by the IRA. It read: “We were helped by the fact that the bazooka shells did not explode because the safety cap was not removed. This latter fact was concealed. Instead a dummy order was prepared which said that such shells should be tested electrically. This would have the effect of exploding the shell in the tester’s hands. Clearance is being sought for this scheme”. Mr Mooney said that, whilst the document was a report of his own activities, this section was merely reporting what the army was doing, and that he had not been involved in any way in what he was describing. He denied Counsel’s suggestion that he appeared to be relishing the fact that he was engaged in activities that would have led to the death of the tester, saying that he had been a lot younger when he wrote the report and that there was no relish in it.
4.2.3 Involvement in PsyOps
Mr Mooney said that he had not made any reference to PsyOps or to his role within IRD in his initial statement to the Inquiry as he did not believe them to be relevant. He denied Counsel’s suggestion that he had not referred to the IRD because he had not wanted to trigger inquiries into his role, stating that he had limited his initial statement to his own activities on Bloody Sunday itself.
SUMMARY OF
PROCEEDINGS
Tuesday 24th: Paragraphs 1 to 2.2.2
Wednesday 25th: Paragraph 2.2.3 to
Thursday 26th: Paragraphs 3 and 4
For Peace Justice & Human Rights
