Garda shadow hangs over ambush

Will the inquiry into the killing of two RUC men substantiate the allegation that a Garda informer was involved, asks Mark Hennessy

Seconds after coming under fire in an IRA ambush, RUC Chief Supt Harry Breen, badly wounded, struggled from a car on a lonely country road in south Armagh, waved a white handkerchief and begged for his life.

An unmasked IRA gunman, one of a gang of up to 20 who had planned his death, walked slowly up to the unarmed man and, in front of eye-witnesses, shot him in the back of the head.

Seconds before, Breen and his colleague, Supt Bob Buchanan, both unarmed, had been travelling back from a meeting about cross-Border smuggling in Dundalk Garda station.

The double murder in March 1989 - involving the most senior police officers killed by the IRA - stunned the RUC and led to rumours and allegations, which persist to this day, that the men were betrayed by a Garda informer.

With or without an informer's hand, though, it would not have been difficult for the IRA in south Armagh to organise the murder of the men, given Supt Buchanan's less than stringent security. He frequently attended meetings in Dundalk, using the same route more often than not, while he also tended to park his own three-year-old car in full view in the station's front car park.

Chief Supt Breen, on the other hand, rarely travelled across the Border and did so on this occasion only because he wanted to pass on information about the smuggling activities of one leading Louth IRA man. He had not wanted to go, expressing fears to a colleague before he left Armagh at lunchtime that one of the Dundalk gardaí, whom he named, was passing information to the IRA.

The IRA had been after the two RUC men for a long time, particularly since Tyrone IRA man Michael Lynagh's eight-strong unit had been wiped out during an attack on Loughall RUC station two years before. The plan to kill Chief Supt Breen and Supt Buchanan had gone on for a week, though intelligence reports suggest that the IRA intended to kidnap and torture the two before killing them, rather than doing so straight away.

The two officers left Newry at 1.50pm and arrived in Dundalk shortly after 2.10pm. With their business done they left for home at 3.15pm, careful not to say what road they would be using.

However, it may not have made any difference. The IRA had posted units on all the roads north: the main Dublin/Belfast road; the main Omeath/Newry Road; the Carrickmacross road; and the road on which the ambush took place, the Edenappa Road.

Just four minutes before Supt Buchanan's car arrived from Dundalk, two of the Edenappa unit, dressed in full combats and wearing camouflage cream, moved in, stopping three southbound cars, thus blocking one lane.

Believing that he was passing a security checkpoint, not uncommon even in south Armagh where security forces moved carefully, Supt Buchanan drove on, only to be trapped by a white or cream-coloured Liteace van, from which four more gunmen emerged.

In a dispassionate report written for the British Ministry of Defence within days of the double killing, the 1st Battalion, Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, said the IRA team had chosen an "excellent ambush position. Mr Buchanan attempted to reverse out of the ambush but came up against a wall and stopped. Mr Breen got out of the car and waved a handkerchief.

"One of the gunmen walked up to him and shot him in the head. Mr Buchanan was dispatched in the same manner while still strapped in his seat belt. It is probable at this stage that he was already dead."

THIS WEEK, THE Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, announced that Judge Peter Smithwick will chair a tribunal of inquiry into allegations that a Garda informer was involved in the killings. Such an allegation has been investigated before, most particularly by former Garda assistant commissioner, Ned O'Dea, in 2000. That investigation was ordered after Daily Telegraph journalist Toby Harnden had put the allegation into print in his book Bandit Country.

Former assistant commissioner O'Dea interviewed Harnden, as well as Irish Times journalist Kevin Myers who had written a column repeating much of Harnden's allegations, but found that no real evidence existed.

Following his review of Garda interviews with both men, a Canadian judge, Peter Cory, who investigated eight controversial killings from the Troubles at the invitation of the Irish and British governments, agreed.

"The interviews revealed how little these gentlemen relied upon fact and how much they relied upon suspicion and hypothesis," he said in his 2001 report. Bitterly annoyed, Harnden, whose book sold 140,000 copies, countered that the judge had never interviewed him directly, and that Garda officers had misquoted him after they interviewed him in Washington.

A Northern Ireland investigation by former RUC deputy chief constable Colin Cramphorn found "that no evidence exists, nor can any documentation be located, which indicates Garda collusion with subversives".

FOR NOW, SENIOR Government and Garda figures in the Republic are confident that a full public inquiry will show convincingly that there was no Garda informer, that it is but one of many myths of the Troubles. They are content for a full probe to go ahead as part of a bargaining deal with London. The British government is under pressure to accept much more problematic inquiries - ones that go to the heart of the relationship between a state and its "dogs of war". Some of these inquiries, such as one into the death of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane, and others, may support charges that British security forces colluded with Loyalist paramilitaries.

So far, the powerful British security establishment, including MI5 and MI6, has done everything possible to prevent the Finucane inquiry getting underway. Despite repeated promises, London is now suggesting a more restricted inquiry into Finucane, one that could hear some evidence in private and be prevented from hearing other evidence.

On this side of the Irish Sea, some people are not so sure that the Government and the Garda have little to worry about in the case of Harry Breen and Bob Buchanan. For years, some SDLP politicians have never been slow to identify, in private, a particular officer as the source of the intelligence - though they have never been able to produce proof. The officer has since left the force, and built up considerable wealth, though he denied all allegations and was never disciplined by Garda authorities.

For years, it has been alleged that a small number of gardaí in Border stations were bribed by the IRA to avert their eyes from smuggling operations, which is hardly surprising given the amount of smuggling that went on.

But could the co-operation have gone further? Judge Cory believes it did not.

Sixteen years on, it is far from clear that a tribunal of inquiry into the final hours of Harry Breen and Bob Buchanan will leave us any the wiser.