COLIN WALLACE

Posted By: September 10, 2021

                                 COLIN WALLACE

                       And the Kincora-Richard Kerr case before U.S. Congress

                                                           

Colin Wallace is one of the most remarkable figures to emerge from The Troubles. He is a former serving officer in the Ulster Defense Regiment and Senior Information Officer, Psychological Operations, British Army HQ Northern Ireland, 1971-1974.

He had a most promising career in his chosen profession … until conscience forced him to speak truth to power—to become, in effect, a whistleblower against the abuse of power. In 1973, he was one of the first to draw public attention to the Kincora Boys’ Home—and other State-run homes in Northern Ireland—the pedophile-sexual abuse scandal.

In April 2019, Colin made a complaint to the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland regarding the RUC’s handling of his evidence on Kincora.  To date, that complaint has still not been investigated despite repeated requests from Richard Kerr’s lawyers. He believes a proper investigation of that complaint could be very important in Richard’s case —and to other abuse victims. Please see copy of his complaint below. 

In regard to the campaign by the Irish National Caucus to raise the Kincora-Richard Kerr case in the U.S. Congress, Colin Wallace wrote to Fr. Sean Mc Manus on September 10, 2021: “I am really very grateful to you for your interest in this matter. In my experience, most victims feel that no one is interested in what happened to them.”

Please see below the Bio of this principled, brave, and honorable man.

COLIN WALLACE ON BRITISH GOVERNMENT AMNESTY PLANS:

On July 14, 2021, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the Right Honorable Brandon Lewis MP, made a statement in the House of Commons regarding a proposal named “Addressing the Legacy of Northern Ireland’s Past”

The proposal stated:

“We are therefore considering a proposed way forward that would end judicial activity in relation to Troubles-related conduct across the spectrum of criminal cases, and current and future civil cases and inquests.”

If the proposal were to be enacted by Parliament that would not only be a breach of the spirit of the Downing Street Agreement, but also it could be a breach of common law.  It would also make legal redress for victims, such as Richard Kerr, impossible.

To date, the proposal has united traditionally disparate oppositions. It has demonstrated the government’s contempt for the Rule of Law. It has undermined the human rights commitments made by way of the Belfast-Good Friday Agreement 1998. It seeks to deny access to justice. It seeks to close all criminal investigations and retributive criminal justice processes which form only a small part of the present system for dealing with the Legacy of the Conflict. It seeks to interfere with the independence of the judiciary by way of limiting Judicial Review public law applications and Legacy-related civil litigation, denying access to the justice which is a foundation of the Rule of Law.  It should never be the case in any society that those responsible for serious crimes such as murder are protected by the absence of a thorough examination of the facts.  I am appalled that any British Government should contemplate such a policy.

President Biden and the U.S. Congress should be concerned about this very serious development that undermines the most basic human rights.  It was the denial of such rights that ignited ‘The Troubles’ in 1968.

              BIO OF COLIN WALLACE

Colin Wallace was a Captain in the British Army’s Ulster Defence Regiment in Northern Ireland.  Secretly, he was also a psychological warfare (Psy Ops) specialist in the Intelligence community.  In Northern Ireland during the 1970s, he operated under a cover role as a civil servant within the Army Information services in a Psy Ops unit known under the cover title, “Information Policy” (IP). The role of that unit was to collect and disseminate intelligence to disrupt and undermine terrorist activities.

He was part of the Army’s legal team at the Widgery Inquiry in 1972 which investigated the events known as “Bloody Sunday.” At that Inquiry, senior Army officers and Government officials falsely claimed that the Army had stopped using Psy Ops activities before “Bloody Sunday” occurred.  The British Government knew that evidence was totally untrue but did nothing to correct that perjury.

At the request of his Army superiors in 1973, Colin Wallace attempted to draw public attention to the Kincora Boys’ Home, the pedophile-sexual abuse scandal some seven years before the Royal Ulster Constabulary finally intervened.

In 1980, shortly after the Kincora story was finally exposed in the press, Colin Wallace was arrested and subsequently convicted of manslaughter. He served six years in jail. His conviction was quashed by the Court of Appeal in London in 1996 when it was discovered that forensic evidence given at his trial had been faked.

Described by the former Head of Army Intelligence in Northern Ireland as “one of his best sources,” Colin Wallace had been removed from N Ireland and disciplined in 1975 under the terms of his false job description for giving a restricted document to a journalist.  Sixteen years later, a Government Defence Minister finally admitted to the British Parliament that Colin Wallace did have a secret role and that he had been “required to make on-the-spot decisions on matters of national security” when briefing the press.  He was awarded compensation.

In 1971, his Army Annual Confidential Report concluded: ‘This is an officer of the highest caliber. Totally dedicated to the Army, he demonstrates this by a devotion to duty that is truly remarkable.’

In February 1975, Ian Cameron, a senior MI5 officer attached to Army HQ Northern Ireland, wrote a report on Colin Wallace’s role in Northern Ireland:

“It cannot be disputed that Wallace’s position within the AIS (Army Information Service) was unique; he was very much more than the head of a section. His views or IP policy were listened to and respected. As a senior member of the AIS staff (Grade I equivalent) he had access to classified papers about information policy. He was the AIS Ulster expert.”

Since Colin Wallace resigned from the Ministry of Defence in 1975, the Ministry of Defence and the British Intelligence have gone to extraordinary lengths to discredit his allegations about wrongdoings by members of the Security Forces in Northern Ireland.

In “Sunday Today” on May 17, 1987, Alex Carlile QC (now Lord Carlile), said:

“I believe there are many people in high places and within the security services who feel ill-will towards Wallace for exposing their activities. The question is that if MI5 was prepared to kill to get even with Wallace, why not kill him? It may be that Wallace’s allegations about MI5 officers being involved in activities verging on the treasonable were widely known – so if any harm came to him the finger would point directly at them. I have tried repeatedly in the House (Parliament) to get an adjournment on the conviction and will continue to do so.”

Commenting in 2003 on the evidence Colin Wallace gave to his Inquiry into the Dublin and Monaghan bombings in 1974, Judge Henry Barron said:

“In-person, Wallace comes across as intelligent, self-assured, and possessed of a quiet yet unwavering moral conviction. Though he has reasons enough to be bitter – the abrupt and unjust ending of a promising career in Northern Ireland, five years spent in prison on a conviction which has since been quashed – he displays no outward signs of resentment towards individuals or institutions.”

 

COLIN WALLACE’S 2019 COMPLAINT TO NORTHERN IRELAND OMBUDSMAN

Introduction

 

In a Judgement by the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal relating to a victim of sexual abuse (Gary Hoy – 27 May 2016 paragraph 41) the judge (The Lord Chief Justice Sir Declan Morgan) commented:

 

“This society has been rocked to its core by the shocking disclosure of the abuse of children in this community over many years. Just as shocking has been the manner in which the institutions to which some of the abusers belonged sought to protect the institution rather than the children. There is a suggestion in this case that children in Kincora were abused and prostituted in order to satisfy the interests of national security. If that is true it must be exposed. As a society, we must not repeat the errors of the institutions and should remember our obligations to the children. If the suggestion is not true the rumor and suspicion surrounding this should be allayed. We have decided that the HIA is entitled to proceed along the route mapped out by it. That does not in any way detract from the need to ensure that our obligations to these children are satisfied.”

 

The Lord Chief Justice’s reference to “the manner in which the institutions to which the abusers belonged sought to protect the institution rather than the children” is at the core of the complaint which I have set out below.

 

It is my personal belief that the abused children were let down by a number of agencies, not just to those to which the abusers belonged, but this complaint focuses specifically on the actions, and, in some instances, the lack of actions, by a number of members of the RUC between 1971 and 1997 when investigating abuse allegations which were in general circulation at the time.  I submit that if the matters to which I refer to in this affidavit had been handled properly by the RUC, not only would the outcome of the Terry, Hughes, and HIA Inquiries have been significantly different, but also years of sexual abuse of children might have been avoided.  Although I focus this complaint on the RUC, I need, occasionally, to put some information in context to refer to some related activity by other Government agencies.

 

I believe the RUC failures referred to in this complaint contributed, to a very significant degree, to the following totally false conclusion reached by the HIA Inquiry:

 

“We are satisfied that it was not until 1980 that the RUC Special Branch, MI5 the SIS and Army Intelligence became aware that McGrath had been sexually abusing residents at Kincora, and they learned of that when it became the subject of public allegations and a police investigation.  All four agencies, whilst aware that McGrath was alleged to be homosexual, had no proof of that.  They were aware that he worked in a boys’ hostel where he was in a position of authority.”

 

[Source: HIA Inquiry Report – Volume 9 (part 2).  Summary of Conclusions]

 

That conclusion has, in my opinion, seriously disadvantaged the victims of abuse.  It is my submission that the above conclusion is false in that the Security Forces, including the RUC, were aware of sufficient allegations in circulation about Kincora during the 1970s to have justified a thorough investigation at a date much earlier than 1980.  Moreover, such ‘investigations’ as did take place at that time appear to have been only ‘token’ ones.

 

I am in no doubt that the Army believed that some members of the RUC were aware of allegations of possible sexual abuse taking place at Kincora.  I am, however, conscious that there were also major sensitivities in Army / RUC relationships at that time that possibly mitigated against a proper response by the Army to those allegations in that they were, to large extent, perceived to be matters primarily for the RUC to deal with.  Also, the Army PsyOps unit believed that RUC officers were attending Tara meetings as members of that organization.  Moreover, attendance at Tara meetings was by membership or invitation only. It was also rumored that key Tara officials had close relationships with several senior RUC officers.  Those sensitivities led to the oblique manner in which the Army PsyOps unit attempted to interest the press from 1973 onwards in William McGrath and his activities, in the hope that the press would ‘discover’ the true nature of what had been happening at Kincora.  I believe that, despite the constraints imposed by the foregoing situation, the amount and nature of the information I passed to the press should have been adequate to generate media interest in McGrath’s sexual activities.

 

The core of my complaint is that the RUC’s actions and, conversely, lack of appropriate actions, over a considerable period of years were partially responsible for HIA Inquiry’s incorrect conclusion that:

 

“It was not until 1980 that the RUC Special Branch, MI5 the SIS and Army Intelligence became aware that McGrath had been sexually abusing residents at Kincora, and they learnt of that when it became the subject of public allegations and a police investigation.  All four agencies, whilst aware that McGrath was alleged to be homosexual, had no proof of that.  They were aware that he worked in a boys’ hostel where he was in a position of authority.”

 

[Source: HIA Inquiry Report – Volume 9 (part 2).  Summary of Conclusions]

 

It follows, therefore, that the RUC’s failures are particularly relevant to the comments referred to above by the Lord Chief Justice.  My personal belief is that the HIA Inquiry’s conclusion referred to above was the one that was desired by Whitehall and elements within the security community in that it absolved the Security Forces from any responsibility for failing to take action before that date.  I also believe that any information which surfaced during the past Inquiries, and which conflicted with that preferred conclusion, was either ignored or deliberately discredited.

 

It is my submission that some members of the RUC acted incorrectly and unprofessionally when dealing with my potential evidence regarding the alleged sexual abuses of children at the Kincora Boys Home.  In particular, I cite the following four key factors:

 

  1. Official Secrets Acts – Dispensation.   The RUC failed to provide me with the contents of a letter dated 10 July 1982 from the Northern Ireland DPP to the Chief Constable of the RUC providing me with dispensation from the Official Secrets Acts to enable me to provide the police with information concerning the commission of homosexual offenses in Northern Ireland, irrespective of the sources of that information.

 

  1. Memorandum dated 8 November 1974. The RUC deliberately subjected a photocopied version of a typed copy of my original handwritten document to forensic examination knowing full well that such a process was both misleading and meaningless because it was neither the original document I had written in November 1974 nor even a copy of that document.

 

  1. Failure to interview, or interview effectively, obvious key witnesses.   The RUC failed to interview a number of people who, clearly were potentially key witnesses, and also failed to carry out further interviews with witnesses who had provided information that was highly questionable.

 

  1. Leaked official information to the press to discredit my allegations:

 

  1. Official Secrets Acts – Dispensation

 

In a written statement to the HIA Inquiry, Detective Chief Superintendent Clarke RUC commented that my solicitor wrote on 18 March 1982 in response to a letter from Sir George Terry noting that it was my intention “not to hamper or withhold information from the Sussex investigation.  He further states that Wallace is concerned that by divulging sensitive information he may be in breach of the OSA.”

 

[Source: KIN-1720]

 

On 10 July 1982 the NI DPP, Barry Shaw, wrote to the Chief Constable of the RUC stating:

 

“I am writing to inform you that there will be no prosecution of John Colin Wallace for any breach by him of the Official Secrets Acts 1911-1939 in respect of any communication by him to a member or members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary of information relating to homosexual offenses in Northern Ireland.

                                                                                               

Mr. Wallace may be so informed.  When he is interviewed, you will doubtless wish to arrange that it should be made clear to Mr. Wallace that it is important that he should make a full disclosure of all information which he has concerning the commission of homosexual offenses in Northern Ireland at any time, and that in doing so he will not be liable to prosecution for breach of the Official Secrets Acts irrespective of the source of his information.”

 

[Source: KIN-102355] [Exhibit 7]

 

The DPP NI’s written immunity to me appears to be confirmed by a letter dated 22 December 1982 from the Law Officers’ Department at the Royal Courts of Justice in London (Mr. Jim Nursaw) to the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Robert Armstrong, which states:

 

“The Attorney has stated that Mr. Wallace can be assured that he will not be prosecuted on the basis of any evidence he may provide during this questioning” i.e., by the RUC.

 

The letter goes on to say:

 

“I can see no justification for authorizing Mr. Wallace to tell the RUC whatever he wishes about his work for the Ministry and what he learned in the course of it. The difficulty here may be that the nature of the RUC investigation is unclear (at least to me).”

[Exhibit 8]

 

I would have been fully satisfied with that written immunity granted to me by the DPP if the RUC Chief Constable had given me a copy of it as he was requested to do.  Unfortunately, the RUC did not give it to me, or to my solicitor.  The RUC later claimed that the contents of the DPP’s letter had been read to me by Det Superintendent Caskey on 27 July 1972.  Neither I nor my solicitor has any recollection of that happening, but, in any event, my solicitor and I would have insisted that a copy of any such correspondence must be given to us before I provided any statement to the RUC.  Why was that letter not given to me or to my solicitor?   It is not unreasonable to assume for the related document referred to here that the Intelligence Services and the RUC thought that the NI DPP’s letter of immunity was too ‘generous’ to me in terms of what I could say.

 

[Source: KIN-1722]

 

The assertion that the DPP’s letter was read to me was, however, contradicted by a letter dated 12 January 1983 from Sir Philip Woodfield, PUS at the NIO, to Sir Robert Armstrong, then Cabinet Secretary in London.  In that letter, the PUS claims that the letter “to the Chief Constable of the RUC by the Northern Ireland Director of Public Prosecutions” was handed to him (Wallace) at the outset of the RUC’s interview within July” (1982).

 

[Exhibit 9]

 

This matter reached a farcical level when the 1989 MoD investigation, led by Arthur Rucker on behalf of Sir Michael Quinlan, reported:

 

[Source: KIN-102637 – page 137 para 186]

 

“On 21 September 1982 Major General Garrett and Mr. Miller (then Head of DS6) attended a meeting chaired by Mr. Bourn (DUE NIO), with the RUC ACC (Crime), the RUC Investigating Officer, the DPP(NI), and the ACOS G2 HQNI also present.”

 

I assume the RUC Investigation referred to was Det Superintendent Caskey RUC?

 

The report goes on to say

 

[Source: KIN-102638 page 138, para 187]

 

“Mr. Miller also noted that, when it had been put to the DPP(NI) [Barry Shaw] that his letter of immunity had been rather widely drawn, he had replied that the letter as drafted had given Mr. Wallace no cover at all: the DPP(NI)’s writ ran only in Northern Ireland, whereas Mr. Wallace was to be interviewed in Great Britain.”

 

[Exhibit 10]

 

I believe that no reasonable person reading the above correspondence would regard the situation that prevailed as credible.  Either, the DPP NI believed that he had the authority to write to the Chief Constable of the RUC offering me immunity from prosecution under the Official Secrets Acts, on the terms contained in that letter, or he did so in the knowledge that he did not have the relevant authority and that the immunity assurance he offered to me was, therefore, totally meaningless and provided m me “no cover at all”.

 

If what Mr. Miller told that meeting on 21 September 1982 was true, then I believe the DPP’s behavior would have been outrageous.  It seems to me incredible that the DPP NI did not know the extent of his authority. However, one would also have expected the RUC to have known what authority the DPP possessed.  The RUC should, therefore, have known that the DPP NI’s letter to the Chief Constable offered me “no cover at all.”  Why did the “RUC Investigating Officer” (Det Superintendent Caskey?) at that meeting not challenge the validity of the DPP’s letter, bearing in mind that he had allegedly read its contents to me?

 

Finally, with reference to my comment above regarding Sir Philip Woodfield’s letter to the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Robert Armstrong, was he aware of the DPP’s letter when he wrote to Sir Robert of 12 January 1983?  Given the foregoing, it was very fortunate indeed that my solicitor and I decided that I would be very unwise to participate with the Terry or Hughes Inquiries!

 

Despite the contents of the above meeting on 21 September 1982, Major General H E M L Garrett wrote a letter to me on 25 October 1982 setting out the MOD’s limited immunity to me from the Official Secrets Acts.  That letter, which was handed to me in a sealed envelope by Detective Superintendent Caskey, stated:

 

“Under the terms of the Official Secrets Act Declaration which you signed when you resigned your appointment with the Ministry of Defence, you undertook to seek authorization from this Department before discussing with anyone information gained in the course of your employment. It is now necessary for the police to investigate fully allegations of criminal offenses involving homosexual conduct in or connected with the Kincora Boys Home in Belfast. The purpose of this letter is to confirm that you may disclose to Superintendent G Caskey and Inspector S E Cooke of the Royal Ulster Constabulary the information that is in your possession which is directly relevant to the investigation – including, where necessary, information which you gained in the course of your employment with the MOD. and which is security-classified. You will, of course, appreciate that your responsibilities for safeguarding information not related to the police investigation remain unchanged and you must therefore be careful not to divulge any information other than that which is directly relevant to them.

 

[Exhibit 11]

 

It is very important to note that there was no reference whatsoever in General Garrett’s letter to the one sent by the DPP to the Chief Constable of the RUC for my attention.  Moreover, it is now abundantly clear, that the contents of General Garrett’s letter, as handed to me by Det Supt Caskey, were much more restrictive than the ones which the DPP sent to the Chief Constable of the RUC on 18 July 1982 for my attention. On whose authority was the DPP’s written authority overridden by the MoD?  Had the DPP’s letter been given to me as he directed, I would willingly have participated in the Hughes Inquiry, and months of pointless correspondence between General Garrett and me could have been avoided.

 

It would appear from the foregoing that the RUC and the Army, for whatever, reason deliberately reduced the immunity offer to me by the DPP knowing that their actions would limit what evidence I could give to the police.  There is no evidence that the RUC opposed that policy.  That is remarkable bearing in mind that the RUC was supposed to carry out a thorough investigation into allegations relating to Kincora.

 

It is obvious from the preceding paragraphs that I needed to be given clear details of the terms of reference for the various Inquiries into Kincora if I was to decide correctly on what classified information I could, or could not, give to the RUC or to the Hughes Inquiry.

 

Bearing in mind the restrictions imposed on me by the final sentence of General Garrett’s letter dated 25 October 1982, I wrote to him seeking clarification on precisely what information I could and could not provide to the RUC.  In particular, I highlighted the fact that I would need to engage with my solicitor to obtain the necessary legal advice.

 

For example, I replied to General Garrett on 13 November 1982 saying, inter alia:

 

“I would like a precise definition of the term, ‘directly relevant’, particularly in the context of the last sentence of your letter; even more important, I would need to know who is to decide what information is ‘directly relevant’.  Quite clearly, this cannot be left to the RUC who may have very different ideas about this from those of the Ministry of Defence.

 

[Exhibit 12]

 

In response to a further letter, dated 13 December 1982, from General Garrett, I replied to him on 27 December listing a number of specific points from his letter that required clarification.

 

[Exhibit 13] [Exhibit 14]

 

After yet further correspondence, on 1 June 1983, General Garrett wrote to me saying:

 

“You mention the possibility that you may be provided with legal advice and assistance, and you draw my attention to the security implications of this.  I am grateful to you for bringing this to my attention and note what you say.

 

I must re-affirm the advice I have already given you: that you may communicate classified appropriate information to the two named RUC officers; but not to any third party.”

 

[Exhibit 15]

 

My solicitor correctly pointed out to my MP that General Garrett’s letter effectively precluded me from receiving legal advice from him and he advised me not to participate any further with the investigation on those terms. Given the very sensitive background to my role with the Army in Northern Ireland and the complexity of issues relating to the Official Secrets Acts, I fully endorsed my solicitor’s advice.

 

[Exhibit 16]

 

The RUC’s action was inexplicable.  It is not unreasonable to expect that any genuine police investigation would have preferred me to give evidence on the basis of the NI DPP’s letter rather than the much more restrictive one provided by the MoD.  There is no doubt that the RUC’s failure to provide me with a copy of the NI DPP’s letter played a major part in my decision not to participate in the Hughes Inquiry. This matter became all the more relevant when my solicitor and I later discovered that the Hughes Inquiry’s terms of reference had also been curtailed, without the knowledge or agreement of Parliament, to exclude any investigation of the RUC or Army Intelligence.  It is still not known who authorized that change.

 

The internal MoD report compiled by Arthur Rucker in 1989 states:

 

“However, the terms of reference of the Hughes Inquiry clearly did not embrace the behavior of the police, or other agencies working in the intelligence field.”

 

That report goes on to say:

 

“In this light, it is clear that the Hughes Inquiry’s terms of reference do not cover Wallace’s central allegations at all.”

 

[Exhibit 17]

 

General Garrett’s letter of 1 June 1983 is also highly important because, although the RUC report to the HIA Inquiry [Source KIN-1710] submitted by Detective Chief Superintendent Clarke mentions in some detail my other correspondence with General Garrett, his letter of 1 June 1983 is not listed.  It is incredible that, what was probably the most important of all the letters to me from General Garrett, in terms of my decision on whether or not to could participate in the Hughes Inquiry, should have been withheld from the RUC report to the HIA Inquiry.

 

The above-protracted debate over what information I could, or could not, disclose to the RUC and Terry and Hughes Inquiries raises very serious questions about the extent to which MI5 played a part in influencing the way in which various investigations into Kincora were managed, or manipulated.

 

It is also now clear that Bernard Sheldon, Legal Adviser to MI5, did his utmost to limit the powers of Hughes Inquiry.  A memo written by Mr Stephen Boys Smith at the NIO on 30 June 1983, and copied to the then MI5 Director and Co-ordinator of Intelligence (DCI) at the NIO, pointed out:

 

“Mr. Sheldon (MI5 Legal Adviser) echoed the DCI’s concern about information being given to the tribunal which would not be in the interests of the Intelligence Services.  He was also concerned about what might be said about secret work very close to extreme Protestant organizations, and close therefore also to some politicians.  If these activities were to be revealed – through a leak if not through a public session of the Inquiry – there could be a brisk reaction.  He pointed out the political embarrassment to be caused to the Secretary of State by any such revelations, quite apart from the difficulties they might cause those engaged in secret work.

 

Mr. Sheldon also said:

 

“The Security Service (MI5) would prefer a GB judge.  If the Secretary of State wished to press for a NI judge, the LC (NI) would have to be fully appraised of the difficulties over evidence-taking (once the Attorney General and Lord Chancellor had accepted that course) so that the best man for the job could be appointed.”

 

[Exhibit 18]

 

According to a report in the Belfast News Letter on 24 April 2015:

 

“Declassified Government files on Kincora reveal that there was a consistent consensus among senior civil servants that the scandal should be investigated by the most thorough form of public inquiry – yet that did not happen. Time and time again, different high-ranking officials gave the view that an inquiry under the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act 1921 was unavoidable given the level of concern about allegations that boys had been abused over 20 years at Kincora by senior public figures and that their crimes had been covered up.

 

[https://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/declassified-files-officials-wanted-full-kincora-inquiry-in-1980s-but-were-overruled-1-6919884]

 

The key question is: who altered the Hughes Inquiry’s Terms of Reference?  There is little doubt that very few people would have had the authority or influence to do that.

 

A report in the Belfast Telegraph on 15 July 2014 said:

 

Baroness’s brother ‘tried to limit probe into Kincora’, writes Adrian Rutherford The brother of a retired judge who quit her post as chair of an inquiry into historic sex abuse tried to limit an official investigation into Kincora Boys’ Home, it has been revealed. Baroness Butler-Sloss stood down yesterday before she had even started the task of examining if alleged abuse by politicians and other figures in the 1970s and 80s was covered up.

 

Pressure was mounting on her since her appointment last Tuesday, with critics warning of potential conflicts of interest because the investigation was likely to look into the role of her late brother, Sir Michael Havers Sir Michael, a former Attorney General, is alleged to have tried to prevent the naming of an abuser in Parliament in the 1980s.

 

It has now emerged that Sir Michael also limited an investigation into Kincora, the East Belfast boys’ home where dozens of children were abused. Three senior staff were jailed in 1981 for the abuse, but there have long been allegations of a mass cover-up by the secret service, which was said to be protecting high-ranking pedophiles in the military, Civil Service and politics.”

 

Source: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-Ireland/baronesss-brother-tried-to-limit-probe-into-kincora-30430984.html

 

The role of Michael Havers is a controversial one.  According to a report in ‘The Independent’ newspaper’,  a Conservative Party activist, Anthony Gilberthorpe, admitted that the Chairman of the Scottish Conservatives, Dr Alistair Smith, had paid him to find rent boys to “entertain” eminent Conservative politicians in the 1980s.  He claimed that one of those taking part in the parties was Michael Havers.  Irrespective of whether or not the allegations made against Michael Havers are true, it is clear that they merited a thorough investigation by the police, not least of all because of past controversial decisions he made on child abuse cases.

 

Source:https://www.independent.co.uk/news/UK/crime/Westminster-abuse-inquiry-I-arranged-for-rent-boys-to-entertain-senior-Tories-in-the-1980s-says-9602754.html

 

It is probably not surprising that many files relating to MI5’s role in attempting to influence Crown Law Officers and the police are not available.

 

In The HIA Inquiry’s Report – Volume 9 Part 2 page 77 para 198 states:

 

“In order to ascertain whether Sir Barry Shaw received and considered the responses to the 30 questions made by Ian Cameron and recorded by Bernard Sheldon we are dependent upon MI5 records to which we have referred. This is because there do not appear to be any surviving records held by the Public Prosecution Service in Northern Ireland relating to meetings held between Sir Barry Shaw and the Attorney General in relation to the Caskey Phase Three investigation. When we asked the Attorney General’s Office in London to produce any papers they held regarding these meetings we were informed that the files they held in relation to Kincora had been destroyed in 2004. In response to the Inquiry Warning Letter, the Attorney General’s Office informed us a mistake had been made (for which they apologized) and that the relevant file was destroyed in 2009. We criticize the destruction of files relating to Kincora in view of the persistent allegations that there had been over many years about wrongdoing at Kincora.”

 

[Exhibit 19]

 

  1. Memorandum dated 8 November 1974 regarding Kincora

 

There is now compelling documentary evidence that members of the RUC either faked or seriously mishandled, evidence relating to a memo dated 8 November 1974 (referred to by the HIA Inquiry as GC80) which I wrote about allegations of abuse at Kincora.   It is important to understand how the relevant information was manipulated and its likely impact on the outcome of the Hughes Inquiry and the HIA Inquiry.

 

According to a report supplied in conjunction with a statement made by Detective Superintendent Clarke RUC to the HIA Inquiry in 2006 the document (GC80):

 

“..appears to have been brought to the attention of the police of the police on the 7th August 1984; Fred Holroyd produced a four-page document to the Essex police, which he told them had been written by Wallace”.

 

Fred Holroyd was a Captain in the Special Military Intelligence Unit in Northern Ireland in 1974 and worked closely with the RUC Special Branch in the Army’s 3 Brigade Area, primarily covering County Armagh.

 

[Source: KIN-1731]  [Exhibit 20]

 

A contact note, disclosed by the RUC to the HIA Inquiry, states that DI Cooke RUC telephoned a D/Con Roberts of the Essex Police Special Branch to enquire about the origins of the document.  According to that contact note DC Roberts:

 

“stated that with reference to GC80 that Holroyd had produced a photocopy stating that it had been retyped from the original document and photocopied.” 

 

The contact note went on to state that:

 

“..various things had been crossed out by Holroyd to protect the source.  DC Roberts believes that Wallace indicated to Holroyd where this document could be obtained.  He also believes that Wallace was aware that Holroyd was producing these documents to the police.”

 

[Exhibit 21]

 

The above extracts from the RUC contact note show that Fred Holroyd made it very clear to the Essex police, who in turn made it equally clear to DI Cooke of the RUC, that the document [GC80] was neither the original nor the final version of my November 1974 memo –  it was simply a photocopy of a re-typed version of the handwritten original.  Why, therefore, did the RUC go through the very obvious charade of having that document forensically examined?  In the absence of any credible information to the contrary, the RUC’s action appears to be nothing more than a deliberate attempt to cast doubt on my wider allegations by creating ‘false evidence’ to mislead the Hughes Inquiry.

 

It is very hard to believe that any professional forensic document examiner would have carried out an examination of such a document without determining from the police the precise objective of that examination.  How did the RUC justify the examination of a document which they knew was nothing more than a photocopy of re-typed version of a handwritten original?  What was the RUC attempting to achieve by such an examination?

 

Indeed, the real impact of that ‘evidential sleight of hand’ by the RUC appears to be confirmed by the comment in the Hughes Inquiry report (page 124 para 4.85) which states:

 

“The RUC investigation attempted, inter alia, to validate the authenticity of the document dated November 1974.  The statements of MoD. personnel, including purported addressees, did not establish its authenticity.  A Forensic Report raised the possibilities that the first page had been tampered with and that two typewriters had been used, but was inconclusive as to its authenticity.”

 

[Source: Hughes Inquiry report.  Page 124, para 4.85]

 

[Exhibit 22]

 

There is no reference in the Hughes Report that the RUC made the Inquiry aware that the document GC80 was nothing more than a photocopy of a re-typed version of my original handwritten draft memo.  I believe that, if the RUC had made the true nature of the document’s history clear to the Inquiry, the members of that Inquiry would have realized that the forensic examination was totally pointless.  The fact that the RUC apparently failed to tell the Inquiry the full facts about the origins of the document indicates that the police wanted to use the forensic examination solely to discredit the document and/or my evidence as a whole.

 

In that context, it is important to point out that bearing in mind that the RUC Forensic Report did not assert that “two typewriters had been used” – see copy of report by Mr. D Budd – the Inquiry appears to have been given that ‘interpretation’ by the RUC.  There is no record that the Hughes Inquiry called Mr. Budd to give evidence on his examination of the document.

 

[Exhibit 23]

 

Where did the erroneous information about “two typewriters having been used” originate from?   It is important to answer that question because, as I shall show below, two leading UK forensic document examiners quite independently ruled out the use of two typewriters in the production of the document.  Moreover, the official transcript of Day 222 of the HIA Inquiry (page 145) shows that even that Inquiry recognized the pointless nature of the forensic examination.  Sir Anthony Hart commented:

 

“ I began by saying getting into the forensic reports and typewriters you may consider to be of little value if this is correct.”

 

Sir Anthony Hart’s comment does, however, raises two key issues:

 

  1. GC80 was typed from a photocopy copy of the original handwritten version long before I initially met Fred Holroyd in 1984. I did meet Fred Holroyd fleetingly at Army HQ in Northern Ireland in 1974, but I had no direct or indirect contact with him in the intervening years.  On 22 May 1982, Fred Holroyd, provide a statement to the Royal Military Police regarding Kincora.  In that statement, he said:

 

“From 7 Jan 74 until Jun 75 I held the appointment of MIO at J Division RUC which included South Armagh. My duties required that I was in close contact with members of the RUC both Special Branch and CID Officers. I am unable to be specific but I would estimate that during the middle of my tour the name ‘Kincora’ came to my attention. I understood that Kincora was a home, (probably run by the Social Services in N Ireland) for boys.

 

To the best of my recollection, I became aware of ‘Kincora’ through recreational conversation in RUC Stations. It certainly did not come to my notice through any official briefing or intelligence and I did not attach any significance to ‘Kincora’.

 

The only information which came to my attention was that of rumor to the effect that a homosexual liaison had been formed between certain leading politicians and a number of boys in the home. This was general talk on occasions when I was in company with RUC officers. I am unable to recall any police officer by name who mentioned the events or alleged events at ‘Kincora’. It was not my understanding that this had ever been the subject of an official complaint to the RUC.

 

I did not attach any significance to this information and did not on any occasion pass the rumor about ‘Kincora’ to my direct superior in the Army nor to any other officers in HQ Northern Ireland.”

 

I do not think there was any official police inquiry into ‘Kincora’ at that time.  I am not acquainted with Colin Wallace.  I was not getting any military intelligence from anyone working or involved at Kincora and my knowledge of the subject is limited to what I have outlined in this statement.”

 

[Exhibit 24]

 

In a follow-up statement to Detective Inspector R Mack of the RUC on 8 June 1982 Fred Holroyd said:

 

“I wish to make reference to a statement I made to Captain [Redacted] on 22 May 1982. In that statement, I said that during the middle of a tour of duty in Northern Ireland the name Kincora came to my attention, and to the best of my recollection through recreational conversation in RUC Stations. Since my meeting with Captain [Redacted], I have found a reference to Kincora in my notebook. The note is undated but was made in May 1973 (sic) prior to the 13th. It states: “Kincora Belfast – Rev Smith’s, Paisley’s lot – queers”.  As far as this entry is concerned.  I did not act on it as it was rumor and meant nothing to me. I do not know who gave me this information but I may have got it from someone in Portadown Police Station. I would be more specific and state that I definitely got this information in Portadown Police Station, in the station, or at a social function run by members in the station. My contacts in Portadown Station were members of the CID and Special Branch. I had no contact with uniform personnel. I did not hear anything about Kincora at any other police establishment. I have given thought to who may have talked to me about Kincora. I have the feeling it may have been Detective Sergeant McMahon but on this point, I’m not sure.  D/Sgt [Redacted] SB may be able to assist you because he had a good knowledge of all going on at that time. I wish to retain my notebook but I will produce it if required.”

 

[Exhibit 25]

 

It is abundantly clear that Fred Holroyd’s statements should have been regarded as critically important to any investigation.  If members of the RUC in Portadown – miles away from Kincora – were openly gossiping about a homosexual liaison that had been formed between certain leading politicians and a number of boys in the home, and mentioned ‘Kincora’ by name, then the allegations were not a closely guarded secret and kept solely within the confines of the Special Branch and Intelligence community. It is also important to note that Fred Holroyd made the above statement to the police some two years before he met up with me again.   Is it simply not credible, therefore, for the RUC, plus the Intelligence Services and the HIA Inquiry, to claim that the Security Forces were unaware of the allegations relating to sexual abuse at Kincora prior to 1980.  I believe that Fred Holroyd offered to give evidence to the HIA Inquiry, but his offer was either refused or ignored.

 

  1. If the RUC and the HIA Inquiry really believed that my November 1974 memo (G80) was of such little value, why did they both devote so much attention to it? For example, the RUC devoted a lot of attention to the contention that the draft version of my memo GC80 was not in the official Army format.  The draft handwritten document was not meant to be in an official Army format.   At that stage in its production, it was simply an initial handwritten response by me to my superiors challenging the reliability of the information allegedly held by the RUC and as supplied to the PsyOps unit.  The document listed some of my suggestions for a possible response to that material to placate General Leng by pointing out that some of the information was highly inaccurate.  It should be borne in mind that by November 1974 I had been at Army HQNI for some seven years and was, therefore, very familiar with the formal layout of Army documents.  It should therefore be obvious to any reasonable person that if I had been attempting to produce a fake memo, I would have produced it in the traditional Army formal format.  GC80 was, therefore, simply a typed version of my handwritten draft to make the contents easier to read.   As my colleagues at HQNI know, I was not a competent typist and, like most of the Army officers in the PsyOps unit in those days, draft documents were usually handwritten and then sent for typing.  Particularly sensitive material was typed by secure sources outside the unit.

 

The official transcription of a polygraph test which I undertook on September 1987 makes that fact very clear.  Given my poor typing skills, I would certainly never have typed any document for submission to any senior officer outside the PsyOps unit, or to be put on file.

 

The polygraph test was carried out by Polygraph Security Services Limited, London.  The report produced at the end of the test stated.

 

A Lafayette Polygraph instrument was used to carry out tests using the Backstair Zone of Comparison Technique.

 

Mr. Wallace has a tape recording of the questions and answers which were measured by the Polygraph and I am pleased to confirm that his responses were truthful.”

 

Question 13 of that test was:

 

“Did you cause in 1974 someone in Army Headquarters Northern Ireland to type this document, ‘D’, headed ‘Tara’ – Reports on criminal offenses associated with the homosexual community in Belfast.

 

Answer. Yes”

 

I submitted a full copy of a transcript of that test to the HIA Inquiry.

 

[Exhibit 26]

 

This apparent deception by the RUC relating to the forensic examination of the GC80 document was unfortunately compounded by the HIA Inquiry which falsely stated in its Report (page 181, section 495):(page181,section495)

 

“We consider it surprising that Mr. Foot made no reference to forensic tests on GC80 being carried out at his request when the only reference to such tests on GC80 is to the inconclusive reports apparently obtained by The Irish Times. If such reports had been obtained by Mr. Foot, we consider it highly likely that Mr. Wallace would have copies, yet he has ignored the Inquiry’s request to produce copies of any forensic reports that he may have on GC80. We considered his failure to do so, despite his assertions that such reports exist, was relevant when considering the authenticity of GC80 and the credibility of Mr. Wallace’s accounts.”

 

Source: HIA Report page 181, section 495

 

Those comments are demonstrably untrue because, as the HIA Inquiry was aware, at page 234 of the paperback version of Paul Foot’s book, ‘Who Framed Colin Wallace?’, he reports how he submitted my 1974 memo to Mr. Derek Davis, a leading UK forensic document examiner, and asked him to see if he could find any evidence of more than one typewriter being used in its creation. In a report dated 29th March 1989, Mr. Davis said:

 

“I cannot find any evidence of more than one typewriter having been used as alleged. It is a         poor photocopy, but all four pages are consistent.”

 

Paul Foot also independently submitted the document to a second expert, Mr. Robert Ridley, who concluded:

 

“I have been unable to find any significant differences in design or spacing characteristics nor have I found any significant differences in typographical layout features which would suggest more than one typewriter or more than one typist has been involved in its production.”

 

[Source: ‘Who Framed Colin Wallace?’ by Paul Foot.  Page 234 – paperback version]

 

The Shadow N Ireland Secretary, Kevin McNamara MP, wrote on two occasions to Peter Brooke MP the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.  On 4 September 1989, wrote saying:

 

“Mr. Foot has received expert opinion which suggests that the memorandum on the Kincora affair written by Mr. Colin Wallace dated 8 November 1974 is authentic.  If the memorandum is authentic, then it would appear that Mr. Wallace and the security forces were fully aware of the position at Kincora Boys Home at least six years before the situation was corrected.”

 

[Exhibit 27]

 

Mr. Brooke, replied to Mr. McNamara on 6 November 1989 saying:

 

“The particular document to which you refer, purportedly written by Colin Wallace in 1984, was, as you know, made available to the Hughes Enquiry by the RUC.  Attempts were made at the time by the police to establish the authenticity of the document, and the outcome was reported to the Hughes Enquiry. As the Hughes Report states (para 4.85) the police investigation included a forensic report which:

 

‘Raised the possibilities that the front page had been tampered with and that two typewriters had been used, but was inconclusive as to authenticity.’

 

I appreciate your point that the question of authenticity, or not, of the document is to some degree significant.  However, Mr. Wallace felt unable to give evidence to the Hughes Inquiry.”

 

Significantly, Mr. Brooke goes on the say:

 

“In his book, Mr. Foot does, as you say, address the question of the authenticity of the memorandum.”

 

[Exhibit 28]

It is remarkable that the RUC and HIA Inquiry apparently ignored, or failed to report, what the Secretary of State said!

 

There were further written exchanges between Kevin McNamara and Peter Brooke on 12 and 27 November.

 

Having agreed in his earlier letter that: “In his book, Mr. Foot does, as you say, address the question of the authenticity of the memorandum”, in his letter of 27 November, Mr. Brooke now quickly changed his argument away from the forensic evidence saying:

 

“You will be aware from Hughes’ paras 4.80-4.84 that the Inquiry did pursue various aspects of a number of documents, including the purported memorandum of 8 November 1974. Hughes concluded that, even if Mr. Wallace had been prepared to authenticate the memorandum and certain other papers, they would have been of limited use to the Inquiry since they consisted of no more than generalized statements without supporting detail or confirmation.  Mr. Wallace’s further testimony would have been required to remedy this. It was not forthcoming (Hughes para 4.87).”

 

[Exhibit 29]

 

On 16 January 1990, Mr. McNamara wrote again to Mr. Brooke on 16 January 1990 saying:

 

“Unfortunately, the second paragraph of your letter of 27 November glosses over the reasons for the failure of Mr. Wallace to testify to the Hughes inquiry.

 

First, the terms of reference of the inquiry, limited to the responsibility of the social services agencies in the Kincora affair, were such that Mr. Wallace felt he had little detailed information to offer. I understand that Mr. Wallace freely admits that he has no detailed knowledge of the position of the social services over Kincora.

 

Second, the legal immunity offered to Mr. Wallace only extended so far as to cover the matters defined in the terms of reference of the Hughes inquiry. Since the immunity did not cover the role of the security forces, over which Mr. Wallace does claim to be in a position to offer detailed evidence, his refusal to testify to the Hughes inquiry can be appreciated.

 

For both of these reasons, I believe that it is essential for the credibility of the rule of law and of the security forces that proper steps are taken to re-examine Mr. Wallace’s allegations. Furthermore, I am also surprised that you should attempt to cast doubt on the relevance of the forensic evidence per se. If you believe that the forensic evidence is as irrelevant as your letter suggests, I fail to understand why you raised the issue of the original forensic evidence presented by the RUC to the Hughes inquiry.  I would again urge you to re-examine the forensic evidence about the validity of Mr. Wallace’s memorandum of 8 November 1974.”

 

[Exhibit 30]

 

Mr. McNamara then requested that a copy of the RUC forensic report on my memo be placed in the House of Commons Library.  That request was refused.  Significantly, the internal NIO correspondence relating to Mr. McNamara’s request was copied to Bernard Sheldon of MI5!

 

In his book, Paul Foot says that when his book, “Who Framed Colin Wallace’ went to press, Mr. Brooke had still not replied to Mr. McNamara’s letter.  What possible link should MI5 have had with the forensic evidence relating to the document ” GC80.

 

Mr. Foot commented: “This exchange of letters is worth reading in full by skeptics who believe that the government may have been doing its best to get to the root of the Kincora scandal.”

 

[Exhibits: 31, 32, 33, 34 and 35]

 

Mr. McNamara was not the only person the RUC refused to share the Forensic Report with, they also refused to share it with the Hughes Inquiry.  On 3 May 1985, the Secretary to the Inquiry wrote to ACC Mellor RUC asking for a copy of the Report. Mr. Mellor replied on 13 May 1985 saying that the RUC was unable to provide the Inquiry with a copy.  The only logical conclusion from that exchange is that the RUC wanted to hide its contents from the Inquiry because it was not in the interests of the RUC to disclose them and risk drawing attention to the fact that not only was the Forensic Report was not only worthless, but the RUC knew it was worthless.   Given that the Hughes Inquiry was set up by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, it is incredible that the RUC refused to release a key document either to the Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland or to the Inquiry.  I believe the actions of the RUC cannot be justified bearing in mind the many years of allegations about a cover-up of wrongdoing at Kincora.

 

[Source; KIN-1725 and KIN-1726]

 

On page 209 (Volume 9 para 559) of the HIA Inquiry Report it claims:

 

“Given that GC80, which bears Mr. Wallace’s signature, bears the handwritten words showing to whom it was addressed, namely Lt Col Railton, it is hard to see why there was any uncertainty on Mr. Wallace’s part as to the identity of the intended recipient(s)   Lt Col Railton said in 1985 that he had no recollection of ever seeing this document   GC80 carries a handwritten note indicating that Lt Col Railton was the intended recipient   If Mr. Wallace did not do so, who wrote this on the document?” 

 

This paragraph totally misleading.  First, it is obvious that the GC80 document does not bear my signature, it bears only my initials because it was supposed to be an exact copy of my handwritten draft version.  I would not have used solely my initials to sign off the final version of a formal memo to my superiors.  The report also states:

 

“It bears the handwritten words showing to whom it was addressed, namely Lt Col Railton, it is hard to see why there was any uncertainty on Mr. Wallace’s part as to the identity of the intended recipient(s).” 

 

Again, this is a totally false assertion.  There was no uncertainty on my part as to the identity of the addressee.  The addressee’s identity had been redacted from the original handwritten draft and it did not, therefore, feature in the re-typed version.  Most of the handwriting on the document is clearly Fred Holroyd’s.  He offered to give evidence to the Inquiry, but his offer was rejected – why?   The various handwritten names were purely speculation by Fred and me as to who, other than the addressee, might also have had sight of the document in 1974.  It is appalling that a major Government Inquiry can resort to making up such false assertions in the absence of real supporting evidence.  It would appear that when the Inquiry had no evidence to support its views, it simply made up the ‘evidence’.

 

In the HIA Inquiry’s Report (Volume 9 Part 2) page 178, para 484, it states:

 

The importance of the 8 November 1974 document/GC80 when considering the accounts given by Mr. Wallace over the years cannot be overstated. GC80 is not just an important element in the accounts given by Mr. Wallace, it is at the very center of those accounts, and is fundamental to the credibility of the allegations made by Mr. Wallace about Kincora. The authenticity of the 8 November 1974/GC80 document was called into question as long ago as 1985. ACC Mellor succinctly described the significance of the document when sending the Caskey Phase Four Report to the DPP on 4 September 1985.

 

This file is the end product of an investigation which was commenced as the result of Frederick John Holroyd handing numerous documents to the Essex Police in November 1984. In the main, these documents relate to grievances harbored by Holroyd in respect of his resignation from the Army and by Wallace in respect of his conviction on a charge of manslaughter.”

 

Assistant Chief Constable Mellor’s comment about Fred Holroyd and myself is misleading and indicative of the closed mindset that pervaded the RUC’s handling of the Kincora investigations.  In his report on the Dublin and Manahan bombings in 1974, Judge Henry Barron made it clear that neither Fred Holroyd nor I harbor grievances against the Security Forces per se.  I can think of no one who has been more supportive of the legitimate work Security Forces than Fred Holroyd was, and still is, despite everything that has happened to him.  Moreover, as I am sure ACC Mellor was well aware when referring to my evidence, Judge Barron said:

 

“In-person, Wallace comes across as intelligent, self-assured, and possessed of a quiet yet unwavering moral conviction. Though he has reasons enough to be bitter – the abrupt and unjust ending of a promising career in Northern Ireland, five years spent in prison on a conviction which has since been quashed – he displays no outward signs of resentment towards individuals or institutions. He remains intensely loyal to his country and to the Army: insofar as he has a quarrel, it is with individuals rather than the institutions concerned. He says he believes that much of the propaganda work undertaken by Information Policy was justifiable in the interests of defeating subversives and promoting a political solution to the Troubles. When speaking of matters directly within his own experience, the Inquiry believes him to be a highly knowledgeable witness. His analyses and opinions, though derived partly from personal knowledge and partly from information gleaned since his time in Northern Ireland, should also be treated with seriousness and respect.

 

[Exhibit 36]

 

The above comment is not the picture painted by ACC Mellor in the Caskey Report of someone who has “grievances harbored”!

 

There is no doubt that I initially felt angry in the knowledge that a small number of individuals, mostly at a very senior level in Whitehall, repeatedly lied in 1975 and afterward to protect themselves from criticism over the existence of PsyOps role in Northern Ireland and my role in those activities. The Metropolitan Police believed that the MoD’s decision to discipline me on the basis of a totally false job description merited investigation as being potentially fraudulent.  Given the political background of that period, it should come as no surprise that DPP advised that no police should not even investigate the matter.

 

On 21 September 1990, my solicitor submitted to the Crown Prosecution Service and to the Metropolitan Police a copy of the report by David Calcutt QC into the way in which the Mod. handled my disciplinary proceedings.

 

My solicitor and I met with the Metropolitan Police who confirmed the view that the contents of Mr. Calcutt’s report provided prima facie evidence that the Mod. had acted fraudulently.  However, the police said that they would seek the advice of the DPP.

 

On 22 March 1991, the DPP wrote saying: “The Director has decided that the evidence is not such as to justify the institution of police inquiries.”

 

On 3 April 1991, The Guardian reported:

 

“Detective Superintendent Graham Searle of the Yard’s organized crime branch said that although the case warranted further investigation, he was reluctant to go ahead without the DPP’s approval.  He did not want to embark on a lengthy inquiry if the Crown Prosecution had no intention of bringing charges.”

 

I wrote to the then Prime Minister, Mrs. Thatcher, on 12 May 1991 challenging the DPP’s decision.  A reply from Downing Street on 10 June 1991 gave a remarkable interpretation of the DPP’s letter saying:

 

“The DPP has not disallowed, nor prevented, Metropolitan Police inquiries.  Indeed, it is not within his power to prevent the police from carrying out such an investigation.” 

 

Despite Downing Street’s amazing linguistic contortions, the net effect of the DPP’s letter was that the Metropolitan Police felt unable to proceed with an investigation which they felt was justified.

 

[Exhibit 37, 38, and 39]

 

I believe that since then the false denials made by those individuals have had a serious impact on a wide range of incidents in Northern Ireland and elsewhere, including some of those that are now referred to as ‘legacy issues’.  Moreover, in 1996, my wrongful conviction was quashed by the Court of Appeal when it became clear that false forensic evidence had been given at my trial by a Home Office pathologist it what appears to have been a blatant attempt to pervert the course of justice.

 

[Exhibit 40]

 

I realized, however, from very early on in my dispute with the Mod. that being bitter was pointless, and counter-productive because that would only play into the hands of those who had used their authority corruptly.  I was very privileged to work with a lot of great people in Northern Ireland and my good experiences with them far outweighed any anger I initially felt at those small number who lied to protect themselves.   Nothing can ever change that.  There have also been a few key people, such as Sir Michael Quinlan, who were not prepared to perpetuate the cover-up relating to my case and I am especially grateful to them for their courage in taking what must have been a very unpopular decision to establish the truth.

 

  1. Failure to interview, or interview effectively, obvious key witnesses.

 

The RUC’s failure to interview obvious key witness should, I believe, be a major cause for concern in this matter, as is the failure of RUC police officers to follow up vigorously what were potentially false or misleading statements made by Crown witnesses.

 

On 2 July 1985, Major General Peter Leng, Commander Land Forces at HQ NI, gave a written statement to the police regarding allegations about the extent of the Army’s knowledge of the abuses at Kincora.  In particular, he was asked by the police about the existence of the Army’s Information Policy Unit.  In his formal response, he said:

 

“I can state that there was an Army Information Policy Unit at my headquarters and its purpose was to produce quick reaction responses to the clear lies that terrorist organizations were putting about.  With regard to the allegation that this Unit used ‘black propaganda’ I can categorically state that I would not have accepted such as I was clear that in security operations the good name of and integrity of the Army must ride above everything else.”

 

[Exhibit 41]

 

As official documents now show, and as the Minister for the Army Forces admitted to Parliament in 1990, what General Leng told the police in his written statement was untrue – the PsyOps unit did use disinformation.  This was confirmed in Parliament on 30 January 1990 by Archie Hamilton, Minister of State for the Armed Forces.  In his statement, Mr. Hamilton said that since the mid-1970s it had not been the policy “to disseminate disinformation in NI to denigrate individuals and/or organizations.”

 

Official Mod. records now also show that in his role as CLF, General Leng was also, de facto, ‘Director of Psychological Operations and Chairman of the HQ NI PsyOps Working Party.   The Terms of Reference for that Working Party (as disclosed to the Saville Inquiry) show that all PsyOps operations “will normally be approved by CLF.”  Even if he did not attend meetings of the PsyOps Working Party, it is safe to assume, therefore, that he was aware of the true nature of the work of that Working Party and the role ‘Information Policy’ unit which included disinformation.

 

[Exhibit 42]

 

It is not my intention to criticize General Leng personally for what he said in his police statement, because I have no doubt that he and other senior officers were under severe pressure from the MoD. to conceal the true nature of the ‘Information Policy Unit’s activities. However, General Leng had been in receipt of a report written by Ian Cameron (MI5) in February 1975 which provided details of the work of the PsyOps unit and my role in it.  An internal inquiry instigated in 1989 by Sir Michael Quinlan, Permanent Under-Secretary at the Mod., concluded:

 

“Cameron [MI5] had no doubt – as his report says – that disinformation was carried out by the Army and believed that the Generals gave clearance for some operations…

 

General Leng was also aware that at a meeting chaired by Sir Michael Cary, Permanent Under-Secretary at the MoD. on 29 April 1975, it was recorded that: “some of the things in the Cameron report, if they came out, would reflect great discredit on the Army.” This was a reference to the report compiled for General Leng by Ian Cameron as referred to above.

 

Bearing in mind that the RUC was aware of my role in Psy Ops, it is remarkable that they did not question General Leng more robustly about the false statement he provided to the police regarding the true nature of the Information Policy (PsyOps) unit’s work and my role in it.  This is particularly significant because the Army’s Chief Information Officer made it clear to the press that I had been authorized by him and by Army Intelligence to brief the press in 1973 about McGrath’s sexual proclivities and his employment at children’s home in Belfast.  It is also remarkable that the RUC did interview Hugh Mooney or Colonel Hutton, the Col GS (IP) to whom I reported in terms of my Psy Ops work.

 

My comments above are not intended to be critical of General Leng or other members of the Security Forces referred to above.  As my annual confidential reports show, I had a good working relationship with them.  I just feel very sorry they were put in such an invidious position by the MoD. However, the above information highlights that, for whatever reason, staff at Army HQ NI in 1973/74 were less than frank with the police investigation that took place in the 1980s.  By accepting such statements at face value, even when those statements clearly conflicted with other available evidence, I believe the RUC were actively engaged in applying double standards when evaluating the evidence of witnesses from the Security Forces and other witnesses such as Roy Garland, who knew McGrath better than most people and who made valiant efforts to stop McGrath’s suspected abuse of children.  As a result, the RUC failed in its duty to the victims of the sexual abuse by William McGrath and others.

 

When considering the failings of the HIA Inquiry into child sex abuse, it is very important to realize that General Leng was only one of a number of Government witnesses who misled official Inquiries about the overall existence of PsyOps in Northern Ireland.  For example, during the Saville Inquiry into ‘Bloody Sunday’ lawyers representing the families of those shot by the Army on that occasion claimed that: “British intelligence officers have obstructed and misled its six-year investigation.”

 

An article published ” Sunday Tribune” on 21 March 2004 reported:

 

The Bloody Sunday Inquiry has been told that British intelligence officers have obstructed and misled its six-year investigation into the Derry killings.

In closing submissions to the Tribunal under Lord Seville, solicitors Madden and Finucane (M&F) argue that a pattern of manipulation and misrepresentation, begun at the Widgery Tribunal 32 years ago, has continued into the proceedings of the present Inquiry.”

 

[Exhibit 43]

 

The following extracts from the Seville Inquiry report list some of the false claims that were made to that Inquiry by Crown witnesses:

 

178.18 According to Colonel INQ 1873, low-level PsyOps were carried out by the Information Liaison Department until about the end of July 1971. They were found to be unproductive and were halted. Colonel Tugwell did not believe in the efficacy of PsyOps and, on his appointment in September 1971, reinforced the policy of bringing PsyOps to an end.

 

178.19 In an undated report probably written at the end of September or early October 1971 to Mr. Welser of the IRD, Hugh Mooney stated that he attended meetings of the “army PsyOps working committee in an advisory capacity”. In his oral evidence to this Inquiry, he said that he could not recall such a committee.  He insisted that he was not then involved in PsyOps.

 

178.20 The draft document referred to above, dated 30th November 1971 and written by Charles Henn of DS10, suggested that PsyOps were at that time being carried out in Northern Ireland under the supervision of Colonel Tugwell.

 

178.21 Colonel Tugwell was asked during his oral evidence about this draft. He said: “… it reflects to me the much greater obsession amongst civilian organizations, Foreign Office and the IRD, very much inclined towards secrecy and psychological this and that.  I was just not interested in that. … It did not affect my policy, which was to back off from PsyOps”

 

It is important to compare the above claims with extracts from documents subsequently disclosed by the MoD.:

 

  • Letter dated 5 August 1971 from Brigadier HAG Bond, Director of Defence Operational Plans at the MoD. to Rear Admiral E F Gueritz, The Joint Warfare Establishment, Salisbury.

 

“Our policy is that we do conduct Military PsyOps in Northern Ireland.  (By definition Pay Ops can be employed to influence enemy, friendly or neutral groups, or individuals – all exist in Northern Ireland).”

 

  • Loose Minute (426) A/BR/130/11/MO4 dated 14 January 1973 from Colonel CR. Huxtable to the Deputy Under-Secretary (Army) and headed ‘Northern Ireland – Pay Ops Policy.’

 

                        “Policy: Whatever terms we may use to cloak such activities in a more acceptable guise, we do in fact use a fairly full range of information techniques in Northern Ireland though, of course, with some limitations imposed by the nearness of the Province, broadcasting policy and the political situation.”

 

  • Ministry of Defence, Chiefs of Staff Committee, Psychological Operations Report by Air Commodore BGT Stanbridge dated 6 April 1973:

 

                        “Deception is a specialized form of PsyOps involving the use of special techniques and can most conveniently be regarded as a separate subject.”

 

  • The following officers are currently employed in PsyOps posts outside NATO

 

                        “Northern Ireland: one Colonel and one Lieutenant Colonel at HQ NI and one Major at HQ 8 Infantry Brigade all of whom are employed on information policy matters.  Counter propaganda and other aspects of PsyOps are handled by an organization representing interested departments.” 

 

Note: The latter underlined extract is a reference to the Information Research Department (IRD), to which Hugh Mooney belonged. The IRD, founded in 1948, was a Cold War covert anti-communist propaganda unit within the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO).  A restricted memo in February 1948 described the establishment of the IRD as a response to the “developing communist threat to the whole fabric of Western civilization”.  IRD was closed down in 1977.  The Foreign Secretary at the time, David Owen, was reported in The Guardian 18.08.1995 as stating that the IRD had become involved in the grey area of manipulating journalism and that clandestine operations were the work of MI6, not that of a “civil department”.

 

The state of denial that existed at that time about the existence of PsyOps had, I believe, a major bearing on the repeated failure by Government agencies to be frank about the Army’s interest in Tara, William McGrath, and his sexual activities.

 

Similarly, Hugh Mooney of IRD, falsely denied to the Saville Inquiry that he had been involved in disinformation activities and that he had not been involved in the planting of a fake news story with the ‘News of the World’ newspaper on 10 December 1972 about an incident relating to the presence of a Soviet submarine off the Irish coast.  Although the MoD., the NIO, and the FCO all knew that he had been involved, none of those Departments corrected his false evidence.  Indeed, the Northern Editor of the News of the World, and the reporter who wrote the story, both confirmed in an interview with ITV that Hugh Mooney had been part of the briefing for that story.

 

 [Exhibit 44] [Exhibit 45]

 

It is clear from the above that, although some of the evidence provided by Government witnesses to official investigations involving PsyOps activities was totally false.  There is no evidence that the Mod. ever took steps to correct that false information that was given under oath.  Nor is there any evidence of disciplinary action being taken against anyone who was involved in the cover-up.   I believe that those witnesses would not have given such false evidence if they had not been confident that no action would be taken against them.  I make this point solely because I believe similar false evidence was given by Crown servants in connection with the Terry and Hughes Inquiries and because some of the individuals named are also relevant to the PsyOps activities related to Tara and William McGrath in 1973/74.  My concern is that the RUC and the HIA Inquiry both repeatedly appeared to accept the evidence provided by past and serving members of the Security Forces without any meaningful challenge – even when some of that evidence could not possibly be true.  It is also clear that the RUC avoided putting obviously key questions to some of those witnesses. I believe that lack of rigor in the RUC’s investigations was grossly unfair to the victims of abuse.

 

Despite the foregoing, it is important for me to point out that the MoD. did deliberately withhold information from the RUC.  For example, in February 1975 when I was initially interviewed by a member of the RUC and a member of the Lancashire about my activities in Northern Ireland, I asked the Mod. what information I could disclose to the two detectives.  The John Groves, the Chief of Public Relations at the MoD. told me that I should confine my information to PsyOps activities directed at Republican targets and not disclose to the RUC officer details of any such activities directed at Loyalist paramilitaries.  The statement which I gave to the RUC confirms that I complied with the directive.

 

In a letter dated 30 September 1975 to Tony Staughton, the former Principal Information Officer at HQ NI, I wrote:

 

“I enclose a copy of a letter that I have sent to the IPCS.  You will note that I refer to CPR’s [John Groves] unwillingness to include in his summary of my evidence any reference to our activities against Loyalist paramilitaries. When I asked the Mod. what information I could disclose to DI Cairns of the RUC and D Supt Taylor of the Lancashire police about my role in Psyops, I was told that I must not refer to any activities directed at Loyalist groups.  John Groves removed all reference to our attempts to discredit Ian Paisley and other political figures.

 

[Exhibit 46]

 

Although I could not have foretold it at the time, the MoD’s directive referred to above had a significant impact on me later in terms of what information I could give to the police when the Kincora abuse investigations arose in 1982.

 

In an earlier letter dated 19 September 1975 to Tony Staughton I wrote:

 

“I did tell John Groves during my oral representations to him on 30 May about the IP attempts to discredit Ian Paisley.  However, it is significant that the MoD’s written summary of my representations makes no mention of Paisley, or of the other politicians.

 

What happened was that Denis P’s people asked us to put pressure on the assassination groups through the Loyalist political leadership (I think this was cover for the fact that they were working with these gangs).  To do this they targeted a number of key individuals, including Ian Paisley and Knox Cunningham, and provided us with documents and other material to show that Paisley was misappropriating Loyalist and church funds, secreting money abroad for himself, and involved with a homosexual group involved in child prostitution at a children’s home in East Belfast.  The group included members of the Red Hand Commando and Tara – the leaders of both organizations McKeague and McGrath, are members of Ian Paisley’s church.”

 

[Exhibit 47]

 

I provided a copy of that letter to the HIA Inquiry.

 

On 5 February 1990, The Irish Times published a report, ‘Kincora case started Wallace saga’.  In that report, it says:

 

“Mr. Paisley has since said, most recently on BBC television last week, that allegations he made in the mid-70s about a dirty tricks campaign against him by British Intelligence referred to Kincora.”

 

[Exhibit 48]

 

This was a particularly important comment by the Rev Paisley because it totally undermines the assertions by the RUC and the HIA Inquiry that:

 

“it was not until 1980 that the RUC Special Branch, MI5 the SIS and Army Intelligence became aware that McGrath had been sexually abusing residents at Kincora, and they learned of that when it became the subject of public allegations and a police investigation.”

 

How could British Intelligence have been operating a dirty tricks campaign against Ian Paisley in the 1970s by linking him with Kincora if they did not know until 1980 about the allegations of sexual abuse at Kincora?  It is now clear that several anonymous documents linking homosexuality with prominent DUP members were in circulation shortly after I left Northern Ireland.  For example, I am in no doubt that one of those, known as ‘The Folio Document’, was circulated to the press by sources at the NIO in 1976,

 

Given the recurring theme of homosexuality, it is clear from John Groves’ knowledge of my PsyOps role that he should have been a very important potential witness for the RUC and the Terry Inquiry.  He was aware of the contents of my PsyOps job description as approved by Army HQ NI.  He was aware of the statement I gave to the RUC and the Lancashire police in 1975 regarding some of my PsyOps activities.  He was aware that, as he directed, I had not disclosed significant PsyOps activities against Loyalists. He also he took part in my disciplinary hearing in October 1975.   He had read the report written by Ian Cameron (MI5) in connection with that hearing.  It is also clear from the above correspondence that I had appraised him of attempts to link various political figures with “a homosexual group involved in child prostitution at a children’s home in East Belfast.”

 

Given the foregoing, the contents of a statement which John Groves gave to D I Mack of the RUC on 7 June 1982 are unbelievably bland.  Bearing in mind the significance of the Terry Inquiry in investigating an alleged cover-up of Kincora by the RUC, it is incredible that any RUC detective with DI Mack’s experience would have been satisfied with the formal statement made to him by John Groves:

 

“I am the Director-General of the Central Office of Information.  I was Chief of Public Relations in the Mod. from 1968-1977.  I know Colin Wallace as a member of the PR staff in Lisburn.  I was aware that Wallace was working for the Information Policy section in Northern Ireland.  I was stationed in London and had no day-to-day contact with that section.  On 11 February 1975 I interviewed Wallace at the Ministry of Defence in London on an administrative matter.  I at no time had a discussion with Wallace about Kincora Home or any matters connected with it.  I have no knowledge of the case.”

 

[Exhibit 49]

 

What is also important to note is that there is no evidence that the RUC interviewed Tony Staughton, who was the Principal Information Officer at HQ NI until his retirement in 1974 when he was succeeded by Peter Broderick.  If the RUC did interview him, then that statement was not disclosed to the HIA Inquiry. The RUC’s apparent failure to interview Tony Staughton is remarkable because he was interviewed by Paul Foot and was quoted extensively in Mr. Foot’s book, ‘Who Framed Colin Wallace’.  There was, therefore, no doubt that the RUC was well aware of him and that he was a potential key witness.

 

It is important to understand something of the conflict within Whitehall that existed over PsyOps in Northern Ireland.  John Groves was strongly opposed to the fact that the PsyOps unit (including Hugh Mooney, a member of IRD) was located within the Army Information Services at Army HQ NI for the purposes of providing the Unit with cover and to give it easy access to the media.  He was particularly annoyed because he had no direct control over the Unit and because the role of PsyOps was considered very important both by the Army generals and by the Prime Minister, Edward Heath.  This is well illustrated in the notes of a meeting that took place on 17 March 1972 and which involved the Adjutant General, the Vice Chief of the General Staff, Brigadier John Stanier, Director of Public Relations (Army), and John Groves.  During that meeting, John Groves told Brigadier Stanier he “should not dirty his hands in the somewhat grey area of propaganda/information policy”.  Brigadier Stanier pointed out, however, that “the GOC Northern Ireland had expressed a wish that he should do so.”

 

[Exhibit 50]

 

There is no doubt that this conflict between John Groves and the Army played a major part in my disciplinary case in 1975 when I was deliberately disciplined under a false job description.

 

It is not unreasonable to suspect that John Groves’ hostility to the PsyOps unit played a part in the statement he provided to DI Mack in 1982.  DI Mack was also involved in the case of Dr. Morris Fraser, the Belfast psychiatrist who was referred to in my 1973 Tara press briefing document and who was convicted of sexually abusing children in London and the USA.  Fraser was convicted of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old boy in London in 1971. Despite that conviction, he remained on the medical register, continued to work at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast, and was again convicted of child abuse in 1974.

 

John Groves’ hostility to the PsyOps unit was particularly directed at the presence of IRD staff within the PsyOps unit because he could not exert any control over them.  Hugh Mooney report to the Director and Co-ordinator of Intelligence at the NIO under the cover of a member of the Home Office. This is graphically illustrated in a letter which he wrote on 11 August 1972 asking that Hugh Mooney be moved from Army HQ NI to the NIO and cease using the “cover” title of  ‘Information Adviser to the GOC’.

 

[Exhibit 51]

 

Hugh Mooney also worked closely with the Head of the RUC Special Branch.  A document written by Hugh Mooney in 1972 and disclosed to the Saville Inquiry provides an insight into some of the activities he was engaged in.  It should be noted, however, that in his evidence to the Saville Inquiry he denied that he was engaged in disinformation.

 

[Exhibit 52]

 

The ‘Sunday Times reported on 26 April 1987 that:

 

“In August 1972, and later, articles appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, and other newspapers, with the inference that (John) Hume, along with well-known IRA leaders, were pocketing large sums of money.  ‘At the time we were simply trying to get people to donate money to worthy causes rather than the IRA’,” said Hume.

 

“Yesterday, Hugh Mooney, a former civil servant who worked for IRD, the secret Whitehall propaganda department which was disbanded in 1977, denied he had written the IRA briefing paper or seen Hume’s bank account. During his time at Lisburn army headquarters in the early 1970s.”

 

“Later yesterday he conceded the handwriting on the documents ‘could be’ his.  He said he disapproved of some of the comments in the documents.”

 

[Exhibit 53]

 

Hugh Mooney was potentially a critically important witness in terms of Kincora. In paragraph 6 of HIA Inquiry document [ KIN-200535], it states that Mr. Mooney:

 

“recalled one meeting referring to the Kincora Boys’ Home, but no reference to it as a homosexual honey-trap run by MI5. IP [PSYOPS] had only been interested in Tara the alleged Protestant paramilitary group.”

 

What possible reason would an Army PsyOps meeting have had in 1973 for discussing the Kincora Boys’ Home by name, if it did not relate either to William McGrath or to sexual abuse?  Clearly, Hugh Mooney’s comment undermines the HIA Inquiry’s conclusion that Kincora was not referred to by name at Army HQ NI at that time. However, his comments become even more significant when read in conjunction with his subsequent correspondence with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

 

On 19 October 1973, Hugh Mooney sent a memo to an IRD colleague, Judith Bunbury, at the NIO, enclosing a copy of the Proclamation which William McGrath had issued in April that year, plus a copy of a booklet written by Clifford Smyth, the Tara ‘Intelligence Officer’.  The memo was copied to ‘G3 Int at HQ NI.  The documents were sent to me by Gerald Bartlett, one of my press contacts, who had interviewed William McGrath at my request to see what he could find out about Tara.  The memo demonstrates that the IRD member at the NIO had already been taking an interest in Tara by that time.

 

[Exhibit 54]

 

In a letter to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on 4 December 1992, Hugh Mooney said:

 

“Since talking to you about the House of Commons Defense Committee’s special report on Colin Wallace, I have had a chance to look at the documents and fear that the Ministry can be accused of misleading the Committee.

 

In his letter dated 14 February, the clerk to the committee asked for a copy of a document relating to TARA reproduced on page 292 of Paul Foot’s Who Framed Colin Wallace. In her reply, the private secretary said: .”We have not been able to establish whether this is an official document.”

 

This is surprising since the MoD has identified the official who originated the document from his distinctive italic note which said: “Some ‘off the cuff’ information on TARA for the Press”. I myself recall passing the document to Wallace. Other manuscript notes on the page show that it was entered as page 45 of an Information Policy file at Headquarters Northern Ireland. All this is known to Wallace and his supporters, who can be expected to raise it. The MoD will be found to have lied and Wallace’s credibility will have been increased.”

 

[Exhibit 55]

 

On 7 December 1992, the FCO wrote to the MoD (WP Cassell) saying:

 

“I pointed that identifying the handwriting is not the same as identifying the originator of the document nor that it was officially produced…   Presumably, he (Mooney) feels that because he can remember the origin of the document e.g. Mr. Cunningham, can also remember and that the information is therefore available to the MoD.”

In other words, the MoD, knew that the Tara press briefing document was authentic, but pretended not to know!!

 

[Exhibit 56]

 

A FCO undated handwritten note disclosed to the HIA Inquiry refers to a telephone call made to the Department by Hugh Mooney’s wife.  It says:

 

“Mr. Mooney now believes that he asked Army Intelligence (John Cunningham) for material on Tara – a briefing was passed to Hugh and to the Press Office.  The material named the Tara OC who worked at Kincora.  The information is two-edged – Army Intelligence knew that the man worked at Kincora, but the material did not originate from Wallace as he now claims.  I shall pass to Mr. Cassel for what it is worth.”

 

[Exhibit 57]

 

Clearly, if the Army knew in that the man (McGrath) worked at Kincora that totally conflicts with the evidence provided by the RUC and the Army and contradicts the HIA Inquiry’s findings.   Hugh Mooney left Northern Ireland in December 1973, so he must have been given the document prior to that.

 

The Tara briefing document to which Hugh Mooney referred and which I used to brief the press about McGrath and Tara in 1973/74 bears the words “Clerks IP” written at the top. The handwriting is that of Peter Broderick, the former Chief Information Officer at Army HQ in Lisburn.  Peter Broderick confirmed this in an interview with Paul Foot (Daily Mirror 8th February 1990).

 

“This week, for the first time, Peter Broderick, Wallace’s boss at the time – 1974 – confirmed to me that he saw the document (The Tara press brief used by Wallace to highlight McGrath’s homosexuality and his role in running a children’s home) and wrote on it. ‘That is certainly my writing’, he told me. ‘I saw the document and approved it’.”

 

[Exhibit 58]

 

Peter Broderick also confirmed this to the Sunday Times (Sunday Times 11th February 1990).  He left Northern Ireland in September 1974, so the memo must pre-date that. Moreover, he also confirmed to Robert Parker of Channel 4 News on 28 March 1990 that he signed the document and authorized its release. It also bears the handwriting of the GSO 1 Information Policy, Lt Colonel Adrian Peck, who was head of PsyOps at HQNI in 1973 and early 1974.

 

[Exhibit 59]

 

Hugh Mooney’s comments about the document are significant for a number of reasons. He left Northern Ireland at the end of 1973. The document which I used to brief the press about William McGrath earlier that year clearly carries an annotation in Hugh Mooney’s handwriting. Referring to Roy Garland, the annotation states: “he [Roy Garland] said he resigned.” This refers to the circumstances in which Mr Garland left Tara.

 

A report in The Sunday Correspondent newspaper on 10 March 1990 claimed that it had obtained an exclusive interview with Hugh Mooney and went on to say:

 

“Mooney also admitted that Mr. Wallace had told him about the above sex scandal at the Kincora boys home in Belfast – casting further doubt on Government claims that the security forces had no knowledge of the long-running rape and buggery of children in care. ‘I do know he mentioned it. He was dropping it in and feeling his way. He kept pushing it. But I could never understand why. I thought it was totally irrelevant to our concerns. I did get the feeling he was pushing this’. “

 

[Exhibit 60]

 

Given Hugh Mooney’s reported comments to the Sunday Correspondent and the fact that he admitted giving me the Tara press briefing document in 1973, it is clear that he was fully aware of the significance of the information I was releasing to the media i.e. about “Kincora” and McGrath’s homosexual activities.

 

Bearing in mind that the foregoing information what was in the possession of the HIA Inquiry, it is incredible that on day 205 of the HIA Inquiry, Counsel to the Inquiry, Mr. Joseph Aiken, said:

 

“Having carried out extensive reviews of material the Ministry of Defense has found no evidence that any member of the armed forces (or indeed any other person employed by the Ministry of Defense) was aware of allegations that Mr. McGrath had abused or been responsible for abuse of inmates at Kincora, and it follows from this that it is not accepted that any such person withheld any such information from the police or sought to use it in any propaganda operation.”

 

It is impossible to reconcile Mr. Aiken’s comments with the Mooney material referred to above and which was in the Inquiry’s possession.

 

On that occasion, Mr. Aiken carefully avoided telling the panel about Mr. Mooney’s statement to the Sunday Correspondent.  Moreover, despite the foregoing items relating to Hugh Mooney, the HIA Inquiry states in its Report:

 

“There is no evidence to show that despite all of these contacts over several years he (Wallace) did anything to alert anyone to his concerns about Kincora, nor is there any evidence to corroborate his assertions as to what he did do. [HIA Report Volume 9 page 163 para.454].

 

There is no evidence to show that he (Wallace) voiced his concerns about residents of Kincora being sexually abused to anyone in the 1970s.”

 

Despite the potential major significance of what Hugh Mooney was saying and writing, there is no evidence that he was ever interviewed by the RUC, or asked to provide a statement or other evidence to the Terry or Hughes Inquiries.  Indeed, Foreign and Commonwealth Office documents state that he was never interviewed by the RUC about Kincora.  It would also appear that the Sunday Correspondent journalist to whom he gave an interviewed was also never interviewed by the RUC or by any of the Inquiries.  Why??

 

Again, these very obvious failures reinforce my belief that the RUC and the HIA Inquiry deliberately ignored crucial information that would, almost certainly, have undermined the assertion that the Security Forces did not know about the abuses at Kincora until 1980.  Those failures are otherwise inexplicable bearing in mind the failure of previous Inquiries and are grossly unfair to the victims.

 

In a letter dated 29 August 2014, to the former Leader of the House of Commons, Tam Dalyell MP, wrote to the then Prime Minister, David Cameron about my attempts to have the Kincora allegations properly investigated.  He told Mr. Cameron that he had been approached separately by Sir Maurice Oldfield and by Field Marshal Sir John Stanier to intervene in my case because they believed that I had been “unjustly treated.”  I believe it is not unreasonable to expect that when the former Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service and the former Head of the Army express their concerns to the Leader of the House of Commons that their concerns would be taken seriously.

 

[Exhibit 61] [Exhibit 62] Dalyell & MO notes

 

Mr. Cameron abdicated responsibility and passed Mr. Dalyell’s letter to the then Home Secretary, Mrs. Theresa May, who assured him that:

 

“The issues raised in the information provided by Colin Wallace are centered on the abuse at the Kincora Boys Home which is due to be examined by the Historical Abuse Inquiry under Sir Anthony Hart’s chairmanship.  I believe that this is the most appropriate place where all allegations related to Kincora should be examined.”

 

Mrs. May went on to say:

 

“I am confident that a full commitment by all Government departments and agencies to share relevant information as described above, on a voluntary basis, will be sufficient for this purpose and I will be monitoring the position carefully.  But if this does not prove to be the case, then I will review the position and, if necessary, agreement to bring the Kincora allegations within the Terms of Reference of the Child Sexual Abuse Panel Inquiry, with the option of converting it into a statutory inquiry as necessary.”

 

[Exhibit 63]

 

Given what I have written in this document, the Home Secretary’s careful monitoring did not amount to much.  Sadly, but not unexpectedly, the assurances which Mrs. May gave to Mr. Dalyell came to nothing.  Given what I have written above, it must be obvious that there were forces at work which led to the manipulation of the Terry and Hughes Inquiries’ Moreover, not only was the RUC’s handling of my 1974 memo highly questionable, so was the RUC’s failure to supply me with a copy of the NI DPP’s letter of immunity from prosecution, the RUC’s failure to interview obvious significant witnesses properly, if at all.

 

On 13 May 1985, DI Cooke RUC, interviewed, in Croydon, the former Head of the Army Information Services at HQ NI, Peter Broderick.  A record of that interview shows that Peter Broderick told DI Cooke that I was not accountable to him (Broderick) for my Information Policy work which was directed by Colonel Hutton, Royal Artillery. [See Exhibit 1 above] This was very important information because, for years, the MoD had falsely indicated that I reported to Lt Colonel Railton.  Although I worked very closely with Lt Colonel Railton on a day-to-day basis, Colonel Hutton was the Head of PsyOps and probably knew much more about the activities I was engaged in.  He would, however, have been the day-to-day link between the PsyOps unit and top officers such as General Leng, It is my belief that the MoD deliberately circulated the suggestion that I reported to Lt Colonel Railton, because that enabled him to deny, quite correctly, some of my PsyOps activities.  Some Army officers suspected that Colonel Hutton was working for MI5.  I do not know if that was true.  However, even if I had known that to be the case, it would not have affected my good working relationship with him.

 

It is important to note that a telegram on 5 August 1982 from MI5 in Northern Ireland to Bernard Sheldon, MI5’s Legal Adviser in London states that the Deputy Head of the RUC Special Branch, at MI5’s request, informed Detective Superintendent Caskey that “no serving or former member of the Security Service should be interviewed by the police.”  That is the clearest possible evidence that the Security Service regarded itself above the law at that time.  There is no evidence that the RUC challenged the statutory basis for that policy.  Moreover, MI5’s directive almost certainly undermined the RUC’s investigation of Kincora and resulted in an outcome that was likely to have been disadvantageous to the victims of sexual abuse.   I believe the RUC’s willingness to comply with the MI5 directive was a serious failure in its duty to those children.  It is also important to note that the RUC did not interview the MI5 member who typed my ‘Clockwork Orange’ material, nor Hugh Mooney who not only admitted that he saw my Tara press briefing document, but also that I had told him in 1973 about the abuses at Kincora.

 

[Exhibit 64]

 

In Intelligence work, the “need-to-know” principle is very strict and very important i.e. only those people who really need to know specific information should have access to it.  For example, if I was given information by someone on a strictly “need to know, ” I could not share that information with anyone, no matter how senior, without the agreement of the person who gave me that information initially. As a result, when dealing with deniable and sensitive topics such as Tara, or ‘Clockwork Orange’, the number of people having access to detailed information was kept to an absolute minimum.  For example, it is quite possible that a significant amount of the work I did for Colonel Hutton may not have been shared with Lt Colonel Railton, or Peter Broderick.

 

It is also important to bear in mind that ‘deniable’ activities would, as General Peter Leng confirmed to the Sunday Times, not normally be recorded in writing.  I totally accept the need for such security.  However, deliberately destroying official records to avoid embarrassment or to cover up wrongdoing, as is likely to have happened in my case, is quite a different matter.

 

There is no record that the RUC ever interviewed Colonel Hutton, or, if he was interviewed, then, as far as I am aware, no record of such an interview has ever been disclosed.   Again, this was a remarkable failure by the RUC, especially when DI Cooke was made aware of the significant role played by Colonel Hutton as my line manager.  It is also significant that Colonel Hutton was not asked to give evidence at my disciplinary hearing in 1975.

 

A report, Analysis of Exhibit GC80, supplied to the HIA Inquiry by Det Supt Clarke PSNI states at page 10:

 

“In  GC80 Wallace dismisses the RUC’s theory that there was a connection between the murder of Brian McDermott and “witchcraft or other satanic rites”. In 1973 the RUC investigation team had looked into allegations of a connection between the murder and ‘Black Magic’ and were “able to disprove this theory and as a result, the press/ public interest diminished”; therefore it is difficult to accept Wallace’s contention that there was ever an RUC theory connecting the McDermott murder and witchcraft.”

 

[Source: KIN-1867]

 

It is an indisputable fact that there was a RUC theory in public circulation in 1973 connecting the McDermott murder and witchcraft.  Contrary to what Det Supt Clarke’s report indicated in his statement to the HIA Inquiry, the RUC did tell the press that the murder may have had sexual and witchcraft overtones.

 

In a report headed “Killer may have been sex fiend” (The Belfast Newsletter dated 11 September 1973) ACC William Meharg was quoted as saying that it was “quite on the cards” that the murder had been sexually motivated.  The report also claimed that: “the murder may have been part of a witchcraft ceremony.”

 

One the same day, The Irish News reported:

 

“Asst Chief Constable William Meharg said that there was no indication that the murder involved sectarian or political terrorism, but he was not in a position to deny or confirm speculation that the killing could have been the result of witchcraft or juvenile terrorism.”

 

On 22 September 1973, The Belfast Telegraph reported:

 

“. . . today it was admitted that murder squad detectives are considering the possibility that 10-year-old Brian McDermott may have been murdered as part of a black magic ritual. This has become one of three lines of inquiry since the boy’s body was dragged from the River Lagan two weeks ago. Forensic experts have discovered that the body was burned over an open wood fire. But the police are still investigating the theories that he may have been killed for sectarian reasons or by a sex fiend”.

 

On 23 September 1973, The News of the World, published a story headed “Boy died in ‘black ritual’.” and claimed:

 

“ A 10-year-old boy may have been murdered by devil worshipers. Police believe Brian McDermott was offered as a human sacrifice . . .

 

… forensic tests show his corpse had been roasted in pagan style over an open wood fire. Shocked detectives are now expecting to switch the hunt to occultists whose black arts have attracted youngsters seeking an escape from Ulster’s terror”

 

It is very disappointing that, even now after almost 50 years, the police in Northern Ireland are still not prepared to present material about my allegations fairly and accurately.  This appears to be yet another attempt to mislead the HIA Inquiry.

 

In March 1987, James Miller, who attempted to infiltrate Tara in 1971 on behalf of the Intelligence Services, contacted the Sunday Times and claimed that he had been asked by his Intelligence handlers to encourage the UC which led to the collapse of the Power Sharing Executive in 1974.   The Sunday Times published his allegations on 22 March 1987.  Miller also told Liam Clarke of the Sunday Times that:

 

His case officer told me to leave McGrath to them and I have always believed they used the information [on his sexual activities] to recruit him as an informer.”

 

The Sunday Times story also alleged that Miller claimed that:

 

His MI5 case officers told him Harold Wilson was a suspected Soviet agent and steps were being taken to force him out of Downing Street.”

 

Soon after the Sunday Times story was published, Clive Ponting, a former senior civil servant in the Mod., told the Sunday Times about his experiences of my allegations.  On 17 May 1987 the Sunday Times reported Mr. Ponting as saying:

 

By 1983 the cases of Wallace and Holroyd had been a long-running internal problem and a great effort had gone into contingency action if and when Holroyd got the story into the Press.  The task was to try to ensure that their stories were contained.

 

The report went on to say.

 

“They were genuinely worried that Wallace had far worse things to say.”

 

[Exhibit 65] [Exhibit 66]

 

Clive Ponting appeared on Channel 4 News on 25 June 1987.  During the interview, he said:

 

“There was never any suspicion that Wallace was making these stories up or that it was totally unfounded and very easy to rubbish. It was very much a matter that, OK the story was being contained at the moment because he was in jail, but that in a few years’ time he would be back out again and could be expected to start making the allegations again, and then that would be a serious problem.

 

The Observer newspaper and Channel 4 News submitted to the leading forensic document examiner, Dr. Julius Grant, the ‘Clockwork Orange’ notes which I had compiled in 1974.  They asked Dr. Grant to see if he could validate the notes by analyzing the paper and ink used to create them.  According to The Observer on 5 July 1987, Dr. Grant concluded: “I consider that the balance of probability favors the authentic origin of the writings attributed to 1974″.

 

[Exhibit 67]

 

It is important to note that at page 124 of the handwritten material examined by Dr Grant it states:

 

Control over MPs – homosexual and other blackmail.  Link to homosexual story via Belfast McKeague, McGrath etc.”

 

The above story in The Observer was followed by a petition of MPs calling for a public inquiry and an informal committee of inquiry, comprising Roy Jenkins, Merlyn Rees, and Edward Heath was set up to investigate what Fred Holroyd and I had been alleging.

 

[Exhibit 68]

 

On 4 August 1987, Brian Blackwell, a former Army Officer and member of the Law and Order Division at the NIO, wrote a memo to other NIO officials and a member of MI5 saying:

 

“1. You and copy recipients will be interested to know that I had one of my regular meetings yesterday with David McKittrick [ Belfast-based reporter for The Independent].  He tells me that he has written a major piece rubbishing the revelations of Wallace and Holroyd.  He hopes that it will be published in the Independent on Wednesday 12 August.”

 

[Exhibit 69]

 

The article was published was eventually published on 2 September 1987.  It contained a series of inaccurate assertions designed to discredit what Fred Holroyd and I had been alleging.  There is no doubt that the story was deliberately created to stem the growing clamor for a public inquiry into our allegations and, from that perspective, it was ‘successful’ in that it did frightened-off some of the MPs who had been taking a close interest in what Fred Holroyd and I had been saying.  I lodged a formal complaint with the Press Council against The Independent’s coverage and my complaint was upheld.

 

[Exhibit 70]

 

I have no doubts whatsoever that some of the material used in The Independent story came from the RUC.  Two journalists independently told Paul Foot that they had been offered similar material by a senior RUC officer involved in the Terry Inquiry.  A former Conservative MP, Humphry Berkeley, told me personally that he had been informed by Edward Heath that the RUC had been behind the story.

 

Clearly, I cannot prove that the RUC was involved in that disinformation exercise.  It is significant, however, to study the content of notes made by Bernard Sheldon, Legal Adviser to MI5, following a meeting with Sir George Terry at his Sussex Police HQ on 27 January 1983.  Bernard Sheldon records comments made by Chief Inspector Flenley at that meeting.  At section 4 of the notes, Bernard Sheldon states:

 

Flenley made the following observations:

 

  1. Caskey was in his view a very ambitious officer who took care to mix with the right people. He thought he was solely motivated by his own self-interest and by his desire to get on, He did not think that he was influenced by any anti-British or anti-intelligence sentiment.

 

  1. He implied that the relationship between RUC officers and their Chief Constable was such that they would not rely upon his support in moments of difficulty. He thought Caskey would be content however if the Chief Constable told him that there was no need to follow this line of inquiry [note: this refers to interviewing Ian Cameron MI5]

 

  1. Flenley had interviewed Chris Ryder after the article in the Sunday Times of 5 December 1982. Although Ryder made no admissions that Caskey had been a source, Flenley had little doubt that this was the position.”

 

Paragraph ‘f’ above is important because it makes a clear allegation that a senior RUC officer involved in the Terry Inquiry into allegations of a cover-up by the RUC of abuses at Kincora was leaking information to the press.  If true, that allegation would have been a serious one because the information would almost certainly have been very sensitive and protected by the Official Secrets Acts.

 

[Exhibit 71]

 

Given that the information in Bernard Sheldon’s notes was available to MI5 and to Sir George Terry, it is remarkable that no formal ‘leak’ inquiry appears to have been initiated on the basis of Chief Inspector Flenley’s comments.  The incident is also potentially significant in the light of the subsequent story in The Independent which was designed to close down any formal investigation by Parliament into the allegations which Fred Holroyd and I were making at that time and which have now been mostly substantiated.

 

In his book, ‘Who Framed Colin Wallace’, Paul Foot recounts how Chris Ryder wrote a story in the Sunday Times in April 1987 which alleged that Sir Maurice Oldfield, who as appointed Security Co-ordinator for Northern Ireland by Mrs. Thatcher in 1980, had sexually assaulted a man in a pub in County Down.  The story alleged that the RUC had been called to the incident and that the whole matter was hushed up.

 

[Exhibit 72]

 

Channel 4 News and the Sunday Times later investigated the alleged incident and were told by the manager and staff of the pub that no such incident ever took place.  Anthony Cavendish, a former member of MI6, and probably Sir Maurice Oldfield’s closest personal friend told me that he had looked into the matter closely and was satisfied that suspicions of Sir Maurice Oldfield’s homosexuality had been given to the RUC SB by MI5 and that the RUC SB had planted the false story in the Sunday Times because they wanted to undermine Sir Maurice’s role in Northern Ireland.

 

[Exhibit 73] [Exhibit 74]

 

I do not know what the true facts of that matter were, but another incident that occurred a few months later tended to confirm that the RUC was attempting to use the Sunday Times to cover up dubious activities in the Province. Paul Foot recounts how Fred Holroyd, a former Army Special Military Intelligence Unit officer, who worked closely with the RUC Special Branch, told the RUC about the assassination of John Francis Green, near Castleblaney in the Irish Republic on 10 January 1975, allegedly with the collusion of the Security Forces in Northern Ireland.  According to Paul Foot’s account, to substantiate his allegation, Fred Holroyd handed over to Superintendent Caskey RUC a Polaroid photograph taken of the victim at the scene of the murder.  One of Fred Holroyd’s Army colleagues, Captain Robert Niarac, had told him that he had taken the photograph immediately after the assassination.  Remarkably, the photograph or a copy of that photograph, which Fred Holroyd gave to the RUC was subsequently passed to Chris Ryder.  According to Paul Foot’s account, Chris Ryder then attempted to interest the Sunday Times in a story which was designed to rubbish Fred Holroyd’s account of what Robert Niarac told him about the assassination.  To its credit, the Sunday Times decided not to print the Chris Ryder story.  According to Paul Foot’s account, Chris Ryder demanded that the Sunday Times return the photograph to him and the newspaper complied with his request.  What is particularly interesting is that the photograph was later passed to another newspaper, The Independent, and used in David McKittrick’s story referred to above.

 

Setting aside the important issue of why Robert Niarac gave Fred Holroyd the photograph and claimed to have been at the scene of the murder, it is clear that either that photograph or another one very similar to it was subsequently passed to the press in a bid to discredit his claim that he had been given it by Robert Niarac.  I have no doubt that Robert Niarac never imagined that years later Fred Holroyd would give the photograph to the RUC.  Clearly, Fred Holroyd’s allegations of collusion between the Security Forces and the UVF in Mid Ulster were highly unpopular within the RUC and the Intelligence Services at that time because there was a danger that Robert Niarac’s links with the UVF might become public.  It is not unreasonable to believe that rubbishing Fred Holroyd’s account by casting doubt on his claims about the source of the photograph would have been seen as advantageous to the RUC and the Intelligence Services.

 

An investigation for the Irish Government in 2003 by Mr. Justice Henry Barron stated that “one piece of evidence which seemed irrefutable – the Polaroid photograph – has been found almost certainly to have been taken by a garda officer on the morning after the shooting.  An RUC officer gave evidence of having received such a photograph from Gardai (Irish police), and said that he could have given it either to Niarac or Holroyd in turn.” [Note: The RUC referred to a photograph (singular) – not several photographs!]

 

Judge Barron’s report goes on to say:

 

“On the other hand, other details given by Nairac to Holroyd concerning the type of guns used, the departure of Carville from the house sometime before the killing took place, and the fact that the front door was forced open – all these matters were confirmed by the Garda investigation and were not details which Holroyd or Nairac would have been expected to know. A further allegation, that a white car was used by the killers, found some support in the sighting of an unidentified white car traveling towards the scene at around 7.20 p.m.

 

There was the further matter of an unmarked British Army car which had been seen several times in the area between the 1 and 14 January 1975. Though there was no evidence to connect it with the murder, it is possible that it was connected with surveillance on Green or on Carville’s farm.”

 

This latter extract provides strong circumstantial evidence that Robert Niarac was either closely involved with the assassination or with those who were involved and it is not difficult to see what the British authorities wanted publicly, via the media, to rubbish Fred Holroyd’s allegations about what Robert Niarac told him. The RUC’s actions were also all the more reprehensible bearing in mind the comments referred to above by the former senior MoD official, Clive Ponting

 

[Exhibit ]

 

In the Sunday Times on 17 May 1987, Clive Ponting is quoted as saying that the MI5 officers with whom he met “were absolutely A1 sensitive about Niarac”.  He quoted the MI5 officers as saying:

 

Of course, a lot of what Fred Holroyd said is true.  Certainly, these illegal actions did take place.”

 

This matter raises a number of important questions.  Was the photograph given to Chris Ryder, and subsequently to The Independent newspaper in connection with a story written by David McKittrick, the one which Fred Holroyd gave to the RUC?  Fred Holroyd asked the RUC to return it to him, but they refused.  Why should the police give to the press an item of evidence associated with an assassination and yet be unwilling to return it to original source.  Did the RUC obtain a different photograph of the assassination from another source and give it to the press to cast doubt on Fred Holroyd’s account.  Whatever the truth, the RUC’s actions were, and remain, highly questionable and appear to be far removed from the Standards of Professional Behaviour for Policing in the UK.

 

Some of Chris Ryder’s activities were also very unusual for someone who was supposed to be a professional journalist.  For example, according to a letter disclosed to the HIA Inquiry [Source: KIN-190167] Chris Ryder telephone Army HQ NI on 3 July 1977 and suggested that the Army should “look around” i.e. search, the address where I then lived in England – the suggestion being that I had classified documents in my possession.  The letter, which was sent to the Director of Army Security, contained a collection of totally false information.  It may, or may not, be significant that the ‘Intelligence Services’ did ask the Sussex Police to search my home for classified documents in 1980 when I was arrested for manslaughter.  No classified documents were found.  Chris Ryder went on to become a member of the NI Police Authority.

 

[Exhibit 75]

 

The Code of Practice for the Principles and Standards of Professional Behaviour for Policing in the United Kingdom states that:

 

“every person working for the police service must work honestly and ethically. The public expects the police to do the right thing in the right way”.

 

It is not unreasonable to expect that the RUC and the PSNI should also embrace those principles. Indeed, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (Conduct) Regulations 2000 stated, inter alia,

 

“It is of paramount importance that the public has faith in the honesty and integrity of police officers. Officers should therefore be open and truthful in their dealings; avoid being improperly beholden to any person or institution; and discharge their duties with integrity, fairness, and impartiality.”

 

During the so-called ‘Troubles’ in Ireland in the 1970s and 80s, many members of the Security Forces, including the RUC and the UDR, acted, at great personal risk to themselves, and with great courage and integrity,  to protect the community from violence.  Many of them lost their lives in the process and numerous others suffered serious long-term injury.  Sadly, however, it is also true that some members of the Security Forces acted in ways that were less than honorable.

 

It is difficult, therefore, to find words adequately to express my disgust that any police service, or any police officer, would accept important information from a witness about potential terrorist activity and then pass that information to the press with the sole objective of discrediting the witness.  If true, the allegation made in Paul Foot’s book about how the RUC apparently misused material evidence provided to them by Fred Holroyd in an attempt to discredit him is an affront to professional policing and should have been investigated rigorously.  The fact that no such investigation appears to have taken place and no one has ever been made amenable for that disgraceful behavior speaks volumes about the culture that existed within the RUC at that time.

 

Although this complaint focuses on failings by the RUC properly to investigate allegations circulating in the1970s about possible sexual abuses at Kincora and elsewhere, in fairness to the RUC it is clear from the material I have referred to in this document that the Security Service (MI5) was actively bringing pressure to bear on politicians and senior government officials to avoid any examination of related Intelligence activities,   For example, in a MI5 telegram from MI5 officers at the NIO to MI5 HQ in London on 2 July 1982, it is made clear that the author of the telegram had a meeting with the Head of the RUC Special Branch (HSB) at which the HSB said (para 3) that he would: “not wish to put Whiteside (Head of the CID) in the picture” about the Army Intelligence officer, Captain Brian Gemmell, who wrote a report for Ian Cameron (MI5) about alleged abuses at Kincora.

 

It is deeply worrying that the Head of the RUC Special Branch should have withheld from the Head of the RUC CID, information about an Army witness who possessed information about possible child sexual abuses by William McGrath, a matter which the CID was then engaged in investigating.

 

The MI5 telegram goes on the say (para 4):

 

“It is therefore important that Caskey’s report does not include things that concern us.  The one problem is that Gemmell might insist on being unnecessarily frank in his written statement.  HSB consulted the DCC (Deputy Chief Constable) there and then and said it might be possible to erase these references on the grounds that they harmed national security.”

 

Finally, the telegram states at paragraph 7:

 

It appears that we should be able to keep Caskey’s report ‘clean’ but the problem will be the public inquiry – if that is what is decided.

 

[Exhibit 76]

 

As I have shown above (page 7), MI5’s legal adviser, Bernard Sheldon, did his utmost to limit the powers of Hughes Inquiry.  Although the RUC were never permitted to interview Ian Cameron of MI5, it would appear that he provided written answers to questions posed by the RUC.  However, an internal report compiled by the MoD in 1989 for Sir Michael Quinlan, the MoD Permanent Under Secretary, stated:

 

“It is understood that Mr. Cameron’s answers to D/Superintendent Caskey’s written answers were eventually sent to Northern Ireland.  But there is no record that they were communicated to the RUC whose inquiries had finished in June 1983.

 

[Source: Letter from the Security Service to the Cabinet Office dated 10 November 1989]

[Exhibit 77]

 

In January 1980 the Chief Constable of the RUC commissioned a report – known as the Walker Report after its author, Patrick Walker MI5 – on the interchange of intelligence between Special Branch and CID and on the staffing and organization of units in C1(1) in Crime Branch.

 

In 2001 the Press revealed the existence of the Report and said that it contained what became high-level policy that priority was to be given to RUC Special Branch intelligence gathering over normal law enforcement. The Sunday Times reported that the Walker Report specified “that records should be destroyed after operations, that Special Branch should not disseminate all information to Criminal Investigations Detectives (CID) and that CID should require permission from Special Branch before making arrests, or carrying out house searches in case agents were endangered.”  Effectively, normal policing appears to have been subordinated to a ‘counter insurgency’ approach based on intelligence and involving many of the practices subsequently criticized in the reports of Stevens, Justice Cory, and the Police Ombudsman.

 

[https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/jun/14/northernireland.richardnortontaylor]

 

It is likely that the introduction of the policy enshrined in the ‘Walker Report’ for giving priority to RUC Special Branch intelligence gathering over normal law enforcement played some part of the RUC’s failure to deal with the Kincora allegations effectively.  This suggestion becomes all the more credible when one considers some of the political and security background to the Kincora story.

 

In the House of Commons on 12 January 1988, Ken Livingstone MP asked the then Prime Minister, Mrs. Margaret Thatcher:

 

“Will the Prime Minister take time in what remains of today to consider whether her Ministers may have inadvertently misled Parliament in 1982 when they reported to the House that the inquiry by Sir George Terry in relation to the Kincora boys’ home would be fair and impartial?  In order to do so, will she ask to see the confidential Sussex police files concerning investigated allegations linking Anthony Blunt with several prominent figures in Northern Ireland, who escaped prosecution for their crimes because, had a prosecution been brought, it would have revealed the immunity granted to Anthony Blunt? Were her Ministers aware when they appointed Sir George Terry. who was Chief Constable of Sussex, that his officers had been involved in this cover-up?”

 

Mrs. Thatcher avoided dealing with that significant issue by replying:

 

“Prosecution is not a matter for me. It is a matter for the prosecuting authorities. If the hon. Gentleman has any new evidence, he should present it to them.”

 

On 11 March 1988, the Chief Constable of Sussex wrote to Ken Livingstone admitting that the Sussex police under Sir George Terry was involved investigations into in allegations about homosexual behavior in Northern Ireland on at least two occasions before the Kincora inquiry was set up in 1982.  The allegations were made by the author, Robin Bryans, and involved some well-known personalities including Sir Anthony Blunt (who in 1964 had confessed to MI5 that he had been a Russian spy and was granted immunity from prosecution) and Peter Montgomery, Deputy Lieutenant for Co Tyrone.

 

It is not credible that MI5 did not know of Blunt’s homosexual relationship with Montgomery and that he was frequently visiting Montgomery’s home near Fivemiletown, or who were Blunt’s circle of friends in Ireland.  It is also very difficult to accept that MI5 and the RUC SB did not know of reports that William McGrath’s paramilitary organization, Tara, carried out military training on Peter Montgomery’s estate.

 

[Exhibit 78] [Exhibit 79]

 

Given the foregoing, the Terry Inquiry was not, therefore, as totally ‘independent’ as the Northern Ireland Secretary, James Prior, led Parliament to believe.  Moreover, it should come as no surprise that, according to documents released to the HIA Inquiry, Sir George Terry was actually the preferred choice of the RUC Chief Constable, Sir John Hermon, to lead the investigations into allegations of a police cover-up of the abuses at Kincora!

 

[Source KIN-102628]

 

The Good Friday Agreement accepted that it was essential that policing structures and arrangements are such that the police service in Northern Ireland is professional, effective and efficient, fair and impartial, free from partisan political control; accountable, both under the law for its actions and to the community it serves.

 

The program of police reform generated by the peace settlement placed great emphasis on accountability and transparency.  Indeed, the Patten Report explicitly recommended that these principles should also apply to covert policing. Despite this, the British Government, in a paper appended to the 2006 St Andrews Agreement, set out “future national security arrangements in Northern Ireland” which shifted the most sensitive areas of covert policing in the opposite direction, effectively ring-fencing them outside the post-Patten accountability arrangements.

 

The policy formalized the previously largely undeclared role of MI5 in covert policing in Northern Ireland and effectively transferred primacy to MI5 over “national security” policing, with the PSNI playing a seemingly subordinate role. The transparency in covert policing policy, codes of practice, legal and ethical standards envisaged by Patten and provided for in international standards sit uncomfortably with an agency that has a culture of operating entirely in secret. Not only is the Security Service not answerable to the accountability bodies set up to scrutinize the PSNI, but the agency is also exempt from freedom of information legislation. MI5’s own oversight arrangements is a Tribunal that has never upheld a single complaint against the organization.

 

I believe the above situation is relevant to my complaint when one realizes that MI5 (Ian Cameron) instructed Army Intelligence (Captain Brian Gemmell) to cease investigating allegations that William McGrath was believed to be sexually abusing children and that the HIA Inquiry recorded that Army files on Tara and William McGrath which were sent to MI5 ‘disappeared’ inside MI5.  Also, as I have demonstrated above, MI5’s Legal Adviser, Bernard Sheldon, played a significant role in attempting to influence Government officials and the RUC in terms of how investigations into Kincora should be managed.

 

On 19 March 2019, the Court of Appeal in Belfast delivered its judgment in an appeal by Margaret McQuillan who was seeking a declaration that the proposed further investigation by the Legacy Investigation Branch of the PSNI into the death of her sister, Jean Smyth, on 8 June 1972.  The Court of Appeal concluded that at this time the Chief Constable of the PSNI “has not demonstrated practical independence on the part of the LIB so that it has the capacity to carry out an investigation into the death of the deceased.

 

I believe that decision by the Court of Appeal is relevant to this complaint. It is my submission that, from what I have detailed above, the RUC (and its successor the PSNI) failed to demonstrate practical independence when carrying out investigations relating to allegations of potential sexual abuse at the Kincora Boys Home.  Those failures were further exacerbated by the links between the RUC Special Branch and MI5 which, almost certainly, influenced the way in which the police managed investigations and included the suppression of information, which resulted in a misleading picture being given to Parliament and the public and which was disadvantageous to the victims.

 

The Official Secrets Acts exist to protect genuine national secrets, not to protect Government agencies or Ministers from embarrassment caused by failures or wrongdoings by those agencies.  Despite have no statutory authority to do so, there now appears to be little doubt that MI5 exerted highly questionable influence on the RUC and other Government agencies, not only to avoid having to disclose some of the Intelligence activities associated with Kincora but also to avoid the setting up of 1921 Judicial Inquiry which could have highlighted unsavory Intelligence activities.  In the absence of evidence to the contrary, and in the light of the documentary evidence referred to above, The fact that the RUC appeared to go along with MI5’s questionable demands probably mitigated against the full facts of the Kincora abuse saga from emerging and also prevented a full Judicial Inquiry from being set up.  In my opinion, the RUC, at a senior level, allowed itself to be unduly influenced by MI5’s need to protect its own self-interests, rather than meet their obligations to the abuse victims.  As a result, the needs of the victims were not satisfied as the Lord Chief Justice stipulated they should be.      END

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Signed:…………………………………………………………                                         Date: 29 March 2019

Colin Wallace