Intelligence officials and fellow policemen are to be questioned in connection with the car bombing of a policeman in Ireland this week. Initial reports of the incident, strongly suggest the bombers had access to classified material which should have been kept confidentially in an office or police station.. The level of inside knowledge required to carry out the bombing in the manner it happened, suggests that the bombers had precise inside of confidential material. Despite the spin, the nature and timing of the attack, pre-supposes very specific details that are unlikely to be anything other than highly significant, according to one source. A highly secretive embarrassing internal inquiry will be investigating, recently recruited nationalists suspected of Crown force collusion, including the role of forces within the Special Branch and covert forces within British army units who formerly had their offices raided. According to one official, the leaks further expose the weakness of a force mixed with all sorts of conflicting interests, including nationalists and the fact that there are no mechanisms for democratic accountability of the various British departments in Ireland or their activities. Moreover, the British government's failure some time ago to implement Patten's requirements, for a new beginning for policing, has left everyone powerless to investigate this matter.The various forces have a force within a force, immune from accountability and immune from scrutiny. Recent recruiting of nationalists and promotion of Special Branch into senior positions of authority throughout the paramilitary police, have polluted any new policing ethos within the force, with security breaches, left right and centre. The bomber's iuntelligence accomplices recently passed through security checkpoints, staffed by armed guards, gained entry to secured coded keypads and opened secure cabinets. They knew exactly what they wanted and they knew exactly where to look. They initially gained access through a ringed 20-metre steel fence with watchtowers, floodlights, classed as impenetrable. They then cracked a network of elaborate security systems, designed to protect some of the northern statelet's most dangerous secrets and intimate details of all paramilitary police personnel. Clearly operating with insider's knowledge, the bombers intelligence operatives, penetrated the heartland of all covert operations. They targeted also an office which runs the network of informers, agents, an important nerve centre for military intelligence and the inner sanctum of counter insurgency operations. According to confirmed reliable reports, having breached the outer security cordon, the masked unit entered the first floor office. One of the men had a Dublin accent. A British agent on the premises was subsequently bound and gagged. The unit gained access to secret files and removed a number of documents, described as highly confidential. They apparently made copies of all the material. They downloaded information from all of the computers. A paramilitary police source has admitted the raid must have involved "someone closely involved with us". 'Very close'; not every officer would have had specific knowledge to access the security systems protecting the most 'highly sensitive' material the British have in Ireland. A former officer admitted, "I worked with the secret services for 30 odd years and I wouldn't know how to do this thing." Nevertheless the paramilitary police remains unacceptable to both unionists and nationalists, because it is widely acknowledged, that no government has the power to curtail the forces within forces. The paramilitary police operates in exactly the same manner that forces within the Special Branch, and forces within MI5, controlled the RUC. "Castlereagh was at the heart of operations in the Six counties for 30 years. It is from Castlereagh that, shoot-to-kill operatives, collusion with loyalists and the torture of republicans was directed." There are also recent revelations, concerning Crown force collusion in the attempted murder of three RUC/paramilitary police members. Further, of the 20,000 official complaints made against the RUC/paramilitary police in recent years only nine have been successfully prosecuted. More 6,000 files were sent to the DPP arising out of the complaints. Of 24 recommended for prosecution, just two police have been found guilty and jailed, one received a suspended sentence, six fined. These figures clearly show the DPP and the system in the six counties are not capable of policing the police. It confirms what nationalists have always known. The RUC/paramilitary police are a law unto themselves, regardless of what crimes they commit. |
