They threw the book at Martin McGuinness yesterday. But cool as you like, he claimed not to have read it, and threw it back. Frank McNally in Derry reports
The book in question was the IRA's little green one - the organisation's training manual - and the bit that fascinated Edwin Glasgow, QC for a number of British soldiers, was a section advising volunteers how to exploit enemy mistakes for propaganda.
Like most lines of questioning these past two days, this one didn't get far. Asked if he understood what was meant by "the green book", Mr McGuinness exploited the question for propaganda purposes, drawing laughter from the gallery by suggesting that he presumed it meant the book was green.
Pressed further, however, he said there had been no such thing in 1972 - an historic fact, since the manual dates from later in the decade - and he'd never studied it since.
He had no need to, by his own account, because in the biggest revelation of the day, he said he left the IRA "in the early 1970s". Mind you, he first declined to discuss his retirement from military life on the grounds that it wasn't relevant, until the fiercely polite Mr Glasgow protested that he had asked exactly the same question of the British soldiers. Mr McGuinness's eventual reply raised eyebrows in the gallery, but the urbane QC kept his firmly where they were.
The little green one was not the only book thrown at the witness yesterday. Earlier, counsel for Paddy Ward - a former republican whose evidence differs sharply from the Sinn Féin MP's - produced another one from the 1970s, entitled "Derry Through the Lens". The front of it featured a picture of a cocked revolver, and among the book's credits was the line: "cover designed by Martin McGuinness".
Mr McGuinness laughed off the suggestion that he had ever been involved in publishing. It wasn't quite clear what the point of the exhibit was, anyway: if you can't judge a book by a cover, you can hardly judge a tribunal witness. But when Anthony Jennings QC responded that it must have been "some other Martin McGuinness," the man on the stand again exploited his advantage, and the public gallery's sense of humour, saying: "I think you need to get your act together." To which Mr Jennings snapped: "You're the one who's been getting an act together, Mr McGuinness."
The need for covers of a different kind has been one of the problems facing this tribunal. In yet another "intelligence document" produced yesterday, only five lines of text were readable while 22 were blacked out. "It doesn't look very intelligent," quipped the witness, before protesting that even the document's date, never mind its source, had been edited out.
It purported to be a list of IRA membership in Derry, and among the few names unblanked were those of Mr McGuinness and Paddy Ward. The attempt to bolster the latter's bona fides was easily repulsed by the former, however. And even Mr Jennings admitted frustration with the tribunal's decision to withhold the date. But of course the date of such a fruitful police interview might be cross-referenced with the dates when certain people were in custody, a point tacitly acknowledged by the chairman when he cited the inquiry's obligations to protect identities.
Mr McGuinness knows the score. He began the day by confirming that, as requested on Tuesday, he had been in contact with the owners of the safe house used on Bloody Sunday, and of the premises where IRA arms were stored, and in both cases had been asked not to reveal details. This is one area where he happily admits designing covers, and he was not going to blow them now.