In April 2000 Jeffrey Donaldson, the former leader of the DUP, stood up in the House of Commons and made the heinous allegation on live television that former Special Branch sergeant in Dundalk Garda Station, Owen Corrigan, had colluded in the murders of Chief Superintendent Harry Breen, Commander H Division, and Superintendent Bob Buchanan, while they were on a visit to Dundalk Garda Station in 1989.

Donaldson alleged Corrigan had tipped off the IRA about the two officers’ arrival at the station.

Donaldson’s allegation was entirely untrue. He made it with the protection of parliamentary privilege.

He never repeated the allegation in public in a forum where he did not enjoy privilege.

He never withdrew the smear.

He never apologised.

Owen Corrigan, who has since passed away, was alive at the time. Donaldson put his life in danger.

As it happened, the IRA operation which Donaldson was misrepresenting, had started early in the morning before Breen had left Armagh police station where he was based. A detailed summary of the case can be read here: Deception – and a death foretold. By Deirdre Younge.

Harry Breen and Bob Buchanan were shot dead by the South Armagh Brigade on the Edenappa Road in South Armagh a few hundred yards over the border, as they headed to Bessbrook barracks, in the afternoon of the 20th.

Breen had received an order from the Chief Constable Sir John Hermon to talk to the Gardai about a joint operation to “do something” about Tom “Slab” Murphy and his smuggling activities. In fact Breen advised the Guards to ignore any such suggestions from newly arrived members of the British army.

On the same day as Donaldson made his statement, the 13th of April, 2000, Charlie Flanagan the former Minister for Justice stood in the Dail and called for an investigation into Garda collusion.

At a dinner in Stormont hosted by the Secretary of State Tom King the previous week, Breen and a fellow Chief Superintendent serving on the border, Witness 27 at the Smithwick Tribunal, were joined by two British officers – described as “two Colonels” newly arrived in South Armagh. One of the officers described how on one day 90 lorries went out of Slab Murphy’s yard which straddled the South Armagh border, allegedly on a smuggling operation. King was furious and demanded action against Murphy.

Both Breen and his fellow officer were disgusted that a civilian, albeit the Secretary of State, should order an operation on the strength of some loose talk over the dinner table, fuelled by newly arrived officers who had no previous experience of working on the border. Breen requested his then Sergeant Alan Mains to investigate the incidents, and he discovered that the Army monitored only 1 lorry, as he revealed at the Smithwick Tribunal.

Donaldson’s accusation had been made solely on the word of a former undercover covert source working for the British Army, the RUC and MI5. Peter Keeley was recruited by Army Intelligence in Berlin and tasked with returning to his hometown of Newry and infiltrating the IRA. He joined FRU in 1982.

By 2000 Keeley was temporarily a whistleblower about his activities in Northern Ireland in the 1980s and ‘90s.

According to the late Willie Fazer Keeley was used to deliver the false allegation in order to push the UK authorities to set up an inquiry into the deaths of Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan. They were shot dead in March 1989 in an ambush on the Edenappa Road, South Armagh led by the local OC. Frazer and his victims group had started a campaign to investigate Breen and Buchanan’s death and began by asking why the British Army didn’t intervene on the day. But the investigation pivoted to a visit to Dundalk Station and a meeting lasting less than an hour after Donaldson’s intervention.

According to Frazer:

“we were persuaded by some RUC men that we should be pointing at Dundalk Garda Station and Corrigan”.

[From conversations with Willie Frazer in Markethill between 2016 and 2018].

He admitted that he and others at meetings in Armagh invented the allegations made by Keeley and later articulated by Donaldson. The same allegations later swayed Judge Cory into calling for a Tribunal in 2003 with particular emphasis on Dundalk and Corrigan.

Keeley had been given the pseudonym ‘Kevin Fulton’ after he left Northern Ireland in 2001. It is still being used, as for instance by the Omagh Bomb Inquiry now sitting in Belfast.

Frazer arranged a meeting between himself, Keeley/Fulton and Cory in the Merrion Hotel Dublin in 2003. Keeley’s assertions swayed Judge Cory in the last week of his investigations to call for a public inquiry which ultimately became the Smithwick Inquiry.

Interestingly Frazer said the “Kevin Fulton’ Statement in the final Cory report did not accord with his clear recollection of what had been said at the meeting with Judge Cory. In fact he was adamant that Keeley did not hand the Judge a written statement at all.

Frazer explained that what happened was a number of RUC men ‘came down here’ [to his base in Markethill ] and persuaded us to point the finger at Corrigan and Dundalk.

Thanks to Donaldson and the fact that his accusations were broadcast live on the BBC Parliament Channel all attention now focused south of the border.

Once the Irish Government set up the Smithwick Inquiry in 2005 Donaldson was to play a further role as Frazer’s minder.

According to Frazer he had three meetings with Judge Smithwick on the Edenappa Road. The discussions centred on Army positions on the day Breen and Buchanan were ambushed. They did not end well and Frazer admitted he ended up swearing at the Judge who told him the [British] Army had nothing to answer.

See Life and Death in South Armagh: Life and Death in South Armagh. [WebBook.]

Lest Frazer had plans to bring his concerns to the newly set up Smithwick Tribunal Donaldson and an advisor set up a meeting. According to Frazer Donaldson told him to stay away from the Tribunal saying: “this is the way it’s going to go”. In other words Donaldson intended to “shape” the Tribunal and Frazer did not feature in his plans.

However in 2012 in the final days of the public hearings Frazer saw his chance to answer allegations made in evidence by Owen Corrigan that he was a loyalist terrorist.

He raised questions again:

In evidence on day 120 he insisted that the Edenappa Road had hidden cameras in an area inaccessible to the Army watch towers. He said that he had been told by Army technicians who had put them on the road that they blind spots on the road and that he had been shown the specifications.

“I know for a fact, for a fact, that road had a camera on it full-time, full-time on that road.

Q – By who

A – By the Army. And the only place you couldn’t see was the place where they were shot..but the other thing was, I also spoke to the man that put an undercover camera on a stone and parked it there [the ambush point] on that road.

Q- If I can move on now, because the Tribunal has heard extensive evidence in relation to army installations and Army analysis on that road”.

Ironically Frazer realised too late that he had been manipulated by Donaldson and others and had helped divert the investigation into the murders of the two officers south of the border to an inquiry too ready to accept the intelligence they were fed.

He told Judge Smithwick he was being manipulated by British Intelligence.

“I would love your honour to be sitting in Newtownhamilton and doing this inquiry, because I would guarantee that you would get at the truth. The problem is the British Government has not put all the facts in front of you”.

Frazer realised too late that getting at the truth was never the object of the exercise.

Donaldson is now heading to Magilligan prison to serve his sentence for rape, his role in the manipulation of inquiries into the murders of the two most senior officers in ‘The troubles’ remains unexplained.

Willie Frazer died in 2019.