Readers of this blog will have read my previous articles about the murders of my parents and my attempt to obtain justice for them.
During this campaign I have engaged, inter alia , the RUC, the PSNI, the HET , the Police Ombudsman and others.
A recurring theme, like “Blackpool” through a stick of rock , has been that there is no intelligence as to the killers. Every organisation has said the same thing.
Consider this. The two most deadly areas of conflict in the Troubles were South Armagh and North Belfast. It is likely that these two areas received the most attention from the security forces.
The “supremo” re intelligence in the PSNI is Drew Harris. He is presently Deputy Chief Constable.
In 2014 , when he was an ACC , I raised with him , again, the issue of intelligence, either before , during or after the murders. I had pointed out the persons whom I alleged were informers to the PSNI, MI5 or the Army. [See previous blogs]. All agencies had told me that no such intelligence existed.
He said in a letter to me dated 11th August 2014, “Whilst is [sic] not appropriate to comment upon the governance arrangements that exist in relation to the exchange of intelligence between agencies, I can assure you that both the SCRT and the HET had full access to all available information and intelligence during the course of their respective Reviews.”
I recommend to you that you read Ed Moloney’s blog entitled “The Tom Oliver Killing-Transcript of Drew Harris’ Testimony to the Smithwick Tribunal”
Aside from the specific references to the killing, Mr Harris is plainly uncomfortable about the twenty pieces of intelligence [not silver] which had lately been laid before the tribunal at his hand.
Where have they been all these years, was one question.
Mr Harris placed these items of intelligence before the tribunal in October 2012. When his testimony was read into the record, the tribunal had been hearing evidence for 124 days.
More importantly, North Belfast was riddled with PIRA informers. Sean Maguire, now SF/IRA publicity director , operated there. The command structure encompassed Gillen, Spike Murray, Scap and McGuinness. All likely informers.
To suggest that no intelligence exists for 1990 in North Belfast , comparable to that in 1989 in South Armagh, is a lie and a desecration of the memory of a man who served the RUC and of a woman who was an “innocent victim”
It’s time ‘men’ like Harris and others who populated Special Branch stood up and admitted what they did and the level of collusion between the State and PIRA.
Or are they just happy to spend their pension in Marks and Spencer ?
Does National Police Memorial Day prick any conscience?