OPEN THE VAULTS

Posted by Jim on June 13, 2015

The head of the PSNI police in the north of Ireland, George Hamilton,
has said the force has a “vault” of secret information on the conflict
in the North but is concerned its release would create a “one sided
focus” on the force’s actions.

Mr Hamilton was speaking as a new television documentary, the third to
be broadcast in less than three weeks, further increased pressure for
the British state to tell the truth on its murderous collusion with
hundreds of informers and state agents.

Hamilton said he would consider allowing the proposed Historical
Investigations Unit (HIU) to look at the material, which he said
contained “millions of documents”, but that some information would have
to be legally suppressed “to protect lives and to protect people’s
privacy”.

He said that if the vault is opened, “out of that will pour material
that will present challenges for other people in the system”.

“I don’t think we should be exempt from scrutiny from investigation in
the police service, past or present. I think that’s good… but I
actually think other people have stories to tell and questions to
answer,” Hamilton told journalists ahead of the broadcast.

He feared the records, including plans for covert operations and minutes
of meetings, meant that there would be an excessive focus on the role of
the RUC/PSNI police in atrocities.

“My understanding is that the IRA, the UVF and the other players in this
didn’t keep notes or minutes of meetings or records of decisions… we
did. And I think all of that has left us somewhat exposed.”

Lawyer Kevin Winters, whose firm represents many of those who were
victims of collusion, said if the reported “vault” had been opened years
ago, “we wouldn’t have all this civil litigation. If the government had
said: ‘Yes, we saved lives, but we got things wrong as well’… It’s
the blanket denial that’s the problem. The families just want to know
what happened.”

Hamilton was speaking ahead of a documentary by Irish state broadcaster,
RTE, to be aired next Monday, which will allege that collusion between
the Crown forces and loyalist paramilitaries went right to the top of
the British government, with former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
turning a blind eye to it.

The programme points out that the Crown forces concentrated their
efforts on “destroying” the Provisional IRA, at the same time as
publicly stating that it was dealing with the conflict in an even-handed
way.

Such was the extent of collusion with loyalists in the 1980s that a RUC
Special Branchman tipped off a top-level UDA paramilitary ‘brigadier’
about the presence of an informer in the organisation.

The programme includes a statement by a former member of the RUC/PSNI
Special Branch, that when he raised the issue of the use of informers
and agents with government authorities, the message he received from the
Thatcher administration in London was “carry on – just don’t get
caught”.

Former PSNI Chief Hugh Orde also told documentary marker John Ware that
the former head of the British Army’s secret Force Research Unit (FRU),
Gordon Kerr, should have been put on trial over collusion — without
admitting any complicity of his own. Former Police Ombudsman Nuala
O’Loan tells the same programme that she was pressured to drop her
investigations into PSNI collusion after Orde became PSNI chief in 2002.

Mark Thompson, director of Relatives for Justice, said there was no
longer any doubt that collusion was formally approved by the British
government. He said the ‘Kitsonian doctrine’, or the ‘dirty war’ of low
intensity operations put in place in the early 70s by British Army
brigadier Frank Kitson, had “framed the entire conflict”. He said a
“firewall of protection” existed through unwritten rules and guidelines
that would otherwise create a trail of responsibility to the door of No.
10 Downing Street.

“In meetings with the most senior government, military and police
officials, one imagines, no one specifically identifies a particular
person and says “go and kill’ or “take out that person”, especially
meetings and briefings involving a prime minister,” he said.

“It’s rather more discreet; a convenient framework policy is
intentionally adopted that enables and facilitates practices that have
the exact same desired end result.

“This is as effective as having named and pointed a finger at a
particular individual to be targeted and killed.

“This includes a particular community, or section of society such as the
nationalist community, creating terror and fear among republicans, and
their families including women and children. And fueling internal feuds
within non-state groupings.”