Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
60-79)
MR JOHN
WARE AND
MR LEO
TELLING
25 MARCH 2009
Q60 Chairman: You are, of course,
referring quite appropriately and properly to the version of Sir
Peter's report, the published version.
Mr Ware: I am, that is true.
Q61 Chairman: Of course you are.
You have not seen—
Mr Ware: No, I have not.
Q62 Chairman: Now Sir Hugh Orde,
who obviously has seen the full version, seems entirely reassured
by Sir Peter's report.
Mr Ware: In what respect?
Q63 Chairman: Well, he has gone on
record, and we have it here, as saying that he does not believe
that anything could have been done to prevent the bombing, and
that there was no—
Mr Ware: He has, I noticed that,
but Sir Patrick, he has said that, I do not know how hard he has
been grilled on that.
Q64 Chairman: I think that is casting
aspersions on a highly respected—
Mr Ware: No, I am not, I am simply
drawing a distinction—I am not. But what I am doing is I
think you can also find, I cannot remember where the reference
is, that Sir Hugh has said that he has no dispute with the conclusions
of the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland, the former Ombudsman,
Nuala O'Loan in December 2001. I cannot turn up the reference,
but in effect she said had all the intelligence been available
and assessed properly over that weekend, there could have been
further evidential opportunities. What she is saying there is
they could have hit some doors, instead of mucking about with
the five arrests that they did make, which had no relevance at
all to the incident, these were just names of suspects in the
Omagh area. I am quite satisfied that the people who reviewed
all that material were quite satisfied themselves that opportunities
were there for the taking very quickly. So Sir Hugh would need
to say why on the one hand he does not think anything could have
been done but at the same time he agrees with the Police Ombudsman,
because part of their evidence did include access to the intercept
material.
Chairman: Yes, we will have a chance
to ask Sir Hugh on a future occasion about these things.
Q65 Mr Murphy: But irrespective of
the amount of material that was available to GCHQ, it would only
be of any use at all if it was passed on, and even if it was passed
on to, I presume then it would have been Special Branch South,
which was in Portadown, they were not allowed to share that information
with their colleagues in the North unless they sought permission
from GCHQ, and then and only then, according to Sir Peter's report,
could they pass on a sanitised version of that.
Mr Ware: That is right.
Q66 Mr Murphy: Which GCHQ were happy
with.
Mr Ware: That was not the law,
those were their protocols at the time.
Q67 Mr Murphy: I am merely posing
the question, that it would be almost impossible, irrespective
of the information that was held at GCHQ, unless the rules were
relaxed, to know that information.
Mr Ware: I accept that, but the
rules have subsequently been—I do not know about relaxed,
but changed, reformed, and that seems to be to me to be a recognition
that the protocols in place at the time were not fit at least
for the purpose of bringing to justice people involved in mass
murder.
Q68 Mr Murphy: Sir Peter almost says
that in his report.
Mr Ware: Why does he not say it?
He spends a lot of time talking about Panorama. Why does
he not say this? That is the question, with respect, you need
to ask him.
Q69 Mr Murphy: He does concede that
what was in place with GCHQ would actually prevent that information
being passed on, so whilst he does not condemn that—
Mr Ware: He is not actually saying
that, with respect. He is saying the Special Branch were cautious,
they could have gone back to ask them, they never did. Well maybe
the reason they never did was because they knew there was not
a hope in hell of them getting an affirmative answer, but I do
not know.
Q70 Mr Murphy: That is exactly what
I read into that.
Mr Ware: But the point is that
Sir Peter, with the greatest respect to him, leaves all this terribly
opaque. He is happy to editorialise in respect of Panorama
about a subsidiary issue—
Q71 Mr Murphy: I am not defending
him.
Mr Ware: I know you are not, but
you have given me the opportunity to make the point. He is happy
to editorialise about the extent to which we have raised in my
view a totally legitimate question about whether the bombing could
have been stopped once we were satisfied, as we are and as we
remain today, that there were intercepts, but he says absolutely
nothing about the wisdom of those protocols, and the question
is why.
Q72 Chairman: Well, the Committee
may well have the chance to ask Sir Peter that.
Mr Ware: I hope you do.
Q73 Chairman: There are two essential
issues here which are troubling the families of Omagh, and we
saw them again last week. The first question is: could that bombing
conceivably have been anticipated and therefore stopped? You are
not saying that it could have been, you are raising those questions.
The other question, of course, is why has it taken so long not
to bring the right people to account, and you very properly included
a clip of Sir Ronnie Flanagan saying that no stone would be left
unturned. Well, however many stones have been turned or unturned,
nobody has yet been convicted of this most appalling atrocity,
and what we are seeking to do, in our brief inquiry, we met the
Omagh victims, is to pursue these two issues to see whether we
believe (a) that something could have been done to stop it, but
(b) whether more could have been done to bring to justice the
perpetrators.
Mr Ware: Yes, I follow.
Q74 Chairman: Those are our essential
tasks and we are focusing on those tasks. Insofar as you can help
us with them we are very grateful.
Mr Ware: I cannot help you as
to whether the bombing could have been stopped. I have no reason—Sir
Peter is pretty clear it could not have been stopped. He has had
access—
Q75 Chairman: And you do not challenge
that?
Mr Ware: How can I challenge that?
There are a lot of questions I want to ask about that, because
I think again there are some, on the face of it, which may—
Q76 Chairman: I am sorry to pin you
down, but it is very important that we do if we are going to conduct
this inquiry. You are not in fact challenging, as I infer from
what you say—
Mr Ware: It is a qualified unchallenge.
OK? It's an unqualified challenge.
Chairman: Alright. Thank you for that,
that is reasonably clear. I will bring in Mr Simpson, then Dr
McDonnell, and then back to Lady Hermon.
Q77 David Simpson: We just do not
have the time, John, to go into all the detail and all the questions
that we would like to ask, and I think the programme did reveal
a lot and a lot of concerns, and I think it raised a lot of issues,
but in relation to one point, do you accept Sir Peter Gibson's
dismissal of your assertion that the Gards in the South had warned
the Northern Ireland counterparts of a likely attack?
Mr Ware: Mr Simpson, I do not
entirely, and I can explain why. This is terribly frustrating
because I cannot disclose my sources, but this source is a very
reliable individual. This source was, so this source tells me,
with the individual from the Special Branch who was made aware
on the 14th that the Garda Síochána were concerned
there may be something on the move. Now I have not seen a record
of this warning, if one was given. I think there were at that
time a number of warnings, the whole border was pretty jittery,
as you will recall these dreadful bombings coming up through the
Dundalk/Newry corridor, so everybody was very jittery, and how
formalised, how confident this particular warning was, I simply
cannot say, but I know what I was told, and I have been back to
this source on a number of occasions. And I would just say this,
that it is consistent with other things that I know about that
were what I believe to have been known to the Gards at the time,
and I want to make it absolutely clear, in no way am I buying
into this business about Detective Garda John White, with which
I am sure you will all be familiar. Nothing that has ever been
said to me about the Garda Síochána Crime and Intelligence
Branch allowing a bomb to go through has ever—I think there
are major problems with Detective Garda White's credibility in
all sorts of ways, I just want to make that clear. None of this
relates to that. However, in the course of my interview with Sir
Peter, I did suggest a number of people that he might want to
go and interview, one of whom I knew to my certain knowledge he
had not interviewed, because in fact I had had a conversation
with this individual, as it happened, a few days earlier. My understanding
is he then did go and interview this individual, but according
to this individual's account of his interview with Sir Peter to
me, he did not ask him about 14 August. So for Sir Peter to say
"there is no evidence whatever before me" is not strictly
true.
Q78 Mr Hepburn: Then why did he not
offer that information? Surely it was a crucial point. Why did
the individual you are talking about, if he was being interviewed
by Sir Peter, not offer that information?
Mr Ware: I cannot answer that.
Q79 Mr Hepburn: Do you not think it is
strange, when you are saying—
Mr Ware: I suppose on the face
of it, it is a bit strange, but I do not know what—
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