PRESS COVERAGE ABOUT TOBY HARNDEN AND HIS WORK

Irish Times, 26 March 2005
Garda shadow hangs over ambush
By Mark Hennessy

Seconds after coming under fire in an IRA ambush, RUC Chief Supt Harry Breen, badly wounded, struggled from a car on a lonely country road in south Armagh, waved a white handkerchief and begged for his life.

An unmasked IRA gunman, one of a gang of up to 20 who had planned his death, walked slowly up to the unarmed man and, in front of eye-witnesses, shot him in the back of the head.

Seconds before, Breen and his colleague, Supt Bob Buchanan, both unarmed, had been travelling back from a meeting about cross-Border smuggling in Dundalk Garda station.

The double murder in March 1989 - involving the most senior police officers killed by the IRA - stunned the RUC and led to rumours and allegations, which persist to this day, that the men were betrayed by a Garda informer.

With or without an informer's hand, though, it would not have been difficult for the IRA in south Armagh to organise the murder of the men, given Supt Buchanan's less than stringent security. He frequently attended meetings in Dundalk, using the same route more often than not, while he also tended to park his own three-year-old car in full view in the station's front car park.

Chief Supt Breen, on the other hand, rarely travelled across the Border and did so on this occasion only because he wanted to pass on information about the smuggling activities of one leading Louth IRA man. He had not wanted to go, expressing fears to a colleague before he left Armagh at lunchtime that one of the Dundalk gardaí, whom he named, was passing information to the IRA.

The IRA had been after the two RUC men for a long time, particularly since Tyrone IRA man Michael Lynagh's eight-strong unit had been wiped out during an attack on Loughall RUC station two years before. The plan to kill Chief Supt Breen and Supt Buchanan had gone on for a week, though intelligence reports suggest that the IRA intended to kidnap and torture the two before killing them, rather than doing so straight away.

The two officers left Newry at 1.50pm and arrived in Dundalk shortly after 2.10pm. With their business done they left for home at 3.15pm, careful not to say what road they would be using.

However, it may not have made any difference. The IRA had posted units on all the roads north: the main Dublin/Belfast road; the main Omeath/Newry Road; the Carrickmacross road; and the road on which the ambush took place, the Edenappa Road.

Just four minutes before Supt Buchanan's car arrived from Dundalk, two of the Edenappa unit, dressed in full combats and wearing camouflage cream, moved in, stopping three southbound cars, thus blocking one lane.

Believing that he was passing a security checkpoint, not uncommon even in south Armagh where security forces moved carefully, Supt Buchanan drove on, only to be trapped by a white or cream-coloured Liteace van, from which four more gunmen emerged.

In a dispassionate report written for the British Ministry of Defence within days of the double killing, the 1st Battalion, Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, said the IRA team had chosen an "excellent ambush position. Mr Buchanan attempted to reverse out of the ambush but came up against a wall and stopped. Mr Breen got out of the car and waved a handkerchief.

"One of the gunmen walked up to him and shot him in the head. Mr Buchanan was dispatched in the same manner while still strapped in his seat belt. It is probable at this stage that he was already dead."

THIS WEEK, THE Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, announced that Judge Peter Smithwick will chair a tribunal of inquiry into allegations that a Garda informer was involved in the killings. Such an allegation has been investigated before, most particularly by former Garda assistant commissioner, Ned O'Dea, in 2000. That investigation was ordered after Daily Telegraph journalist Toby Harnden had put the allegation into print in his book Bandit Country.

Former assistant commissioner O'Dea interviewed Harnden, as well as Irish Times journalist Kevin Myers who had written a column repeating much of Harnden's allegations, but found that no real evidence existed.

Following his review of Garda interviews with both men, a Canadian judge, Peter Cory, who investigated eight controversial killings from the Troubles at the invitation of the Irish and British governments, agreed.

"The interviews revealed how little these gentlemen relied upon fact and how much they relied upon suspicion and hypothesis," he said in his 2001 report. Bitterly annoyed, Harnden, whose book sold 140,000 copies, countered that the judge had never interviewed him directly, and that Garda officers had misquoted him after they interviewed him in Washington.

A Northern Ireland investigation by former RUC deputy chief constable Colin Cramphorn found "that no evidence exists, nor can any documentation be located, which indicates Garda collusion with subversives".

FOR NOW, SENIOR Government and Garda figures in the Republic are confident that a full public inquiry will show convincingly that there was no Garda informer, that it is but one of many myths of the Troubles. They are content for a full probe to go ahead as part of a bargaining deal with London. The British government is under pressure to accept much more problematic inquiries - ones that go to the heart of the relationship between a state and its "dogs of war". Some of these inquiries, such as one into the death of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane, and others, may support charges that British security forces colluded with Loyalist paramilitaries.

So far, the powerful British security establishment, including MI5 and MI6, has done everything possible to prevent the Finucane inquiry getting underway. Despite repeated promises, London is now suggesting a more restricted inquiry into Finucane, one that could hear some evidence in private and be prevented from hearing other evidence.

On this side of the Irish Sea, some people are not so sure that the Government and the Garda have little to worry about in the case of Harry Breen and Bob Buchanan. For years, some SDLP politicians have never been slow to identify, in private, a particular officer as the source of the intelligence - though they have never been able to produce proof. The officer has since left the force, and built up considerable wealth, though he denied all allegations and was never disciplined by Garda authorities.

For years, it has been alleged that a small number of gardaí in Border stations were bribed by the IRA to avert their eyes from smuggling operations, which is hardly surprising given the amount of smuggling that went on.

But could the co-operation have gone further? Judge Cory believes it did not.

Sixteen years on, it is far from clear that a tribunal of inquiry into the final hours of Harry Breen and Bob Buchanan will leave us any the wiser.

There was a time, more mature readers may recall, when journalism was largely about reporting or commenting on the activities of others. Thankfully that time has long passed, and it’s a thrill to find so many colleagues inviting a global audience to follow them on their own bespoke websites.

Telegraph Middle East correspondent Toby Harnden and "his faithful dog Finn, a long-haired terrier mix and former Belfast stray" will feature shortly. Also due a cheery "Ave!" is Julia Caesar, a BBC business reporter whose picture-saturated homepage suggests she is very close to crossing her personal Rubicon, and entering the land of the glamour model. Any nominations for other sites will be much appreciated.

WITH THIS WEEK marking five years since John Hume and David Trimble were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, most outsiders could be forgiven for feeling as confused as ever about Northern Ireland.

The 1998 Good Friday agreement was meant to herald an era of unprecedented peace and conciliation. Five years on, Northern Ireland's political extremes, Sinn Fein and Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionists, find themselves the power-brokers after the middle ground was swept aside in last month's local elections.

The world may have altered beyond recognition since September 11, 2001, but Ulster's self-obsession has again confirmed Winston Churchill's observation of 1922: "The whole map of Europe has changed, but as the deluge subsides and the waters fall short we see the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone emerging once again. The integrity of their quarrel is one of the few institutions that has been unaltered in the cataclysm which has swept the world."

Northern Ireland 's recent history is nothing if not complicated, but three books, in particular, help to explain why conciliation remains so hard to achieve.

In Toby Harnden's Bandit Country: The IRA & South Armagh (Hodder & Stoughton), the Provos' most ruthless brigade is exposed as a fiefdom of wealthy smugglers, the power-hungry terrorists who must be persuaded to wind up their organisation if there is to be a lasting settlement.

Of the many shelf-loads of books written about the Troubles, probably the most chilling is by Eamon Collins, a former IRA informer. Killing Rage (Granta) describes how he joins the IRA at the height of the "blanket protest" by republican prisoners and uses his job as a Customs official in Newry to set up a colleague for murder. This is an excruciatingly honest account, from a man who became a merciless tool of violence and at one point declared: "I knew I no longer existed as a normal human being. Every aspect of my life was dedicated to the purpose of death."

As Collins becomes more involved, he starts to challenge many of his colleagues' prejudices -some have since become prominent members of the dissident Real IRA - and eventually becomes a critic of violence. In the end, Collins became so outspoken that he himself became an IRA victim; in January 1999 he was stabbed to death by his former comrades.

Bandit Country, by Toby Harnden

"This is non-fiction but it reads like fiction," says John Glover, of Fitzroy. "It's a chronicle of the IRA in the South Armagh area in Northern Ireland, which is one of the roughest areas to be posted as a British soldier. It's IRA heartland. It's pretty awful what has happened with terrorism in that area. The book doesn't go into graphic detail it just accounts for what happened in a very direct, objective way. I've read a lot of books on this subject and this is one of the better ones."

Ahead of his report News Letter Chief Reporter STEPHEN DEMPSTER reveals a worrying list of claims

ON March 20, 1989, two senior RUC officers attended a meeting at Dundalk Garda station to discuss border security with police in the Republic.

Such get-togethers were common, usually a monthly or even bi-monthly occurrence.

There was nothing different about the 2pm gathering, though News Letter security sources have said that RUC Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan had shown some reservations about the trip that day.

Harry Breen had made a call to see if the meeting could be postponed, claimed a former RUC man. “I have no idea why he felt uneasy about something but the order came down from above to go. “

The pair travelled south on the main Newry to Dundalk road and parked their unmarked Vauxhall Cavalier car inside the Garda station grounds. Afterwards, they took a different route home, heading towards Jonesborough.

Around 4pm on the Edenappa Road, their car was ambushed by the IRA close to the south Armagh border. It is thought that five gunmen were directly involved in the attack and the officers died in a hail of machine-gun fire.

Within hours of the murders, suspicion was rife as to how the IRA had known the men were in Dundalk and travelling back on that road.

Unionist politicians cried “collusion.

Publicly, the RUC dismissed this claim, saying they had the greatest confidence in police colleagues in the Republic. But the News Letter can reveal that behind the scenes RUC officers were deeply concerned that gardai had been involved.

A source close to the then RUC Chief Constable Sir Jack Hermon has said that police in the Province unofficially began to hide their border movements from gardai. There was a lot of concern, he said.

Not because the Garda was corrupt, the vast majority were good officers, but we knew there were IRA moles. Conspiracy sceptics have said the RUC mens car was simply spotted at the Dundalk station and followed back towards the border, using radio links to alert the gunmen up ahead.

The News Letter, however, has learned from a top IRA informer at that time that this theory may only have been partially true and that a Garda IRA mole was involved. Kevin Fulton, the British Army spy in the IRA, was based in Dundalk at the time of the killings.

And he has said that an IRA mole in Dundalk Garda station whom he has now named to Canadian Judge Peter Corys inquiry into the murders had tipped off the IRA. He said: “Those murders were the work of the south Armagh IRA.

“Basically, the IRA had every road covered coming from Dundalk and across the border. A car followed the RUC officers from Dundalk. When it was suggested that the officers could have been spotted in the town and the operation set-up, Fulton dismissed this.

No, they had to know Breen and Buchanan were coming down. To get so many IRA men on the ground so quickly, they had to know. When asked were they tipped off, Fulton said “yes. By someone in the Garda station? “yes.

When the name of the alleged mole was put to him, Fulton said: “I believe it was him. In his book Bandit Country, author Toby Harnden also said: “RUC Special Branch received intelligence that a Garda officer telephoned an IRA member to tip him off. A former Garda Detective Inspector said: “I’m afraid the leak came from a Garda officer.

No doubt he would maintain that he is entitled to some reward for all his years of work in the voluntary sector; and indeed, who can argue with that? Importing arms for the IRA can be arduous: you have to learn Arabic, and maybe even the tiresome yo ho ho slang of mariners: reef the AKs 'neath the fore t'gallants, Mr Mate, and stow the Semtex aft the foc'sle. In the evening, bottles of rum and shanties galore: "What shall we do with the drunken sniper..." But still, arms smugglers can get seasick and even drown for their country. Sailors are we. The truth is, a terrorist organisation can't kill thousands of people without an awful lot of unsung, unseen hard work. New member And now the IRA Army Council has a new member, the Surgeon. Surgeons are expensive, and usually have prohibitive waiting lists. Yet lucky, lucky Martin can consult his surgeon whenever the council has finished discussing whatever merry pranks it's planning next, and for free.

The ferrous Martin can murmur in a low note to the Surgeon: I've got something to discuss, a small rather personal ailment, it looks like male rust, I wonder if you might, ah... The Surgeon might hurriedly interject that he's not actually a surgeon, more a bayonet man than scalpel, but to no avail. Once a belief spreads that you've got healing powers, regardless of the truth, you get all these ill-looking people at your front door with strange swellings and odd backs and too many feet.

The Surgeon is actually rather good at getting rid of feet, and anything else that annoys him. He features prominently in Toby Harnden's extraordinary account of the IRA in South Armagh: Bandit Country. This credits the Surgeon with at least 70 bewitching murders, and I'm not at all sure which is the loveliest. For the Surgeon is the Peter Stringfellow of homicide. He helped make the bombs which massacred 17 soldiers at Narrow Water. In time, he turned the Border crossing point at Killeen into a narrow gauntlet of slaughter. He led the ambush and murder of senior RUC officers Breen and Buchanan as they returned from a cross-Border meeting with the Guards at Dundalk, probably shooting them at point-blank range himself.

Hannah family A year before that, in 1988, the Hannah family were crossing the Border when the Surgeon's boys detonated a mine beside their car. All that was found of Robin Hanna and his wife Maureen was a foot each; of their son David, his right forearm. The real target of this attack was Mr Justice Higgins. There is an unbearable irony in what follows.

In 1985, the Surgeon had masterminded a mortar bomb attack on Newry Barracks in which nine RUC officers were killed. Soon afterwards, the IRA terrorist Eamon Collins was arrested, and after six days' interrogation, told all he knew, implicating the Surgeon in a wide range of terrorist murders. But under pressure from his wife, Collins withdrew the statements implicating the Surgeon, who was then released. Collins himself was later freed by a Northern court, because he might have been assaulted while in custody: the judge who made that ruling was Judge Higgins, the very fellow the Surgeon was trying to kill when his unit blew the Hannah family to pieces. To complete the circle, just four years ago, even though the IRA was firmly on ceasefire at the time, the Surgeon's gang caught up with Collins, knifing him to death with such primeval and unsurgical savagery that his skull was shattered, his features turned into an unrecognisable pulp.

So. This now was the rule of law against terrorism. It allowed the Surgeon and Eamon Collins to go free; and thus freed, the Surgeon then tried try to kill both the judge who freed Collins and - successfully - Collins himself. The political penalty? None. Now he's on the Army Council of the IRA; and he and his colleagues are free-floating in a gravity-free zone, where they may perform whatever deeds they like, and completely without consequence. For the two governments will make every unprincipled concession possible to keep the peace process, and thereby the City of London, intact.

Bad old days In the bad old days, the Surgeon and his IRA chums used the law against itself, dodging through the thickets of habeas corpus meluddery. But in today's peace-process land, such cunning is unneeded: London and Dublin are resolutely ranged in the IRA's support, minimising the corporate consequences of IRA misdeeds whenever they can. Far from the Surgeon being an outlaw, the law is his refuge and his strength.

The British government probably believes its gift to the IRA of control of petrol, diesel and white alcohol supplies across Northern Ireland will lure many terrorists into retirement, to rest their swelling bellies on snooker tables in those vast and vulgar bungalows the banditti in that part of the world favour. But the Surgeon didn't bathe in strangers' blood for that. In his own wicked way, he is a man of utter principle, and he probably has a mordant smile on his face. Faced by the unscrupulous ninnies of Whitehall and Leinster House, he thinks his crowd is winning; and by God, he's probably right.