Articles obtained from the following sources:
(1) Andersonstown News, (2) Irish Republican News, (3) Sunday Business Post
Friday, 14 January, 2005
Saturday-Tuesday, 15-18 January, 2005
Sunday, 16 January, 2005
Bank Heist - Here we go again
The political fall-out from Hugh Orde's laying of the blame for the Northern Bank robbery at the door of the IRA has uncanny parallels with another meticulously planned and executed job – the break-in at Castlereagh on the evening of March 17, 2002.
That the IRA was behind the break-in beggared belief. The three-man team behind the raid wore no masks or gloves, they gained easy access past heavy security at the entrance to the building. They made no attempt to conceal their faces from the battery of security cameras outside and inside the building – not suprising, really, because the cameras had been de-activated. The trio knew their way around the building and the only one of them to speak had an English accent. Claims that the IRA had been assisted by an American chef working inside the building have never been substantiated. Undoubtedly, a chef would have been able to tell the break-in team where the HP sauce and the beans were kept; questions about how he would have been able to get the team past perimeter security, or how he would have knowledge of the rooms holding Castlereagh's most closely guarded secrets have never been answered – although he lives openly in New York, no attempt has been made to have him extradited.
The first question traditionally asked by the IRA when considering the smallest military engagement, never mind a politically explosive high-wire operation, is this: what are the risks compared to the potential benefits? The answer was that the risks were absolutely enormous and the benefits uncertain at best – a calculation that would have seen anyone suggesting such a venture laughed out of the safe house.
All of this was reflected in the considered response at the time of UUP leader David Trimble who said he would wait to see the proof before acting, a position that was warmly welcomed by Sinn Féin's Mitchel McLaughlin.
Trimble's party colleague, the then Lord Mayor of Belfast Jim Rodgers, said he didn't think the IRA was involved and added that the whole episode "stinks to high heaven". Outgoing RUC Chief Constable Ronnie Flanagan said he would be "most surprised" if the IRA was involved, hinting strongly that he believed it was an inside job. More predictably, though, from other unionists and from the Irish and British media burst a tidal wave of hysterical recrimination which swept away common sense and objective analysis. Republicans were refusing to end the conflict; Sinn Féin weren't fit for government.
Sound familiar? Stay with it...
Regardless of what their boss thought about the matter, the RUC went on to launch a series of highly publicised raids in nationalist areas of Belfast and Derry during which six people were arrested. Five of them were quickly – and quietly – released and one was later charged with possession of information unconnected to the Castlereagh raids, including possession of biographies of leading Tories John Major and Norman Lamont and a 1988 New Statesman article on international eavesdropping. In a statement the RUC said they were "interested in a number of mobile phones that were being used in West Belfast in the period leading up to the break-in and on the night of the robbery itself." No more was ever heard about the mysterious mobile phones. The PSNI continued to focus their attention on republicans.
In October four people were charged after raids on their homes in Belfast once again unleashing a flood of shock-horror stories about death lists and prominent targets. A local businessman became the fifth person charged after he rejected attempts to recruit him as an informer. Charges against two, including the businessman, were later dropped (quietly); charges against the remaining three were later substantially reduced (quietly) and a case which many legal observers believe to be pitifully thin is being persevered with (watch this space).
The investigation was frontloaded with the sensational and highly publicised raid on the Sinn Féin offices at Stormont during which a single Windows floppy disc and a CD-Rom were taken in a laughably brief search that nevertheless involved a mob of boiler-suited officers and saw parliament buildings ringed with Land Rovers. At a press conference in November, Acting Deputy Chief Constable Alan McQuillan said the Castlereagh investigation had taken the PSNI "into the very heart of the Provisional IRA." Impressive stuff, but no-one was ever charged with IRA membership. Ian Paisley Jnr of the DUP said, "The revelations by ACC McQuillan that the police have now uncovered active IRA spying activity is another signal that their political counterpart in Sinn Féin is not fit for government. Lives have undoubtedly been saved by police actions." The floppy disc and CD-Rom were (quietly) returned to Sinn Féin.
To this day, no-one has been charged in connection with the Castlereagh break-in. Not surprisingly, the Castlereagh episode has all but disappeared from the political discourse.
Against that background, it might be expected that another setpiece shocker involving an elaborately plotted and daringly executed operation followed by virtual political meltdown would give politicians and journalists pause for thought. Not a bit of it – even as the Land Rovers were lining up again outside republican homes in West Belfast in time for the evening news, the same siren voices were raised making precisely the same noisy and apocalyptic political predictions.
Last Friday's press conference at which Hugh Orde duly pointed the finger of blame at the IRA was a confusing and contradictory hotch-potch of claims and allegations about which no evidence was offered. Mr Orde claimed that he was making the statement for "operational" reasons, without actually telling us what those reasons were; in the next breath he said that he was making the statement because media speculation was getting in the way of the investigation and he wanted to bring it to an end. Here's the quote: "It now makes sense that we make an attribution because it makes operational sense, and it will allow us to get on with the enquiry unhampered by some of this unnecessary speculation."
The naming of a culprit by a police force which has not amassed enough evidence to warrant an arrest, never mind charges, is so damaging to fairness and due process that it boggles the mind. And impressed as we are by Mr Orde's dedication to the operational considerations of a single investigation, one wonders whether the questionable short-term benefit of bypassing the concept of innocent until proven guilty is worth the risk of ending the peace process. Hugh Orde says that is not his concern – he is fond of repeating the mantra that he's not a politician, he's a cop. But he revealed at the press conference that he was naming the IRA to end media speculation. If doing something to get the press off your back is not a political act, then perhaps he's in need of a new dictionary.
Mr Orde also said he was pointing the finger at the IRA because "Northern Ireland is a unique policing environment" which "inevitably gives rise to questions as to who or what organisations committed what crimes, and how did they plan it, and who organised it. This would not happen anywhere else in the United Kingdom." Really? Is Mr Orde telling us that the Met didn't come under pressure after the Brinks Mat robbery? That English detectives don't come in for some rough treatment from Fleet Street during the course of major investigations? Can it really be only here in the North that hacks get excited by big stories? Can it really only be the local press that wants cops to tell them something they can write about? The reality, of course, is that journalists put policemen under huge and sustained pressure – it's their job.
When we talk about the peace process, we're talking about people's lives, let's be completely clear about this. And yet the standard of proof required for the PSNI – or the Independent Monitoring Commission, for that matter – to cast judgement is not only massively less than even Diplock courts require, it is something about which we are allowed to know absolutely and precisely... nothing.
Mr Orde told us: "But what I can say is, on the basis of the investigative work that we have done to date, the evidence we have collected, the information we have collected, the exhibits we have collected, and bringing all that together, and working through, it is in my opinion the Provisional IRA were responsible for this crime and all main lines of enquiry currently undertaken are in that direction."
So, on the basis of i) investigative work; ii) evidence collected; iii) information collected; and iv) exhibits collected, the PSNI have not been able to make one single arrest or to get one single republican into an interrogation room (not the hardest of tasks), but they are able to state that the Provisional IRA is guilty and trigger a political reaction exactly the same in effect as if Martin McGuinness been tried and sentenced to 25 years. In the Alice in Wonderland world that we inhabit today, the Chief Constable is able to speak ex-cathedra without producing a grain of evidence, and even the unelected members of the International Monitoring Commission have an effective veto over political progress. Newspaper leader writers treat Hugh Orde's opinion (he was careful to point out that it was only his opinion, although you wouldn't know it) as though it were incontrovertible fact and have constructed fantastic political scenarios on that flimsy foundation to the point where a media consensus has been arrived at and to depart from it is to run the risk of being condemned as mad, bad, a fellow-traveller, or all three. If all the papers agree that it was the IRA, if the Chief Constable says it, if the political parties with the exception of Sinn Féin say it, if the British government says it, if the Irish government says it, then it must be true.
The dogs on the street and all that.
In fact, the only thing that can be said with any degree of certainty is that nobody knows. The press is in makey-uppy heaven – that legal limbo when no-one has been arrested or charged and they can (and do) write whatever balderdash takes their fancy. The PSNI knows nothing; if they did they would swoop immediately and decisively, such is the career-threatening depth of their humiliation. The political parties clearly know nothing as they readily admit to have taken their cue from the PSNI. The two governments know nothing because they're hearing the same things which Hugh Orde is hearing, ie 'high-grade' intelligence of such quality that not a single arrest has been made and not a penny has been recovered.
And guess what? The Andersonstown News doesn't know either. But we're happy to be among the very few to admit as much.
Copyright © 2005 Andersonstown News
Killing the process
By Irish Republican News
A battle over political credibility has continued in the wake of the bank robbery in Belfast last month, an incident which Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams warned is being "used to kill the peace process".
The PSNI Chief Constable, Hugh Orde, has said he believes the 36 million Euro robbery was carried out by the Provisional IRA. No evidence has yet been advanced linking the IRA to the raid.
Orde's statement launched an intense political campaign against Sinn Fein on both sides of the border.
Dublin's Minister for Justice, Michael McDowel accused the Sinn Fein leadership of being involved in a conspiracy to rob the bank. The 26-County Prime Minister Bertie Ahern made similar allegations
The Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams has complained that his telephone calls to Mr Ahern have since gone unanswered.
The political stakes are high, as Sinn Fein tonight launched a huge recruitment drive in tandem with the centenary of the founding of the original Sinn Fein movement. The party is attempting to build its support to seize the balance of power in the Dublin parliament in the next general election in the 26 Counties.
Mr Adams said he had phoned the Taoiseach every day since Monday, first "more in disappointment than anger" last Friday.
"If the Taoiseach wanted to meet me he would meet me. If the Taoiseach wanted to make a call to me, he would make a call to me," he said.
Mr Adams said he wanted to repudiate the Taoiseach's expressed belief that the Sinn Fein leadership knew during the recent political negotiations of the plan to rob the Northern Bank.
The Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, has also launched a fierce broadside against Sinn Fein and the IRA. He said the Provisional leadership "betrayed the Tricolour and the reconciliation that it symbolises. They have hijacked history. They have put a gun to the head of hope." He also compared the west Belfast-based Andersonstown News group with Nazi propogandists.
Mr Adams has warned his party's supoporters that they must resist any campaign of discrimination by the two governments against its electorate.
In a substantive news conference, Mr Adams said he believed statements by the IRA that it was not involved.
"In my opinion the IRA is telling the truth. Hugh Orde said "in my opinion"(the IRA did it).
"He has his opinion. I have my opinion. He may be putting forward his opinion based on intelligence, maybe based on whatever information he has.
Is this the same intelligence which started the war in Iraq in search of weapons of mass destruction? Is this the same intelligence that put the Guildford Four or the Birmingham Six [ in prison] or refused to co-operate with the Barron Commission?
"He may in good faith be saying that. But he may be wrong. I believe what the IRA is saying."
Mr Adams suggested a sinister agenda was in play.
"This incident is being used to kill this peace process," he said. "This incident is being used to have a gang-up on Sinn Fein. This incident is being used to try and impinge upon the integrity of the Sinn Fein leadership.
"So all we can do is give our opinion.
"But there are other questions. What happens if and when it emerges the IRA weren't involved? Do you all apologise to me? Does Hugh Orde come out and say, 'I am sorry, I got it wrong?' I have as much right to be believed as Hugh Orde.
"You remember that. I have as much right for people to give me the benefit of the doubt as for any other . . . I have as much right to be believed in stating honestly my opinion on this issue."
Mr Adams said claims that the Provisional IRA were the only group capable of the high-profile bank raid were wrong.
"There are lots of disgruntled former RUC officers who could have done it. You have for people of my generation the memory of the Littlejohns."
Self-proclaimed British agents Kenneth and Keith Littlejohn, were convicted in 1973 of the biggest bank robbery until then in Irish history. They said the purpose of the robbery was to have the IRA blamed.
Mr Adams also pointed to other operations which were blamed on the IRA, but were later found out to be by loyalists or MI5.
Saturday-Tuesday, 15-18 January, 2005
IRA statement on bank raid
By Irish Republican News
The following brief statement was released by the Provisional IRA last night:
"The IRA has been accused of involvement in the recent Northern Bank robbery. We were not involved."
The statement, signed "P O'Neill", followed a denial before Christmas that the IRA had any role in the December 20 bank raid, the largest in Irish history.
The statement appears to have been issued in response to calls in some quarters for a formal statement by the IRA to restore stability to peace efforts.
There had been suggestions in some quarters that the previous denial to the media was not in the format of a formal IRA statement, and was somehow suspect.
Sinn Fein has said it believes the IRA. On Sunday, Mid-Ulster MP Martin McGuinness said that if the IRA had carried out the raid it would have been "unacceptable".
He again said he believed IRA assertions that its Volunteers were not involved in the robbery.
The Mid Ulster MP said: "If the IRA had been involved...there would have been a defining moment in Sinn Fein's leadership's work with the IRA. It would have been totally and absolutely unacceptable to me."
However, the statement was greeted with hostility and suspicion by hardline unionists.
"P O'Neill obviously stands for Pinocchio O'Neill," said the DUP's Ian Paisley Jr.
"Just because you deny something does not mean to say you did not do it. It is up to the IRA to prove they did not do it."
Meanwhile, one of the Northern Bank staff forced to help an armed gang raid the bank's vaults has spoken publicly about his ordeal.
In interviews, Chris Ward said the raiders had considerable intelligence on his family and that of the other bank official involved, Kevin McMullan. In particular, they had used his involvement in a soccer supporters club as a ruse to gain entry to his home.
Mr Ward revealed the raiders had left over ten million pounds sterling behind as they made their getaway, minutes before a police foot patrol approached. The patrol, alerted to the suspicious behaviour at the bank of a number of men wearing wigs, saw nothing amiss and chose not to speak to the bank's security guards.
Asked if he had any opinion on who may have carried out the heist, Mr Ward said he had no idea. He added that the robbers referred to a similar raid last year on an Ulster Bank in Strabane, a theft of a smaller sum which was linked to the republican INLA (Irish National Liberation Army).
McDowell's attack on SF a reckless act
By Vincent Browne, Sunday Business Post
Minister for Justice Michael McDowell can never pass up an opportunity to voice an opinion.
The peace process in the North was jeopardised by the statement of opinion by Hugh Orde, the chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), that the IRA was responsible for the stg£26 million (€38million) Northern Bank robbery.
Circumstances of such delicacy might suggest some verbal restraint on the part of participants in negotiations.
However, McDowell can't resist a chance to prove how forensically brilliant he is, how fearless, how forthright.
In his broadside against the leadership of Sinn Féin on Thursday night, he made the following points (I have paraphrased what he said):
Orde is a professional and honest police officer, so his opinion on responsibility for the robbery is believable.
Gerry Adams has previously stated that criminality has no part in the republican movement. Since criminality has occurred, he is a hypocrite. The IRA has previously denied several actions for which it was later found to be responsible.
Adams and Martin McGuinness have made a career in the peace process of over-promising and under-delivering.
The Provisionals are now backing a new daily newspaper in Belfast.
The Provisionals are fraudulently trying to claim direct lineage from Arthur Griffith's Sinn Féin.
Senior Sinn Féin figures who play a senior role in the IRA are responsible for a pattern of violence, kidnapping, exiling and torture.
At the heart of the republican movement is the undemocratic conviction that the real government of Ireland is not the elected government, but the IRA Army Council.
The first two of these contentions are non-sequiturs.
Orde may be a police officer of honesty and integrity, but he may also simply be wrong in his opinion about IRA responsibility for the Belfast robbery.
Adams may be expressing a personal conviction about the nature of republicanism. The fact that others do not adhere to this view is not, in itself, evidence of hypocrisy on his part.
The new daily newspaper planned for Belfast is expected to be more in line with Sinn Féin's politics - as the Irish News is supportive of SDLP politics. But to suggest that the IRA is “backing'‘ this new venture is to defame the promoters of the enterprise.
What is so bad about Sinn Féin claiming lineage with Griffith's Sinn Féin? Personally, I couldn't care less, as I think Griffith's Sinn Féin was off the wall. I suspect McDowell thinks likewise, so why should he care?
On the stuff about republicans adhering to the undemocratic conviction that the real government of the country is the Army Council of the IRA, if they want to believe that, let them. If they want to believe they are the true descendants of Cú Chulainn, let them.
What does it matter, provided they do not act on such idiotic convictions in a manner damaging to the public interest?
Anyway, is it not obvious that Adams and McGuinness have repeatedly accepted the democratic legitimacy of the southern state?
The claim that Adams and McGuinness promised much but delivered little is grossly unfair. Perhaps they made promises to the governments on which they were unable to deliver, but look at what they did deliver.
They delivered a ceasefire that has remained more or less intact for more than ten years.
Yes, there was a break in the ceasefire for several months during which several people were murdered by the IRA.
Yes, there has been IRA criminality. But look at how the situation has been transformed.
To refuse to acknowledge this is simply dishonest. We should not be grateful to the IRA for stopping killing as many people as they used to kill, but the roles of Adams and McGuinness in helping to bring this about should be recorded.
They delivered the republican movement in favour of the Good Friday Agreement, which defied the very core of republican philosophy by acknowledging the right of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland to decide the constitutional future of the North. That was a huge bonus.
Persuading the IRA to abandon its initial stance of “not an ounce, not a bullet'‘ and to start decommissioning was an immense advance. To get it to agree to the complete decommissioning of IRA weapons was an enormous step forward.
Bringing the republican movement to the verge of accepting the new PSNI and to the verge of committing the organisation to end all acts of violence and criminality was also a huge step.
Let me explain. It is true that the IRA baulked at the form of words proposed by the two governments on the issue of criminality. There was understandable reason for that: the IRA has always claimed that it does not engage in criminality.
It says it is about a political struggle which, of course, involves methods that, under the present legal system, are illegal. But it rejects the characterisation of criminality, which was the issue at the core of the 1980 hunger strikes.
It is now clear that the IRA would have negotiated on a formula of words that would have taken care of the issue that was of concern to the governments and the other parties.
So to suggest that Adams and McGuinness have promised much and delivered little is unfair.
Finally, with regard to the personal responsibility of senior Sinn Féin figures for reprehensible acts of torture and violence, perhaps they were responsible.
For what it is worth, that is also my view. But I also believe that Sinn Féin have been committed to the cessation of all such actions for well over a decade now.
To imply otherwise, as McDowell is doing, is reckless.
Either the peace process - which essentially involves bringing the extremes of Northern politics into reconciliation and government - is to progress or it is to be abandoned.
I understand from what Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has said that it is government policy to advance the peace process. Given that view, what contribution has McDowell made?
One final constructive proposal to assist the peace process (with acknowledgment to Liz O'Donnell): decommission Michael McDowell.
Copyright © 2005 Sunday Business Post