Examination of Witness (Question Numbers
240-259)
DAME NUALA
O'LOAN, DBE
8 JULY 2009
Q240 David Simpson: Sir Peter notes
in his review that Special Branch briefed CID officers the day
after the bombing, I think that the information was given to him
on 20 August. John Ware has said that his CID sources recall no
such briefing on 20 August and that the CID log for the time contained
no record of such a briefing. Is Sir Peter Gibson correct to say
that Special Branch briefed detectives with the names of suspects
on 20 August 1998, five days after the bombing, or did that first
briefing happen three weeks later as noted in your report of 2001?
Dame Nuala O'Loan: My understanding
is that Special Branch briefed the senior investigating officers
on two occasions. In the first instance, my understanding is that
there was a briefing on 17 August and, in that briefing, I think
that a number of names were given to the investigating officers.
My recollection is that there was a series of arrests—and
I am working from memory and it was a long time ago—on 20
August or thereabouts and that those individuals were all released
and that subsequently there was another briefing which I think
was either on 8 or 9 September and there was a series of arrests
following that and those arrests seem to have been more serious
arrests.
Q241 David Simpson: So what you are
saying is that there was a briefing on 20 August?
Dame Nuala O'Loan: No, I did not
say there was a briefing on 20 August.
Q242 Chairman: A briefing on 17 August.
Dame Nuala O'Loan: I think there
was a briefing within 48 hours and I think the arrests followed
the briefing. The question then, of course, would be what was
in the briefing.
Q243 David Simpson: Lastly, how does
your report's detail of the 4 August warning that Omagh was a
target and the allegations made by Kevin Fulton square with Sir
Peter Gibson's conclusion that the security forces were not alerted
to any risk against a specific town and that there was "no
obvious reason why Omagh should be attacked"?
Dame Nuala O'Loan: I think that
is probably a question for Sir Peter because you are asking me
how did he reach a conclusion, if I may say so with respect. You
can look at an individual piece of information in isolation or
you can gather it together, and the function of Special Branch
is to gather information together and to be constantly reviewing
the picture that is emerging. The information which came in on
4 August that there would be an attack on police in Omagh on 15
August was information which was not shared with the senior investigating
officer. It was never shared with the sub-divisional commander
of Omagh and my contention in my report was that it should have
been so shared. I say in my report, and I do not think my view
has changed at all, that we will never know whether the bomb could
have been prevented. Having said that, had the sub-divisional
commander been alerted that there might be an attack on police
in Omagh on 15 August there were a number of options available
to him. One of those options would have been to put checkpoints
at all the entry points into the town, which geographically he
could have done. When we spoke to him he said that he had been
very shocked to discover that this information had been received
by the police and he had been unaware of it. He said initially
to us that his response would have been to set up checkpoints,
but he subsequently contacted us and said that was not the case
and he would have put as few officers out on the ground as possible.
Chairman, I cannot really explain why Sir Peter said what he did.
If I may make one other observation, and it is this, and I will
put it early so you do not have to tease it out of me, I will
put it on the record: the material of which I am aware practically
speaking in all probability could not have prevented the Omagh
bomb.
Chairman: It is very helpful to have
that on the record. Thank you very much indeed for that. There
do remain a number of very worrying aspects of this, but thank
you for putting that clearly on the record.
Q244 Lady Hermon: Dame Nuala, if
I can ask you about a couple of issues. You have confirmed that
you were able to hear the evidence given by our previous witness,
Mr Jason McCue. He was asked, and I paraphrase him here, whether
in fact he had heard rumours or speculation or was there any evidence
of an RUC sting operation. Did you, as Police Ombudsman at that
time investigating the RUC and their investigation of the Omagh
bombing, at any time have any information, any hint or any speculation
of a proposed sting operation by the RUC?
Dame Nuala O'Loan: No, Chairman,
I did not.
Q245 Lady Hermon: Not at any stage?
Dame Nuala O'Loan: No.
Q246 Lady Hermon: Thank you, that
confirms what I had thought all along. Could I now just ask you
in relation to the High Court judgment in the Omagh case, the
most recent one, does that have implications now for your successor
as Police Ombudsman? Are there issues arising from that judgment
which would lead to a further investigation by your successor?
Dame Nuala O'Loan: I am sorry,
Lady Hermon, I did read the judgment but I did not read it with
that hat on. I do apologise.
Lady Hermon: No, it is all right. What
was your reaction?
Q247 Chairman: Were you surprised
by the judgment?
Dame Nuala O'Loan: I think I have
to qualify what I say by saying that I have been so busy that
I was not able to follow the case in detail because I have been
overseas.
Q248 Lady Hermon: Out of the country
for quite a while, yes.
Dame Nuala O'Loan: Because I had
not read all the evidence, and because I know it is very unwise
to try and form a conclusion about a case where you have not heard
the evidence, I had not formulated any opinion but I was interested
to see what would happen. I was surprised because this is the
first time this has happened that we have had such a judgment.
On the other hand, I thought the judge—now we are getting
back into the judgment, which I read—articulated his reasoning
very clearly, so it seemed to me logical that he got to where
he got to.
Q249 Lady Hermon: Obviously a lot
of the judgment depended on the telephone numbers of the mobiles
that had been identified and linked, as Mr McCue said, and there
was a pattern in the use of those particular telephones. In light
of that and in light of the fact that in your capacity as Police
Ombudsman when you carried out your investigation you did have
access or did see the intelligence information in whatever capacity
it was provided to you, can I just ask if you have evidence why
on earth when GCHQ passed the intercept evidence, as we understand
it, to RUC Special Branch South it was not passed to Omagh and
RUC Special Branch North?
Dame Nuala O'Loan: In the first
instance, with respect, Lady Hermon, I cannot confirm the material
which I saw came from GCHQ. It would be a criminal offence for
me to do that.
Q250 Lady Hermon: I would not want
you to do that. That is fine.
Dame Nuala O'Loan: We went across
a number of evidential opportunity lines when we were conducting
our investigation and we went to the Security and Intelligence
Services. This is not the only case on which we went to the Security
and Intelligence Services. When we went to the Security Services
what they said to us was, "We will give you information.
We will let you see what we have got, but if you want to use that
information you have to seek our permission effectively and you
have to let us know". The process would be that we would
take information from them, we would use it and we would go back
to them with the paragraph which we were proposing to use in a
public report and agree with them the content of that paragraph,
but it would not in any way compromise anybody's life or any particular
methodology. We did use the material which I got from the Security
and Intelligence Services in formulating the report which we published,
both the detailed report which I gave to the Secretary of State
and the members of the Policing Board and the Chief Constable,
and also the report which I published. If I can refer you perhaps
to a couple of my paragraphs. I did make notes of where I had
this material. Paragraph 6 .19: "All the intelligence held
by the RUC which may have been relevant to the investigation of
the Omagh bomb has not been revealed to the Omagh Bomb Investigation
Team. Evidential opportunities which the intelligence and findings
of the Omagh Bomb Review Report offered have not been exploited".
I have a couple of other references to that information somewhere
else, which I cannot now find. Can you bear with a minute, Chairman?
Q251 Chairman: Of course.
Dame Nuala O'Loan: It is so long
since I have dealt with this. It is in paragraph 26.10-17 of my
big report, which is not a public report unfortunately. I do have
references from my other report. The essence of what I was saying
was repeatedly I said had all the available intelligence been
put together there would have been investigative opportunities
and the question must be asked whether there might have been the
possibility of preventing the bomb, and on each occasion on which
I referred to all available intelligence I was referring to all
the material which I had seen, some of which was Special Branch
material and some of which was material received from the Security
Services.
Q252 Chairman: You referred just
now to your big report which was not published. If it would be
convenient for you, perhaps the Committee could have five minutes
with you in private at the end of the public session.
Dame Nuala O'Loan: Yes certainly,
Chairman.
Chairman: Thank you. That would be very
helpful.
Q253 Mr Murphy: When the Secretary
of State came in front of this Committee to give evidence on 1
April we were pressing him on the issue you have just raised,
how quickly Special Branch passed intelligence to the detectives
investigating the Omagh bombing. The Secretary of State said:
"This issue has already had its inquiry; the Ombudsman did
it, the lessons have been learned and it has moved on". That
is an exact quotation. Do you agree with the Secretary of State
that your report actually covered all of the issues that were
raised with regard to the evidence that was available at that
time?
Dame Nuala O'Loan: The law does
not permit anyone to refer to certain types of evidence, Mr Murphy,
so my report covered it but did not cover it explicitly, if that
is of assistance to you.
Q254 Mr Murphy: Do you think Sir
Peter raised more questions in relation to this "cautious
way" in which Special Branch—
Dame Nuala O'Loan: Special Branch
did not disseminate material which they could have disseminated
to the CID officers investigating.
Q255 Chairman: Do you know why?
Dame Nuala O'Loan: No.
Q256 Chairman: Did you ask them?
Dame Nuala O'Loan: If I can explain
to you, Chairman. At the time that Special Branch was operating
they had very unusual ways of managing information. There were
no criteria, no guidelines, no force orders on which to benchmark
the relevance of any information which they would get or what
they should do with it. If you take even the Force Manual, which
is their standard operating procedures sort of thing, there is
no entry under the word "intelligence".
Q257 Chairman: Really!
Dame Nuala O'Loan: There was not.
You will find an entry under the words "Drugs intelligence",
but no entry under the word "intelligence". For example,
there was no CD through which you could search the force orders
to try and find what the rules were. There were no rules to regulate
the dissemination of information from Special Branch to the CID.
There were rules, the Walker report particularly, which regulated
the dissemination of information from CID, who were very often
talking to criminals who might have information which was national
security information so they had to give that to the Special Branch
officers, but there were no rules. We cannot explain why, and
I was unable to ascertain why, it was not passed on. Nobody had
a specific regulated responsibility to do it.
Q258 Chairman: So because nobody
had a designated responsibility nobody did it?
Dame Nuala O'Loan: I cannot draw
any conclusion as to why it did not happen, I simply know that
it did not happen.
Q259 Mr Murphy: Sir Peter also goes
on to say: "The Security and Intelligence Services cooperated
fully" with your investigation, "within the limit of
their statutory powers". How limited were their statutory
powers?
Dame Nuala O'Loan: Everybody is
limited by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and was
previously limited by the Interception of Communications Act.
They cannot just allow people in to trawl through their systems.
It is a matter for Sir Peter, I do not know what the limitations
on them were, but clearly we saw the material which we had surmised
might possibly be there. I did not personally see it, my senior
director of investigations saw it because he went to the premises
and examined what was there. He came back to me and made a report
to me.
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