It's difficult to avoid the conclusion that the British government must feel that it plumped for the wrong man when Judge Peter Cory was appointed to assess whether the murders of Pat Finucane, Robert Hamill, Rosemary Nelson and Billy Wright warranted independent inquiries. Judge Cory remains unconvinced about British excuses, writes Gerry Moriarty.
An apparent solid establishment figure, a former judge on Canada's Supreme Court, at age 77 sufficiently long in the legal tooth to understand the pragmatic workings of government, perhaps the British felt he would be equally pragmatic, from its perspective, in his recommendations.
The retired Canadian judge however illustrated his independence and his disgruntlement with the British government by personally informing the four families on Monday afternoon that he urged the British to hold independent public inquiries into the murders, all of which carry allegations of collusion.
In going above the head of the British government, he demonstrated that he remains unconvinced about its excuses for not publishing his reports and calling the inquiries.
The central point made by the British side is that Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair has already pledged that the reports will be published, but that first they must receive legal advice on how the reports will be presented.
The British government has been waiting for that advice for three months now, which seems rather long.
On Judge Cory's recommendation the Irish Government agreed to hold an inquiry into allegations of Garda collusion in the IRA murders of RUC Chief Supt Harry Breen and Supt Bob Buchanan near Dundalk, close to the Border in 1989. He found no evidence of collusion in the 1987 IRA murders of Lord Justice Gibson and Lady Gibson.
The British argue that in the Finucane, Hamill, Nelson and Wright cases there must be concern about the safety of people mentioned in the reports.
And in relation to the UDA 1989 murder of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane, and the 1987 loyalist mob attack on Robert Hamill in Portadown, they point out that people face charges, and that in the particular case of Mr Finucane, more may be charged.
"How can you hold independent inquiries when there are already some cases before the courts? There is the real issue of a right to a fair trial," said one official.
Moreover there is the matter of the British Salmon Principles whereby legally, it is argued, those mentioned in the Cory reports could be entitled to have sight and to challenge what is written about them.
If the Salmon Principles mechanism is applied, then publication could be delayed for months or more.
A reasonable assumption here is that a man of Judge Cory's experience, in line with his terms of reference, made allowances for such concerns in his reports. Implicit in his going direct to the families is that he believes publication would not threaten people's personal safety or prejudice court hearings.
There are allegations of security force collusion in the 1997 INLA killing of LVF leader Billy Wright in the Maze Prison, in the 1999 LVF bomb attack that killed Lurgan solicitor Rosemary Nelson, and in the 1997 loyalist fatal beating of Robert Hamill in Portadown.
But the most explosive of the cases relates to Pat Finucane - the subject of long years of investigation by the Stevens inquiry - who as a solicitor successfully defended IRA suspects. It goes right to the heart of the dirty war involving the intelligence agencies of the RUC and British army, drawing in such sinister figures as the late Brian Nelson, a UDA member who was an army agent.
It also raises questions about how much the British political establishment knew about what was going on, and how far up the political ladder the information went. Some of the detail is in the public domain but largely it's a very murky untold story that senior people in the British security services and probably the British government would prefer to remain untold.
That currently is the main concern of the families: that the British government is mounting a defensive rearguard action to prevent the truth emerging. Their view is that Tony Blair's much-vaunted bona fides will be tested by whether Judge Cory's reports are published and inquiries held.