chief constable

Handshake

It is said that it originated as a way of showing that you were unarmed.

English barristers do not shake hands because as ‘ learned friends’ that have no need of this display.

There have been many famous handshakes. Hitler/Chamberlin, Nixon/Mao, Sadat/Begin, Rabin/Arafat, McGuinness/ Elizabeth Saxe- Coburg-Gotha.

These have been ground breaking moments.

So why did  George Hamilton , stolid, NIO Gopher, go to West Belfast and shake the hand of  McGuinness, terrorist, gunman, murderer of policemen and others, member of PIRA Northern Command, and sometime member of PIRA Army Council?

What was the hidden agenda? What was the purpose? McGuinness confessed to having been momentarily in  PIRA, like Clinton confessed to smoking dope but not inhaling.

Is there a clue in what was said?

Hamilton  said ” there were serious problems with policing in the past”.

McGuinness said “tonight is another act of reconciliation”.

Leaving aside the  Relate-like language of these two almost former lovers [you don’t bring me flowers anymore], on whose behalf does Hamilton speak? Certainly not those officers killed, maimed or still living daily with their scars.

Certainly not on behalf of my parents, whom he refers to as a “legacy issue”.

Perhaps on behalf of Bryan Harold Harris or Anne Harris? The brother and mother of his deputy, whose father was killed by PIRA on 8 October 1989, on the orders of McGuinness?

Will he look his deputy in the eye on Monday morning?

Is the message from the PSNI that there will be no more arrests of senior Provos? Their head of intelligence Bobby Storey shared the platform. Hamilton had no issue with that.

And what of the other branches of government? Who knows what messages are being whispered into the ears of the judges in the back corridor?

The Secretary of State may not be able to fix welfare reform but there is a lot more on the republican agenda that we don’t see and which can be attended to.

Not all landmark handshakes survive. Hitler, Arafat…maybe we can add Marty and Liz to that list?

But wait! the most famous modern handshake of all! Blair and Gadafy! I’m coming for you soon Tony!

Wheels within wheels

Liam Clarke, in his article in the Belfast Telegraph on 18 June says: “the Castlereagh raid allowed the IRA to identify the entire agent network in Belfast through a process of elimination.”

It is interesting that this observation, relating to events which occurred in 2002, passed without apparent comment in the media.

Was the “raid” in fact a hostile act by a devilishly cunning SF/IRA unit or was it staged? Was the insider in fact Larry the Chef, a state agent, and was the object of the state to further destabilise SF/IRA?

Larry was never prosecuted, a decision made jointly by the police, who took him out of the jurisdiction and the PPS.

Guess who was asked to investigate? A man call Chilcott.

Could Barney Rowan help?

Imagine the scene at the army council when the product of the raid was tabled. “Gerry, I never knew….you too Marty….gosh and you , and you”. It is unlikely that anyone on the army council failed to make the grade.

So why the silence both from the media and from SF/IRA?

It’s the Peace Process Stupid!

Sinn Fein/IRA’s touts

Even as I write, in England, Boys and Girls , educated at Oxbridge, are wrestling with a problem.

It is this.

Given that sooner or later the enormity of the participation of senior Sinn Fein/IRA personnel as state touts will emerge, how should the state  manage it? Also, how do we stop the Irish rabbiting on about the past?

Clearly, blanket denial is not an answer.

These clever Boys and Girls, schooled from childhood to take on the mantle of those who ran an Empire upon which the sun never set, will have to come up with an answer to bamboozle the Paddies.

We may be already seeing the first fruits of their labour.

“Well placed sources” and “veteran journalists” will start to mention the unmentionable. Books will be written. Reference has already been made in the last few days to Adams’ family.

I believe that I have already articulated the notion that the state knew years ago about the Adams Family Values and probably also about the Cahill family. They would have used this information for their own ends.

But I digress. The tactic is to reveal sufficient for the masses to be a little shocked, but not a lot. Slowly but surely they become used to it.

“Of course the Army Council were all informers” says the man in the pub/golf club/church/garden centre, “everybody knows that”

Then as the Boys and Girls point out , distracted by Britain’s Got Talent and other Circuses, if not bread, the masses  will move on.

Jimmy Savile has already been replaced by Sepp as the Bogey Man.

The aim is to numb, neutralise and normalise so that nobody asks the hard questions about the state’s involvement in murders that could have been avoided. “It’s all terribly sad and it was a cock up not a conspiracy so  let’s move on.”

Sadly , for the Boys and Girls and their Mandarin Masters, a few good people will continue to ask awkward questions.

What’s Irish for eeney,meeney, miney,moe?

Readers of this blog will know that part of my case against the state is that at the time of the murders of my parents, PIRA was so thoroughly penetrated that the state not only knew who killed them but could have prevented it and had agents participating in the crimes.

Anne Cadwallader, in the opening pages of chapter eight of  her remarkable book “Lethal Allies” articulates how victims feel.

“He is a bit obsessed you know…”

Here is what  de Silva has noted , when he investigated the murder of Patrick Finucane.

The Commanding Officer of the Force Research Unit said; “You cannot report on a terrorist organisation unless you have someone at the centre of things”.

In March 1991 the Secretary of State for Defence wrote: “we cannot expect to obtain valuable intelligence from agents that are not at the heart of the target organisation or group.”

So, let’s think. In PIRA, who was at the “centre” or the “heart”?

No, surely not! That can’t be right! Gerry, Marty, Bobby, the Army Council, Northern Command, Belfast CO?

Readers might accept that there would be little point in recruiting the woman cleaning Connolly House or even one of Gerry’s bodyguards.

So, who were the agents involved in the events of 6th June 1990?

Patience, Dear Reader!

“These legacy issues”

Interviewed on BBC Panorama and shown tonight, the Chief Constable referred to “these legacy issues”

Well, I have news for him.

The murders of my parents were crimes. Crimes which his force has failed to solve. Crimes where the papers were put in a box and stored away , probably months after the bomb. The exhibits were destroyed.

My parents were real living victims of crime.

They are not a “legacy”, nor an “issue”.

I suppose I should not be surprised that , having been selected as a safe pair of hands by the state, he trots out the state’s line.

Readers, particularly those who have also lost loved ones might well think  [like I do] that George Hamilton’s attitude stinks.

The partial repayment of a debt

Today I lodged papers with the Police Ombudsman. Details will follow. Essentially, I contend that PIRA was so completely penetrated by the state in 1990 that the murders of my parents were the state’s responsibility. This the police failed to investigate. I have given details of the PIRA informers, whose names I know and I have asked the Ombudsman to examine all state files. The exercise has taken a year of my life, which I have gladly given, for my parents. Other events have given me this opportunity, which I failed to take for twenty four years. A number of people who treated me badly during that time and who gave me no support will have their own God to answer to. I thank those who have stood by me through all my travails for these years. I thank those from both communities, who, in the last twelve months have given me information and insight. The PSNI and the PPS failed to come up to the mark. Let’s see if the Ombudsman is hewn from different wood.

Lies and the RUC Special Branch

It is reported that Chief Supt. Nigel Grimshaw told the AGM of the Superintendents’ Association of NI that “we need to see the full implementation of strategies and policies which deal with those issues which continue to haunt us, parades , identities and in particular the past.”

He and his bosses would do the community and the past a great service by opening up the secret Special Branch files and confessing as to what is in them.

The concept that the identity or safety of paramilitary touts trumps the prosecution of those who should stand trial for the murder of innocent civilians is deeply wrong.

Of course the state could order the opening of the files or some Special Branch man, luxuriating in his Patton pension, topped up with further state work, could salve his conscience by telling the truth.

Come to think of it, there must be a few Branch men still left in the current PSNI high command, if Marty is right.

The murders of James and Ellen Sefton

My research into these murders will be complete in the next ten days.

The PSNI and the Director of Public Prosecutions have failed to give proper regard to the points I have raised. Accordingly I am lodging a complaint with the Police Ombudsman.

On 6th June 2015, the twenty fifth anniversary of the murders I will publish here a full account of my allegations.

Hair today

The Times reports that scientists from an elite FBI forensic unit exaggerated evidence that help incriminate defendants in hundreds of trials. The evidence related to hair matching and has been found to be flawed in a significant number of cases.

I seem to recall that Ronnie Flanagan had links with Quantico, the FBI Academy. I wonder how often hair match evidence was given in Northern Irish courts and was it given by experts trained by the FBI?

I note also that Chief Constable Hamilton is said by the BBC to be a member of the FBI Law Enforcement Executive Leadership Association. [whatever that is]

Let’s hope that he, the DPP and Minister Ford spring into action and review such cases here.

ACC Stephen martin

This police officer is giving his congratulations to Bishops Edward Daly and James Mehaffey.

He has no business doing so , any more than he would give his good wishes to the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church [who was at school with me].

Church and State should be separate, although he has probably grown up with bad habits…….

The police service should be remote from these ‘Christians’.

Perhaps he has occasion to be grateful to them?