Handling recommendations ‘niave’
By Alan Murray
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Former RUC Special Branch officers have labelled some recommendations on agent-handling in Nuala O’Loan’s report as “unbelievably naive”.
Retired senior officers say that two instances in particular highlight a lack of understanding and knowledge of the realities of handling agents.
They say that her recommendation in the case of the sabotaged UVF attack on Sinn Fein’s Monaghan office in March 1997 that those involved should have been arrested is “astonishing”.
The former officers say that, if evidence had been processed with the intention of prosecuting the UVF men involved, then ‘Informant 1′ - Mark Haddock - would have been exposed as an RUC agent and killed.
Said one officer: “She (Mrs O’Loan) confirms that Haddock brought the bomb destined for Monaghan to Special Branch so it could be neutered.
“If prosecutions had been mounted, a forensic scientist, either in Belfast or the Republic, would have had to write up a report on the composition of the ‘bomb’ and, unless the scientist was prepared to fabricate a report for the trial, he would have had to confirm that the ‘explosives’ were no more than a mixture of putty and sawdust.
“That report would have had to be given to the defendants and they would have been able to figure out that someone doctored the bomb and easily worked out who it was. What she suggests is unbelievably naive.”
Former officers also say that, similarly, if Haddock had been pulled in about planning a hit on a “republican target” in the Antrim area in July 1994, he would have been made aware that there was at least one other informant within his Mount Vernon UVF unit.
In her report on the incident, Mrs O’Loan says “there is no record of police challenging Informant 1 about it”.
Another former officer added: “Imagine the implications of pulling Haddock about that.
“It would have told him that there was another agent within his unit and he would probably have sussed out who it was, because so few knew about this and then would probably have killed him.
“If you were to do what Mrs O’Loan suggests in these two incidents, agents wouldn’t survive more than a month - they’d be dead and then she’d probably level the charge against their handlers that they were in breach of their duty of care towards an agent.”
In response, the Police Ombudsman’s office said yesterday: “The Antrim incident referred to happened in 1994. Informant 1 was engaged in terrorist activity he hadn’t told his handlers about.
“It was one of a series of incidents which should have rung alarm bells about his activities and value as a source, yet he remained an agent for another nine years, during which intelligence linked him to multiple murders and attempted murders and police effectively protected him from prosecution.
“In relation to Monaghan, police made no attempt to mount a surveillance operation, they did not attempt to disrupt the attack, they failed to tell their counterparts in the Republic, they failed to keep records which could have been analysed and helped gain a fuller picture of UVF activity.
“These things could have been done without compromising an agent.”
