Introduction: Peter Keeley and the Omagh Bomb.

Q – Can I put it to you: he is a bit of a Newry wide boy who was involved in the IRA …And the reason he was involved in the IRA was because he was a Newry wide boy?

A – Most likely.

Q – And the only reason Kevin Fulton was ever any use as an informant was because he would run with the wolves?

A – That’s correct.

(Peter Keeley’s  KC cross examining one of Keeley’s former CID handlers in December 2011, at the Smithwick Tribunal. Keeley gave evidence under the pseudonym Kevin Fulton.)

Chapter 1

01. The Man with the Tapes.

A British Irish Secretariat official sent his weekend report to a counterpart in the Department of Justice Equality and Law Reform in Secure Fax 172 on 18 February 2001. It stated that:

“Subject: Omagh informer – Kevin Fulton – hands over tapes to the Ombudsman.

The Ombudsman’s office has confirmed that former political agent “Kevin Fulton” who claimed he warned his RUC handlers that a real IRA attack in Northern Ireland was imminent 48 hours before the Omagh bomb atrocity of August 1998, has handed over a number of audio tapes. Fulton is  believed to have personally handed over the tapes to a senior investigator from the Ombudsman’s office at a location in Belfast centre last week”.

02. Peter Keeley

Kevin Fulton’s real name is Peter Keeley. Born in Newry in 1960. He was a soldier in the Royal Irish regiment who was recruited in 1979 by the British Army Intelligence’s ‘Force Research Unit’, tasked to to infiltrate the IRA in South Down. Evidence he gave to the Police Ombudsman of Northern Ireland Nuala O’Loan, in 2001 resulted in O’Loan calling for a public inquiry into the August 1998 Omagh bomb. Keeley’s intelligence also persuaded High Court Judge Mark Horner to call for a new Human Rights compliant investigation into the bombing, citing as a principle reason, the information Keeley gave his CID police handlers between June and August 1998.  

This article explains how Keeley’s involvement with the Real IRA, and an alleged RIRA bomber, made him a crucial witness in relation to the Omagh bomb. Fulton/Keeley and his former RUC and PSNI handlers reiterated the intelligence he had given them in 1998 when they gave evidence at the Smithwick Tribunal which began oral hearings in Dublin in 2011. Keeley, giving evidence under his pseudonym ‘Kevin Fulton’, was Judge Peter Smithwick’s ‘star’ witness in the Tribunal which was set up to investigate allegations of Garda collusion in the IRA murders of Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan in South Armagh in March 1989. Keeley’s collusion allegations, which were made against the retired Dundalk based Special Branch Garda Sergeant Owen Corrigan, were false which makes it ironic that he should be considered a credible source on the Omagh bomb.

Agents who undertake the potentially lethal job of infiltrating terrorist groups are unlikely to be ‘polished gemstones’, as Keeley’s KC pointed out.

Keeley was deeply involved in and around  the criminal and paramilitary world of the Real IRA throughout 1998. He supplied his handlers with intelligence about drugs, money laundering, weapons and dissident IRA activity. By all accounts he was himself deeply involved in criminality. Newry and the border area was often a dangerous no-man’s land where feuds and killings by various IRA fronts – so called anti drugs groups like DAAD and RAAD – were a regular occurance. 

According to usually reliable sources, Keeley described being at a meeting in a specified location in Newry town where the major bomb operation that culminated in the Omagh Bomb, was planned. He is also alleged by a credible source to have driven the bomb car after it was stolen on the 11th/12th of August 1998, including in the hours before it was driven over the border to Omagh. The car was taken in Carrickmacross,Co Monaghan by an INLA man from Dundalk. It would be unusual if it did not have a tracker device fitted as Keeley did all with vehicles he had used for IRA operations.

According to retired ACC Raymond White MI5/GCHQ had the bomber team’s mobile phone number or numbers weeks before Omagh and listened ‘live’ to their conversations as they drove North. The Continuity IRA and Real IRA groups on the Armagh/ Louth border from where car bombings originated were being heavily monitored by both Garda Special Branch, MI5 GCHQ and the RUC.

Though ‘the Branch’ (RUC) had no capacity to intercept (in the Republic) GCHQ did, according to ACC Raymond White.

White gave an interview to the BBC’s ‘Panorama’ reporter John Ware in 2008:

“I would say they had the capacity to monitor in the Republic, whether or not  they would be prepared to sort of accept and admit to that… Now telecommunications signals obviously don’t respect what you would call land borders as such and I’m quite certain that if conversations that were South of the Border happened then they would be monitored”.

GCHQ is perhaps the most secret of the British Spy organisation and the extent of their penetration will probably never be known.

03. The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Chris Heaton-Harris sets up a new inquiry.

The terms of reference of the new inquiry into the Omagh bomb proposed by the Secretary of State Chris Heaton-Harris are  based on the grounds set out by Mr Justice Horner in the High Court in Belfast in October 2021, when he found that there had not been an Art 2 compliant investigation into the Omagh bomb. *

Keeley’s intelligence was cited as of primary importance in Mr Justice Horner’s (October 2021) decision.

Judge Horner’s decision in a Judicial Review brought by Michael Gallagher  was the culmination of years of litigation. Gallagher’s son Aiden died in the Omagh bombing. In 2013 Mr Gallagher sought a review of the then Secretary of States decision not to set up a public inquiry.  After legal arguments over the holding of ‘closed’ hearings on grounds of ‘National Security’, the case opened in Belfast in July 2018, centering on claims that intelligence held by RUC Special Branch, GCHQ and MI5, could have been drawn together to prevent the bombing.

A decision was finally made in the case: Mr Justice Horner found the bomb could have been prevented and that new investigations were needed in Northern Ireland and the Republic. The judge gave three grounds for his decision on the 8th of October 2021:

Ground 2: Information passed to police between June and August 1998 by a former British security agent known by the name of Kevin Fulton relating to Dr (Dissident Republican) activity.

Ground 6: Surveillance operations relating to events surrounding the Omagh bomb that were reported on in a BBC Panorama; in particular telephone and vehicle monitoring carried out by GCHQ.

Ground 7/9: The tracking and pattern of phone usage by DRs [dissident republicans] and the connection arising between different bomb attacks, including the same mobile telephone being used in the Omagh bomb and the bomb in Banbridge on 1 August 1998. Detective Chief Superintendent Baxter’s evidence to the NIAC (Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, HOC) to the effect that investigators into previous attacks in 1998 did not have access to intelligence which may have enabled them to disrupt the DR gang by way of arrest or house searches prior to the bombing.

These grounds will constitute the terms of reference of a new inquiry.

[Mr Gallagher’s legal team had set out ten grounds which they argued, could form the basis for a new inquiry. Mr Justice Horner accepted four grounds. He retained the numbering used in the Gallagher affidavit for ease of reference.]

No one has yet been successfully  convicted of the bombing of Omagh. The leader of the Real IRA, Liam Campbell, as the ‘Operations Director’  was found to be civilly liable for the bomb. He was recently extradited to Lithuania on weapons charges but has been released. The late Michael McKevitt, the leader of the Real  IRA, was jailed in the Republic of Ireland in 2003, on charges of directing terrorism. He was released in 2020 and died shortly after. McKevitt was also found civilly liable for the bombing.

The late Colm Murphy, ‘Continuity IRA’ leader, was the organiser of the bombing. He was a long running Republican operative who is believed to be one of the gunmen at  Kingsmills in 1976. He had no convictions in the UK. In 1972 and 1976 he served prison sentences in the Republic. In the 1980s, he was sentenced to 5 years in the US for the attempted purchase of weapons. At that stage he was associated with the INLA.

After he returned to Ireland Murphy was able to accumulate considerable wealth as a builder and publican and a dissident Republican. He was jailed in the Republic of Ireland after the Omagh bomb but was subsequently released when it was found statements relating to his police interviews had been altered by two gardai.

Seamus Daly, who allegedly drove the bomb car to Omagh was also found civilly liable. A criminal case against him collapsed in 2016.

In 2007 Sean Hoey from Co Armagh was found not guilty on a total of 56 charges including the murder of 29 people at Omagh. The judge believed the forensic evidence presented in the Hoey case was tainted.

 No money has been paid over to victims’ families. 

Chapter 2

04. Undercover 

Agent/informer Peter Keeley, aka Kevin Fulton, had a twenty year run as a Covert Human Intelligence Source (CHIS) and agent.  He worked  undercover from 1981, first for the British Army’s Force Research Unit then in the early to mid ’90s for RUC Special Branch and MI5. Keeley had been recruited by the British Army Intelligence Corps in 1980 in Berlin as a corporal in the Royal Irish Rangers.

He was handled by members of the FRU who were based in Bessbrook barracks in Co Armagh.

Keeley claims that Jonathan Evans (whom he refers to as ‘Bob’) was the MI5 liaison to the FRU unit in Bessbrook in the late 1980s and that Evans became his MI5 handler for a time in the early to mid ’90s.

Keeley was given specialised training in weapons at Ballymena and Ballykinler, Co Down. His aptitude for bomb making and weapons handling made him an attractive potential recruit for the IRA. He is an expert bomb maker.

In evidence to Smithwick Keeley described his induction into the British Army Intelligence Corps. His training in weaponry by special forces instructors and his  acquired skills in bomb making, were aimed at aiding his recruitment into the IRA.

05. ‘Green booked’.

In 1987 Keeley said he was ‘green booked’ as a full member of the IRA. He then became an active member of a group developing new bombing technologies, operating under the aegis of the South Armagh brigade.

In 1990 Keeley was involved in one of the three ‘human bomb’ events in Northern Ireland at Cloghogue, Newry. The IRA had developed new technology which allowed them to override the British Army’s ‘shield’ around the checkpoint. This operation involved the kidnapping and attempted murder of John McEvoy whose ‘crime’ had been to serve members of the British Army in his petrol station. This event is  graphically described by Keeley in his book ‘Unsung Hero’. Mr McEvoy escaped the car but a bomb triggered by a radar gun killed 21 year old Ranger Cyril Smith. Its possible Keeley himself aided the development of the ‘radar gun’, as he did many other weapons and bombs which killed soldiers and RUC men and women. The human bomb episode was one of the most heinous acts of the IRA.

There are approximately 25 civil cases being taken against the MOD and PSNI in relation to Keeley’s involvement in the most serious crimes, as an informant/agent. Cases against Keeley are being settled but whether criminal charges follow is moot.

By the early 1990s after the John Stevens investigations  the Force Research Unit was replaced by the ‘Joint Services Group’ which was led by Lt Col Victor Williams. Keeley was  told by his army handlers in late 1991 to report directly to MI5. He would now be handled by the Special Branch in the South Region while working for the Security Service.

In 1992 Keeley was involved in the death of Constable Colleen McMurray in Newry. She died when a mortar triggered by a ‘flash’ unit developed by Keeley and others, slammed into her police car as she drove alongside Newry Canal. Keeley  claims he told his handlers that the IRA had developed the flash unit and modified the mortar used in the killing of Constable Murray and the maiming of her colleague Paul Slaine.

By the early 1990s Keeley branched out from South Down. He was eased into the IRA in Belfast by recommendations supplied by  Freddie Scappaticci and John Joe Magee. Gerry Bradley in his book ‘My Life in the IRA’ describes how Keeley’s entre was provided by Scappaticci and Magee who Keeley had facilitated in their ISU activities in Co Louth. His pivot to Belfast and a proposed expanded role with the Internal Security Unit, delighted his MI5 handlers.  

However after two years things turned sour. Keeley claimed his cover was deliberately blown by his Special Branch handlers managing him for MI5. He had come under suspicion in Belfast after supplying phones to an ASU  including Gerry Bradley, Joe Haughey and Dominic Adams in 1994. The IRA leadership had planned an operation to ambush and kill a senior RUC CID officer, Derek Martindale, on his way to work. Keeley’s phones  helped the ASU to be tracked and ambushed by the RUC. The result was multiple arrests including Adams and Bradley who were to serve years in jail. This episode featured in Keeley’s evidence to Smithwick. The Special Branch handler  who was  running Keeley for MI5, also gave evidence to Smithwick as witness 64. He had nothing good to say about Keeley. Witness 62 at Smithwick who had served as an RUC Detective Inspector in Gough Barracks and Portadown described Keeley as a “compulsive liar, a fantasist, a con man of the highest order and an intelligence nuisance”.

After being  “burnt” by his suspected part in the entrapment of the IRA men, Keeley dropped out of sight. He was warned by one of his handlers he was in danger of being exposed or worse. Scappaticci, he claims, was to deliver a guilty verdict. IRA activity was winding down even after the first ceasefire in 1994 had broken down. It was time to look for new markets and he began selling information to an intelligence officer in HM Customs, Jim Sloane.

Keeley was now mixing in dissident IRA circles with their links to ‘fundraising’ criminality, smuggling and customs frauds. Not satisfied with the money available from HM Customs, and on the advice of Sloane, Keeley also offered his services to RUC CID in 1996. As a ‘walk in’ to Woodbourne RUC station in Belfast, he made contact with one officer in particular, a sergeant in the  Drug Squad.  Shortly afterwards that officer moved to the Economic Crimes Bureau C1(6) and suggested  Keeley as an informant and, as it happened, he set up frauds and scams designed to entrap his victims. This CID police handler, who was later to also receive Keeley’s information about dissidents in 1998, crucially, gave evidence to the Police Ombudsman’s Omagh bomb investigators and to the Smithwick Tribunal in 2011 under the cipher witness 71.

06. Dissidents

Post-Ceasefire Patrick ‘Mooch’ Blair, a long time IRA volunteer and Keeley’s original mentor, had joined the dissident ‘Real IRA’ lead by Michael McKevitt and Liam Campbell. Blair had been one of the IRA’s top bomb makers – a ‘veteran’ who had been jailed in the 1970s.  According to an RUC man’s  intelligence document:

“A [Blair] had been a suspected terrorist longer than I had been in the Police”.

Blair also gave evidence to the Smithwick Tribunal in late 2011. Keeley, in his  evidence, described how he supplied  Blair with ‘equipment’ including bulletproof flak jackets and grinders for bomb making. As a result of his dual training with the British army and the IRA, he was a skilled bomb maker who worked with top IRA operatives developing timers, detonators and mortars that could override the electronic blocking systems of the British army. He had the technical back up of British Army ordnance specialists in Ballykinlar camp in Co Down, who could help him solve ‘problems’ and polish his reputation as an armourer.

As dissident activity was funded by the proceeds of ‘ordinary’ crime Keeley wasn’t just an informant, he also created many of the frauds and scams used to entrap participants usually on the fringes of Republican movements.

Chapter 3

07. Michael McKevitt

Michael McKevitt, the former IRA Quartermaster and post-ceasefire dissident, was now leader of the Real IRA’. He had retained some Libyan supplied semtex taken from IRA arms dumps but the majority of quartermasters in a line from the border to Limerick stayed loyal to the Adams leadership. He also lost control of IRA funds in Swiss banks, according to one politician who described a dramatic chase to Switzerland to change bank codes and thwart McKevitt’s efforts to empty the ‘vault’.The Real IRA’s lack of funds and weapons made them vulnerable to infiltration by MI5 and FBI agents and informers, including the seemingly improbable American David Rupert. It was to be McKevitts determination to obtain new weapons and American funding that made him an easy target for the FBI and MI5 covert ops.

08. Witness 71

Keeley’s former handler in CID Economic Crimes Bureau from 1996 gave evidence at the Smithwick Tribunal using the cipher number witness 71, in late December 2011. Crucially, he corroborated Keeley’s evidence to the then Police Ombudsman Nuala O’Loan in 2001. He confirmed that Keeley had given him vital intelligence in the months leading up to the 1998 bombing. Contrary to the normal practice – due to Keeley’s aversion to RUC Special Branch – he was receiving and inputting Keeley’s dissident IRA  intelligence, flouting normal intelligence gathering procedures. This was confirmed by his boss – the former RUC Assistant Chief Constable, Head of CID, Raymond White – at Smithwick. The intelligence Keeley gave was entered into the  CID intelligence systems and also passed to the Special Branch. This process was to become, and remains, a central point of conflict in relation to Keeley’s evidence.  This CID officer’s information and documentation and Keeley’s evidence was to be central to O’Loan’s devastating criticisms of the RUC Special Branch and the CID investigations into the Omagh Bombing. As mentioned above, Keeley supplied the tapes and notes of his intelligence to the Ombudsman in 2001.

Keeley has also alleged that one of his Real IRA associates was an MI5 or RUC Special Branch agent and has never been interviewed by the Police about Omagh. Neither has Keeley himself been interviewed about the bombing.

09. Raymond White

Raymond White the former RUC Assistant Chief Constable in Crime Division, which included the Economic Crimes Bureau C1(6), cleared Fulton/Keeley to be taken on as a paid informant in the Drug Squad and later in  the Economic Crimes Bureau. In 1997 he agreed that Keeley be given participating informant status. Giving evidence to the Smithwick Tribunal in 2012, Raymond White described the reaction of senior officers in the regional HQ of RUC Special Branch in Armagh, when they learned about his new ‘hire’ Fulton/Keeley. The Special Branch advised him he said ‘Do Not Touch‘. However, that didn’t rule Keeley out as a CID informant. White was cross examined by Keeley’s barrister on the 7th of February, 2012 and confirmed Keeley’s usefulness as an informant:

“Q – So.. Is it fair to say you were satisfied with him as a source /

A – Certainly as a criminal informant we would like to have had more, Mr Chairman in that respect. It panned out extremely well for us in that respect.

Q – Did Mr Fulton also supply to witness 71, information which was more of a subversive than a criminal nature.

A – Yes, as our relationship with him grew, other intelligence was provided by him that, again checking it out, showed that it had substantive criminal content that could be verified, and again, in respect of that, approval was granted to him to participate to such times as we were able to use that information  or pass it on to other agencies that actually used it.

Q – And did that decision yield results ?

A – It did. There was …very substantial sums of money recovered in relation to a bank,  where cheques had been the subject of fraud. And In relation to, I think, an operation with the Post Office and it was Customs, that resulted as it were, in a substantial, shall say degree of criminality being intercepted and individuals being prosecuted before the courts”.

Former ACC White also agreed Keeley  gave his handlers in CID intelligence about IRA dissidents which was entered into CID intelligence systems and passed on to the Special Branch. Though this was outside  ‘normal’ procedures, it got around the fact that Keeley refused to deal with the Special Branch himself:

“Q– Did Mr Fulton also supply to Witness 71 information which was more of a subversive than a criminal nature?

A – Yes, there was subversive intelligence coming from him mixed with, but witness 71 was under strict instructions that the information would be debriefed to the CID intelligence unit,  given to the Special Branch officers and and that it would be a matter for Special Branch officers thereafter as to how they evaluated it”.

The Chief Inspector in the Economic Crime Bureau C1(6) was Alan Mains. He  had been Chief Superintendent  Harry Breen’s Sergeant in Armagh in 1989. By coincidence both Mains and Keeley claimed to have evidence of Garda collusion involving Sergeant Owen Corrigan in 1999. The statement shown above was given by Mains in 2000.The fact that Mains and Keeley both worked in or for the CID  Economic Crimes Bureau at the same time did not emerge at Smithwick Tribunal.

CID officers’ glowing accounts of Keeley’s usefulness were premature. Even as his handlers were giving evidence in 2011 and 2012, Luigi Marotta, who had been jailed as a result of an elaborate sting created by Keeley in Derry involving stolen cheques and banking fraud, was bringing a case against the PSNI which he eventually  won. Marotta walked free when Keeley’s status as an informant was revealed. There are a string of other cases pending which allege entrapment in VAT frauds and other scams. How Keeley was able to operate in Derry in Sinn Féin circles raises a number of questions particularly for those entrapped by him.

10. Witness 70

A retired RUC CID Inspector and Keeley’s former co-handler gave evidence at the Smithwick Tribunal in 2011 under the cipher witness 70. He told the Tribunal he was particularly interested in Keeley’s information about the activities of the IRA ASU in South Down. Witness 70 had served in the area for years and lost many colleagues who were shot by the IRA. Keeley admits in his book ‘Unsung Hero’, published in 2006, that he was responsible for killing police and members of the British Army.

11. Real IRA bombings

A series of  bombings carried out by the Continuity IRA in alliance with the bomb makers in the Real IRA throughout 1998 intensified surveillance operations North and South of the border. Both the Gardai and the RUC were running informants. One Garda informant was a car thief, Paddy Dixon, who sourced cars for the  Real IRA under orders of a businessman based in Kildare.

The FBI and MI5 had recruited an American, David Rupert, to infiltrate the Continuity IRA on the Sligo/Leitrim/ Donegal Borders. Rupert however did not meet Michael McKevitt until 1999. In a recent BBC Spotlight programme he said he did not obtain any prior information about the Omagh bomb from his Continuity IRA associates on the West Coast.

 Despite surveillance by the Garda and RUC the ‘Real Irish Republican Army’ and the ‘Continuity IRA’ who were based in North Louth and South Armagh, bombed Enniskillen on the 24th of January 1998, then Moira, Lisburn, Belleek, Newry and Banbridge, on the 1st of August 1998. These were bombings carried out both before and after the signing of Good Friday Agreement in April 1998. The object to literally explode the Agreement.

In his judgement of October 2021 Judge Horner lists the names of the suspected dissidents.

Sources close to Keeley at the time claim he had a direct role in dissident activities including bomb making. Liam Campbell, increasingly suspicious that activities South of the Border were penetrated by the gardai, concentrated bomb making in the North. Keeley was now himself under surveillance by the RUC Special Branch who knew he was also involved in serious criminal activity with dissident republicans. In August 1998 Armagh Special Branch warned his CID handlers that Keeley was on the verge of being arrested for subversive activity – that he was planning a dissident IRA ‘show of strength’ with weaponry and they were about to raid his home.

This was confirmed by Keeley himself. In a well sourced article in the ‘People’ Newspaper. Journalist Greg Harkin described how, just before the Omagh bombing, Keeley was setting up a photo op, a ‘show of strength’ with weapons which had to be cancelled for “something big”. Reliable sources say Keeley received a call warning him to get out of his house before he was arrested by Special Branch.

From ‘The Sunday People’ Newspaper April, 2000.

A statement made by a senior Special Branch officer in the South region, which was  made subsequent to the publication of a Police Ombudsman’s report on Omagh in 2001, described events involving Keeley/Fulton leading up to the bomb. The  statement concerns a disputed chain of events which were to be central to the Ombudsman 2001 report on the Omagh bomb which will be dealt with later in this article.

“On the 14th of 8. 1998 I was made aware of very sensitive intelligence indicating Fulton’s possible involvement in a serious criminal event. On that same date I spoke to the.. Deputy Head of the Crime Department: I told him that I suspected that Fulton was involved in serious [redacted word] matters and would possibly be arrested in the near future. As a result of my conversation …a meeting was arranged to take place between D/Sergeant Z and myself at RUC Headquarters on the 20-8-98..The arrangements for this meeting were finalised on 18th or 19th 8.98”.

Chapter 4

12. The Omagh Bomb August 1998

On the 15th of August the bombing campaign culminated in a so-called “spectacular” that proved disastrous. A massive bomb, made by the Real IRA, went off in Omagh Town centre killing 29 people and injuring 200 others. All the bombs had in common the use of a timer unit or TPU as described by Judge Weir in The Queen V Hoey (2007) – it was he said “comprised of a ‘Coupatan’ brand two-hour timer with two toggle isolating switches mounted on a plastic lunch box…” The TPUs were bought in the UK in 1997 as part of an order for 480 units. The person who bought them has never been identified.

According to a well placed police source the post bomb investigators “did a very good job of putting together the (Omagh bomb) timer power unit but never told anyone about it”. A small fragment of a TPU can provide vital evidence by giving the bombers ‘signature’ or method of assembling the bomb.  A replica was shown at press conferences.

The Bomb was made of 500 pounds of fertiliser with a semtex ‘booster’ as a primary charge. The makeup of the Omagh bomb was the same as those made by the South Armagh IRA to bomb London after the breakdown of the 1994 ceasefire, including the Docklands bomb in 1996. There was suspicion that senior IRA leaders in South Armagh were turning a blind eye or even helping the dissidents.

Though he called an immediate cessation after the bombing,  McKevitt had no intention of calling a halt to the dissident ‘campaign’. The Irish Government had believed that McKevitt was amenable to negotiation. According to State Papers, the Irish Government appeared to mistakenly believe that the dissidents were not actively planning a major event just before Omagh.  Also, in a politically volatile atmosphere just weeks after the Good Friday Agreement, arresting McKevitt was potentially dangerous. It was wishful thinking.

13. Fallout

Five days after the bombing of Omagh, on the 20th of August 1998, there was a pre-arranged meeting between the senior South Region Special Branch officer who had warned against using Keeley and Keeley’s CID handler, Detective Sergeant Z, aka Smithwick witness 71. The meeting  took place in RUC HQ in Belfast. The date of this meeting was to be a bone of contention between the Special Branch officer and the Police Ombudsman’s investigators who believed the meeting was arranged after the bombing and not just before it. A statement detailing what happened in the days after Omagh was made by the Senior Special Branch officer and put on line.

“As a result of my conversation with the TFC [ the TFC was the Deputy Head of CID, the conversation referred to was on the 14th of August ] a meeting was arranged between D/Sergeant Z and myself at RUC headquarters to take place on 20.8.98..The arrangements for the meeting were finalised on 18 or 19.8.98. At the meeting I informed D/Sergeant Z that the person known as Kevin Fulton was an intelligence nuisance and that we in the South Region Special Branch had had serious problems dealing with him and controlling him in the past and..I told him that Keeley would probably tape record his meetings if given the opportunity. I told D/Sergeant Z that I had good reason to suspect that Fulton was involved in serious crime and it was our intention to arrest him. D/Sergeant Z told me that Fulton did not have ‘participating status’ for anything he might be involved in. The D/Sergeant also referred to some good results that had come out of information supplied by Fulton. I accepted that might well be the case but emphasised that Fulton was highly dangerous and could not be trusted in terrorist related matters. I based my advice to Det Sergeant Z on my experience of Fulton over the period from the early 1990s. I do not recall specifically mentioning that Fulton should stay away from the person known as ‘A’ [ Patrick ‘Mooch’ Blair] in the report of the PONI. However I did say that Fulton should not be involved in any terrorist related matters”.

14. Omagh, Smithwick and a crucial witness

In December 2011 at the Smithwick Tribunal Witness 71, Keeley’s main CID handler in 1998, (who was Det Sergeant Z in the statements shown above) was cross examined by Keeley’s Q.C., Mr Rafferty. Witness 71 was quite clear that Keeley had given him the information that the Police Ombudsman of Northern Ireland, Nuala O’Loan, believed was crucial information. She made clear in her 2001 report on the RUC investigation of the Omagh Bombing. This included Keeley’s final two pieces of  intelligence that got ‘lost’ somewhere between the Force Intelligence Bureau (FIB) and Special Branch recording systems. (The FIB was a CID intelligence unit.) The lost material crucially related to information Keeley had passed to witness 71 in the weeks leading up and including the 11th-12th of August 1998, three days or so before the Omagh Bomb. Most importantly witness 71 in his evidence said Keeley had warned him on the 12th of August 1998 that the Real IRA were about to move a large bomb north of the border; that a notorious dissident – Patrick ‘Mooch’ Blair – was preparing the huge bomb and that something big was about to happen, indicated by the fact that the potency of the bomb is lost after two or three days. As stated earlier, a reliable source claims Keeley was  himself to be at planning meetings in Newry discussing the bomb.

Witness 71, under cross examination, confirmed that Keeley had passed over the information:

A – He gave me specific information in relation to a meeting that he had with ‘Mooch’ Blair, that he had met him, that he stinked (sic) of fertiliser which is also the product of bomb making, and that he was as high as a kite.. He felt that something big was going to happen.

 Keeley knew that a 500 pound bomb had enormous destructive capacity and would have to be used within hours or days.

15. Intelligence sent to Special Branch

Witness 71 realised the significance of what Keeley was telling him. He said he immediately put the information into the CID Intelligence systems, and to emphasise its importance, also phoned it through to the Special Branch. Keeley had said he didn’t know the intended location of the bomb but it was huge and imminent. The destination of the bomb was apparently only made known by the Continuity IRA to the Real IRA bomb makers on the morning of the 15th.

But he didn’t neglect his trade craft and made time to take notes and tape his conversations with handlers.

On the 15th of August, the day the Omagh Bomb went off, witness 71 was on a day off but received a call from Keeley who said he was in Tenerife. Keeley asked witness 71 if he had passed on the information he had given him days earlier. Witness 71 confirmed he had put it into the intelligence system.

Three days after the bombing in Omagh on the 18th of August 1998, witness 71, aka Detective Z, had the meeting with the South Region Special Branch officer described in the statement above. Also attending the meeting were senior officers in CID.

Then on the 24th of August the handler, witness 71, received an order from his CID bosses. He was not to allow Keeley, aka Fulton, to have any further contact with dissident republicans, particularly a man known as “A” aka Patrick ‘Mooch’ Blair. Witness 71 described what happened after meeting the officer from  Special Branch South in a statement (below):

“When I returned to Knocknagoney I informed ex D/C/Superintendent C1 of my meeting with Mr “T”.

ex D/C/Superintendent held a meeting in his office on the 24th of August 1998, involving D/Inspector “CW” and myself, at which we discussed how to deal with Fulton. Following the meeting D/Inspector ‘CW’ and I met with Fulton and informed him that there was to be no more contact with ‘A’ or any more contact with RIRA and he was not to involve himself in any terrorist organisation or activity…He was told that he did not have any PI [participating informant] status for any operation at that time”.

Keeley’s barrister continued his cross examination of witness 71:

Q –  Keeley was now regarded as an intelligence nuisance ..?

A – That’s right.

Witness 71 agreed he instructed Keeley to have no further contact with ‘Mooch’ Blair or the Real IRA and his only status as a police informant was in relation to specific CID cases. 

There was to be a major conflict over the meeting between the Special Branch and Keeley’s CID handlers when the  Police Ombudsman Nuala O’Loan investigated the bombing three years later. The Ombudsman’s investigators appeared sceptical that the meeting, which took place after the bomb went off, was arranged before it. Instead the suspicion was that it was because of Keeley’s intelligence about the bomb.

The fact that a number of the pieces of intelligence Keeley’s handler had submitted to the CID intelligence system were  missing from the Special Branch computer  was to emerge during the Police Ombudsman investigation.

16. Looking for a bomb factory south of the border

In the weeks after Omagh Keeley couldn’t understand why his information wasn’t acted on to prevent the bombing as he said in evidence to Smithwick in December 2011:

A – ..I gave witness 71 the information I had about Blair. And every time I’d go back to him  I’d say “Is there any..” He said “yeah, he made inquiries, something was being done.” He was under the impression the RUC were doing…they were acting on the information. So it went on. But one day the senior investigating officer (who was also a witness at Smithwick given the cipher number 68)  was on television and he started crying…that annoyed me. So I actually rang him….I told him that I did work for the police. And we arranged a call the next day. So the next day I spoke to witness 68 and I said I work for the RUC and I gave him the names of 70 and 71- his CID handlers – and he said “I’m their boss”.. it actually shocked me. I mean, if he was their boss he should have known about this.

A few weeks after the bombing Keeley travelled across the border to Carrickmacross with the CID Chief Superintendent who was in charge of the Omagh investigation and his other handler Witness 70. Keeley was to try and locate a bomb factory. As he made it clear at Smithwick in 2011, he did not claim to show the officers where the Omagh bomb  was made but rather a location where Patrick Mooch Blair had made explosive devices, bombs and mortars. The location was also in the area where the Omagh Bomb car was stolen.

Witness 70, a Detective Inspector in C1(6), described sitting in his office in Knocknagoney, the CID HQ in Belfast, when his Chief Superintendent told him they were travelling  across the border with  Keeley. Witness 70 didn’t have a clear recollection of the location.

The Chief Superintendent with witness 70  was Eric Anderson. He had been put in overall charge of CID’s Omagh bomb investigation.

He had come to Smithwick to air his grievances about the Gardai in Dundalk but he was cross examined about the  journey south of the border with Keeley after the Omagh. Jim O’Callaghan SC asked him:

Q – Do you know Kevin Fulton (Keeley)?

A – I know Mr Fulton, yes. I have no comment to make on that subject.

Q – The reason I ask about Fulton was that a statement has been provided to this Tribunal by witness 70.

He said he (68, the witness ) met with Fulton “through witness 71 and myself”.

A – I have no comment to make about that.

Q – Sorry Sir, …..I am putting to you the statement of a witness who said he, yourself and Kevin Fulton (Keeley) drove down to a house where Mr Fulton said the bomb was made, and you are refusing to comment sir, isn’t that right ?… Why are you refusing to comment ?.. [ In fact what Keeley said was that a place where bombs had been made by ‘Mooch’  Blair in the past].

A – I have nothing further to say on that Mr Chairman.

Chapter 5

17. Keeley after Omagh

Despite Special Branch objections, after Omagh Keeley continued his relationship with CID and MI5.

Det Sergeant Z supervised Keeley as he infiltrated drug and cigarette smuggling gangs involved in money laundering along the border where millions of pounds were being washed every year in bureau de change. In 1999 he was involved in a joint operation between CID and HM Customs. While an informant for RUC CID Economic Crimes he was also given participating informant status by HM Customs in 1999 for a major operation targeting a drugs warehouse in Belgium. Interestingly, Andrew Parker, later to become Director of MI5, was also seconded to HM Customs as Head of Intelligence in 1999.

The target of the multi-year investigation involving Keeley and Andrew Parker, who had moved from MI5 to become Head of Intelligence, HM Customs, was an international smuggling ring which included South Armagh man Kieran Smyth. He was an alleged cigarette and  weapons smuggler who was also a money launderer for criminal gangs in Ireland and the UK. The centre of Smyth’s operations was the haulage company he ran from Ravensdale, Co Louth, which used warehouses in the UK, Belgium and Holland and Italy. He was estimated to be laundering 3 million pounds a month for criminal gangs and paramilitaries as one of the biggest ‘ ‘washers’ of dirty money in bureau de change along the border. Smyth had also been questioned over the murder of businessman Ritchie McFerron in Dundalk in 1999 but had no criminal convictions.

 Two months after being arrested and questioned by the Garda Bureau of Fraud Investigation, in February 2001, Smyth was murdered. His body was found in Ashbourne, Co Meath. He had been beaten and been shot in the head. Allegedly he had been murdered by members of the Real IRA after a ‘mole’ hunt for a suspected Garda informant. Smyth may have been compromised by evidence given during the trial in Holland of drug and gun runner for RIRA, John Cunningham, who had been one of his associates.

UK Customs moved to arrest the UK end of the cigarette smuggling gang in April of the following year, raiding warehouses in Italy, Belgium, and France. Ten UK citizens involved in smuggling, warehousing and transporting cigarettes were arrested, brought to court and sentenced to various terms in prison. It was estimated they had smuggled 354 million cigarettes into the UK and that approximately £3.5 billion had been lost to the UK taxpayer in revenue as a result of cigarette smuggling.

It’s not known how much Keeley received as a reward for his work for HM Customs, CID and MI5.

Keeley’s information about criminal gangs around Newry and Dundalk came from a dangerous and often lethal world. The Belfast IRA were suspected of involvement in the killings of drug dealers under cover of anti drug vigilantes. On the 11th May 1999, 24 year old Brendan ‘Speedy’ Fagan was shot in a bar in Canal Street, Newry. Fagan was a major drug dealer; his death was reported in a fax from the Anglo Irish Secretariat in Belfast which noted the fact that he blamed the IRA for the attack just before he died.

The murder of  Paul Anthony Downey, aged 37, from Derryleckagh Road, Newry followed in June 1999. Downey was described as an associate of Brendan Fagan and a known dealer in cannabis. He was abducted from the Canal Court Hotel in Newry, shot in the head and found on the Carrowmannon Road in Belleeks, Co Armagh.

Keeley was paid nearly £20,000 for his information on the drugs scene between 1997 and 2000.

Keeley’s handler also investigated the Bureau de Change at Dromod, Co Louth with Keeley’s help. The Bureau had a turnover of a staggering quarter of a billion euro in an 18 month period ( c1998 – 2000), according to Witness 71.

At this time Keeley was also involved in intelligence gathering for the Sunday Times legal team defending the newspaper against a libel action brought by IRA man, Tom  ‘Slab’ Murphy, against the Sunday Times. Liam Clarke, the paper’s Northern Ireland editor, had enlisted Keeley’s help. Keeley was rewarded with a five year lease of a bar in Thailand – his ‘bolt hole’. Clarke also suggested that Keeley meet Willie Frazer now a ‘victims campaigner’ in Armagh which was to lead to allegations of Garda collusion in 2000 and ultimately the Smithwick Tribunal. Frazer used Keeley as his vehicle for allegations of Garda collusion.

18. End of the line for Keeley

 In late 1999/2000 articles about Keeley in the press were making his use as an informant problematic even for CID. In 2001, long after the Special Branch had warned against him, his relationship with CID came to an end according to Det/Sergeant Z aka Witness 71 in a witness statement:

“On the 16th of April 2000 a series of articles started to appear in various papers referring to an RUC Mole who had close associations in PIRA in Newry and who was responsible for the disability of one officer and the death of another in the Newry area. The articles also described the mole as previously serving in the British Army. It was clear to Fulton that this referred to him. He approached me and stated that he was the person referred to in the newspaper articles and he believed he was in need of protection. He informed me that he was attempting to apply for a personal protection weapon and that he had applied for a firearms licence. At that time he had a prohibition preventing him from applying for a firearms certificate so he was applying to the Secretary of State to lift the prohibition in order to allow him to apply for a personal protection weapon but he did not intend moving home or moving out of the area…”

Keeley did not receive permission nor was there a response to a request to for a risk assessment to be done for Keeley in Newry until the handler Detective Z aka Witness 71 submitted a CHIS application    [as participating informant] for the Gardai in relation to Viagra tablets stolen from a warehouse in ROI.

According to witness 71:

DET/I ‘AI’, FIB, refused the application and Det/Sergeant ‘AM’ IMU then informed me that I was not allowed to meet Fulton and that I could only converse with him by telephone as he had been deemed an intelligence nuisance.

Chapter 6

19. London

In 2000 Keeley was stranded in Newry having run out of road. In his book ‘Thatchers Spy’, the late Willie Carlin describes how he travelled to Newry to help relocate him to London. Carlin introduced Keeley to journalists who began to reveal details of his life undercover. Keeley was reinventing himself as a whistle blower.

Keeley had the notes and, more importantly, the tapes of his conversations with his CID handler, witness 71, to back up his story.

20. 2001, the Omagh story appears

The ‘Sunday People’ Newspaper in July 2001 carried a Special Report written by Chris Harkin featuring Fulton/Keeley and his allegations about Omagh. He described Keeley’s meeting with “Mooch” Blair who he called ‘Mike’ in the article, just before Omagh:

“The meeting with the terrorist lasted only a few minutes but Kevin Fulton had seen enough to convince him that dissident republicans were planning something major, and that the attack was imminent.

It was 10 minutes past midnight on August 13,1998. He was in the car park of the Claret Bar in Dundalk on the Crossmaglen Road with a man called Mike (not his real name). Mike was a senior member of the real IRA…Mike did not know that Fulton, whom he had met years earlier, when they were both members of the IRA, was working as an agent for C(1)6, the terrorist anti-racketeering squad within the RUC..

The pair sat in the front seats of Mike’s car. Fulton had been asked if he could supply non-military equipment to the Real IRA, but he had not been able to get his hands on the goods. He told Mike he needed a bit more time, but Mike did not seem to be interested in the conversation. He was a little edgy..”. He said “I’m in a hurry, there’s something big on”…

“I could see he had pink dust all over his pullover”, said Fulton. “When you make a bomb, you have to grind fertiliser almost to powder, using coffee grinding machines, otherwise the bomb won’t have any impact. Then you mix the dust with something like diesel or nitrobenzene.. When you make a bomb, the mix has a distinct, fusty damp smell. There was no doubt in my mind he had been making a bomb”.

The story continued:

“Fulton rang his handler and had an emergency meeting in Holywood, Co Down with a warning that something big was coming”.

“I gave him the name of the man I’d been with and his car registration number..

I told him I didn’t know where the bomb was going to go off or when, but I warned him the attack was imminent. An assembled bomb retains its potency for a maximum of only seven days beyond that the fertiliser becomes too caked and solid, and has to be broken up”.

After the bomb Keeley said:

“I rang my handler. It was a Saturday afternoon…I didn’t have to say anything before he said ‘Kevin, I f##king know’. “I said ‘You did put that stuff in the system, didn’t you?’ and he said “thank f##k I did”.

When giving evidence or writing an account of events, as in in his book, Keeley is anxious to avoid self incrimination. As mentioned earlier, reliable sources say Keeley was more involved in events leading up to the Omagh Bomb than he admits. These will be matters for Judge Turnbull who will preside over the public inquiry into the bombing.

21. A vital mobile phone number  

Keeley also revealed another important piece of information in the 2001 article in the ‘Sunday People’. A year earlier he had, crucially, been able to identify a mobile phone used by the man who planted the bomb in Omagh in the minute that the bomb car was parked. A BBC Panorama Programme on the Omagh bomb presented by John Ware, which  transmitted in 2000, had been given the mobile phone numbers used by the Omagh bomb team.  The mobile phones were being monitored by GCHQ.

The programme named some of  the owners of the phones including Liam Campbell, Colm Murphy and Seamus Daly. But Keeley also recognized the mobile telephone number of a person who had not been identified by Panorama – that of  Patrick “Mooch” Blair. Blair had received a call on his mobile from the Omagh bomb car within seconds of the explosion.

In the interview with the Sunday People, Keeley explained he had recognised one of the numbers as ‘Mike’s’ mobile when he was shown it by the BBC reporter John Ware. ‘Mike’ was the pseudonym for Patrick Blair. Blair was cross examined about the phone call during evidence to the Smithwick Tribunal in 2011.

22. The Ombudsman Reports in December 2001

The Sunday People story helped persuade the Police Ombudsman Nuala O’Loan to investigate the Omagh Bombing. O’Loan assembled a team of investigators who interviewed Keeley aka Fulton about his allegations. It was clear Keeley had retained documentation and tapes to prove his allegations about supplying information, which he handed over to the Ombudsman’s Investigators.

The issue of missing intelligence was emerging. A witness statement from a Det/Superintendent of the PSNI who was the regional Head of Special Branch, South Region, included the details of a meeting in Mahon Road RUC station on August 24, 2001, with John Bridger a senior investigator for the Police Ombudsman . The meeting was described in statements as being in relation to information which passed between Witness 71 and a detective inspector ‘X. Witness 71 was Keeley’s handler and is referred to as D/Sergeant Z in documents relating to Omagh.

(The reference to D/Inspector X in the document illustrated below is to a detective inspector who was in charge of Armagh Special Branch.)

The meeting between Witness 71 and Special Branch was in regard to Peter Keeley, a then source of the CID. He was referred to as ‘Kevin Fulton’ to protect his identity.

The information related to dissident activity in 1998.

At D/Inspector X’s request and in order to provide the Ombudsman with a full understanding of Special Branch processes X’s superior officer, a chief superintendent, came to the meeting and took notes. He described the meeting in a statement:

“During the meeting between Mr Bridger, Det/Inspector “X” and myself, Mr Bridger produced seven CID intelligence documents and asked which of the documents had been received in South Region Special Branch…I arranged for Det/Inspector B to have a search made of Special Branch records, to answer Mr Bridgers inquiry.  As a result I was provided with two Prism entries received electronically by the unit on the 10th of June 1998 and a faxed copy document dated 5th of August 1998 with a fax heading 5/8/981408 hrs from Belfast Source Unit. I showed these to Mr Bridger and agreed with him that if he wanted copies of these documents he should  received make a formal request  through the HQ Special Branch  liaison  officer…I have been shown seven documents by A/D/Chief Inspector ‘AQ’ marked  PJW1-7 – Documents PJW1 and PJQ2 are identical in content to the two retrieved faxed document.

So it emerged that in total five of Keeley’s pieces of intelligence disappeared between the  CID intelligence unit in Belfast and Special Branch South Region whose responsibility was to investigate and track the suspected bombers acting on both sides of the border in Louth, Armagh and Down.

The issue of the meeting between Keeley’s CID handlers and the Special Branch Officer who said Keeley should not be used and was an intelligence nuisance was now given added significance for the Ombudsman investigators.

Detective Sergeant Z aka witness 71 was also interviewed by the Ombudsman’s investigators. He was the crucial recipient of Keeley’s intelligence while working in C(1)6 and Keeley was his informant. He described the meeting with the Ombudsman investigators:

“The only information that ‘Fulton’ ever gave me relating to ‘A’, RIRA,  and PIRA is contained in the seven intelligence reports; copies of which have been handed to D/Inspector ‘BD’. This information was submitted in full, either to the DIU, or IMU and Special Branch. I did not research or comment on the information as I did not feel that this was my responsibility. I have always graded the information supplied by Keeley as A1 as I considered it to be factual and relevant. I based my assessment upon Fulton’s past performance…

The only contact that I have had with anyone from the Omagh Bomb investigation team was – on 2 August 01 when I met with [REDACTED] – Reviewing Officer and [REDACTED],..in ACC Crime’s office in Knocknagoney. Our discussion centred around Fulton, his background and the information he gave me. At the end of this meeting I was asked to prepare a report on my involvement with Fulton…I did so and I have handed to D/Inspector ‘BD’ a copy of this.

On the 11th September 2001 I met with Stephen Hill and Neil Thomas from the Police Ombudsman’s office in ex D/C/Superintendent C1’s office in Knocknagoney. At this meeting I provided them with a copy of the report which I had prepared for the reviewing officer regarding Fulton. I met them again on the 13th of September 2001 in my office in Knocknagoney. During this meeting which lasted the whole day..they went through the report that I had previously given them to clarify matters. They had with them five pages of questions and a laptop which Neil Thomas (an investigator from PONI) used during the meeting. I believe he used it to record what was said. At the end of the meeting I was told that they would get the report typed into a statement. I informed them that I would not put the contents of the report into a statement and sign it due to the nature of the information contained in it. They said they would return with a typed report.

On the 18th of September 2001 I was given a copy of my report to the Ombudsman to read… I met with the Police Ombudsman on 26th September 2001 in Knocknagoney when they arrived with my report in statement form. I again explained that I was not prepared to sign it. I suggested  that I make reference to the report as an item. Later that day I was informed that the Ombudsman would not accept my refusal to make a statement.“

The Ombudsman’s investigators had now heard vital evidence from Sergeant Z, aka witness 71, who had been Keeley/Fultons handler in CID in 1998. The seven pieces of intelligence Sergeant Z had fed into CIDs intelligence systems were now regarded by PONI as crucial pieces of information. However his refusal to make a signed statement meant it could not be put into evidence. The reason why the Ombudsman believed Keeley’s intelligence about the bombing of Omagh and other incidents, was vitally important could not therefore be fully explained. The content of the intelligence swayed not only the Ombudsman and her investigators but also Judge Horner nearly twenty years later. The crucial question remains – what happened to the five missing pieces?

O’Loan now also became aware of an internal RUC report on the Omagh Bomb investigation which contained highly critical comments about the police investigation. The McVicar report has never been published. McVicar was unaware of Keeley/Fulton’s intelligence when he wrote his report.

23. The O’Loan Report

The report by Nuala O’Loan, the Police Ombudsman, was published in 2001. It was heavily critical of the RUC investigation and endorsed ‘Kevin Fulton’ aka Keeley’s evidence. In the report O’Loan referred to the lead article in the Sunday People newspaper of 29th July 2001 about Keeley/Fulton’s information titled ‘I told cops about Omagh’ which claimed that the bomb could have been prevented had his information been acted on.

The Ombudsman’s report noted that the Chief Constable Ronnie Flanagan issued an immediate denial of Fulton’s assertions and further stated that “retrospective information” he (Fulton) gave to the RUC about Omagh was “checked and found to be without any foundation whatsoever”.

In a section headed’ THE FULTON INFORMATION’

The Ombudsman accepted that:

•  Fulton did pass information relating to alleged dissident activities to his handler on five separate occasions between June and August 1998.

• The Contact Sheets in respect of each of these meetings were delivered to Special Branch.

• The contact Sheets in respect of two of those meetings on 23 July 1998 and 12 August 1998 cannot be found in Special Branch records.

The Ombudsman  pointed out that Fulton’s credibility had not been called into question before August 1998 and that he did not claim to show the location of the Omagh bomb factory (during the trip to Carrickmacross) but a place where the IRA and Patrick Blair had made bombs.

She found the accounts of his conversations with handlers “highly significant”.

O’Loan seemed convinced that Special Branch had received all the Fulton intelligence reports and went on:

 “But the fact that Special Branch states it never received the documents represents at the very least, a breakdown in communications”.

The Ombudsman’s report (illustrated above) also highlighted the phone call between ‘Man A’ (allegedly Blair) and a member of the bomb team just as the bomb car was put into position in Omagh. (Neither Man ‘A’ or ‘B’, another man mentioned in the O’Loan report, have ever been arrested in connection with the Omagh bombing).

The Ombudsman however concluded that;

 “Even if reasonable action had been taken, it is unlikely the Omagh Bomb could have been prevented on Fulton’s Intelligence alone”.

Baroness O’Loan has since said that she  believes the Omagh bomb could have been stopped.

Devastatingly the Ombudsman noted “with great sadness”, that:

“The judgement and leadership of the Chief Constable (Ronnie Flanagan) and ACC Crime (Raymond White) have been seriously flawed. As a result of that, the chances of detaining and convicting the Omagh Bombers have been significantly reduced”.

O’Loan’s report was a hammer blow to the reputation of the RUC, already demoralised by the conclusions of the report by Lord Patten which recommended that a new police force be instituted on foot of the Good Friday Agreement of April 1998.  In November 2001 the RUC was superseded by the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Ronnie Flanagan briefly retained his role as Chief Constable. Raymond White became Head of the PSNI Special Branch and CID until his retirement in 2002.

24. The Chief Constable responds

In January 2002, Ronnie Flanagan, the Chief Constable of the new PSNI since the previous November, issued a furious response to O’Loan’s report. In an emotional outburst he talked about ‘committing suicide’ if the report turned out to be true. Flanagan was scathing about the heavy emphasis the report put on evidence provided by Kevin Fulton (Keeley):

“As it was an article about him which led to the investigation by the Ombudsman. It is thus necessary to consider Fulton in some detail.

Fulton was an informant for the Special Branch (in partnership with another agency) from 1992 to 1994. Some of the early intelligence he provided was valuable and enabled police to disrupt terrorist activities. However it emerged he was becoming increasingly unreliable and deliberately fabricating information, and in the autumn of 1994 all contacts with Fulton were severed”.

Dealing with his time in CID (which was cleared by Raymond White as ACC) Flanagan said:

“From 1996 to 2000 Fulton provided information to CID with regard to criminal, as opposed to terrorist, related matters, because of his particular access to certain types of criminal activity. In that role he provided information which led to a number of successful police operations, which is why his CID handler regarded him as reliable. As a result of his behaviour becoming steadily more erratic and counterproductive…the RUC decided in April 2000 to have no further contact, because the risks he posed to the police outweighed any potential gains”.

But it was precisely the information that Fulton was giving to his CID handlers about dissident IRA activity, information that was said to have gone straight to the Special Branch, that the Ombudsman  Nuala O’Loan found constituted compelling and valuable intelligence.

Whatever the truth of Keeley’s behaviour, and the Special Branch claimed they found  him erratic and dangerous, neither his CID handler nor former ACC White had anything but praise for Fulton/Keeley as a CID informant in evidence to Smithwick.

Flanagan’s report got to the vital matter of missing intelligence:

“Fulton’s CID handler, in line with standard practice, recorded the information supplied during these meetings on contact sheets and forwarded them to the Force Intelligence Bureau (FIB) for onward transmission to Special Branch as appropriate. Details of three of the five meetings were duly passed on. Details of the other two (for 23 July and 12 August) were not. The PSNI conclusion is that, contrary to the Ombudsman’s assertion, these never reached Special Branch – and as a result were not assessed by them – in all likelihood because of an administrative error in FIB. This represented an unacceptable breakdown in procedures. The PSNI agrees that the information on those sheets should have been considered and assessed by Special Branch in the context of other relevant information”.

According to Flanagan the two pieces of information given by Fulton/Keeley to his handler, which both the Ombudsman and Judge Horner regarded as crucially important and which Keeley and his handler could prove existed, never arrived into the Special Branch system as a result of a ‘breakdown of procedure’ in the CID’s Force Intelligence Bureau (FIB). They  certainly were not in the computer systems in Special Branch South when the Ombudsman investigators went looking. This will be the crux of an Inquiry.

Flanagan did not agree with the Ombudsman’s assessment:

“4.10 In this case, however, covert police operations underway at the time, analysis of the wider intelligence picture and analysis by the Senior Investigating officer in charge of the Omagh Investigation, provides a high degree of confidence that the information concerned was either inaccurate or irrelevant to Omagh”.

Flanagan then went on to deal with ‘Man A’  in the Ombudsman report, who is allegedly Patrick ‘Mooch’ Blair. Keeley aka Fulton has alleged that the reason why Patrick Blair was never arrested over the Omagh bomb is because he is an agent or informer. Blair has served a number of terms in jail and was recently sentenced to five years in prison after being caught in an MI5 surveillance operation targeting dissident republicans. Blair and others pleaded guilty to belonging to a proscribed organisation. Ronnie Flanagan denied that Blair had ever been an informer as alleged by Keeley.

He referred to pieces of  intelligence given by Fulton/Keeley in which as  Flanagan said, Fulton reported “Man A” was in the New IRA and was identifying targets for robberies to finance weapons:

“On the 28th July he (Fulton) reported that ‘Man A’ was moving packages believed to be weapons, he also said that “Man A” was responsible for the bombs in Newry; had at one time smelt of fertiliser when Fulton met him; and had been supplied with body armour “.

Flanagan continued:

 “On the 4th of August 1998, Fulton reported that the Real IRA were planning a show of strength. On the 12th of August 1998 Fulton stated that the day before, ‘A’ had provided a list of weapons he wanted. He also said that the Real IRA were about to move something North over the next few days and that “B” was assisting “A”.

According to  Flanagan it was Fulton, not ‘Man A’ who was buying body armour [Fulton/Keeley agreed, he said this himself in evidence at Smithwick]

 Dealing with the crucial issue – the pieces  of intelligence the Ombudsman found most significant and which were missing from the Special Branch system, Flanagan said:

“Fulton’s unreliability was demonstrated by the fact that he changed the date, when interviewed by the Ombudsman’s staff, on which he had claimed to have told his handler that ‘A’ had smelled of fertiliser, from the 23rd of July (the occasion confirmed in police records) to the 11th of August – presumably to imply some sort of link with the Omagh attack, as fertiliser is an ingredient of home made explosives. In fact a check with forensic experts should have indicated that the fertiliser bomb mix used by dissidents since 1991 had been virtually odourless”.

Flanagan was mistaken in his accusation of changing dates. Also, Keeley maintained that the bomb making mix did create a  musty smell. The Omagh Bomb was a fertiliser mix with a semtex charge or booster which creates a powerful bomb from a “dull” material like fertiliser. The ‘musty’ smell results from the grinding down to powder of the fertiliser ‘prills’, according to forensic sources and the materials used to clean off the grinder.

Ronnie Flanagan’s account of the nature and sequence of Keeleys evidence was  confused and contradictory, as became clear when the Ombudsman’s investigators interviewed Keeley and his handlers. As the Police Ombudsman  Nuala O’Loan pointed out, the Special Branch grading of Keeley/Fulton’s evidence at the time indicated a degree of confidence in him. According to Keeley the grading was ‘B2’ – which indicated his intelligence was regarded as generally reliable.

 Witness 71 in evidence to Smithwick said he got a phone call from Flanagan apologising for his remarks which seemed to cast doubt on his credibility in endorsing Keeley.

25. A disaster for RUC Special Branch

The investigation into the Omagh bombing was a disaster for the RUC Special Branch  but the publication of the Ombudsman’s report in 2001 represented the nadir of its reputation. RUC Special Branch was described by O’Loan as a ‘force within a force’ which dictated how, or even if, certain people or cases would be investigated and withholding vital intelligence from uniformed police investigators. The failure of the Special Branch to pass on mobile phone records to CID, relating to the bomber’s journey to Omagh, was never adequately explained. The law surrounding the passing of and use of information from GCHQ intercepts is highly restrictive but does not adequately explain the paucity of information passed on to CID. Signals from mobile phones used in the bomb and scout car were picked up by GCHQ ‘live’ as they drove over the border through Cullaville and Crossmaglen on the way to Omagh.

In the interview with retired Assistant Chief Constable Raymond White in 1998 John Ware asked him about live monitoring of the bombers by GCHQ:

“Q – There was GCHQ monitoring of at least one telephone, on the day of the bombing?

A – That is my understanding, yes…

Q – If the monitoring that day had begun with one phone – the Murphy phone, which had eight or more exchanges with several other phones – GCHQ would have had a matrix of the calls that had been made that day by the bombers?

A – It’s a very fair assumption. If these calls were made – and we have no reason to doubt that because as they evidently had to do the cell-site analysis work and that emerged, that those contacts were made – then obviously the conversations would have been recorded, and the detail of that would have been immensely beneficial to Special Branch and subsequently to CID”.

It took CID months to trawl through phone records supplied by phone companies and  build up an intelligence matrix.

In evidence to the House of Commons Northern Ireland Committee the present Garda Commissioner who was then ACC PSNI, Drew Harris, put forward the hypothesis that it was the ‘sensitivity of some of the mobile phone numbers’ which  may explain why particular numbers or number were held back by Special Branch or the intelligence services

26. O’Loan under pressure

After the publication of her report, the Ombudsman came under pressure. She described a meeting with the Policing Board to an Irish Official from the Department of Justice based at the Anglo Irish Secretariat in Belfast. Not only had Unionist members of the board given her a hard time, but she had come under attack from official quarters. The Irish official noted that:

“O’Loan added somewhat bitterly that – apart from the Unionist members of the Policing Board the main opposition to her position had come from the Secretary of State and the NIO. She suspects in fact that elements of the Chief Constable’s rebuttal were written by the NIO and the Home Office. She revealed that she had a very difficult meeting with the Secretary of State some weeks ago where he had accused her in a bullying manner of “lobbing a hand grenade into the Peace Process”. Such criticisms she believed to be grossly unfair and ignored  the powers- and obligations – which she possessed under the Police Act 1989.”

O’Loan was not going to be swayed.

27. The Police seek a Judicial Review

In February 2002 the Police Association which represents senior officers and the rank and file in the PSNI, applied for a judicial review against the Ombudsman’s report. Chief Constable Ronnie Flanagan signed affidavits for the application as did Raymond White former head of both CID Special Branch in the new PSNI and Special Branch until his retirement. They were represented by the then QC now High Court Judge, Bernard McCloskey.

A few weeks later on the 22 of May it was revealed in the ‘Irish Times’ that two senior former RUC then PSNI officers, Assistant Chief Constable Sam Kincaid and ACC Alan McQuillan had signed affidavits in support of the Ombudsman, contradicting Flanagan and White. McQuillan had been made ACC North Region just after the bombing. As senior regional officers in the North Region they rejected any suggestions that they had responsibility for the investigation into the Omagh bomb.

They stated that the investigation was in fact carried out  under the direction of the two top officers Ronnie Flanagan and Raymond White, that crucial intelligence was not passed to them and that they were not consulted or kept informed of developments.

As mentioned earlier the senior investigating officer in the Omagh investigation, appointed “Task Force Commander”  by the Chief Constable Ronnie Flanagan was CID Chief Superintendent Eric Anderson, witness 68 at Smithwick. The two regional  officers at the time of Omagh claimed that the effective line of command stretched from the Crime Division headed by White in 1998 to Chief Constable Flanagan.

In a fax the Secretariat official explained what was at issue:

The Police Association issued a statement in which they regretted  that details of the affidavits of the two officers, McQuillan and Kincaid, had been made public before the court hearing – they had been published in The Irish Times:

“It appears to the Police Association that Ms O’Loan has sought to divert attention away from her unlawful actions to one peripheral matter of detail. The Police Association is in possession of evidence which will be presented to the court,which clearly demonstrates the factual inaccuracy of her evidence on this issue. The Police Association regrets that this matter was aired in public rather than in court.  It feels that this can only compound Ms O’Loan’s earlier unlawful actions and add to the gross injustices she has caused to individual officers”.

 After the Judicial Review was dropped by the Police Association of Northern Ireland, the Ombudsman Nuala O’Loan issued a statement in which she accepted that better notice should have been given to some members of the PSNI about allegations made against them.

Sourced from The CAIN website

Chapter 7

28. Patrick ‘Mooch’ Blair’s Counsel Cross examination at the Smithwick Tribunal.

In December 2011 Patrick Blair’s Senior  Counsel cross examined Keeley and pointed out that Blair absolutely denied his allegations about the Omagh bomb:

Q – I think you tried to imply Mr Blair was involved in it ?

A – I implied Mr Blair had been mixing explosives approximately 48 hours before the bombing, madam.

Q – And when you said that you were trying to imply that he was involved somehow in this bombing ?…

A – I believe so …I had given my handler’s (information) that he was mixing explosives for approximately 48 hours before the bomb.

A – Well Mr Blair denies that completely.

A – I’m sure he does.

A – I put it to you finally, that all the evidence you have given here has been a total fabrication ?

A – No madam, it is not. It’s been the truth.

28. Patrick ‘Mooch’ Blair gives evidence in November 2011

Patrick Blair was cross examined in relation to the Omagh Bombing, by Counsel for the Tribunal at Smithwick:

Q – .. there would be no love lost between you and Fulton sure there wouldn’t?

A – No.

Q – And did he implicate you in the Omagh Bomb?

A – Yes, he did..

Q – And that led to an inquiry being carried out in the North by the Ombudsman isn’t that so?

A – Yes. I was never arrested in the North about …or questioned in the North about that, even though I have been arrested..

Q – And were you, was your name outed in the House of Common? [ In relation to the Omagh bomb]

A – That’s correct, yes.

Q – were you ever interviewed by the Gardai in the South about a possible involvement?

A – I was never arrested over the Omagh bomb in any state or Jurisdiction.

Blair was then cross examined by Fulton/Keeley’s QC Mr Rafferty about the fact that Keeley had made allegations about his involvement in the making of the Omagh Bomb:

Q – Are you aware of the sequence of events ? He gave information that he met you and that he thought that, because of his observations, you were preparing a bomb, and he told his handler. Are you aware of that?

A – Yes.

Q – And his handler then noted it down…on a contact sheet?

A – Yes.

Q – And that goes through the whole system?

A – Yes.

Q – Yes. And that is only a few days before the Omagh bomb?

A – Yes.

Q – Are you saying that he has made that up, that he didn’t meet you?

A – Oh he met me around – before it, but I was coming from work. He had an arrangement, he wanted to see me about selling certain items.

Q – Well, again, is it not pure dumb coincidence then, that a phone attributed to you, there is a 59-second phone call between that phone and the bomb team on the day that the bomb is planted…

A – Sorry, repeat that.

Q – Is it pure coincidence, then, that on the day the bomb is planted, three days after he has made his observation of you that there is a 59-second phone call between a phone attributed to you and the bomb team, as they are planting the bomb?

A –  It would have been pure coincidence. I was working in a hotel in Navan at the time and he came to the hotel and I met him and I met him in Dundalk shortly after.

Q – It’s a pretty big coincidence isn’t it.

A – Well coincidence is coincidence….

Q – But the only information he gives about you is his observation and then three days later your phone is making a 59-second call to the bombers. That is a big coincidence, isn’t it?

A – He said I made the bomb, and I denied any knowledge or any part in that incident.

Patrick Blair received another  prison sentence under the Terrorism Act 2000, in 2018 relating to a meeting in Newry in 2014 at which weapons training and targeting of prison officers was discussed. MI5 produced transcripts of the meeting.

Chapter 8

29. November 2006

Keeley, still using his nom de guerre Kevin Fulton, was arrested in London under the Prevention of Terrorism Act and flown to Northern Ireland for interrogation on foot of the publication of his book ‘Unsung Hero’ about his life undercover. The book, which was republished in 2019, described a series of shootings, bombings and kidnappings which he participated in or initiated, in as an undercover IRA man. It probably was not a coincidence that he  had also been subpoenaed by South Armagh man Sean Hoey’s defence team to give evidence at his trial. Hoey had been jailed in 2003 on 58 charges relating to the Real IRA bombing of Omagh; the case against him was flimsy at best and  later collapsed. Keeley was interrogated 30 times by the Serious Crimes Unit of the PSNI.

The arrest removed any immunity he could have been  guaranteed and he therefore, did not give evidence in the Hoey case.

2006 was also the year Keeley had his first meeting with the Smithwick Tribunal. He was to give the first version of his statement in 2008, and in December 2011 gave evidence in public, as did his former handlers in C(1)6 of the CID.

In his interview with John Ware, Raymond White was asked the important question by John Ware:

“Q – Let’s move on to the contribution of the intelligence agencies. What’s your understanding about the extent of intelligence that was supplied to Special Branch, after the bombing, to assist the detectives?

A – Well, on reflection this is the singularly most puzzling aspect of it that, going by their recollections – as obviously I had no dealing directly with the security service – nothing flowed in any substantive direction, at all that they can recall, from either GCHQ or the Security Services, relative to the intelligence surrounding the suspects that were involved in the Omagh Bombing. This is remarkable in a sense that if you have, and we’re assuming, the live monitoring capacity, that one would have thought this was prime time as regards conversations that, if there had of been a natural, should we say, guarded was in respect of what of what people would use their telephones for, that you know, as the detail of the atrocity was breaking, you can imagine the leadership of then organisation; the panic, in a sense they must have been in; the membership themselves; who got it wrong? The blame game would have been going… If ever there was a time when caution was down, in relation to the use of telephone communications; not wishing maybe to be seen with each other perhaps even having gone into hiding. The only means of satisfying your craving for knowledge as to what actually is going on, is to be in telephone communication. This is what struck me that my Special Branch colleagues would basically say: We never got anything that would have resembled a feed, in relation to any activity, post the Omagh Bombing.

A – That could be because, theoretically GCHQ weren’t listening for it?

A – That’s a possibility.

Q – But not one you take seriously?

A – Not one I take seriously.

But what CID and MI5 had was Keeley, embedded in the RIRA ecosystem around Newry and Armagh, cheek by jowl with one of RIRA’s most ruthless bombers. Liam Campbell had moved operations North of the Border when it became obvious the Guards had penetrated their operations in the South. Keeley was side by side with the bomb team at the height of the bombing campaign.

Mark Bridger, former PONI investigator did a report for the Omagh families which was quoted by Judge Horner in his 2021 judgement:

30. Overreach

Liam Campbell had grossly overreached. The devastation of the Omagh bomb with its botched amateurish warnings destroyed the prospect of any credible defections from the IRA. The reaction was ferocious North and South of the Border.

McKevitt called a ceasefire in an attempt to recover from the fallout; it was a play for time.  The Irish Government’s belief that it could use persuasion to get McKevitt  to end the campaign once and for all came to nothing.  Neither Michael McKevitt, or Liam Campbell were interested in talking. McKevitt continued with fundraising and plans for  weapons purchases, not realising one of his biggest assets in the US David Rupert was an MI5 agent. He had big plans for ‘spectaculars’ in the  UK and possible assassinations even while MI5 constructed elaborate sting operations in Eastern Europe.

Transcript of a conversation between the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair ón the 20th of August, 1998.

After the Omagh bomb the Irish Government decided to close McKevitt down. After a massive surveillance operation and using the evidence of MI5/FBI agent David Rupert, McKevitt was sentenced to 20 years for “directing terrorism” in the Special Criminal Court.

Statutory inquiries, which the Secretary of State Chris Heaton – Harris has committed to, are not affected by the British Government’s new Legacy legislation. It is unthinkable that the British Government would resile from a solemn commitment to the Omagh families. The inquiry’s terms of reference according to Heaton-Harris, will be based on Mr Justice Horner’s judgement of October 2021 which made  Keeley’s intelligence central to his decision to call for a new inquiry:

Above: From Mr Justice Horner’s judgement in the Judicial review brought by Michael Gallagher October, 2021.

Why has MI5 agreed that the Omagh inquiry can go ahead when the service has always been implacably opposed to one into the murder of Patrick Finucane and others.

Cui Bono ?

© Deirdre Younge

   May, 2023.

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