UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
Unanswered questions
Why was vital information on mobile calls between the Omagh bombers, which were monitored by GCHQ, not passed on at all to detectives investigating the atrocity, asks John Ware
Monday at the Belfast High Court was a truly liberating moment, was it not? Cell doors may not have clanged shut on those who destroyed the lives of so many at Omagh. But at least four of the individuals responsible for that most wicked of crimes now have a financial millstone slung around their necks for the rest of their lives.
Liberating, too, because I have never seen the Omagh families looking so genuinely happy. It was as if Mr Justice Morgan had put oxygen masks on all of them, reviving their cells starved for a decade of justice.
And, let's be fair, it was a good day for the PSNI and Gardai. The verdict salvaged something of their reputation because without their assistance and evidence, the families would not have prevailed. Nor should we forget the role of Peter Mandelson, a stalwart to the families.
So, does success in the civil courts mean the curtain can now close on Omagh?
Regrettably, not. It would, I think, be a travesty for history to record that the failure of the criminal justice system was simply down to the failings of the old RUC.
There clearly were major failings by the Special Branch in not passing to the CID all relevant intelligence to maximise evidential opportunities. Likewise the CID seem not always to have maximised their own opportunities.
Also, the fact that the bomb went off north of the border and almost all the culprits lived south was a much bigger obstacle than has been generally appreciated.
Intelligence sharing was sometimes non existent. No written protocols existed between the two forces to manage the exchange of documents and information. Formal requests could be slow and cumbersome. So although the RUC had primacy because the crime was committed in their jurisdiction, they were often powerless to influence the course and direction of the Gardai investigation.
All that said, there remains to this day one outstanding question which neither ministers, nor the PSNI Chief Constable nor, in fact, anyone in government seems prepared to clarify. This relates to the role of the government's eavesdropping agency, GCHQ.
Last autumn, our second Omagh Panorama disclosed that GCHQ had been monitoring some of the telephones used in the bombing. The Prime Minister asked the Intelligence Services Commissioner Sir Peter Gibson to "review any intercept material available to the security and intelligence agencies in relation to the Omagh bombing and how this intelligence was shared."
Not surprisingly the Omagh families, their lawyers and I all dared to hope that Sir Peter's Review would squarely address the issue at the heart of the programme which was that neither the fact of interception nor the telephone numbers were ever shared with the CID trying to identify the bombers.
Had these leads been shared, the CID could have swiftly discovered the names of the phones' registered owners, affording them an early paper trail. Detectives refer to the initial phase of an inquiry as the "Golden Hours" when forensic and other evidential opportunities are at their maximum.
However, we now learn from Sir Peter's recent evidence to MPs on the Northern Ireland ' Affairs Committee that he "deliberately did not" investigate the issue that we assumed had triggered his review: why the CID were given none of the telephone numbers. Sir Peter explained that his terms of reference were "limited" and that although "the Prime Minister's action appears to have been prompted by the Panorama programme... I was not asked to examine, nor did I examine, any issue other than those identified to me by the Prime Minister whether or not others featured in the Panorama programme..."
So what were the particular issues Sir Peter was asked to examine? They seem to have been mainly concerned with the important but secondary question we raised: if GCHQ were listening live, could the bombing have been stopped?
Sir Peter says categorically no. This has been a grand distraction from the primary issue as encapsulated in the programme title "Omagh: What The Police Were Never Told": why exactly were the detectives, competent, incompetent or indifferent, never given the intercept evidential bullets to fire in the first place in order to get the culprits behind bars? Last summer when I was satisfied there had been intercepts, I told Detective Chief Superintendent Norman Baxter who was then still leading the inquiry.
He replied: "As the current SIO (senior investigation officer) I would be somewhat saddened if what you are saying from your research is true as it would mean that the investigation on the 15th August was effectively sabotaged through the starvation of essential intelligence which would have created immediate opportunities for executive police action to bring the culprits to justice, to search their homes and to recover vital evidence. This opportunity did not arise for many weeks and, in the case of two key witnesses, nine months."
What Baxter meant was that although the CID did eventually work out for themselves that mobiles had been used to co-ordinate the bomb run, by the time detectives had trawled through literally millions of numbers trying to identify which telephones had been involved in Omagh and four linked bombings, nine months had passed. At no stage have the CID ever been told there were intercepts.
Asked by MPs what was the point of GCHQ monitoring telephones if the information was not passed to the CID, Sir Peter said simply that they would "have to ask Special Branch". He certainly astonished me by saying it was "not up to GCHQ" what intelligence derived from GCHQ monitoring should have been shared with the CID. Indeed, in one part of his review, he says the Branch could have sought GCHQ's permission for "further dissemination of any GCHQ material... the records show that no such request was made."
So the Branch had only to ask then? Well, not quite. In another part of his review Sir Peter also says "strict conditions" were "imposed by GCHQ" about dissemination to Special Branch and beyond. This was certainly the reality on the ground, according to the Branch officers from that time. For as Sir Peter himself acknowledges: "GCHQ's permission had to be sought for the use of intelligence in a 'sanitised' form, that is without revealing its source, to carry out some authorised action." This, he says, was to protect "GCHQ's capabilities, sources and methods."
In other words GCHQ procedures did not, in fact, allow any disclosure which would have indicated that telephone interception was the source of intelligence.
Why can't the government just acknowledge that? Presumably, because to do so would be to acknowledge there had been intercepts in the first-place. The Omagh families have had their day in a civil court. But neither they, their lawyers, nor indeed any of us are any clearer as to why they could not have been given a better chance of having it in a criminal court, sparing them a decade of such anguish and distress, never mind the enormous damage to the reputation of the police and the criminal justice system?
Why was vital information on mobile calls between the Omagh bombers, which were monitored by GCHQ, not passed on at all to detectives investigating the atrocity, asks John Ware
Monday at the Belfast High Court was a truly liberating moment, was it not? Cell doors may not have clanged shut on those who destroyed the lives of so many at Omagh. But at least four of the individuals responsible for that most wicked of crimes now have a financial millstone slung around their necks for the rest of their lives.
Liberating, too, because I have never seen the Omagh families looking so genuinely happy. It was as if Mr Justice Morgan had put oxygen masks on all of them, reviving their cells starved for a decade of justice.
And, let's be fair, it was a good day for the PSNI and Gardai. The verdict salvaged something of their reputation because without their assistance and evidence, the families would not have prevailed. Nor should we forget the role of Peter Mandelson, a stalwart to the families.
So, does success in the civil courts mean the curtain can now close on Omagh?
Regrettably, not. It would, I think, be a travesty for history to record that the failure of the criminal justice system was simply down to the failings of the old RUC.
There clearly were major failings by the Special Branch in not passing to the CID all relevant intelligence to maximise evidential opportunities. Likewise the CID seem not always to have maximised their own opportunities.
Also, the fact that the bomb went off north of the border and almost all the culprits lived south was a much bigger obstacle than has been generally appreciated.
Intelligence sharing was sometimes non existent. No written protocols existed between the two forces to manage the exchange of documents and information. Formal requests could be slow and cumbersome. So although the RUC had primacy because the crime was committed in their jurisdiction, they were often powerless to influence the course and direction of the Gardai investigation.
All that said, there remains to this day one outstanding question which neither ministers, nor the PSNI Chief Constable nor, in fact, anyone in government seems prepared to clarify. This relates to the role of the government's eavesdropping agency, GCHQ.
Last autumn, our second Omagh Panorama disclosed that GCHQ had been monitoring some of the telephones used in the bombing. The Prime Minister asked the Intelligence Services Commissioner Sir Peter Gibson to "review any intercept material available to the security and intelligence agencies in relation to the Omagh bombing and how this intelligence was shared."
Not surprisingly the Omagh families, their lawyers and I all dared to hope that Sir Peter's Review would squarely address the issue at the heart of the programme which was that neither the fact of interception nor the telephone numbers were ever shared with the CID trying to identify the bombers.
Had these leads been shared, the CID could have swiftly discovered the names of the phones' registered owners, affording them an early paper trail. Detectives refer to the initial phase of an inquiry as the "Golden Hours" when forensic and other evidential opportunities are at their maximum.
However, we now learn from Sir Peter's recent evidence to MPs on the Northern Ireland ' Affairs Committee that he "deliberately did not" investigate the issue that we assumed had triggered his review: why the CID were given none of the telephone numbers. Sir Peter explained that his terms of reference were "limited" and that although "the Prime Minister's action appears to have been prompted by the Panorama programme... I was not asked to examine, nor did I examine, any issue other than those identified to me by the Prime Minister whether or not others featured in the Panorama programme..."
So what were the particular issues Sir Peter was asked to examine? They seem to have been mainly concerned with the important but secondary question we raised: if GCHQ were listening live, could the bombing have been stopped?
Sir Peter says categorically no. This has been a grand distraction from the primary issue as encapsulated in the programme title "Omagh: What The Police Were Never Told": why exactly were the detectives, competent, incompetent or indifferent, never given the intercept evidential bullets to fire in the first place in order to get the culprits behind bars? Last summer when I was satisfied there had been intercepts, I told Detective Chief Superintendent Norman Baxter who was then still leading the inquiry.
He replied: "As the current SIO (senior investigation officer) I would be somewhat saddened if what you are saying from your research is true as it would mean that the investigation on the 15th August was effectively sabotaged through the starvation of essential intelligence which would have created immediate opportunities for executive police action to bring the culprits to justice, to search their homes and to recover vital evidence. This opportunity did not arise for many weeks and, in the case of two key witnesses, nine months."
What Baxter meant was that although the CID did eventually work out for themselves that mobiles had been used to co-ordinate the bomb run, by the time detectives had trawled through literally millions of numbers trying to identify which telephones had been involved in Omagh and four linked bombings, nine months had passed. At no stage have the CID ever been told there were intercepts.
Asked by MPs what was the point of GCHQ monitoring telephones if the information was not passed to the CID, Sir Peter said simply that they would "have to ask Special Branch". He certainly astonished me by saying it was "not up to GCHQ" what intelligence derived from GCHQ monitoring should have been shared with the CID. Indeed, in one part of his review, he says the Branch could have sought GCHQ's permission for "further dissemination of any GCHQ material... the records show that no such request was made."
So the Branch had only to ask then? Well, not quite. In another part of his review Sir Peter also says "strict conditions" were "imposed by GCHQ" about dissemination to Special Branch and beyond. This was certainly the reality on the ground, according to the Branch officers from that time. For as Sir Peter himself acknowledges: "GCHQ's permission had to be sought for the use of intelligence in a 'sanitised' form, that is without revealing its source, to carry out some authorised action." This, he says, was to protect "GCHQ's capabilities, sources and methods."
In other words GCHQ procedures did not, in fact, allow any disclosure which would have indicated that telephone interception was the source of intelligence.
Why can't the government just acknowledge that? Presumably, because to do so would be to acknowledge there had been intercepts in the first-place. The Omagh families have had their day in a civil court. But neither they, their lawyers, nor indeed any of us are any clearer as to why they could not have been given a better chance of having it in a criminal court, sparing them a decade of such anguish and distress, never mind the enormous damage to the reputation of the police and the criminal justice system?
Further Information
Publisher: BELFAST TELEGRAPH
Ref: BT/1168
Published Date: 12-Jun-09
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