We're now entering the final phase of the Smithwick Tribunal and it is expected it will finish hearing evidence around Easter. Then Judge Smithwick will have the difficult task of going through the evidence and deciding who he believes, who he doesn't and drawing up his conclusions.
The last few days of evidence at the Tribunal encapsulate the dilemma he is facing. We had witnesses contradicting each other, accusations, denials, murder, secrets and the whiff of politics.
The Tribunal is investigating claims of garda collusion in the deaths of two senior RUC officers.
Chief Supt Harry Breen and Supt Bob Buchanan died in an IRA ambush in March 1989 just minutes after leaving a meeting in Dundalk Garda Station. Former garda sergeants Leo Colton, Owen Corrigan and Finbarr Hickey all deny the allegations.
First up was Witness 68 who retired as an Assistant Deputy Chief
Constable of the RUC. He gave his evidence via a video link from Belfast as he was too ill to travel. He was sent from Belfast to investigate the IRA ambush at Narrow Water Castle near Warrenpoint in 1979 in which 18 soldiers, mostly members of the Parachute Regiment, were killed.
One British tourist who was across the River Newry in the Republic was shot dead by the soldiers in the chaos that followed.
In his reports at the time, Witness 68, who was the chief investigating officer, said they were receiving full co-operation from the gardaí. But that is not what he said in the witness box.
There he said the assistance from the gardaí was "non existent". He'd written the opposite in his reports he said, because they could have been passed to the gardaí and he wanted to keep them onboard.
He said the matter was raised at his request at a meeting between the Chief Constable and the Garda Commissioner but nothing changed. Witness 68 started to say what he was told at a meeting with senior gardaí involving two taoisigh. However, he was prevented from doing so at that stage but was told he could return and tell us all when "public bodies" had been informed first.
Witness 68 also firmly focused on former Det Garda Sgt Owen Corrigan and his role at the locations in the Republic from where the IRA detonated the bombs.
The witness said he was promised the sites would be preserved to allow for an RUC forensic team examine the areas. When they returned, however, the vegetation had been completely cut down rendering them useless from a technical point of view. He claimed Mr Corrigan was in charge of the scenes.
Two men were arrested by gardaí in relation to the attack, Brendan Burns and Joe Brennan. Both, claimed Witness 68, had traces of firearms and explosives residue on them and in a car but were never charged. They went on to build other bombs which killed dozens of people in the following years, he said.
However, the following day, former RUC Detective Inspector Gerry
McCann, who was also involved in the investigation, had a completely different view. Based in Newry, he said he trusted Det Sgt Corrigan with his life.
No one in the RUC had expressed concern to him about Mr Corrigan and he said it was unbelievable that they would have and not tell him. He also insisted they got full co-operation from the gardaí during their investigation. However, the retired Detective Inspector surprised many when he said he didn't know who was in charge of smuggling along the border at the time or whether Thomas 'Slab' Murphy was involved.
But the main witness of the week was undoubtedly former Garda
Commissioner, Pat Byrne. Much of the questioning he faced related to the investigation he set up in 2000 into allegations of garda collusion with the IRA after the issue had been raised in the media and by politicians. The report by the late Det Chief Supt Sean Camon concluded there was no evidence of collusion.
But how did he reach this conclusion without taking to some of those who claimed to have information, the Tribunal wanted to know. The gardaí did talk to two journalists but not to two TDs and one MP who said they knew about it. Despite intense questioning Mr Byrne was adamant that the gardaí didn't need to talk to them because they already knew who and what the politicians were talking about.
He stuck to this even when it was pointed out that unionist MP Jeffrey Donaldson had talked to a former British agent within the IRA, Peter Keeley. The former garda chief maintained that the report was thorough and complete.
There were also many questions about garda intelligence reports. There ere two which suggested a garda had passed information to the IRA which ed to several deaths while a third said a member of the IRA had ntimidated a witness to prevent him giving evidence against Owen orrigan in a court case.
The Camon report, however, stated that there was no evidence or intelligence to suggest garda collusion. The former Commissioner said he could not say why the reports weren't referred to in the report but as Mr Camon had access to them, he must have considered them.
Then there was the abduction and assault of Mr Corrigan when he ran a pub in Drogheda. Garda in Louth believed it was because of a drink related debt to the IRA. That too was not mentioned in the Camon report.
The other issue Mr Byrne was quizzed on related to his time as a
superintendent in the Crime and Security unit and a phone tap on a leading republican in Louth. The Tribunal had earlier heard from Dundalk based retired Insp Dan Prenty who said he was called down to Garda HQ with Supt Myles Hawkshaw to listen to a tape to try and identify a voice in 1990. That voice warned the target to get rid of a forged passport as he was to be raided the following morning. The call could only have come from a garda but the tape and the transcript can't be found.
Mr Prenty said he couldn't recognise the voice but this did happen. Retired Supt Hawkshaw said he didn't believe it happened and retired Commissioner Byrne was adamant it didn't. There was no missing tape or transcript because they never existed in the first place, he said.
Unusually, Judge Smithwick intervened asking the witness if he believed Mr Prenty had imagined the whole thing and if there was a gap in the garda file. Former Commissioner Byrne said there wasn't and it was of serious concern to suggest that information would go missing from Crime and Security.
The Tribunal has had access to records held by unit relating to that phone tap. It shows a gap around the date Mr Prenty said he was called to HQ to listen to the tape. That, according to the former Commissioner, could be explained by the IRA target being away on holiday so there would be no intercepts on the days in question.
During his two days in the witness box there were tense clashes between Mr Byrne and the legal teams representing the Tribunal and the PSNI who separately accused him of not answering their questions. Indeed, Mr Byrne unusually often posed questions to his accusers from the witness box.
The role of double agents was also explored briefly too with Guy
Burgess, Kim Philby and Donald Maclean who worked as KGB agents in Britain being mentioned. That led to one point at least on which the Tribunal counsel, Justin Dillon, and Pat Byrne did agree.
You don't know you've a double agent in your midst until you catch them.
