Catholic priest's involvement in bombing covered up by British deep state

[Jan Klimkowski]

I respectfully suggest that anyone interested in the deep political significance of this matter reads the official police ombudsman's report.

It's fairly short and can be downloaded as a pdf here:
http://www.policeombudsman.org/Publicati...Claudy.pdf

What I see - fundamentally - is near four decades-old RUC and British intelligence reports being presented in 2010 as fact.

When in truth this "evidence" is what it was in the 1970s - essentially hearsay.

Fwiw - the IRA has never claimed responsibility for the Claudy atrocity.

The hearsay presented as fact in the police ombudsman's report is currently being spun and respun by MSM.

Let's have a look at a typical example of this tangled and spun web from the BBC:

Ex-officer was within 15 minutes of Fr Chesney arrest

A former police officer who investigated Fr James Chesney in 1972 has told the BBC he was prevented from arresting him by senior RUC officers.

Fr Chesney, who died in 1980, was named in the Police Ombudsman's report into the Claudy bombing.

The Special Branch detective sergeant said he was within 15 minutes of launching an operation to search Father Chesney's house.

He was told not to proceed, because "the matter was under control".

Three no-warning bombs exploded in the County Londonderry village on 31 July 1972.

It later transpired that talks between the Catholic Church, the police and the government led to Fr Chesney being moved to a parish in Donegal.

The Police Ombudsman's report confirmed that detectives believed Fr Chesney was involved in the bombing which killed nine people.

However, former IRA explosives officer Shane Paul O'Doherty, who was active in the Derry-Donegal area in the early and mid-70s, said he had never heard anyone mention the priest's name at the time.

Mr O'Doherty, who served 14 years in jail in England for his involvement in a letter-bomb campaign, told the Irish News that "journalists appeared to have mistaken intelligence reports for hard evidence".

The police officer was interviewed by the ombudsman's investigative team for its Claudy report, and the ombudsman later wrote to inform him he would be referring to his evidence in his findings.

The ombudsman, Al Hutchinson, found that after talks between the then Catholic Primate Cardinal William Conway, and Secretary of State William Whitelaw, Fr Chesney was moved to a parish in the Irish Republic.

No action was ever taken against Fr Chesney, who detectives believed was the IRA's 'director of operations' in south County Derry.

He died of cancer in 1980 aged 46.

The retired Special Branch officers said the decision to "leave the priest alone" was made at a senior level.

"The time that I asked for his arrest, I had information there was a large amount of firearms in the parochial house.

"I had good sources within the Provisional IRA in south Derry," he said.

'Under control'

He said he told his superiors he was going to raid Fr Chesney's parochial house within 30 minutes unless he was told to do otherwise. He said he had soldiers standing by in Magherafelt police station as back-up for the search and arrest operation.

"They (senior officers) gave me an answer back within 15 minutes that things were under control, not to go.

"I was told, leave it alone, we're looking after it. Then the next thing I heard was that he was transferred to Malin Head (in Donegal)."

The ex-policeman said he himself was transferred out of the area a few months later after being wounded in an IRA attempt on his life.

He said he had no doubt whatsoever that Fr Chesney was involved because other Special Branch officers had received the same information from other sources.

"All my reports were obviously filed in headquarters and just locked away and now the ombudsman has got them out, discovered them."

Shane Paul O'Doherty, who cut his links with the IRA while in prison in England, said: "It is extraordinary that the ombudsman's report into the Claudy bombing pours judgment upon the late Fr Chesney and then asks for witnesses to come forward wtih evidence to support its case.

"Would this be putting the hanging before the trial?"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-11091255

There are so many ambiguities in this.

We are truly in Jorge Luis Borges' "El Jardín de senderos que se bifurcan": "Whosoever would undertake some atrocious enterprise should act as if it were already accomplished, should impose upon himself a future as irrevocable as the past."

No action was ever taken against Fr Chesney, who detectives believed was the IRA's 'director of operations' in south County Derry.
(snip)
The retired Special Branch officers said the decision to "leave the priest alone" was made at a senior level.

"The time that I asked for his arrest, I had information there was a large amount of firearms in the parochial house.

"I had good sources within the Provisional IRA in south Derry," he said.

And directly from the ombudsman's report:

4.14 Intelligence from August 1972 identified Father Chesney as the Quarter Master and Director of Operations of the South Derry Provisional Irish
Republican Army (IRA). During the same month other police reports alleged
that Father Chesney had directed the Claudy bombings and that both he and
Man A were involved in other terrorist incidents.

http://www.policeombudsman.org/Publicati...Claudy.pdf

So what are the precise allegations against Chesney?

Let's break it down.

Brigades
The IRA refers to its ordinary members as volunteers (or óglaigh in Irish). Up until the late 1970s, IRA volunteers were organised in units based on conventional military structures. Volunteers living in one area formed a company as part of a battalion, which could be part of a brigade, although many battalions were not attached to a brigade.

For most of its existence, the IRA had five Brigade areas within what it referred to as the "war-zone". These Brigades were located in Armagh, Belfast, Derry, Donegal and Tyrone/Monaghan.[53 O'Brien The Long War]
(snip)
Derry city had one battalion and the South Derry Brigade. The Derry Battalion became the Derry Brigade in 1972 after a rapid increase in membership following Bloody Sunday when British paratroopers killed 13 unarmed demonstrators at a civil rights march.[55 1974: Compensation for Bloody Sunday victims]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provisional...Leadership

So is the allegation that Chesney was Quarter Master and Director of Operations of the IRA's South Derry Brigade?

The Special Branch officer says: "I had good sources within the Provisional IRA in south Derry," he said.

Really? And these "sources" finger Chesney as Quartermaster and Director of Operations of that "brigade"?

The IRA Derry brigade contained some aspiring "rock stars" at this time:

Martin McGuinness joined the IRA around 1970 at the age of 20, after the Troubles broke out. He originally joined the Official IRA unaware of the split at the December 1969 Army Convention. He shortly switched to the Provisional IRA. By the start of 1972, at the age of 21, he was second-in-command of the IRA in Derry, a position he held at the time of Bloody Sunday.[5] A claim was made at the Saville Inquiry that McGuinness was responsible for supplying detonators for nail bombs on Bloody Sunday where 14 civil rights marchers were killed by British soldiers in Derry. Paddy Ward claimed he was the leader of the Fianna, the youth wing of the IRA in January 1972. He claimed McGuinness, the second-in-command of the IRA in the city at the time, and another anonymous member gave him bomb parts on the morning of 30 January, the date planned for the civil rights march. He said his organisation intended to attack city-centre premises in Derry on the day when civilians were shot dead by British soldiers. In response McGuinness said the claims were "fantasy", while Gerry O’Hara, a Sinn Féin councillor in Derry stated that he and not Ward was the Fianna leader at the time.[6]

Ultimately, the Saville Inquiry was inconclusive on McGuiness' role due to contradictory testimony over his movements, concluding that while he was "engaged in paramilitary activity" during Bloody Sunday, and had probably been armed with a Thompson submachine gun, there was insufficient evidence to make any finding other than they were "sure that he did not engage in any activity that provided any of the soldiers with any justification for opening fire"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_mcguinness

However Shane Paul O'Doherty was right in the thick of IRA actitivities in Derry in 1972:

former IRA explosives officer Shane Paul O'Doherty, who was active in the Derry-Donegal area in the early and mid-70s, said he had never heard anyone mention the priest's name at the time.

Mr O'Doherty, who served 14 years in jail in England for his involvement in a letter-bomb campaign, told the Irish News that "journalists appeared to have mistaken intelligence reports for hard evidence".
(snip)
Shane Paul O'Doherty, who cut his links with the IRA while in prison in England, said: "It is extraordinary that the ombudsman's report into the Claudy bombing pours judgment upon the late Fr Chesney and then asks for witnesses to come forward wtih evidence to support its case.

"Would this be putting the hanging before the trial?"

Indeed.

I do not believe the available (primarily hearsay) evidence justifies the conclusions of the police ombudsman's report that "Father Chesney as the Quarter Master and Director of Operations of the South Derry Provisional Irish
Republican Army (IRA) (snip) had directed the Claudy bombings."

However, the following chronology does seem likely:

i) low level RUC and Special Branch officers received intelligence from inside the Derry/South Derry (take your pick 'cos they sure don't know which) "cells" of the IRA that Chesney was actively involved in active terrorist activities, including Claudy;

ii) these low level RUC and Special Branch officers decided to raid Chesney's home and arrest him;

iii) high level RUC and Special Branch told these low level officers to back off. Immediately and permanently;

iv) shortly afterwards, the British govt's relevant big cheese, Northern Ireland secretary Willie Whitelaw, meets Cardinal William Conway, and Chesney is moved a few miles over the border into Ireland.

The official justification for these actions is that:

Senior politicians feared the arrest of a priest in connection with such an atrocity – at a time when sectarian killings in Northern Ireland were out of control and the province stood on the brink of civil war – could destabilise the security situation even further.

(See OP above.)

I've been looking at a lot of Irish websites - of each and every political and religious persuasion. The general consensus is that the official rationale is tosh. Rubbish. In 1972, the killing was happening anyway, and most of the killers didn't need any more reasons to carry on doing their foul work.

So, behind the smoke and mirrors of a limited hangout, hearsay presented as official fact almost forty years later, what options are we left with?

Speculatively:

i) the official story is essentially true - Chesney was a "provo priest", involved in the Claudy atrocity, and the British state did a deal with the Roman Catholic Church to move him across the border.

Moral objection: that would be a disgrace.

Practical objection: how did moving Chesney a few miles across the border prevent him from being involved directly in ongoing IRA activities?

ii) alternately, the British deep state, at senior Special Branch, intelligence and Cabinet level, stepped in to protect a British intelligence asset.

The asset may have been Father Chesney.

Alternately, it may have been someone else in the IRA.

Footnote: the police ombudsman report does not regard the 2002 "Father Liam letter" as authentic, despite MSM having quoted it widely.

This leads to a significant problem:

Namely, that the "Father Liam letter" was the trigger for the ombudsman's report.

It also leads to further speculation. Here's a key passage from the "Father Liam letter":

‘At the end of the summer of 1972 I was up in Malin Head. I met a changed
man. We talked long into the evenings about the situation in the north and
then one evening John broke down in a flood of tears and said he had a
terrible story to tell. I listened in silence to what he had to say and now
recount as well as I can what he told me.
John said he was horrified at the injustices done to the Catholic people and
decided to do something for the people, he became a member of the IRA and
was soon in charge of a small number of volunteers. His unit was ordered
from Derry City to plant bombs in Claudy to ease the pressure on the IRA in
the City and to [sic] they planted the bombs, it was their intention to phone a
warning as they passed through Dungiven on the way home but found that all
telephones were out of order. When he heard of what happened in Claudy
he was horrified.
Shortly after Claudy he got word from a friend in Derry City that the police
were onto him and with the help of a senior police officer and the Bishop he
got a posting to Malin Head. He named the police officer but I forget the
name but I think it was Lennon or something like that.’

:bebored:

I read the "Father Liam letter" as an attempt to create an intelligence legend. Indeed, for me, it is the starting point of the limited hangout.

The letter points the finger at Chesney using existing, highly tenuous evidence, and provides mitigation along the following lines: we couldn't phone in a warning 'cos the phone boxes weren't working and I've been wracked with guilt ever after....

I call BULLSHIT.

My speculative interpretation is that a key British intelligence asset was, or is, being protected as part of the Whitelaw/Conway deal.

And that asset may not have been Father James Chesney.