1 Tuesday, 24th September 2002
2 (10.05 a.m)
3 GENERAL SIR FRANK KITSON, sworn
4 Questioned by MR CLARKE
5 LORD SAVILLE: General Kitson, if you look across to your
6 left, you can see who is talking to you. I am the
7 Chairman of the Tribunal. I say this to all the
8 witness, I am going to say it to you. The questions
9 will in the main come from the barristers, the people in
10 front of me. In order for everybody to hear what you
11 have to say, could you remember to keep reasonably close
12 to that microphone, we may ask you to pull it a little
13 bit towards you if we cannot hear you, and by that means
14 we will all be able to listen to your evidence.
15 MR CLARKE: Sir Frank, do you have with you your two
16 statements to the Tribunal, the first of which is on the
17 screen, which I think you signed on the 18th February of
18 the year 2000, and the second of which you signed on
19 18th October 2001?
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. Are the contents of those statements true to the best of
22 your knowledge and belief?
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. Because we have all had the opportunity of reading both
25 of their statements and their attachments, I am going
1 only to ask you supplementary questions that arise out
2 of them. It may be that in the course of giving
3 evidence, it becomes necessary to refer to individual
4 soldiers. Can you please not, in the first instance,
5 mention the names of any soldiers because they may well
6 be entitled to anonymity and we will find the cipher, if
7 any, to which the soldier whom you are referring to has,
8 but you can proceed upon the basis that Lord Carver,
9 General Ford, Colonel Wilford and Brigadier McClellan
10 are all public names so you do not need to worry about
11 those.
12 You describe, in the first paragraph of a statement
13 that is on the screen, how in 1972 you were then
14 a Brigadier in command of the 39th Air Portable Brigade
15 with eight battalions under your command in Belfast and,
16 in addition, you had two battalions on two-year tours,
17 one of which was the Brigade reserve which, in 1972, was
18 the 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment, and the
19 other battalion was designated as the Province Reserve.
20 Was that the 1st Battalion of the King's Own Border
21 regiment?
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. You describe in the second paragraph how you had been in
24 Northern Ireland since September 1970 initially
25 reporting to the then CLF, Major General Farrar-Hockley,
1 until he was replaced by General Ford, which we know to
2 have occurred at the end of July 1971. Did you know
3 General Ford before he came to Northern Ireland as
4 Commander of Land Forces?
5 A. Yes.
6 Q. By January 1972, the time we are dealing with, would it
7 be fair to say that you knew him well?
8 A. I certainly knew him better, yes.
9 Q. You were based at HQNI where, presumably, he was based
10 as well; is that right?
11 A. No, that is not quite right. Headquarters 39 Brigade,
12 which was my headquarters, was in the same general area,
13 Lisburn, but it was a separate compound to HQ
14 Northern Ireland, which is where he was based.
15 Q. Did you know General Tuzo before you came to
16 Northern Ireland?
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. Could we have on the screen paragraph 6 at the bottom of
19 the page. You describe in this paragraph the
20 formulation of military policy in Northern Ireland and
21 how the GOC exercised command through the CLF to whom
22 the three Brigade commanders were subordinate.
23 When we talk about the three Brigade commanders,
24 that is the 39th Brigade, the 8th Brigade and the
25 5th Brigade; is that right?
1 A. I cannot remember if it was the 5th Brigade, I think it
2 moved, it changed.
3 Q. Certainly the 39th and the 8th?
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. You say at the bottom of the page:
6 "I was never asked for my views on security policy
7 outside my own Brigade area. I knew nothing about the
8 political decisions which governed security policy and
9 very little about the situation elsewhere in the
10 Province."
11 That is really so, is it, you were never asked your
12 views on security policy outside the confines of the
13 39th Brigade?
14 A. No.
15 Q. Can I say why there is a note of surprise in my voice.
16 We know you had written, in 1969 and 1970, a report
17 which eventually was published as the book "Low
18 intensity operations," which contains a laudatory
19 forward by General Sir Michael Carver, who was then the
20 Chief of the General Staff, in which he said that nobody
21 could be better qualified than you to write on the
22 subject and that your book is written "for the soldier
23 of today to help him prepare for the operations of
24 tomorrow. It will be the greatest possible help to him
25 and I hope it will be read by all those concerned with
1 training the Army."
2 It occurred to me when reading that book, published
3 in November 1971, that you would have been the one
4 person whom it would be appropriate to consult on
5 security policy province-wide?
6 A. Well, the first thing is the book did not come out until
7 November, and we are talking about January the following
8 year. I think it may be a bit of a splitting hairs, but
9 they would not have thought they were responsible for
10 training anyone at the time, they were busy looking
11 after their jobs in Northern Ireland.
12 They were also, most of the senior officers, I do
13 not think when Lord Carver wrote that -- General Carver
14 as he then was -- he was thinking that it was good for
15 all the senior officers of that level to have done that.
16 Certainly General Tuzo had been involved in these things
17 before, I cannot remember if General Ford was, General
18 Farrar Hockley certainly was, and I do not think you
19 would expect them to suddenly put everything down and
20 read the book written by a comparatively junior officer
21 in order to get it read as quickly as possible.
22 I believe it is possible that General Ford has not yet
23 read it.
24 Q. No, I was not in fact necessarily suggesting they had
25 read the book, I was just expressing a little surprise
1 as to the fact they do not appear to have consulted the
2 author about anything beyond the confines of the
3 39th Brigade?
4 A. Well, General Tuzo did not consult me about anything
5 because he was very rigorously working through his CLF.
6 There was a bad history of this, of muddle earlier on in
7 the campaign and the CLF was appointed specifically for
8 this purpose, so he often talked to me on social
9 occasions, but he would not have -- he would have gone
10 through his CLF, put it that way, and I do not suppose
11 either of them would have seen any necessity to ask me
12 my opinion on what should happen outside my own area.
13 Q. You say in the sentence immediately preceding the one
14 which I have highlighted with an arrow:
15 "The GOC himself did not hold meetings with the
16 three Brigade commanders at which policy for the whole
17 of Northern Ireland was discussed."
18 Should we understand from that that the GOC did not
19 consult the three Brigade commanders about policy for
20 the whole of Northern Ireland at all?
21 A. Correct.
22 Q. It was really left, was it, to two people, General Tuzo
23 as GOC and General Ford as CLF?
24 A. That is right. When I say "correct," that is as far as
25 I was concerned in Belfast, I do not know whether
1 General Tuzo may or may not have adopted a different
2 line with the Brigadier in Londonderry, particularly the
3 Colonel -- I mean Brigadier Cowan who was there earlier,
4 I do not know.
5 Q. Could we go over the page, please, to CK1.2,
6 paragraph 8. You say in paragraph 8 that you have no
7 recollection of the days leading up to 30th January, but
8 you remember that towards the end of that month you went
9 on leave to England. You have no record of the dates,
10 but think that you were away from Northern Ireland for
11 about a week up to 3rd February.
12 Should we understand, by the reference to your
13 having no record of the dates, that no diary of yours
14 for the time survives?
15 A. Well, I did not keep a personal diary. There would have
16 been a desk diary-type thing, but because of security
17 that was kept by the PA.
18 Q. You no longer have it?
19 A. And I do not have it, but I do not know what happened to
20 it. I mean, that was the Brigade Commander's
21 appointments book, as you may say.
22 Q. Before we get to the end of January, I would like to
23 come back for a moment to consider the situation at the
24 turn of the year, the end of December and the beginning
25 of January 1972. Do you recall what, in general, you
1 regarded the state of the security situation in both
2 Belfast and the province as being at that time?
3 A. Well, certainly in Belfast it was relatively quiet. The
4 big problems at my level was when you had riots in all
5 directions and you were trying to make sure there were
6 some soldiers in the right place.
7 At this time that was not happening in Belfast,
8 there were the odd sniping incidents and there were
9 bombs. So that was the condition of Belfast. It was
10 quiet in the sense of rioting, moving troops hither and
11 thither, but it did not mean nothing was happening;
12 people were being killed occasionally and that sort of
13 thing.
14 Q. Although Londonderry was not your area, were you aware,
15 in general terms, of the security situation there?
16 A. Well, only in very general terms. I mean, no, I was not
17 particularly aware of it that I can remember. I mean,
18 if you had asked me on 5th January 1972 what was going
19 on in Londonderry, I might have known a bit more than
20 I can remember.
21 Q. Could we have on the screen, please, G48.299. Could we
22 highlight the first half. This is a document I know you
23 have now seen, and it is a report from General Ford as
24 Commander of Land Forces to the GOC, described as "The
25 situation in Londonderry as at 7th January 1972", and it
1 records what he found on a visit on that date to that
2 city.
3 Do I understand correctly that before you were shown
4 this document by Eversheds, the solicitors to the
5 Inquiry, you had, so far as you recall, never seen it?
6 A. No, I certainly had not seen it before, but I cannot
7 actually recall having seen it recently. It is not in
8 the heap of extracts and things I have been given.
9 Q. No, it is not, but it is referred to in your statement.
10 If we look at CK1.3, you say, four lines up from the
11 bottom, this is admittedly some time back:
12 "I have now been shown a copy of a memo dated
13 7th January 1972 written by Major General Ford to
14 General Tuzo [that is the document we had on the screen
15 a moment ago] ... I have never seen this before and nor
16 would I expect to have done so ..."
17 A. I did not immediately recognise it as that and I am not
18 even sure it was the one I saw, or maybe I was shown one
19 paragraph out of it or something.
20 Q. I am pretty certain it would have been the one you were
21 shown?
22 A. Can I see it again?
23 Q. Can we go back to G48.299. That is the first page of
24 it?
25 A. Can I see the bottom of the second page?
1 Q. Can we have 230, please. That is the second page. Then
2 231, that is the last page, and it shows that it was
3 written by General Ford?
4 A. I might have seen it, you know, two years ago or
5 whenever I had signed it. I do not remember actually
6 seeing it, but I might have done.
7 Q. You did not see it in 1972?
8 A. Oh, no, I did not see it then.
9 Q. Can we go back to the previous page. Can we highlight
10 paragraph 6. The document is dealing, amongst other
11 things, with the position of what General Ford describes
12 as the DYH, the Derry Young Hooligans, and the point he
13 is making, amongst other things, in paragraph 6 is that
14 the weapons at the Army's disposal are ineffective. He
15 says at one point:
16 "Attempts to close with the DYH bring the troops
17 into the killing zones of the snipers. As I understand
18 it, the Commander of a body of troops called out to
19 restore law and order has a duty to use minimum force
20 but he also has a duty to restore law and order. We
21 have fulfilled the first duty but are failing in the
22 second. I am coming to the conclusion that the minimum
23 force necessary to achieve a restoration of law and
24 order is to shoot selected ring-leaders amongst the DYH,
25 after clear warnings have been issued. I believe we
1 would be justified in using 7.62-millimetre but in view
2 of the devastating effects of this weapon and the danger
3 of rounds killing more than the person aimed at,
4 I believe we must consider issuing rifles adapted to
5 fire HV .22 inch ammunition to sufficient members of the
6 unit dealing with this problem, to enable ring-leaders
7 to be engaged with this less lethal ammunition. Thirty
8 of these weapons have been sent to 8th Brigade this
9 weekend for zeroing and familiarisation training. They,
10 of course, will not be used operationally without
11 authorisation."
12 Regardless of whether you saw this memorandum, were
13 you aware in January 1972 that General Ford was coming
14 to the conclusion that the minimum force necessary to
15 achieve a restoration of law and order was to shoot
16 selected ring-leaders of the DYH after clear warnings
17 had been issued?
18 A. No, I do not remember this being discussed in any
19 context.
20 Q. The reference in this memorandum to sending weapons
21 adapted to fire .22 ammunition relates to the
22 8th Brigade, which was of course not your Brigade; were
23 any weapons adapted to fire .22 ammunition delivered to
24 the 39th Brigade, so far as you recall?
25 A. No, certainly not as far as I recall, but it does not
1 mean that in a pure sort of context somebody might, on
2 the staff level, have said "we are thinking about this,
3 what are your views about it," but I certainly have no
4 recall of that at all and no-one in 39 Brigade had found
5 the necessity to suggest such a thing.
6 Q. Could we go over the page, please, to paragraphs 7 and
7 8. In paragraph 7 General Ford says:
8 "If this course is implemented, as I believe it may
9 have to be, we would have to accept the possibility that
10 .22 rounds may be lethal. In other words, we would be
11 reverting to the methods of internal security found
12 successful on many occasions overseas, but would merely
13 be trying to minimise the lethal effects by using the
14 .22 round. I am convinced that our duty to restore law
15 and order requires us to consider this step."
16 It occurred to me, when reading that paragraph, that
17 the reference to "reverting to the methods of internal
18 security found successful on many occasions overseas"
19 might be a reference to some of the methods referred to
20 in your book. Do you recall discussing that with
21 General Ford?
22 A. No, but I do -- I mean, it was the general system for
23 dealing with riots up to a certain time. I mean,
24 I think that the pamphlet that was issued in 1930
25 something, that was the system and you had a platoon and
1 they deployed, and in the colonies they would say "over
2 now to the military Commander" and a banner would be
3 extended in whatever language you were in, saying
4 "disperse or we fire" and then a fellow would say to one
5 of the riflemen "you see that man dancing round out
6 there, fire one round at him", and then there would be
7 pictures taken.
8 This was all the formal system of internal security
9 and duties in aid of the civil power that had at one
10 time existed. It was not used in Northern Ireland.
11 Q. Then in paragraph 8 the memorandum deals with more
12 specific matters. General Ford writes this:
13 "We have also to face the possibility of a NICRA
14 march from the Creggan to the Guildhall Square at
15 1400 hours on Sunday, 16th January 1972. This would be
16 followed by a rally which will be addressed by Members
17 of Parliament and leading members of NICRA [that is the
18 Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association]. I told the
19 Commander 8th Brigade that he was to prepare a plan over
20 this weekend based on the assumption that the march was
21 to be stopped as near to its starting point as was
22 practical and taking into account the likelihood of some
23 form of battle (therefore he must choose a place of
24 tactical advantage) and also the fact that the minimum
25 damage must be done to the shopping centre. This plan
1 is due to be with me at 1400 hours on Monday and will
2 also forecast the force levels required for it. I have
3 issued a warning order to 1 King's Own Border (who
4 become operational on the 13th as Province Reserve) and
5 1 Para. I have asked Director of Intelligence to get
6 the best possible intelligence of the possible strengths
7 of the march and its real intentions."
8 This is a document written soon after 7th January
9 and it is referring to a march which was then scheduled
10 to take place on Sunday the 16th although, as we know,
11 it in fact took place on Sunday the 30th, but it refers
12 to a warning order to the Province Reserve and to
13 1 Para.
14 Can we take it that at the time you would have been
15 either the recipient of or aware of the warning order
16 given to, at any rate, 1 Para?
17 A. It would have been received by my headquarters and
18 forwarded, the normal system would have been that
19 I would have had the warning order from
20 Northern Ireland, or 39 Brigade, and would have passed
21 it on to Para, in which case I would have undoubtedly
22 been told by my staff that they had received a warning
23 order to this effect.
24 But now I have no recollection of this at all
25 because, as I said, I have no recollection of this
1 particular document.
2 Q. In the next sentence there is a reference to asking the
3 Director of Intelligence to get the best possible
4 intelligence of the possible strengths of the march and
5 its real intentions.
6 Would you have been made aware at the time of what
7 intelligence, if any, the Director of Intelligence had
8 gained about the possible strength of the march and the
9 real intentions of the organisers?
10 A. No, not at all. I would just be involved in the
11 possibility of being minus my Brigade reserve for
12 a number of days. My concern would have been: would
13 I be all right without it, sort of thing.
14 Q. The note goes on to say:
15 "I understand that the SB [that must be
16 Special Branch] warnings I had about the march may well
17 prove to be unfounded. It is the opinion of the senior
18 commanders in Londonderry, that if the march takes
19 place, however good the intentions of NICRA may be, the
20 DYH backed-up by the gunmen will undoubtedly take over
21 control at an early stage."
22 Do you have any idea what the SB warnings about the
23 march were?
24 A. No. That is virtually the same as the last question, it
25 refers to the intelligence; the last thing you asked me,
1 I mean.
2 Q. It is similar but not identical because I think the
3 Special Branch is the police and the Director of
4 Intelligence is Army intelligence, but you have no
5 recollection of either?
6 A. No, that is not quite right, the Director of
7 Intelligence was meant to collate all the different
8 sources. Anyhow, I did not know anything about it, is
9 the answer.
10 Q. We know that in the week before the march that took
11 place in Derry on 30th January, there was a march on the
12 Saturday of the previous week, Saturday 22nd January, to
13 the newly opened internment camp at Magilligan where
14 a company of the 1st Battalion, C Company, were deployed
15 and the television showed shots of soldiers from that
16 company firing rubber bullet guns and using batons.
17 Do you remember the Magilligan march?
18 A. No, until this Inquiry started, I had not heard of that,
19 although, I mean, I obviously would have heard of it at
20 the time.
21 Q. Should I take it from that answer that you have now no
22 recollection one way or the other of whether or not
23 there were complaints about the behaviour of the
24 paratroopers at Magilligan?
25 A. No, no recollection, and I doubt if I did hear that.
1 Q. Were they not percolated to you if they were made?
2 A. It depends what they were.
3 Q. Assume they were allegations that the paratroopers had
4 used excessive force, had fired rubber bullets at point
5 blank range and had beaten people up?
6 A. Do you have any idea of the -- am I allowed to ask you
7 a question?
8 Q. Not really, but do not stop on that account.
9 A. Do you have any idea of the sort of numbers of
10 Parachutists that were there? Because I think it was
11 a very small number that were sent to reinforce the
12 local battalion.
13 Q. It was 1 Company, I believe?
14 A. It could be anything, really, from 50, 60, that sort of
15 thing.
16 Q. Assume it was that sort of number?
17 A. Right, well, I have not heard, no.
18 Q. Could we have on the screen KR2.1. This is the
19 statement to this Inquiry, Sir David Ramsbotham, as he
20 tells us, in January 1972 was military assistant to
21 General Carver and a Lieutenant Colonel in the Green
22 Jackets.
23 Could we please have on the screen KR2.4. Could we
24 have paragraph 19, please. What he said in his
25 statement to this Tribunal is this:
1 "I remember that after the march at Magilligan,
2 which was the week before what was to become
3 Bloody Sunday, I spoke to Peter Welsh, the Commanding
4 Officer of 2nd battalion of the Royal Green Jackets. He
5 telephoned [me] to describe what had happened at
6 Magilligan, where some soldiers from the Parachute
7 Regiment had to be told by his Adjutant that soldiers
8 had to behave differently in Londonderry to Belfast. He
9 and I knew each other well, as we were in the same
10 battalion."
11 This appears to be a conversation, initially with
12 Sir David and possibly then subsequently with
13 Lord Carver, in which the Commanding Officer of the
14 Green Jackets who were at Magilligan was observing that
15 some of the soldiers from the Parachute Regiment were
16 being told that if they were going to come to
17 Londonderry, they would have to behave differently to
18 the way that they did in Belfast.
19 Were you made aware of any such Army observation or
20 complaint?
21 A. No, certainly not -- I of course am in the same regiment
22 as Welsh and Ramsbotham, and Welsh could perfectly well
23 have contacted me if he had wanted to, but I heard
24 nothing of any of this, nor have I seen this document
25 that we have now got up before.
1 Q. I want, then, if I may, to come to the circumstances
2 that existed immediately before the march took place on
3 30th January 1972. The picture that the Tribunal has,
4 from some of the evidence that it has so far heard, is
5 that a series of pressures were building up in the days
6 leading up to Bloody Sunday, the first of which was that
7 the local traders in Londonderry wanted tough action to
8 be taken against what they regarded as hooligans, on
9 account of the ever-increasing encroachment on the
10 business area as a result of their activities.
11 Were you familiar with that, in general terms?
12 A. No.
13 Q. The other picture that seems to emerge is that, in
14 certain quarters in the Army, in particular
15 General Ford, there was a view that law and order was
16 breaking down in Londonderry and that it was time that
17 the Army took the same firm grip on Derry as, under your
18 command, it had in Belfast. Were you aware of those
19 sort of sentiments?
20 A. Well, I cannot remember being aware of them, if I was
21 aware of them at the time I certainly do not remember
22 it. But as far as Londonderry was concerned, I had
23 a hugely bigger patch to look after and plenty to do and
24 I was not thinking about Londonderry very much. So it
25 is not surprising that I did not know or, if I did know,
1 that I have forgotten.
2 Q. Could we have on the screen B1208.003.010. This is
3 a document that I think you have been shown. What it
4 purports to be is an account written by a journalist
5 called Hamill of an interview many years later with
6 General Ford. What he has recorded General Ford as
7 saying is this -- the context in which this conversation
8 occurred is that there is a discussion about the
9 position in London Derry. What he has recorded is this:
10 "You could dominate Belfast. Frank Kitson never
11 really understood this. He used to say to me 'why can
12 you not sort out Londonderry?' Well, while you could
13 dominate Belfast, you could never dominate Londonderry.
14 You had to operate in co-operation. So we had to allow
15 the no-go areas. We had to bring the RUC very much into
16 our confidence -- bring the Catholic leaders into our
17 confidence, getting things done with their support and
18 co-operation insofar as we could. Harry Tuzo tried it
19 and it all went wrong. I never really agreed with it.
20 There were differences of opinion on Londonderry all the
21 way down the line."
22 Do you recall urging General Ford to try and sort
23 out Londonderry?
24 A. I do not recall urging him to do so. I do not actually
25 recall talking to him about it, but it would have been
1 perfectly natural, as things were done differently
2 there, for me to say -- because we were never permitted
3 to leave any barriers or road blocks up, I could well
4 have said to him something like "we always have to take
5 these things down, why is it different in Londonderry?"
6 That is as far as I can really go on it.
7 I think, am I right in saying, this is something --
8 a conversation he had with this journalist sort of
9 10 years later, sort of thing?
10 Q. Yes?
11 A. Well, that is the answer, as you could see, it is
12 a slightly disconnected set of suggestions and
13 everything, but as far as your question is
14 concerned: I would not have said "why can you not" --
15 I might have said "why can you not", I did not say "you
16 ought to get on and do anything" because it would not be
17 within my -- I have no means of knowing, you know, what
18 forces he could spare, could he get more from England.
19 Hundreds of things go into this beside the things he
20 points in there about getting support and co-operation.
21 Q. I want to come to the events of the week immediately
22 preceding the march. We know from evidence that has
23 already been given to this Tribunal that on the Monday
24 of the week before the march, Brigadier McClellan, the
25 Commanding Officer 8th Brigade, had a meeting with
1 Frank Lagan, the Chief Superintendent of the RUC in
2 Derry, at which Chief Superintendent Lagan proposed that
3 the march should be allowed to go to the Guildhall
4 unmolested and that photographs be taken of the marchers
5 with prosecutions to follow later; and General Ford has
6 said in his statement to this Tribunal, I can show it to
7 you if you like, that he telephoned you to warn you that
8 1 Para were to be deployed on the Sunday, the following
9 Sunday, and that they might be away for up to four days.
10 Do you have any recollection now of that sequence of
11 events?
12 A. I have no recollection of it, but it is thoroughly
13 likely.
14 Q. If that is what occurred, would the chain of command
15 have been that you would have then passed the message on
16 to Colonel Wilford?
17 A. Yes. It would have just been the message to go, not the
18 message of what you do when you get there.
19 Q. We know, because we have the operational orders, that on
20 the Thursday, Thursday 27th January, orders were given
21 for what became known as "Operation Forecast," which
22 envisaged that in certain conditions the Army would
23 conduct a scoop-up arrest operation, with 1 Para being
24 the arresting force.
25 Did you play any part in the composition of the
1 orders for that operation?
2 A. No.
3 Q. Would you have seen them at the time?
4 A. No. I mean, these were orders -- 8 Brigade's orders
5 presumably. No, they did not come to me.
6 Q. They were 8th Brigade's orders, but of course 1 Para was
7 being borrowed, if I can use that non-technical phrase,
8 from you; would you not in those circumstances see what
9 orders they were receiving?
10 A. My concern would be to say to them "you are going to
11 Belfast". They would have got the orders from their
12 Commander designate for the operation, not me.
13 Q. You would not get a copy of them?
14 A. No. This is not a thing that never happened, you know,
15 units going from one Brigade to another. It happens all
16 the time in the Army.
17 Q. Yes?
18 A. And I had had battalions from Londonderry in the past
19 and all they would be told is "go to Belfast, report to
20 39 Brigade for your orders".
21 Q. At some stage prior to the giving of the operational
22 orders on the 27th, a decision was obviously made that
23 there would or could be an arrest operation with 1 Para
24 to be the arresting force. Were you a party to the
25 making of that decision?
1 A. No.
2 Q. Do you recall discussing with General Ford whether or
3 not there should be an arrest operation and, if so, who
4 should conduct it?
5 A. No, certainly not. It is all the same question, if you
6 follow me: when they are under the command of someone
7 else I would not be asked what I thought about their
8 orders to the person they were taking under command.
9 Q. Yes. My question was, in a sense, related to the
10 position immediately before they were under the orders
11 of somebody else. I mean, you must presumably have been
12 asked whether or not you could spare 1 Para?
13 A. Yes, well I would not -- I believe in this case
14 General Ford knew perfectly well I could spare them
15 because he was fully in the picture. If he had said to
16 me "things are dead quiet with you, I am going to take
17 your reserve battalion" and I had had strong objection
18 to it, I would doubtless have said so and given him
19 reasons. But in this case I did not.
20 Q. The reason for my questions, which are not intended to
21 be, even if they may seem repetitive, is that to the
22 non-military mind it appears at least a possibility
23 that, before deciding to use 1 Para as an arresting
24 force, the decision-maker might be likely to consult the
25 person in whose Brigade they were and whose reserve
1 force they were and whom knew a great deal about them?
2 A. But the point being is that the factors that would lead
3 up to the decision were not factors that I could
4 contribute to, they would be totally different
5 ones: what battalions had he got to play with, I am
6 talking of Commander 8 Brigade; what were the penalties
7 of taking one thing to use it as an arresting force and
8 so on. I would not have any idea whether it would be
9 better to use 1 Para or some battalion that he had, or
10 did he want them for it and so on.
11 Q. To put it shortly, your evidence is that you were not
12 party to the decision-making process about having an
13 arrest operation and having 1 Para as the arresting
14 force or about the wisdom of using them as opposed to
15 anybody else?
16 A. Correct.
17 Q. Do you know, even though you were not party to the
18 decision-making process, why 1 Para was selected?
19 A. If I have seen things since in various books, papers and
20 that, I cannot actually remember it now, but I certainly
21 would have only seen, in effect, some of the factors
22 that were put forward long subsequently, probably during
23 the time this Inquiry has been going.
24 Q. So far as 1 Para is concerned, it is right, is it not,
25 that they had, I think, virtually no practical
1 experience of operating in Londonderry?
2 A. I do not know if they may, in the course of the previous
3 however many months they had been in Ireland, they may
4 have had some or a company or even the whole battalion
5 there before, I cannot remember it.
6 Q. What we have learnt so far is that 1 Para had been in
7 Derry on 17th, the night of 17th and 18th July 1971 in
8 an operation called "Operation Hailstone"; presumably
9 you would have known at the time that they were going to
10 Londonderry?
11 A. Presumably unless I was not there at the time, I might
12 have been on leave. But I mean I would have known,
13 certainly exactly the same procedure would have gone on
14 on this time, someone would have thought "can I spare
15 them?" I have no idea that they went there, to be
16 honest, until I saw these papers and I am not sure they
17 did anything when they got there.
18 Q. No, the exercise was abortive because the attempt to
19 lure people into the area of Bligh's Lane and attract
20 gunmen to the periphery did not succeed. You have no
21 recollection now of that?
22 A. No, none at all. But I mean if the thing was aborted
23 before it started, they would not have got much
24 knowledge of Londonderry from it, presumably.
25 Q. Could we have a look, please, at B1208.003.15. This is
1 another part of General Ford's interview with Mr Hamill
2 many years after Bloody Sunday. There is a passage in
3 it that I would like your help on. What he is recorded
4 as saying is this:
5 "1 Para was the reserve battalion for 39 Brigade and
6 the only battalion totally uncommitted. I agree that
7 when I chose them -- and I did choose them -- I had in
8 mind they were highly experienced. I had in mind the
9 fact that their reputation in Belfast must have spread
10 to Londonderry. And one platoon of 1 Para could do what
11 one company of any other battalion could do in Belfast."
12 Then he gives a short anecdote, he says:
13 "I can remember after internment being caught in
14 a street in a cross-fire. There I was with my little
15 tactical group and we were absolutely stuck. I thought
16 "my God! This is going to take two companies to sort
17 this out'. They would have to go right through all the
18 houses and get the terrorists. Not a bit of it. Round
19 the corner came a platoon of 1 Para who tumbled out of
20 their vehicles and went down the street and everything
21 stopped. Everyone disappeared. The terrorists were
22 frightened of 1 Para. That was another factor ... their
23 reputation. But the main factor was they were available
24 and uncommitted. I also knew they were the soldiers to
25 handle the hooligans if they surrounded them and got
1 them -- which is what we were hoping to do. They were
2 very highly trained soldiers. Hooligans in mass are not
3 very pleasant to deal with -- particularly by
4 inexperienced soldiers. 1 Para would not be frightened.
5 They had this tremendous confidence.
6 "Remember we had all three Para battalions there at
7 different times. The others did not have, necessarily,
8 the same reputation. 1 Para had been deliberately
9 trained by Frank Kitson to develop this reputation -- as
10 a stabiliser -- in his Brigade area. So that when
11 things went wrong they came and were tough. But they
12 did not break the rules. I think any battalion could
13 have been taught to do the same thing."
14 Do you recall whether part of the thinking for the
15 use of 1 Para was that their reputation gained in
16 Belfast would precede them to Londonderry so that if
17 they were deployed they would be a fearsome sight?
18 A. No, I assure you I do not think that would have ever
19 occurred to me either.
20 Q. Had they been trained by you in Belfast to be, in
21 effect, a fearsome sight to people who were rioting on
22 the streets?
23 A. In fact I did not train anyone in Belfast because I did
24 not have the time to train them and the training of an
25 individual battalion, whether 1 Para or any other, is
1 the responsibility of its own officers and I do not
2 think they were any different to the other Para
3 battalions in that respect.
4 Obviously, as General Ford said, because they were
5 there a long time they knew a lot more about it,
6 particularly routes to and from places, which made so
7 much difference, why they could turn up at the right
8 time very quickly and things of that sort.
9 But they were not deliberately trained to develop
10 a particular reputation.
11 Q. Were they trained at all in how to conduct an arrest
12 operation of civilians using minimum force?
13 A. The business of how to do that evolved in Belfast over
14 a period. When I was first there the tactics were
15 rather to stand in a line, pump the place full of gas
16 and let people chuck bricks at you until they got tired
17 of it or they went away with water cannons and that.
18 This was not a very good idea because the gas did so
19 much damage to the local people, it made them hostile
20 and it damaged them.
21 So we did deliberately try and work out different
22 ways of making arrests, a few arrests being better than
23 standing there. 1 Para were not, as far as I remember,
24 actually involved because most of the rioting was, in
25 the first place, handled by the battalion whose area it
1 was where it took place and Para was the reserve and
2 would be sent for, not only if the battalion ran out but
3 if the next door battalion which had a reserve company
4 was also too busy to get there, then they would ask for
5 some other things or I would see they needed it and the
6 Brigade reserve, 1 Para, would come.
7 So they were not in the forefront of working this
8 out but, having been there, they would have been well
9 aware of the various methods that were developed in
10 order to handle this particular form of activity.
11 Q. The point I am getting at is that some of the evidence
12 that the Tribunal has so far received, and some that it
13 may receive hereafter, is to the effect that having
14 shock troops with SLRs with a tough and highly efficient
15 regiment was an unsuitable unit to use to control a riot
16 of civilians in Londonderry?
17 A. Well, I do not think so. I mean, any battalion ought to
18 be able to do it. If they needed an extra battalion
19 they could use it for this purpose as well as for
20 anything else. After all, they were only going to get
21 involved in this sort of activity if the battalions that
22 were in what you might call the front-line were put
23 under too much pressure, the people doing the blocks, as
24 it happened. And so I do not think they were the key to
25 this at all; they were the people who were being used if
1 it became -- a march became a riot, if you follow me,
2 because it was not designed to be a riot, it was
3 designed to be a march and the people who were meant to
4 stop the march going in the wrong place were not the
5 Para.
6 Q. Could we have S173. This is a document you may not have
7 been shown, but I would like to ask you about it. Can
8 I explain what it is? This is part of the Sunday Times
9 working papers. They did a long article about the
10 events of 30th January, which was published
11 in April 1972. This is a part of the draft of what was
12 to become that article. In the course of the article,
13 what they were proposing to write, was this:
14 "Nor was disquiet about the Paras confined to
15 opponents of the Army in Ulster. Last autumn, a senior
16 officer of the Green Howards, then based in the Ardoyne
17 area of Belfast, lamented to a member of Insight the
18 problems created by even a single visitation from the
19 Paras. 'It takes us six weeks to repair the damage to
20 community relations,' he said. In January, following
21 a search operation by the Paras in his area, the
22 Commanding Officer of the Queen's Own Highlanders,
23 quietly told the Belfast Brigade Commander, Brigadier
24 Frank Kitson, that he did not want the Paras in his
25 patch again. The Commander of the King's Own Scottish
1 Borderers made much the same point. And Kitson later
2 privately confirmed to more than one source that 'two or
3 three' regiments had requested not to work with the
4 Paras."
5 Breaking that down, do you recall that
6 in January 1972 the commanding officers of those two
7 regiments quietly told you that they did not want the
8 Paras on their patch again?
9 A. No, I certainly do not recall it.
10 Q. Do you mean by that you recall that it did not happen,
11 or that you simply have no recollection now whether it
12 did or not?
13 A. I have no recollection of whether it did or not, but
14 I would be extremely surprised if it had, but not -- if
15 you found the people concerned and they actually
16 testified that they did, I can only say I have no
17 recollection of it.
18 Q. The last sentence appears to indicate that you yourself
19 had confirmed to more than one source -- that must mean
20 more than one source to the Sunday Times -- that two or
21 three regiments had requested not to work with the
22 Paras; do you have any recollection of discussing not
23 using the Paras in the area of some regiments?
24 A. No, certainly I do not have any recollection of that and
25 it seems pretty unlikely that I would have said that to
1 whoever the sources of the Sunday Times were.
2 Q. I cannot help you on that, other than to say that
3 Mr Barry of the Sunday Times said that the source was
4 probably somebody at Lisburn, but that will not help
5 you?
6 A. Because Lisburn, as I have said, hold the two separate
7 headquarters. But could I just say that there are
8 a number of things all mixed up in this. There are two
9 ways in which the Para could have been called to help
10 a company.
11 One is, as we have talked of before, when a company
12 is getting too much opposition to be able to handle it
13 and the Para company is called in, or some number of
14 people to help, and that looks as though what they are
15 talking about in the top of that, the senior officer of
16 the Green Howards.
17 The other one is the Commanding Officer of the
18 Queen's Own Highlanders quietly telling me he did not
19 want 1 Paras in his patch again and this followed a
20 search operation.
21 Now, the point about that is that each battalion had
22 trained search teams. That is little groups of, I think
23 it was four or five men who knew where to look and how
24 to find it, pull up the floorboards and that. If they
25 were doing a search operation and the number of search
1 teams was not enough, they could ask for a Para search
2 team, which would be another little group of three or
3 four people, and those people, having done it for years,
4 might have been a bit more effective at doing the
5 search. But it is quite separate types of things seem
6 to have got mixed up in this.
7 The Para were just jolly good and it was no
8 conceivable way you could overlook the fact that they
9 managed to get there, regarding of the difficulties,
10 very quickly. They were ready to go, after maybe days
11 when nothing has happened, at the drop of a hat and they
12 were experienced and that is the way they operated and
13 I very much doubt that this sort of thing was going on,
14 I was being asked not to, for the simple reason that
15 unless the Colonel wanted them, the Commanding Officer
16 of that battalion, he would not have asked for them.
17 Q. Could we have on the screen L9. What I am about to show
18 you is in the same vein, but whilst you are giving
19 evidence I think I ought to ask you about what appears
20 in this article as well, though it may be referring to
21 the same matters.
22 This is an article that was written in The Guardian
23 in the week before Bloody Sunday by the journalist
24 Simon Hoggart. Do you have any recollection of being
25 aware of this article?
1 A. Do you know, because it is a bit blurred, what the date
2 of it would be?
3 Q. I think it is the 25th?
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. It is certainly the week before. It is, it is the 25th?
6 A. I do not remember seeing it until this Inquiry.
7 Q. The reason I am asking you about it is this: the article
8 begins by saying this:
9 "At least two British Army units in Belfast have
10 made informal requests to brigade headquarters for the
11 Parachute Regiment to be kept out of their areas.
12 "Senior officers in these units regard the
13 paratroops' tactics as too rough and, on occasions,
14 brutal. One officer whose Commanding Officer has made
15 a request to headquarters said 'the paratroopers undid
16 in 10 minutes the community relations which it had taken
17 us four weeks to build up.'
18 "In the news of the requests, which are to say the
19 least extraordinary within the British Army, came after
20 the Parachute Regiment had completed its own
21 investigations of events at Magilligan internment
22 camp ..."
23 Then there are several paragraphs dealing with
24 Magilligan. The article goes on in the second column to
25 say:
1 "It is these events which have caused some of the
2 other British Army units in Northern Ireland to ask that
3 the Parachute Regiment should be kept out of the areas
4 for which they are responsible.
5 "Since the requests were made, paratroops have not
6 been used in those sensitive areas of Belfast which, it
7 is now believed, are beginning to calm down. This is
8 because the Army now believes that the absolute minimum
9 of force must be used in these areas to prevent the
10 local community from becoming more disaffected with the
11 Army.
12 "Officers at the Army's Lisburn headquarters said
13 that the requests had been made during normal
14 discussions of tactics and had never been presented in
15 written form. A senior officer based in Lisburn said
16 'some areas are in a very delicate state at the moment
17 and we would prefer it in the tough boys did not go in
18 there now.'"
19 What is written in that article, if correct, appears
20 to suggest that in the period immediately leading up to
21 30th January the paratroopers were being kept out of
22 what is described as sensitive areas of Belfast
23 following requests by Army officers themselves for them
24 not to be employed.
25 Do you recollect anything of that kind happening?
1 A. Certainly not. I think it is quite likely that 1 Para
2 did not go in so often then, for the simple reason that,
3 as I mentioned earlier, it was a very quiet period and
4 there would not have been any requirement for them to go
5 in. Unless there were riots or something of that sort
6 going on, then you would not have had the Para in.
7 Again it is a question of the battalions on the
8 ground wanting them. If there was nothing happening
9 they would not have been being asked for. I think this
10 is -- well, totally turning the thing on its head and
11 trying to make out, make a case, I should think, to make
12 a nice interesting article out of things that were
13 happening in the normal course of events.
14 Q. If we look at the next column, the author goes on to
15 record this:
16 "A captain in one regiment, whose Commanding Officer
17 has not made a request, said 'they are frankly disliked
18 by many officers here, who regard some of their men as
19 little better than thugs in uniform.
20 "'I have seen them arrive on the scene, thump up
21 a few people who might be doing nothing more than
22 shouting and jeering, and roar off again', he said.
23 'They seem to think that they can get away with whatever
24 they like'.
25 "The captain added that the paratroops were
1 undoubtedly one of the finest fighting units in the Army
2 and that in many situations their training and expert
3 tease were invaluable. 'But wading into people as if
4 this were jungle warfare simply is not on in Belfast',
5 he said."
6 Then there is a reference to an incident in
7 Andersonstown where a woman was blinded by a rubber
8 bullet.
9 Were you aware of officers expressing those sort of
10 sentiments about the behaviour of Paras in Belfast?
11 A. No, I was not and I do not think it was, generally
12 speaking, true at all, "an unknown captain" talking to
13 some journalist on a subject of this sort does not seem
14 at all convincing.
15 Q. If we could look at the fourth column -- no, there are
16 similar sentiments from some other officer which appear
17 in the next column, but I do not think you can help us
18 any further about that. Thank you.
19 Could we go, please, to CK1.2. In paragraph 9 of
20 your statement, you say that you do not remember when
21 the decision was made to reinforce 8 Brigade for the
22 illegal march in Londonderry that had been arranged to
23 take place at the end of January:
24 "Commander 8 Brigade must have felt that he needed
25 to be reinforced and the GOC and CLF must have decided
1 to send the province reserve battalion and 39 Brigade's
2 reserve battalion (1 Para). In making this decision
3 they would have considered the risk involved in removing
4 1 Para from Belfast for the short period concerned."
5 Were you aware as to how far up the decision-making
6 process the question of sending the Brigade's reserve
7 battalion to Londonderry had gone? You say that the GOC
8 and CLF must have decided that; do you know whether
9 a decision had either been made or reported to the
10 Ministry of Defence or the Government and, if so, which
11 part of it in London?
12 A. I would not have had the slightest idea.
13 Q. Could we have on the screen G81A.511.1. This is
14 a letter of 27th January 1972. It is written from
15 Headquarters Northern Ireland and it is addressed to
16 David Johnston, HQ Royal Ulster Constabulary and it is
17 from the Director of Intelligence, whose Christian name
18 is David. It says:
19 "I enclose a copy of a signal I have this morning
20 sent to Commander 8th Infantry Brigade based on
21 information from London. I have reversed the normal
22 process of passing information first to you on this
23 occasion because the Commander is holding a planning
24 meeting this morning."
25 If we go to page 3 -- sorry, that is the signal,
1 I think we have at 5 an intelligible transcript of it,
2 and the passage that is of interest is serial four in
3 the signal, well, one and four. One records:
4 "The source known to you has provided the following
5 information about plans for the march on
6 30th January ..."
7 In item four it records:
8 "Source believes that the marchers will be armed
9 with sticks and stones and he expects that the IRA will
10 use the crowd as cover. The organisers are determined
11 to have their revenge to what they regard as
12 a humiliating defeat at Magilligan where they found
13 themselves with nothing more lethal than sand to throw.
14 They are determined to get to the Guildhall come what
15 may."
16 Did you see this signal or hear of its contents?
17 A. No, I certainly would not have.
18 Q. Could we have on the screen M71.23. Let me explain to
19 you what this is. In the week immediately after
20 30th January, two journalists from the Sunday Times came
21 out to Londonderry and they wrote an article, of which
22 this is the draft, which was in fact never published and
23 they wrote it, having conducted some research in the
24 city, and a passage in the article they wrote appears on
25 the screen now. What they wrote is this:
1 "This according to the military planners left only
2 one major problem, the nest of IRA militants in the
3 Londonderry Bogside. Military Intelligence asserted
4 that there were about 80 hardcore militants; if they
5 were killed or locked up, the IRA problems would be,
6 according to the reports, as good as over.
7 "But tactics were difficult. If one of these men
8 was 'lifted' in a surprise dawn raid, the other 79 would
9 flee over the border ...
10 "The Parachute Regiment staff planners believed they
11 had the answer in the last weeks of the old year --
12 a solution which in fact produced the massacre.
13 "The idea -- worked out, we believe, by Lieutenant
14 Colonel Derek Wilford on lines of thinking propounded by
15 Brigadier Frank Kitson, British Army counter-insurgency
16 expert, was based on the military principle that the way
17 to bring your enemy to battle is to attack something
18 that, for prestige reasons he will have to defend -- the
19 Germans attacking Verdun in the First World War or the
20 same firm attacking Stalingrad in the second. Brought
21 to battle, he will then be annihilated by superior
22 strength.
23 "The civil rights march, the Parachute Regiment
24 planners believed, was just such an objective which the
25 IRA would have to defend or lose its popular support in
1 the Bogsidee -- and either way the IRA would be
2 finished.
3 "If the IRA gunmen could be induced to stand and
4 fight while other demonstrators fled, a snatch squad --
5 but it would have to be a large one -- would be able
6 either to kill them or take them in. So, for some weeks
7 the Paras have been drilling and rehearsing
8 a company-size snatch squad -- at about 100 men, the
9 biggest one ever used in the present Ulster fighting."
10 What they appear to have been suggesting was that
11 part of the plan for the events of the day was that the
12 march would be attacked which would cause the IRA to
13 have to defend it, as a result of which they would come
14 out and show themselves and could be engaged by the
15 specially drilled snatch squad on the lines of thinking
16 propounded by you.
17 I have two questions. Firstly: so far as you were
18 aware, was there ever any such plan?
19 A. Obviously not. If I may just say so, this is total
20 rubbish. I mean, I can quite understand why they did
21 not publish it. When you see all that, me the great
22 expert looking at Verdun and Stalingrad, that is not
23 counter-insurgency at all, these were huge battles.
24 None of this would have worked in any counter-insurgency
25 sense and the Parachute Regiment planners that come into
1 this, again, he is not talking about the Parachute
2 Regiment's plan but 8 Brigade's overall plan and it is
3 about as totally contrary to anything that could have
4 been thought of by 8 Brigade or any other Brigade.
5 Q. I think you may already have answered my second
6 question: is there anything in your books that
7 represents this sort of plan?
8 A. No, mercifully not.
9 MR CLARKE: Those are all my questions.
10 Questioned by MR ELIAS
11 MR ELIAS: General Kitson, you have told the Tribunal that
12 you only had a general idea of the problems going on in
13 Londonderry when you were in Belfast. Does it follow
14 from that that you would never have been privy to any
15 discussion as to what might have to be done, so far as
16 Londonderry was concerned, to overcome the IRA problem
17 there?
18 A. No, I was not aware of any discussions other than what
19 I mentioned in general conversation with General Ford,
20 saying "why are you doing things differently there to
21 Belfast?"
22 Q. If one of the answers to that question might have been
23 "because the prescription to solve the problem will have
24 to be very different from that in Belfast," you would
25 not have been aware of those details either, would you?
1 A. Well, it just depends how much difference he talked
2 about. I mean, basically there were two sorts of
3 differences involved. One was the difference in the
4 force level available to Londonderry, and the other was
5 the difference mentioned in the statement we discussed
6 earlier about, as you might say, the political
7 desirability of doing it by agreement that General Tuzo
8 is alleged to have come to and to which General Ford
9 said "this did not actually work out too well in the
10 end".
11 Q. As I understand your position, you would not have been
12 involved in detailed discussions --
13 A. No, I might have been involved over a cup of tea and
14 a conversation such as we have just mentioned.
15 Q. The problems you had in Belfast of course included, did
16 they not, dealing with rioters?
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. And scoop-up or arrest operations in relation to
19 rioters?
20 A. Certainly.
21 Q. And, as you were telling the Tribunal a little while ago
22 now, in order to deal with riots in Belfast and make
23 arrest operations, the tactics were refined over
24 a period of time?
25 A. Correct.
1 Q. And by, I suggest, January 1972, the tactics had been so
2 refined, had they not, that they involved isolating the
3 rioters from other persons standing by, those who may
4 not be directly involved in the riot?
5 A. That would not have been quite the context I was
6 thinking of. What I was trying to explain was, instead
7 of standing and having stuff chucked at you and sending
8 stuff back in the form of gas and water, you tried to
9 get a group round and take a few, not prisoners, what am
10 I saying, make a few arrests, for the Court. But
11 obviously you would not arrest people who were not
12 rioting in those circumstances.
13 The thing that you are slightly pushed into that was
14 if there was a separate issue, like the march in
15 Londonderry and the rioters, you obviously would not
16 want to get the two operations mixed up. No, that was
17 not what I was talking about.
18 Q. I follow that, but I am asking you about it now, if
19 I may. If there were a situation where you had rioters
20 and persons who might be lawfully about their business
21 or even standing by watching, it was important, was it
22 not, to separate, if one could, the rioters from the
23 others?
24 A. You would obviously want to arrest the fellow for whom
25 you had enough evidence to get him punished in the
1 Court. You would not want to take somebody who would
2 turn round and say "I was just on the way back from
3 shopping" and have a good alibi and so on.
4 Q. So those soldiers who were carrying out the arrest
5 operation, the plan would be, so far as possible, to
6 isolate the rioters; would you agree?
7 A. That would be part of it, but the main part of it would
8 be how to get at the people you wanted to arrest.
9 Q. Certainly. But having isolated the rioters, one then
10 had to prevent them from escaping before arrest?
11 A. You wanted to -- you had to grab them quickly.
12 Obviously they would not stand there unless you did.
13 Q. If I could ask you to look, please, at part of
14 a statement of a Company Sergeant Major operating in
15 Belfast at the time, Company Sergeant Major 202 of
16 Support Company. We find it at B2111.004. Under the
17 heading "Tactics" halfway down the page, this is the
18 Company Sergeant Major indicating what happened in
19 Belfast.
20 "Discussions took place with the Officer Commanding,
21 [another soldier] and his senior ... officers regarding
22 containment tactics, which were used in built up areas.
23 My perception of those tactics was that, having assessed
24 a situation, we would try to contain a riot in an area
25 long enough to seal off side roads. Once the side roads
1 were sealed, we would go in and arrest the main
2 agitators, who, in theory, would be unable to escape."
3 Do you recall that that was, essentially and in
4 broad outline, the tactic operating?
5 A. That would be ideal if it could be made to work like
6 that.
7 Q. Of course. He goes on to say:
8 "This did not always work as the rioters would nip
9 into front doorways and out of the back. INQ218
10 referred to it as an anvil and hammer tactic; we came
11 down pretty forcefully. I do not know if it was put
12 over as official policy, but it was certainly a tactic
13 that was invariably used, with positive results."
14 He goes on in the next paragraph to say this:
15 "The soldiers on the ground were aware of the
16 policy ... The important thing was making sure there
17 was some form of cordon. We knew then that even if the
18 person we were looking for went into a house they were
19 in a sealed area in which they could be caught. In
20 Belfast we knew the area we were going into. It was
21 a question of containing and then going in and sorting
22 it out."
23 Do you follow?
24 A. I follow.
25 Q. That was a tactic that you would recognise operated in
1 Belfast?
2 A. I would certainly agree to that. I would just say that
3 when you talk about "tactics," they have to be different
4 every time according to the situation, but as a general
5 idea and as a, certainly as an aspiration, that is how
6 it would be put.
7 Q. I accept, General Kitson, if I may say so, that of
8 course every situation will not only be different, but
9 there will be a fluidity about it and decisions have to
10 be taken at the time, but in general principle that is
11 what one is aiming to do?
12 A. Of course.
13 Q. Could I then set the scene for some further questions by
14 asking you to look at a photograph, P203, please. I do
15 not know whether you have seen photographs or any
16 photograph of the area in which the events that this
17 Tribunal is concerned with occurred?
18 A. No, I do not remember seeing them. I might have seen
19 a picture in a book or something like that.
20 Q. The photograph has been lightened for us a little so
21 perhaps we can use that. I am going to, if I may very
22 briefly, indicate to you what happened at material times
23 and then just ask you to comment upon it.
24 What we are looking at here is from the top of the
25 photograph to the south, the Free Derry Corner area of
1 Londonderry at the time, the Bogside. The containment
2 line of soldiers containing the march, the baseline as
3 I think it was called, would run more or less along the
4 bottom of the photograph as we look at it; do you see,
5 and along that yellow line that has now been put on the
6 photograph for you and the red line at the top, would be
7 barricades with troops behind them, the baseline, within
8 which the march was contained; do you follow?
9 I am going to ask now that you be shown the route
10 that the march took, so far as this photograph is
11 concerned, coming towards its end. It came down
12 William Street. That is now being arrowed for you. The
13 head of the arrow is at the junction of William Street
14 and Rossville Street, Rossville Street running up the
15 plan towards the south, that green arrow that has just
16 been put on; do you follow?
17 The main body of the march, it seems, although there
18 may have been a scatter at the junction between
19 William Street and Rossville Street, the main body of
20 the march followed that green second arrow, along
21 Rossville Street going south.
22 Some marchers, and undoubtedly some hooligans and
23 rioters, followed the line of the arrow which you are
24 now being shown, the pink arrow, coming along to a point
25 that we know as barrier 14. That was the route through
1 to the Guildhall where the march might have endeavoured
2 to go, the blue line shows the approximate position of
3 barrier 14; do you follow?
4 It was at barrier 14, where that blue line is, that
5 there was significant rioting. That is where, in the
6 area of that barrier, most of the rioting and the severe
7 rioting took place.
8 There was another barrier in the area, which I will
9 have marked for you on the photograph, the bottom
10 centre, just to the right, barrier 12, and there was
11 some rioting, stone-throwing in front of that barrier
12 too; do you follow?
13 If I could ask that all those arrows be taken away
14 and that the barrier at barrier 14 and the barrier at
15 barrier 12 be put back on, please. So, General Kitson,
16 the rioting was essentially in William Street at
17 barrier 14 and, to a lesser extent, at the junction
18 between William Street and Rossville Street; do you see?
19 A. I am not sure which is William Street now.
20 Q. I will ask that it be marked for you. William Street is
21 being marked with the yellow, do you follow, and runs
22 along from that position to the right. Rossville Street
23 is the road running north/south in that photograph from
24 the centre.
25 So the area now marked with the yellow highlighted
1 is the area where, I think it will be agreed, most of
2 the serious rioting took place and where most of the
3 serious rioters were to be found; do you follow?
4 In the light of what had happened in Belfast, if
5 there was to be an arrest operation, to arrest those
6 rioters from that area, their routes for escape would
7 have to be sealed off, would they not?
8 A. If they could be.
9 Q. If they could be, of course. There were essentially
10 three escape routes. I will ask that they be marked for
11 you: the Chamberlain Street route, a road between the
12 two houses with a gap coming through onto what we can
13 see as the wasteground in the photograph; a narrow lane,
14 now indicated with a further red arrow, do you follow,
15 also leading out into the wasteground; and finally
16 through Rossville Street and down Rossville Street, as
17 is now being indicated by the double arrows.
18 If the rioters in William Street were to be arrested
19 as rioters, those escape avenues would have to be
20 effectively sealed, would they not, if they could be?
21 A. If they could be there would be more chance of catching
22 someone. But I must say I do not know the land, I have
23 no idea where the other troops were, anything else, and
24 if I did I truly would not comment on what should or
25 should not happen there. I agree with what you said was
1 going on in Belfast, but I could not, just from looking
2 at a piece of land I have never seen or a few arrows and
3 that, I could not comment on what should have happened
4 that day or did happen.
5 Q. It would depend, of course, upon the situation at the
6 moment, but would you agree that if an arrest operation
7 were planned in advance and the area where rioting was
8 to take place was, if not known, at least highly
9 suspected, that one of the steps that it was going to be
10 essential to take was to seal off the escape routes for
11 the rioters?
12 A. I do not want to talk about a specific place where I do
13 not know the answers and, indeed, I would not want to
14 talk about a specific place in Belfast. I am quite
15 happy to agree that the theory he was talking about was
16 fine, but I could not actually say what you should or
17 should not do here because the circumstances are too
18 difficult. I mean, after all, you might catch a rioter
19 by just going straight in. Mainly they would disperse
20 and go, but you might catch one or two that way, but you
21 would not be likely to catch a huge lot.
22 But my evidence would be totally worthless if I was
23 to try and comment on this because there are too many
24 things I could not work out.
25 Q. You say you would have had to have been there on the
1 ground, do you, in order to give an opinion?
2 A. I mean, if I had been there on the ground, if I had been
3 Brigadier McClellan, I would know everything about this
4 and I have no reason to suppose he put in place a plan
5 that was completely hopeless.
6 Q. Can we agree on this: looking at the photograph,
7 General Kitson, once rioters had escaped from that area
8 where the rioting had been taking place through one of
9 the routes that are indicated on the plan and onto what
10 you can see as open, what we have been calling
11 wasteground, it made it, did it not, much more difficult
12 for any body of troops to scoop them up and arrest them,
13 running across wasteground as they then would have been?
14 A. On the face of it, yes, but I must ask not to be
15 recorded as commenting on something about which
16 I know -- a specific incident about which I know
17 virtually nothing.
18 MR TOOHEY: Mr Elias, you are pressing Mr Kitson, I think,
19 beyond the sort of general and hypothetical which he
20 seems quite content to answer to his opinion on
21 a specific situation which, for the reasons he has
22 given, he is reluctant to engage in; have I understood
23 the position correctly?
24 A. Precisely, I would say.
25 MR ELIAS: We understand the fluidity and the situation on
1 the ground at the time are aspects of the matter, are
2 very much matters that have to be taken into account,
3 and I certainly would not press the General further if
4 beyond the theory I have put he cannot go, but I have
5 put the matter as I have put it.
6 A. I am sorry not to do more, I would like to say anything
7 I could that would assist, but it is no good my saying
8 things that will merely not assist.
9 Q. Can I move on to one other matter: would you agree,
10 General Kitson, that generally speaking -- and, General,
11 it will depend of course upon the situation at the
12 time -- but that generally speaking it is better to use
13 reserve troops who will not know the geography perhaps
14 in static positions and local troops who will as, in
15 this case, an arrest force to go into the streets which
16 they will know better?
17 A. It would just depend what the static troops had to do.
18 It may be that the static troops would have to know
19 things more than the reserve troops that were moved in.
20 So it might not be -- you know, what you have said,
21 again in a general sense, makes good sense but it might
22 not exactly fit the particulars circumstances.
23 Q. That is how I put it to you: that generally speaking,
24 all other things being equal, that is what you might
25 expect?
1 A. Except that a reserve, such as 1 Para was in Belfast,
2 was constantly having to be used in areas for these sort
3 of things which they would not necessarily know as well
4 as the deployed troops who were living on it.
5 So it does not actually follow entirely, it just
6 depends on the circumstances at the time. Usually in
7 the case of Belfast, it would be because the local
8 people needed some more, that the some more came at the
9 end of the operation, that the timings dictated that the
10 reserve battalion would be the right people to do this
11 part of it and the static people would be doing what
12 they were doing because they were there anyhow.
13 This might not have applied in Londonderry, they
14 might all have arrived at the same time, for all I know,
15 but in a general sense obviously where you have to
16 plunge around and you do not know the land, you would be
17 at a slight disadvantage between people who did.
18 Q. The counter-argument, as I understand it, might be that
19 the Paras had done this arrest-type operation in Belfast
20 on a number of occasions and were experienced in that?
21 A. Yes, but for all I know the people who were the statics
22 may have done plenty of arrest operations on their own
23 account.
24 MR ELIAS: Thank you very much.
25 Questioned by MR LAVERY
1 MR LAVERY: General Kitson, my name is Michael Lavery and
2 I represent some of the families in this Inquiry.
3 General Kitson, you took up a defence fellowship in
4 Oxford in 1969; is that not right?
5 A. Yes.
6 Q. I think you said that you were volunteered for that;
7 I take it by that you were invited to apply and it was
8 not your idea?
9 A. That is correct.
10 Q. Whose idea was it?
11 A. It was the Colonel Commandant of our regiment who was
12 also the GOC, the Commander in-chief strategic command.
13 Q. Who was that?
14 A. General Mogg, who suggested it would be a good thing.
15 Probably someone said to him "there is a job coming up
16 for this fellow in a year's time, but we do not know
17 what to do with him for now, this would be quite a good
18 way of employing him".
19 Q. And your area of study, was it low intensity operations?
20 A. Again, when you volunteer for a defence fellowship you
21 have to put forward suggestions as to what you might be
22 told to study, and I put forward "low intensity
23 operations," as we can call it for convenience, but
24 various things like peace keeping and
25 counter-insurgency, and then that was refined into the
1 task that was given to me and I was required then, like
2 any defence fellow is, to do the attachment to the
3 university for the inside of a year, at the end of which
4 you produce what the university would call a thesis and
5 what the Ministry of Defence would call a report or an
6 examination or something of that sort.
7 Q. Just to try and shorten this, General Kitson, the
8 perception at that particular time was that the Army, as
9 well as having to fight conventional wars, might be
10 engaged in the years to come in quite a lot of
11 counter-insurgency in different parts of the world; is
12 that right?
13 A. Well, it was the case I made anyhow.
14 Q. You made that case?
15 A. Well, I had to try and make it, yes.
16 Q. It was counter-insurgency, then, that was your
17 speciality?
18 A. Well, it was not before I went there, put it that way.
19 I had taken part in a number of counter-insurgency and
20 peace keeping operations, but I suppose I had spent
21 slightly longer in armoured divisions if it came about.
22 Q. In any event, the idea came from the Army. Presumably
23 they thought it was going to assist, not only you but
24 also the Army, and that it would be useful to have
25 somebody with some degree of expertise in this subject;
1 did they think that?
2 A. I hope so, but I cannot promise.
3 Q. Could I ask you, in the British Army, something about
4 the promotion system? Does one just sit at home and
5 wait for a letter to drop in from the postman telling
6 you one is going to such and such a posting, or can one
7 lobby or make representations as to what posting you
8 would like?
9 A. No, basically you do what you said first, but of course
10 the Army is not working on that basis, the Army knows
11 a number of slots that are coming up 18 months hence and
12 a number of people who might take them, and then they
13 have very complicated ways of working out who is the
14 best person to go to what slot.
15 Q. I am merely asking, I mean, obviously human nature being
16 what it is, some soldiers might prefer some postings to
17 other postings; is that not right?
18 A. I think very few soldiers would have wanted to command
19 39 Brigade in Belfast.
20 Q. When you say you were volunteered for Oxford, you
21 certainly did not volunteer for Belfast, did you?
22 A. No, certainly not.
23 Q. What is your reaction, then, when you were appointed,
24 were you pleased, disappointed, or what?
25 A. Well, I was pleased. I mean, I had just finished
1 commanding a battalion. I could easily have had a job
2 as a full Colonel or in a staff somewhere and naturally
3 I was pleased to get command of a Brigade as
4 a Brigadier. I do not suppose I was particularly
5 pleased at the thought of going to Belfast, but --
6 Q. It was probably the only place in the world, at that
7 particular point in time, correct me if I am wrong,
8 where the Army was likely to get involved in direct
9 action, so to speak; would that be right?
10 A. I cannot quite remember what was going, Aden I think had
11 just finished, maybe Dohar had not got -- I cannot
12 honestly remember exactly who was where then.
13 Q. Lord Carver said that 1968 was unique and that the Army
14 was not really in action anywhere and then
15 Northern Ireland came along in 1969.
16 In any event, your feelings were mixed at coming to
17 Northern Ireland?
18 A. Yes. Mind you, if I may just add this: no-one thought,
19 when I was appointed, which I think was in June,
20 probably the appointment was made but I heard of it
21 then, that Northern Ireland was going to go on being
22 involved from a military point of view.
23 Q. Nevertheless, when you arrived in Northern Ireland it
24 was in, what you would call, in a state of insurgency;
25 is that right?
1 A. I do not think that is quite right because there was
2 a great deal of rioting, but the first thing that went
3 on was a conference to decide how to get the Army off
4 the streets by Christmas. What was happening was
5 inter-communal rioting which the Army was stopping, but
6 the actual use of force by the IRA which would
7 constitute an insurgency, or indeed by any other
8 organisation, had not started at that time or was not
9 deemed to have started.
10 Q. But whatever may have been the position in 1970,
11 certainly by the time that internment was introduced in
12 1971, there was a full-blown state of insurgency, was
13 there not?
14 A. Oh, certainly there was a state of insurgency.
15 Q. Let me put the matter beyond doubt, could I refer you to
16 OS1.657 on the screen, please. This is an extract from
17 a book which was written by you, published in 1987,
18 called "Warfare as a whole." If I could highlight the
19 second last paragraph --
20 A. Could I just ask for a moment to find out what I am
21 looking at?
22 Q. This was a publication by you called "Warfare as
23 a whole" and it was published in 1987?
24 A. Correct.
25 Q. What I wanted to look at was the last sentence of the
1 second last paragraph on page 86 on 1.657:
2 "Furthermore, for the last 17 years a state of
3 insurgency has existed in Northern Ireland which has
4 made a considerable demand on Army manpower."
5 A. Right.
6 Q. We are agreed, then, that whatever was going on in
7 Northern Ireland was, certainly by the introduction of
8 internment, a state of insurgency?
9 A. Yes. Mixed up, I may say, with -- there continued to be
10 inter-communal aspects of it that were not, at least
11 ostensibly, connected to the insurgence. For example,
12 NICRA would not recognise that they were insurgents
13 because they were a political pressure group using what
14 they would say is more or less legal means. They might
15 do an illegal march or something, but they were not
16 insurgents, in so many words.
17 Q. You anticipated really the next question I was going to
18 ask you, to identify really the insurgents. The IRA
19 would clearly have been regarded as insurgents; is that
20 not right? What about people who might help them by
21 rioting, by organising illegal marches and so on, fellow
22 travellers, how would they be regarded?
23 A. Well, this is a matter of terminology, of course, but
24 I would say that insurgents, if they are people who are
25 trying to use force, to force the Government -- I am
1 merely quoting the definition -- to do something it did
2 not want to do or to change the Government altogether
3 and they are using force to do it, then they are
4 insurgents. And if people are helping them, well, they
5 are also in a sense insurgents.
6 Q. It might be more, General Kitson, than a matter of
7 terminology because -- I am trying to get into the mind
8 of the soldier -- he sees the IRA who are clearly --
9 A. Insurgents.
10 Q. Insurgents, who are trying to kill him, destroy him and
11 so on. He then sees these other people who, to his
12 eyes, are helping these insurgents. Is he going to make
13 any moral difference between the two?
14 A. A moral difference. I do not think it is a question of
15 a moral difference --
16 Q. Emotional difference?
17 A. It is a legal difference. I mean, if you catch someone
18 in one category, can he be dealt with by the Courts or
19 in the period of internment in the same way as someone
20 in a another category.
21 Q. But will the soldier operating on the streets always be
22 able to make these nice distinctions?
23 A. No, not really, I mean he will deal with what he is
24 faced with. If someone is throwing a brick at him in
25 the form of a riot, he will not be likely to want to use
1 the force that he would use if he was being shot at.
2 Q. Possibly, and it has been suggested that the men
3 throwing the stones would divide and then the IRA would
4 come out and shoot; do you think the soldier is going to
5 draw fine distinctions between people in the crowd who
6 are helping the IRA and the IRA?
7 A. He will try and draw a distinction between the people
8 who are a threat of using firearms and people who are
9 not, but not only firearms, there are other lethal
10 weapons that can be used.
11 Q. I wonder if we could have on the screen OS1.662.
12 A. I am not quite sure where we have got to.
13 Q. This again is one of your works, it is "Directing
14 operations", 1989, and you say, it is the first new
15 paragraph on page 56:
16 "In this context it often seems that public opinion
17 will only accept a level of force being used against
18 insurgents if it is related to the amount of force that
19 the insurgents themselves are using. Thus the more the
20 insurgents use violence, the more Draconian can the
21 emergency regulations become and vice versa. This is
22 illogical, because anyone who is prepared to use illegal
23 force against his own country has no right to expect
24 anything other than total extermination, as fast as
25 possible, by any legal means, regardless of how much
1 force he is using."
2 Applying that to the situation in hand: the IRA, you
3 think, could regard only total extermination within the
4 law, of course?
5 A. Can I just get the context of this?
6 Q. Yes?
7 A. This is in a book written in 1989, the purpose of which
8 is to examine the ways in which operations should be
9 directed in the modern world, that is 1989 where
10 perceptions were somewhat different to what they were in
11 1969, "so as to assess and identify characters and
12 skills that commanders need".
13 Now I put this bit in because where you stopped is
14 the important part. It goes on:
15 "But after ... a period of comparative peace, people
16 in the west are [this, that and the other]."
17 What I am saying is that although legally it may be
18 right and possible to do one thing, the political
19 background, the general feeling of the world may demand
20 that you do something else. That is the context of
21 this.
22 I am not saying that you ought to immediately
23 exterminate everyone as fast as possible by legal means;
24 I am saying that although that is the logical response
25 to insurgency, it has to be tempered by non-legal
1 obstructions, if you want to put it that way, which
2 demand that you use another approach in order to fit
3 political considerations, what allies may feel and a lot
4 of other things.
5 Q. Let us read on for a moment, General Kitson:
6 "But after so extended a period of comparative
7 peace, people in the west at least, have become soft and
8 gullible, which is one of the reasons why insurgency
9 campaigns last so long. It now seems politically
10 impossible for sufficiently strong Government measures
11 to be taken against insurgents for any length of time,
12 before being assailed by popular outcry at home or
13 abroad. The answer to this problem is not to ignore the
14 protest, but to attack the sources of adverse opinion
15 using the Government's public relations machine together
16 with such legal sanctions as may be available, since the
17 outcry is not usually a spontaneous reaction originating
18 from the public, but is carefully orchestrated by
19 sympathisers of the insurgents."
20 Does any of that take away from your recipe, so to
21 speak, which is to exterminate insurgents within the
22 law?
23 A. Yes, it all does, because what I am trying to say -- and
24 I am very sorry if it is not clear -- is that you cannot
25 just do the maximum that the law would let you do, you
1 often have to do less for political reasons, in order to
2 achieve your aim in fact, and what you can do is to do
3 other things, like try and remove the political
4 objections by setting out the sources and so on.
5 Q. Was it a matter of regret for you that the west had
6 become soft and gullible?
7 A. No, it was not --
8 Q. Let me finish, General Kitson, please -- that the west
9 had not become soft and gullible so that you were not
10 able to exterminate the IRA within the law?
11 A. No, I am not talking about the IRA.
12 Q. Well, insurgents, then?
13 A. No, it is not a source of regret or unregret, I am
14 merely stating a situation as it existed when I wrote
15 this book, and indeed still does to some extent.
16 Q. Let me ask you a further question about that: the
17 opportunities in a democracy for exterminating people
18 within the law are fairly limited, are they not?
19 A. Exactly, and very luckily they are.
20 Q. And they do not really relate to the amount of force
21 that -- they do have some relation, of course, to the
22 amount of force that insurgents themselves are using,
23 but there is a fairly net area in which people may be
24 killed by the Security Forces lawfully; is that not
25 right?
1 A. Yes, but extermination does not necessarily mean
2 killing. They can be put away in some way, such as the
3 Americans have put away a large number of Taleban in
4 prison.
5 Q. If a soldier said in the mess "the IRA should be
6 exterminated"; what did you expect him to mean by that?
7 A. I would not use it in terms of the IRA in this context.
8 We are not talking -- this book is not even about the
9 British Army particularly, it is just a general work.
10 Q. Might this sort of language have been used by soldiers,
11 "they are vermin, they ought to be exterminated"? Did
12 you ever hear language like that used at all in 1971,
13 1972 about the IRA?
14 A. They did not want to exterminate it, they certainly
15 wanted to neutralise them, kill them if they were
16 shooting at them, or take them prisoner or put
17 them -- internment or anything else. I think we are
18 talking about separate things altogether. This book is
19 not about the IRA or anyone else particularly, it is to
20 point out that there are limitations on what
21 a government's plan --
22 Q. It may not be about the IRA in particular, but the
23 description could apply to the IRA. I am just asking
24 you -- I will not take up a great deal more time on
25 this, General Kitson -- might this have been the
1 language that was being used in 1971, 1972 about the IRA
2 at all levels of the Army?
3 A. No, I would not think so at all. They would have used
4 the term "neutralise".
5 Q. Neutralise?
6 A. Yes, in this sort of context.
7 Q. Understandably the Army would have regarded the IRA with
8 intense hostility; is that right?
9 A. Certainly they would regard them with the hostility you
10 normally feel for the enemy.
11 Q. Could I ask you further: there seems to be a moral
12 judgment here because you are condemning someone who is
13 prepared to use illegal force against his own country.
14 The IRA would not have regarded themselves as using
15 force against their own country; is that not right?
16 A. I do not know what they regarded, but it was a fact that
17 they were.
18 Q. You are saying you do not know what the IRA regarded
19 themselves as doing?
20 A. I mean, it is a fact that these people were British
21 subjects trying to make the Government of Britain or
22 Northern Ireland, in the case of Stormont, do something
23 which it would not -- it either did not want to do or
24 they wanted to change the system.
25 Q. And the fact that they believed, rightly or wrongly,
1 that they were fighting a war of liberation did not
2 affect your attitude to them?
3 A. I do not know that -- no, I suppose not. I mean, they
4 were, as far as this goes, they were insurgents. It did
5 not mean that we necessarily thought each one of them
6 was an evil person or anything else, they were just
7 insurgents like any other insurgents.
8 Q. To what extent do you think that the average soldier
9 might have been aware of these constitutional niceties
10 that these were British citizens that he was being
11 confronted with?
12 A. Well, he knew they were.
13 Q. Would he have regarded -- when a soldier was going into
14 the Bogside, for example, would his attitude have been
15 exactly the same as if he had been going somewhere in
16 Brixton, Birmingham or London?
17 A. He would not expect in Brixton, Birmingham or London to
18 be shot at, and so there might be that much difference.
19 Q. Might he have felt that he was in a far away place where
20 there was some strange quarrel going on between strange
21 people?
22 A. No, I think it is highly improbable, because do not
23 forget most of our battalions had quite considerable
24 numbers of Irishmen in them.
25 Q. At any rate, as far as the soldiers were concerned, you
1 obviously had considerable experience of the Paras for
2 an appreciable time before they went to Derry for
3 Bloody Sunday; is that not right?
4 A. They had been in Belfast -- do not forget not only
5 1 Para, but 2 Para and 3 Para as well.
6 Q. Indeed. No doubt, as a good Commander, you would want
7 to know what was going on in the minds of your soldiers;
8 is that right?
9 A. No, not particularly, as long as I knew they would do
10 what they were told.
11 Q. You were not interested as to what their thinking was
12 and you did not take any steps to find out what the
13 ordinary soldier thought, you just expected him to obey
14 the orders from above; is that it?
15 A. I had been in the Army however long it was at that time
16 and I had a fair idea of what soldiers think, but you
17 cannot generalise obviously.
18 Q. I am sure you cannot. Would it not be part of your
19 business to find out what they were thinking?
20 A. I expect I did have a fair idea what they were thinking,
21 but not in any detail. They did not know what I was
22 thinking.
23 Q. Did you have a fair idea what they were thinking about
24 the no-go areas?
25 A. Well, in Belfast --
1 Q. I am talking about the no-go areas in Derry?
2 A. I do not know, because I was not in Derry.
3 Q. No, you were not in Derry but the Tribunal has an amount
4 of evidence, and I will show it to you in a moment if
5 you wish, that the Paras were affronted by the no-go
6 areas. Were you aware of any feeling?
7 A. I mean, if a no-go area had been erected in Belfast,
8 which is where I knew about, they would expect to be
9 told to take them down. If they were told not to take
10 them down, they would have left them up.
11 Q. Would the ordinary paratrooper have said to himself
12 "look, we do not tolerate these things in Belfast and
13 they are getting away with them in Derry"?
14 A. I would very much doubt it. I mean, there was a time in
15 Belfast not long after this when Stormont was abolished
16 and some barriers went up and, because the policy had
17 changed, we were told to leave them up in some areas.
18 The soldiers did not immediately say "this is an
19 affront, we are going to take them down," they do not
20 mind, they will do what you ask them to do.
21 Q. What I am trying to explore at the moment is what
22 reaction, if any, they had to the no-go areas which were
23 existing in Derry just before they went to Derry. You
24 seem to have been suggesting they really would not have
25 been all that worried about them; is that right?
1 A. I should not think so. If they were told to take them
2 down, they would take them down.
3 Q. Could we have on the screen, please, CJ1.16. These are
4 notes of an interview with Captain Jackson, as he was at
5 that time. This is an interview with Captain Jackson by
6 Moynahan of the Sunday Times. This is what Major, now
7 General Jackson, is supposed to have said on
8 4th February 1972, just a few days after Bloody Sunday:
9 "He considered it as a battalion had an unequalled
10 experience and record in Belfast. The battalion was
11 proud that it had no fatalities. He put this down to
12 going in hard and ready. The idea was to inflict
13 casualties, never to receive them, and this was possible
14 due to the battalion's aggressive posture in always
15 seizing the initiative. He felt that the 1st Battalion
16 had helped to ensure that there were no 'no-go' areas in
17 Belfast, and that a certain contempt was felt for such
18 areas existing elsewhere in the province."
19 A. Am I to comment?
20 Q. Yes, I am asking you to comment, in view of your
21 previous answer --
22 LORD SAVILLE: Before General Kitson does, can you remind
23 me, Mr Lavery, does General Jackson accept that he said
24 things like this?
25 MR LAVERY: He does, and he puts them down, I think, to his
1 youthful inexperience. He seeks to explain. Perhaps
2 the Tribunal may think it fairer to show the Tribunal
3 what General Jackson said about that. He certainly
4 admits, I think, saying them, but attempts to explain
5 them.
6 LORD SAVILLE: We will continue, and we will see how we go.
7 MR LAVERY: He was saying, a few days afterwards, what he
8 was purporting to describe was the feelings that the
9 Paras had when they were surveying the scene in Derry.
10 Would you agree that it would be understandable for
11 the Paras to make comparisons between the situation in
12 their area and the situation in Derry?
13 A. Well, the fact is that the barriers were down in Belfast
14 because the battalions there, including 1 Para, had at
15 different times been told to take them down.
16 It is possible, and certainly a captain within the
17 battalion itself would be likely to have a better idea
18 than me as to whether they would feel a certain contempt
19 for such areas existing otherwise than in Belfast.
20 Q. Would it not be likely that they would compare
21 themselves favourably to other areas?
22 A. They are not comparing themselves, they are comparing
23 the situation in Belfast to the situation that they
24 seemed to be finding in Londonderry, and I am not
25 surprised they compared it, but that did not mean to
1 say -- and if General Jackson said they felt a certain
2 contempt for it, that would be reasonable. The reasons
3 for it they would not know. They would not know why it
4 was like that, and I suppose a soldier might feel
5 a certain contempt for something he did not like the
6 look of, but he would not have the details of why the
7 barriers had been left up in Londonderry and not in
8 Belfast.
9 Q. I accept that entirely, General Kitson. The soldier
10 might have many ideas in his head which are true or
11 false, but whether they are true or false, they may well
12 affect his conduct; is that not right?
13 A. Not necessarily in this case affect his conduct. His
14 conduct should be exactly the same in one place as
15 another, it is to do what he is asked to do.
16 Q. I said "may affect". In theory it ought to be, but in
17 practice a soldier is a human being like anybody else
18 and his actions are bound to be coloured by what he
19 believes, to some extent?
20 A. Bound to be coloured by what he thinks, I suppose.
21 Q. I will not read the whole, I will skip, not unfairly,
22 I hope, to the last paragraph:
23 "He agreed to talk about Derry, but off the record
24 and certainly not in his position as adjutant. He said
25 his battalion had overturned convention and made amends
1 for 17th July fiasco."
2 That I think was Operation Hailstone, to which you
3 have been referred earlier on?
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. I will say a word or two about that in a moment.
6 "He confirmed that the battalion had no ground
7 experience of Derry, but had models and aerial
8 photographs available. He said that the battalion,
9 having proved it could go anywhere in Belfast, had now
10 proved it could go anywhere in Derry. He said having
11 things thrown at you was not enough, it was necessary to
12 go in hard and this was what the paratroopers had done."
13 That attitude might -- and you cannot say -- have
14 been prevalent amongst the paratroopers in Belfast
15 before they were sent to Derry, might it?
16 A. I do not really follow this --
17 LORD SAVILLE: I do not understand the question, Mr Lavery.
18 MR LAVERY: I am trying to explore the minds of the
19 paratroopers before they set off for Belfast and,
20 according to Captain Jackson as he then was, they had
21 contempt for the fact that no-go areas existed in Derry.
22 They had established that they, the Paras, were able to
23 go anywhere in Belfast and, as a result of
24 Bloody Sunday, they had now established that they could
25 go anywhere in Derry.
1 LORD SAVILLE: I follow that in one sense, but I am finding
2 it difficult to see why you are addressing these
3 questions to General Kitson as opposed to
4 General Jackson.
5 MR LAVERY: I am trying to establish what General Kitson
6 knew about the minds of his men and trying to jog his
7 memory. I have suggested to him that he might have been
8 expected to know what was in their minds and I am
9 inviting him to comment on that.
10 LORD SAVILLE: Let us break it up: General Kitson, this
11 report of what Captain Jackson, as he then was, is
12 supposed to have said relates, in the last paragraph,
13 I think, to in a sense what the feelings of 1 Para were
14 after the day, after Bloody Sunday.
15 Do you have any memory or recollection of learning
16 what those feelings were?
17 A. No. I no doubt would have talked to Colonel Wilford but
18 I would not know what an individual soldier in 1 Para
19 thought had happened on the day in question.
20 LORD SAVILLE: Did you get a general view from
21 Colonel Wilford as to the feelings of 1 Para generally
22 as to what had happened on Bloody Sunday.
23 A. I cannot remember getting anything more than the sort of
24 practical aspects of it. We caught so many people, that
25 would mean people will be away giving evidence in Court
1 and so on. I do not remember saying "are the Paras
2 pleased with themselves or are they not" or anything of
3 that sort.
4 It is perfectly possible that in conversation with
5 Colonel Wilford I could have discussed this vaguely.
6 But we are in an area where I am being asked to remember
7 what I thought on an occasion 30-odd years ago which
8 really was not very much my concern, except to the
9 extent that it affected the future performance of
10 1 Para.
11 MR LAVERY: I understand entirely that your memory, like
12 everybody else's, there must be a lot of things you have
13 forgotten since 1972, but the simple matter that I am
14 trying to explore at the moment is: what was in the
15 minds of the Paras before, before they went in.
16 LORD SAVILLE: That is actually not quite what you asked
17 before, but we can move to it by all means.
18 I understood, Mr Lavery, from your earlier questions,
19 that you were directing the question to General Kitson
20 relating to the last paragraph on the screen, which
21 deals with the position after 30th January.
22 If you want to move now to the position before, let
23 us by all means do so; what is your question?
24 MR LAVERY: I already had asked him, I introduced this topic
25 by asking what was in their minds before. I then
1 produced Colonel Jackson's statement as evidence of what
2 might well have been not only in their minds afterwards
3 but what might well have been in their minds before.
4 I am now going to produce a statement from
5 Colonel Wilford. Perhaps if the Tribunal might make --
6 if I have not made it clear that at the moment I am
7 trying to investigate the mindset of the paratroopers
8 who he commanded for a year or for two years and what he
9 knew or did not know about them.
10 LORD SAVILLE: I understand that and I think, at the moment
11 it seems to me, General Kitson has answered as best he
12 may about what you described as "the mindset" both
13 before and after the day, which is that he did not know
14 very much about it either before or after 30th January.
15 If you think he can help us further, do, but we have
16 to get on, Mr Lavery.
17 MR LAVERY: Perhaps I could jog his memory with two more
18 short observations from what soldiers said in the
19 Paratroop Regiment.
20 LORD SAVILLE: Very well.
21 MR LAVERY: Could we have on the screen E1.028, please.
22 This is an interview that Mr Peter Taylor claims he had
23 with Colonel Wilford some years later, in the process of
24 marking a film, and he records -- have you had an
25 opportunity to look at that, Colonel Derek Wilford?
1 A. No, I have not seen this before.
2 Q. Then I will read it out to you:
3 "The soldiers were standing there with their big
4 plastic shields and they would throw the odd tear gas
5 which would then be thrown back at them -- and this to
6 us was really quite horrifying because it was clear that
7 the soldiers never went forward and just stood there
8 like Aunt Sallies."
9 A. Is this a report of what he saw on this occasion,
10 30th January 1972?
11 Q. No, evidence has been given that week after week
12 soldiers in Derry simply stood there and were stoned and
13 attacked by rioters and that this affronted, not only
14 Colonel Wilford but the other soldiers in the
15 Paratroop Regiment, and the suggestion might be that
16 they could not understand why this state of affairs was
17 allowed to exist and that "certainly it would not happen
18 with us"; do you understand the point I am making?
19 A. I do, and it is very similar to the one I commented on
20 earlier when I said they would not understand it unless
21 they knew all the factors that had brought that
22 situation about.
23 Q. That is not the point, as I think I explained. It does
24 not matter whether they are right or whether they were
25 wrong. I am trying to establish what they were thinking
1 as they were running into the Bogside; do you
2 understand?
3 A. Yes, I understand, but it is not very likely that
4 I could help you on that.
5 Q. One final quotation on this point, if I may, C1581.2,
6 paragraph 11. This is a statement which was made for
7 the purposes of this Tribunal by a member of Support
8 Company who was in Derry on Bloody Sunday; do you
9 understand?
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. What he says at paragraph 11:
12 "One thing I do remember is there being a general
13 feeling that everyone wanted to go into the no-go areas
14 of the Bogside to break them. I have a recollection of
15 us having to wait where we were parked up for some time
16 for permission to go in to be sought up the chain of
17 command. I remember someone saying 'we have had to seek
18 permission from the PM', which I assumed meant the UK
19 Prime Minister. As we did not end up going into the
20 no-go area, I presume no permission was ever received."
21 Here is a Para who was saying they all were anxious,
22 and he is talking about the time they are actually in
23 Derry itself, they all were anxious to go into the no-go
24 areas and break them up. Again, are your previous
25 objections valid as far as this is concerned, you were
1 not aware of any such feeling amongst the Paras?
2 A. This is slightly different. Here is a man, sitting in
3 a vehicle and obviously thinking that the job was
4 different to the job he was going to be given.
5 Presumably he had not yet been told that it was an
6 operation to scoop-up some stone-throwers rather than to
7 whatever he says, go into the no-go areas of the Bogside
8 to break them. That is a different aim and, presumably,
9 before the actual operation started, someone told him
10 what he was on; this was not it, as it happens.
11 Q. Were you aware of a general feeling amongst Paras that
12 they were superior to other troops in the Army?
13 A. I think every regiment feels that.
14 Q. And the Paras, one of the terms the Paras -- the
15 Tribunal has been told, rightly or wrongly, perhaps you
16 have never heard the expression -- used to describe
17 other soldiers were "crap hats"; do you remember that?
18 A. I think every regiment has a number of terms they use
19 for --
20 Q. Abuse?
21 A. It is affectionate abuse, if you like, it is like
22 calling the guards wooden tops, it is that sort of
23 thing.
24 Q. I have been asking you really about the attitude of the
25 Paras before the operation on Bloody Sunday and I want
1 to ask you now some general questions about what might
2 have been in the minds of soldiers who were engaged in
3 shooting incidents: do you remember any attitude that
4 the Army may have had at that time -- I am talking about
5 1970, 1971, 1972 -- about the prosecution of soldiers
6 who were engaged in shooting incidents?
7 A. The terms of engagement were well laid down. They were
8 designed to ensure -- this is the Yellow Card -- that,
9 provided they were adhered to, that the man was
10 completely in the clear, both with regard to the law and
11 with regard to the orders he had been given from above,
12 and therefore they would feel that as long as they could
13 follow them they would be all right.
14 But in practice it is the split second you have
15 before you fire that you have to make your assessment
16 and a soldier, like anyone else, knows that he has on
17 one side the pressure of feeling if he does not fire at
18 that moment, he might get one back; if he does fire and
19 it is wrong, he might well be in trouble.
20 So a soldier is naturally slightly worried about
21 this particular aspect of the job.
22 Q. I am sure everybody recognises it is a very difficult
23 situation, but may we take it that the Army was
24 concerned about the effect that prosecutions might have
25 on soldiers' morale?
1 A. Well, a prosecution would only take place if there was
2 a doubt as to whether he had fired when he should have
3 done or he should not. If the soldier fired and the
4 investigation afterwards made it look as though he might
5 not have done it in full accordance with the
6 instructions in the Yellow Card, he could then be
7 prosecuted.
8 Q. I am sorry to interrupt you because I am not really
9 asking you at this stage, feel free to answer about the,
10 if I may call it, the nuts and bolts of the prosecution;
11 I am merely trying to explore if there was any tension
12 between the Army and the prosecuting authorities over
13 the subject of prosecuting soldiers and whether in fact
14 the Army did what it could to prevent prosecutions?
15 A. Well, it was the Army -- the investigations were carried
16 out jointly by the Army Special Investigation Branch of
17 the Military Police with the civil police.
18 Q. Was the reason for that not so as to reduce the
19 prospects of prosecutions?
20 A. The reason was that the Military Police would be the
21 people most capable of finding out what happened within
22 the Army.
23 Q. Could I ask you to look at C3.1, please. This is
24 a statement of a Major in the SIB branch of the Royal
25 Military Police, INQ3, a statement made for the purpose
1 of this Inquiry in April 1998. I would ask you to look
2 at the last paragraph on that page:
3 "Further on in the same paper I wrote: 'Back in 1970
4 a decision was reached between the GOC and the
5 Chief Constable whereby RMP would tend to military
6 witnesses and the RUC to civilian witnesses in the
7 investigation of offences and incidents. With both RMP
8 and RUC sympathetic to the soldier, who after all was
9 doing an incredibly difficult job, he was highly
10 unlikely to make a statement incriminating himself, for
11 the RMP investigator was out for information for
12 managerial, not criminal purposes, and, using their
13 powers of discretion, it was equally unlikely that the
14 RUC would prefer charges against soldiers except in the
15 most extreme of circumstances. However, in March 1972,
16 following the imposition of direct rule from
17 Westminster, a Director of Public Prosecutions was
18 appointed for Northern Ireland and he soon made it clear
19 that the existing standards were far from satisfactory."
20 Would that suggest that the Army was very anxious to
21 avoid the prosecution of soldiers?
22 A. It would be certainly true that the Army would not want
23 a soldier prosecuted unless there was clear case that he
24 had done something wrong. It would not mean that the
25 Army -- if someone had deliberately done something
1 wrong, the Army would certainly want him prosecuted and
2 would indeed, if the civilian authorities did not do it,
3 would probably court martial him.
4 Q. Was it not always the practice of the Army to extend
5 extraordinary support to soldiers who do find themselves
6 in difficulty?
7 A. I would hope the Army would provide the support but not
8 go against the law of the land by trying to prevent the
9 truth, the justice being done.
10 Q. We know, for example, that any soldier who was ever
11 convicted of killing an Irish -- convicted of murdering
12 on Irish civilian has been welcomed back into the Army
13 after his conviction --
14 LORD SAVILLE: Mr Lavery, I am not at all sure at the moment
15 what this has to do with this Inquiry?
16 MR LAVERY: I am trying to explore again what the mindset of
17 the soldier was, the attitudes are. Did he think, if he
18 went out and did go a bit over the top, that the Army
19 would protect him at all costs? I merely want to ask
20 General Kitson if that was his view at that time and
21 could it have happened in your time that a convicted
22 murderer, for example, could have been brought back into
23 the Army?
24 LORD SAVILLE: I think that is off the point.
25 General Kitson, what I think is being suggested is: did
1 you at the time have any knowledge or assumption that
2 soldiers employed in Northern Ireland took the view that
3 they could, more or less with impunity, shoot anybody
4 and would not be prosecuted?
5 A. No, certainly not. They knew perfectly well that they
6 could not, under any circumstances, just shoot people
7 without being prosecuted.
8 MR LAVERY: Did they know, General Kitson, that they would
9 be given as much latitude as the Army could give them?
10 LORD SAVILLE: I think that is really too general
11 a question, Mr Lavery.
12 MR LAVERY: Were they aware that there was a general culture
13 in the Army of "my soldier, right or wrong" and protect
14 them? Can you explain otherwise how they would have
15 taken a convicted murderer back into the Army? Have you
16 ever known that to happen anywhere in the world?
17 A. I know nothing about convicted murderers being accepted
18 back into the Army. What we are talking about is: would
19 the Army protect something, right or wrong. I have
20 already said if he was very clearly wrong they would not
21 protect the case from being properly investigated.
22 Q. If he was convicted of murder, he was clearly wrong, was
23 he not? Does it surprise you to know they welcomed back
24 into their ranks convicted murderers?
25 A. I do not know, I am not at all acquainted with this
1 general, as you might say.
2 Q. What I want to know is: is that an attitude that the
3 Army arrived at only 10 years ago, or would that sort of
4 attitude have been prevalent in the Army at your time?
5 LORD SAVILLE: I am sorry, what sort of attitude, Mr Lavery?
6 MR LAVERY: The attitude that the comfort and the morale of
7 a soldiers is more important than the life of an Irish
8 citizen.
9 LORD SAVILLE: That is not quite the question you have put
10 to General Kitson.
11 MR LAVERY: First I put it in that way, then.
12 LORD SAVILLE: Could you turn that into a question and then
13 perhaps the General can deal with it.
14 MR LAVERY: Would it appear, from the fact that they have
15 welcomed back into the Army convicted murderers, that,
16 in the scale of things, they rate the morale of their
17 soldiers as being more important than the life of an
18 Irish person?
19 LORD SAVILLE: I am sorry, Mr Lavery, I am not sure that
20 sort of question is going to help us. I can quite
21 understand a line of questioning to the effect that the
22 general attitude of soldiers encouraged by their
23 officers was to not worry too much about shooting
24 outside the rules of the Yellow Card because the Army
25 would protect them. I can understand that line of
1 questioning, but I think to go wider than that is not
2 very helpful.
3 MR LAVERY: The point I am simply making is this: that this
4 is very powerful evidence that the Army did extend
5 particular protection to their soldiers.
6 LORD SAVILLE: What is very powerful evidence?
7 MR LAVERY: The fact they took murderers, welcomed murderers
8 back into the Army.
9 LORD SAVILLE: When are these occasions said to have
10 occurred?
11 MR LAVERY: The first one I think was 1984. I can give the
12 Tribunal details of them if the Tribunal wishes.
13 LORD SAVILLE: A lot of water had passed under the bridge
14 between 1972 and 1984, I do not think that is personally
15 of any help.
16 What I would find of help, although I think
17 General Kitson has already been asked this, as to
18 whether or not he agrees that the general attitude of
19 officers and soldiers in Northern Ireland at this time,
20 that is to say 1972, was one of such antipathy towards
21 the insurgents at that time that the soldiers really
22 proceeded on the basis that they could, without much
23 regard to the Yellow Card, shoot and kill people?
24 A. No, I am sure they did not feel that they could just
25 shoot away without regard to the instructions given
1 them, which is on the Yellow Card, and I am sure also
2 that the officers would not have wanted them to do so
3 because it would have put them at risk. The purpose of
4 the Yellow Card was as much as anything else to protect
5 the soldiers. If they followed it, they were not doing
6 something that was against the law.
7 MR LAVERY: Yes, I am sure that is right, and I will be
8 asking you a little bit about the Yellow Card and the
9 soldiers' understanding. Lord Widgery was critical of
10 that. We will be coming to that shortly.
11 Let me now come to, if I may call it the
12 preparations or the lead-up to Bloody Sunday itself.
13 Could I ask you, General Kitson, if --
14 LORD SAVILLE: Sorry to interrupt you, Mr Lavery, we have
15 got to 12.30 and I think it might be appropriate to stop
16 for lunch now and we will come back to it at 1.20.
17 General Kitson, as I say to all witnesses whose
18 evidence goes over an adjournment, I would be grateful
19 if you did not discuss the evidence you are giving with
20 anybody until you have finished giving it. Can we come
21 back, please, at 1.20. Thank you.
22 (12.35 pm)
23 (A short break)
24 (1.30 pm)
25 MR LAVERY: General Kitson, before I leave the subject of
1 the no-go areas, could I explore one area briefly with
2 you, as an expert on the matter of counter-insurgency?
3 Would you agree, apart from the effects it may have had
4 on the morale of soldiers, that the very existence of
5 no-go areas was sending out a very bad signal to the
6 people of Northern Ireland?
7 LORD SAVILLE: Is that really a question for General Kitson?
8 MR LAVERY: Yes, he has said -- and I can show the Tribunal
9 what his writings say -- that it is very important in an
10 insurgency situation to show that the insurgents are
11 never winning, and the mistake they made in Aden was
12 saying that they were going to go. So, so long as the
13 no-go areas existed, the signal was being sent to those
14 who would support the IRA.
15 LORD SAVILLE: I see what you mean.
16 What is the answer to that, General Kitson?
17 A. I think what I was saying about Aden in that passage was
18 that you cannot afford to give the signal to
19 a population that you are definitely going, because by
20 doing so you are saying it is no good being loyal to us,
21 you are going to -- we are not going to be here anyhow.
22 That is a very different matter to having a few barriers
23 in, in this case Londonderry. I would say it was not
24 particularly good, but I do not think it would have made
25 a huge difference to the general way people were
1 feeling.
2 MR LAVERY: But here was an area of the United Kingdom, an
3 integral part of the United Kingdom where access was
4 being denied to the Security Forces; was that giving
5 great comfort to the insurgents?
6 A. I should think it might be giving some comfort for the
7 insurgents, but I cannot really speak for them.
8 Q. Was it not increasing the pressure upon the authorities
9 and the Army to do something about it?
10 A. This is all the thing that was being discussed by the
11 GOC and the Joint Security Council, possibly. Whether
12 the British Government were involved, but it was
13 certainly -- it did not bother me, to put it that way.
14 I was curious as to what they were going to do, but
15 I was not bothered.
16 Q. You did not think it a matter of some urgency to bring
17 them to an end as quickly as possible?
18 A. No, I would not have thought so.
19 Q. Finally on the subject, if I could ask your expertise on
20 no-go areas. Could I ask you to look at OS1.55. This
21 is a document which emanated from a gentleman in the
22 Foreign Office on the 27th June 1972, and he discusses
23 no-go areas. I want to ask for your comment on the last
24 or the penultimate passage in it on page 56:
25 "If the no-go areas do not end of their own accord,
1 we can finally make use of one option. As you know,
2 I have always been in favour of encouraging the no-go
3 areas to rot from within. There is no reason why we
4 should not encourage the breakdown of even health
5 services and the spread of disease et cetera."
6 That is a piece of nonsense, is it not?
7 A. Yes, it looks like it, but I cannot really read this
8 quick enough and --
9 Q. The no-go areas were going to have to be dealt with
10 either politically or militarily, is that not right?
11 A. It was obviously one of the things that the Joint
12 Security -- by then probably that had gone, I do not
13 know, because you are now talking about the period after
14 Stormont was gone and I do not know what --
15 Q. It would be very difficult to envisage any circumstances
16 in which a policy like that would be put in practice in
17 the United Kingdom?
18 A. I cannot see what the policy is, to be honest.
19 Q. The policy is sealing off these areas and encouraging
20 the growth of disease in them. The point I am making,
21 is this, General Kitson: might there not have been some
22 people who felt that by the end of 1971 and the
23 beginning of 1972, that this really was the time for
24 military action?
25 A. I dare say there were, but you are talking about the
1 overall policy for dealing with the situation and it is
2 no good my commenting on it, you really should be
3 talking to a number of people, most of whom are dead,
4 unfortunately.
5 Q. Could I ask you, generally your lack of memory of these
6 instances is totally understandable, General Kitson, but
7 is there anything in the lead-up to Bloody Sunday that
8 sticks out, any conversation you might have had with
9 General Ford or Colonel Wilford that has stuck in your
10 memory for some reason?
11 A. No.
12 Q. I know you have been asked some questions by my learned
13 friend Mr Elias about the planning of the lead-up to
14 Bloody Sunday. I am not going to ask you to comment on
15 that because you have said you were not doing it, but it
16 has been suggested, and perhaps you would look at
17 OS8.5.23.
18 I am not going to take you through the whole of the
19 document unless it is felt unfair of me not to do it,
20 and I should say in fairness to my friends that these
21 are put forward as part of a spectrum of views of people
22 they represent. You will see that it says in 4.25:
23 "In assessing --
24 LORD SAVILLE: I am sorry, Mr Lavery, perhaps you could give
25 General Kitson slightly more information as to what this
1 document is.
2 MR LAVERY: I think in fairness I should explain what the
3 document is, General Kitson.
4 This is a document which has emanated from --
5 perhaps if we could turn to 8.5.1. It is a document
6 which was presented and prepared by those who are
7 representing some of the soldiers, you understand,
8 albeit not soldiers of a particularly high rank. They
9 are raising what they see as issues in the case and at
10 the start, as I say, I have to emphasise in fairness to
11 them, they say they represent 25 witnesses, mainly
12 former military personnel and a range of individuals of
13 different roles on and after Bloody Sunday and who
14 present a spectrum of views. Then they go on to say:
15 "Within that spectrum, with the benefit of hindsight
16 and in most cases after reflection over time there are
17 some who accept that there were shortcomings in the
18 planning of Operation Forecast and in its execution and
19 that in individual cases during and in the immediate
20 aftermath of Bloody Sunday there may have been some loss
21 of military discipline."
22 I am not really sure if I need read a great deal
23 more of it because the point I want to ask you, is
24 this: if the Tribunal were to come to the view I have
25 addressed, and we do not know whether they will or not,
1 but if they were to come to the view that there were
2 shortcomings in the planning of Operation Forecast and
3 its execution -- perhaps just to complete it if we go to
4 OS8.5.23:
5 "Nevertheless, the arrest plan as conducted appears
6 sufficiently far removed both from the original plan to
7 get behind the rioters on William Street and from the
8 successful tactics operated by 1 Para in Belfast, as to
9 suggest that there were significant failures in the
10 planning and execution of scoop-up element of Operation
11 Forecast."
12 Can you explain or offer any theory as to why
13 soldiers of the calibre and distinction of those who
14 were involved in planning this operation made what might
15 perhaps be regarded as fairly elementary mistakes in its
16 planning?
17 A. Could I please ask you one thing: when was this, is this
18 something that was prepared for this Tribunal, or was
19 this something way back?
20 Q. This is something that is prepared for this Tribunal and
21 the authors very clearly say, they are talking with the
22 benefit of hindsight, how, you understand --
23 A. I just was not sure whether this was for this Tribunal
24 or something that was done in 1972.
25 Q. Yes, but even subject to all of these qualifications --
1 LORD SAVILLE: General Kitson, this is a document that has
2 been prepared very recently, within the last two or
3 three weeks, by certain representatives of certain
4 soldiers and it is a document prepared for the purposes
5 of this Inquiry.
6 A. Thank you, sir.
7 MR LAVERY: I am wondering if you can offer any explanation
8 as to why the people who planned this operation, who as
9 we know were senior and distinguished soldiers, why they
10 should have, if this is right, why they should have made
11 a mess of the planning.
12 A. Well, we do not know that they have made a mess and if
13 they had made a mess, I would not have any means of
14 knowing why. No, I am sorry --
15 Q. You cannot offer any explanation?
16 A. No, I am sorry, I could not possibly.
17 Q. Might it be that the arrest operation was not really the
18 most important thing that was happening on that
19 occasion, so they were not really particularly worried
20 about whether the arrest operation or not was
21 successful; might that be an explanation?
22 LORD SAVILLE: I do not really see how General Kitson can
23 provide any sort of meaningful answer to a question like
24 that, Mr Lavery. I see exactly where you are going. It
25 seems to me that this line of questioning is much better
1 directed to those who actually formulated the plan or
2 carried it out, whatever the case may be.
3 You are really asking General Kitson to speculate
4 and I just do not see how he can help us on this.
5 MR LAVERY: There is no better person than General Kitson,
6 knowing these people as they were, knowing what was
7 involved, to suggest -- if there is another theory to
8 suggest it and if there is not another theory then the
9 Tribunal can draw its own inferences when they come --
10 LORD SAVILLE: General Kitson was at pains to point out he
11 was not actually in charge of and had no knowledge or
12 details of the planning of the day conducted by
13 8th Brigade; he has explained to us that he was in
14 charge of 39 Brigade and his involvement, so far as
15 Bloody Sunday was concerned, is that he had to lend his
16 reserve for the purposes of 8th Brigade and the march.
17 I really do not think that a question along the
18 lines you have put is going to be productive with any
19 answer because, apart from anything else, General Kitson
20 is going to say, quite correctly, as he already has
21 said, he does not in fact know what the original plan
22 was; he does not know what it is suggested went wrong,
23 if it did go wrong and, without being given those
24 details and enabled to study it, I cannot see how he
25 could really help us.
1 MR LAVERY: I have made the point insofar as I can, I simply
2 would have thought that he, as an expert, might have had
3 some views as to account for these culpable failures, if
4 there were culpable failures.
5 Let me ask you this, then, General Kitson: if the
6 Tribunal comes to the view that there were shortcomings
7 in the plan, would that not make it remiss of those who
8 were executing the plan not to have consulted with you
9 before they put this plan into operation?
10 A. No, because if they had made the bad plan that was
11 unfortunate, but I could not have done anything about it
12 if they had consulted me, because I knew nothing of the
13 circumstances.
14 Q. But nobody knew better than you what the paratroopers'
15 capabilities were, is that not right?
16 A. I think a lot of people knew as much as I did about it.
17 Q. Perhaps as much, yes. Would it be right to say that the
18 description given -- maybe you cannot answer this -- the
19 paratroopers had not encountered any situation in
20 Belfast like the situation that everybody knew they were
21 going to encounter in Derry; is that not right?
22 A. Every situation is different and I cannot think of
23 a situation in Belfast that was precisely similar to
24 this, certainly.
25 Q. Everybody appears to be very defensive about the fact
1 that this was an arrest operation and denying that there
2 was any object to teach a lesson to the IRA, but if the
3 Army intelligence is correct and if the Army belief is
4 correct, it was expected that the IRA would present
5 themselves on Bloody Sunday for the purposes of
6 shooting; do you follow that?
7 A. If that document you showed me of some telegram to the
8 Director of Intelligence from someone in London is
9 correct, then obviously what it said would happen might
10 have happened.
11 Q. So the state of mind of the Army at that particular
12 point in time was: we are going to have a big march in
13 Derry and the IRA are going to be there. Would you, as
14 a counter-insurgency expert, have seen that as an
15 opportunity for the Security Forces to make contact with
16 what might be an otherwise elusive enemy?
17 A. I do not think I would personally choose to make contact
18 under circumstances of that sort. But really it is not
19 in any way -- you keep saying I am a something or other
20 expert, counter-insurgency expert, this is on the
21 strength of my year at wherever it was on the defence
22 fellowship at Oxford. I do not think anyone else
23 thought I was more of an expert than they were
24 themselves.
25 Q. Your modesty is very becoming, General Kitson, but
1 whether you were a particular expert or not, you knew
2 a great deal about the activities of the Paras, did you
3 not?
4 A. Of course I had them, for that time, under my command.
5 Q. And you knew sufficient about them to form a high view
6 as to their professionalism?
7 A. Exactly, they were very good.
8 Q. Could I ask you, in the course of your studies, did you
9 ever study the Human Rights Convention? Britain, I may
10 say, signed -- or the United Kingdom subscribed to the
11 Convention in 1950, though it did not become law until
12 quite recently; did that feature at all in your studies?
13 A. Well, if it is not in the book, I cannot remember it.
14 Q. It was not a subject of conversation, was it, in 1972,
15 between the authorities, either the Government or you or
16 anybody else?
17 A. Not that I remember, certainly.
18 Q. What I want to ask you, then, but you would have
19 realised at all times, particularly in the
20 United Kingdom, that steps must be taken to minimise the
21 risk of casualties to innocent civilians; you would have
22 accepted that, would you not?
23 A. Well, clearly.
24 Q. And in an operation of this sort where you are going to
25 expect, where the Army were expecting the IRA to be
1 present and engaged in a gun battle in or about a crowd,
2 would you have felt it necessary if this had been your
3 job, to give any specific instructions to the soldiers
4 about minimising the risk of casualties?
5 A. I think it would have gone without saying, to be honest.
6 You would not have taken this as a subject to mention
7 because you would expect that everyone would realise it.
8 Q. Realised if there is a gun battle in the midst of
9 a crowd that there is going to be a high risk of
10 civilian casualties; is that right?
11 A. If someone shoots at you in the middle of the crowd,
12 there is a chance that if you try to defend yourself
13 somebody -- the wrong person might have got hurt,
14 presumably.
15 Q. Contrary to, I should not say a popular belief but
16 perhaps some belief, the Yellow Card does entitle
17 soldiers to shoot in circumstances in which their lives
18 are not in danger?
19 A. I do not have a copy of the Yellow Card with me, but the
20 Yellow Card is designed clearly, it lays down the rules
21 of engagement and I think one of them was if your life
22 is in danger or somebody else's life is in danger.
23 Q. There are other circumstances as well. I am wondering
24 whether you, as a professional soldier and an organiser
25 of these operations, might, in a situation where there
1 is going to be a high risk of casualties, might have
2 tried to impose some restrictive version of the Yellow
3 Card upon the soldiers --
4 MR TOOHEY: Mr Lavery, if you are going to put that question
5 to General Kitson, would you not put to him those parts
6 of the Yellow Card put forward in that description of,
7 I think as you put it, someone who is not actually being
8 shot at at the time?
9 MR LAVERY: I agree entirely, sir. We get the gist of it --
10 LORD SAVILLE: To speed things up, Mr Lavery, I will show
11 General Kitson my copy of the Yellow Card. (Handed)
12 MR HOYT: It is ED71.1.
13 MR LAVERY: I am very much obliged to you, sir.
14 MR TOOHEY: Mr Lavery, are you taking General Kitson to
15 a particular part of the card? Is it necessary for him
16 to read the entirety of the document?
17 MR LAVERY: I am not sure that it is. The point I am
18 making, is this -- and this is only one aspect of the
19 point -- the point that I am putting to him is that in
20 an operation of this sort, there should have been
21 a considerable amount of thought given to what exactly
22 was going to happen and to the risk to civilian lives
23 and as to how that might be mitigated. It would appear,
24 as far as the Tribunal is concerned, there does not
25 appear to be great evidence that these points were ever
1 considered in advance, and I was merely trying to see if
2 General Kitson would agree that they ought to have been
3 considered.
4 MR TOOHEY: That is not quite the way you began. You put to
5 General Kitson:
6 "It seems a popular belief, contrary to some belief,
7 that the Yellow Card does entitle soldiers to shoot in
8 circumstances in which their lives are not in danger."
9 If that is the basis of any questioning of
10 General Kitson, ought you not to take him to those parts
11 of the card which answer that description?
12 MR LAVERY: Yes, indeed. The version I was looking at
13 yesterday was November 1971.
14 If you go to ED71.2:
15 "You may fire after due warning.
16 "8. Against a person carrying what you can
17 positively identify as a firearm, but only if you have
18 reason to think that he is about to use it for offensive
19 purposes and he refuses to halt when called upon to do
20 so and there is no other way of stopping him.
21 "9. Against a person throwing a petrol bomb if
22 petrol bomb attacks continue in your area against troops
23 and civilians or against property, if his action is
24 likely to endanger life.
25 "10. Against a person attacking or destroying
1 property or stealing firearms or explosives, if his
2 action is likely to endanger life.
3 "11. Against a person who, though he is not at
4 present attacking has:
5 "(a) in your sight killed or seriously injured
6 a member of the Security Forces or a person whom it is
7 your duty to protect and
8 "(b) not halted when called upon to do so and cannot
9 be arrested by any other means.
10 "12. If there is any other way to protect yourself
11 or those whom it is your duty to protect from the danger
12 of being killed or seriously injured."
13 The example there is 11:
14 "Against a person who, though he is not at present
15 attacking has:
16 "(a) in your sight killed or seriously injured
17 a member of the Security Forces or a person whom it is
18 your duty to protect and not halted when called upon to
19 do so and cannot be arrested by any other means."
20 So that entitles a soldier to kill somebody after
21 the event, so to speak, and when his life is not in
22 danger. Do you follow that, General Kitson?
23 A. I can see what is written here, certainly, but what is
24 the question?
25 Q. I am wondering whether it might be considered that in
1 a riot situation or in a situation where the firing was
2 coming from a crowd, that the soldiers might have been
3 told to operate the Yellow Card more restrictively, lest
4 as a civilian be caught in the cross-fire?
5 A. I have no reason to suppose that they were told or that
6 they were not, I have no idea.
7 Q. Would you not agree that this is one of the things that
8 whoever is planning this operation should have directed
9 their minds to?
10 A. The circumstances are different every time. I was not
11 in the position where this was going on. I really
12 cannot say what I would have done there if I had been
13 there, which I was not, and you --
14 Q. I accept that --
15 A. I cannot go any further.
16 Q. I accept that point entirely, General Kitson. You do
17 not feel, then, able to make any comment as to what you
18 would have considered appropriate if you had been --
19 A. No, because I do not, even now, know what the
20 circumstances were in any detail.
21 Q. And in spite of the fact that the paratroopers -- you
22 have already accepted, then, nobody saw fit to ask you
23 what your views were?
24 A. No.
25 Q. Could I ask you, then, coming to the events after
1 Bloody Sunday: when did you first become aware that 13
2 people had died; I presume you heard it on the news that
3 night or something; would you have?
4 A. I was in England. I have no idea whether I heard it
5 that night or I would have read it in the paper the next
6 day and I also do not know when they mentioned the
7 figure of 13. I have a slight feeling, not that
8 I remember it, but being told later that initial reports
9 said one thing and it subsequently became something
10 else.
11 So the answer is: I do not know when I first heard
12 that 13 people had been killed.
13 Q. This is not something that stuck in your memory, for
14 example everybody says where they were when President
15 Kennedy was killed, it did not come as a shock to you?
16 A. No, nor do I know when President Kennedy was killed, as
17 it happens.
18 Q. In any event, whenever you heard this, did you assume
19 that since these soldiers were highly professional and
20 steeped in the Yellow Card, that they must have shot 13
21 terrorists?
22 A. Well, I assumed that they fired under circumstances
23 which were fully justified.
24 Q. But when you heard that 13 people had died, did you
25 assume, not unnaturally, that they were terrorists?
1 A. Well, I would have naturally assumed that they were.
2 Q. The case has been made by those who represent the
3 soldiers that none of these people were in fact
4 terrorists?
5 A. If it is being represented in that way, then no doubt
6 the Tribunal will have something to say about it.
7 Q. And cannot offer any explanation as to why 13 people
8 were killed, apparently because the aim of the
9 paratroopers was defective is one of the possible
10 explanations; you cannot explain that?
11 A. No, I certainly cannot.
12 Q. Critical things were said about the paratroopers by
13 Lord Widgery. These soldiers returned from Belfast and
14 continued under your command; is that right?
15 A. Certainly.
16 Q. Their officer was Colonel Wilford. Do you have any
17 recollection of ever having spoken to Colonel Wilford in
18 the immediate aftermath of Bloody Sunday and ask him
19 what had happened?
20 A. I have no recollection of doing so, but I fully realise
21 I must have done so. I cannot sort of say "oh,
22 I remember meeting him here and discussing it," but
23 obviously next time I saw him he would have told me
24 about it.
25 Q. He would have told you and I am sure you would have
1 questioned him closely as to what happened?
2 A. Well, it depends what the circumstances were when I was
3 talking to him, probably something else was going on as
4 well, but I would have been interested in hearing from
5 him.
6 Q. Does the same thing apply to General Ford, that you have
7 no recollection of saying to him, "Look what happened up
8 in Derry," you have no recollection of that?
9 A. No, I have no specific recollection, but equally I am
10 sure that I must have -- he must have seen me and said,
11 "Oh, by the way," that and that and the other happened.
12 Q. Do you have any recollection that critical things were
13 said about some of the soldiers by Lord Widgery; do you
14 have any recollection of that?
15 A. Lord Widgery's report came out a week, I think, before
16 I left Ireland, I mean, you know, my time was up in end
17 of April and I think it came out quite shortly before
18 I left and I remember that I read the -- there was
19 a summary, not the whole report in which it said, I know
20 the bit you mean, that some of their actions "bordered
21 on the reckless", I think.
22 Q. You remember that, do you?
23 A. Not from then, but I have seen it subsequently, yes.
24 Q. Do I take it if you read that at the time -- and did
25 read it at the time, you believe -- it must have caused
1 you a considerable degree of shock?
2 A. I would have no doubt been unhappy about it, but I would
3 not say it caused me shock. A lot of things were going
4 on that --
5 Q. You cannot remember doing anything about it or --
6 A. You are now getting into another sphere altogether: what
7 happens after incidents in which people are shot, the
8 mechanics of it, which I do not know if you want me to
9 tell you, but it is well-known.
10 Q. I think the Tribunal is familiar, unless the Tribunal
11 wishes you to go into that, it is not the point I am
12 asking. I am just asking: would you or any officer have
13 felt -- let me put it this way: as far as we are aware
14 nothing happened to any of the soldiers who were
15 involved in the Bloody Sunday incident?
16 A. Well, a lot would have happened to them in the sense
17 that they would have been questioned and they would have
18 probably been involved in the Tribunal run by
19 Lord Widgery.
20 Q. As far as we know, notwithstanding that some of his
21 findings were critical, as far as we can understand no
22 disciplinary action was taken against them or no
23 prosecution was mounted against them?
24 A. If you say so. I do not know.
25 Q. I am just wondering, would you or any commander have
1 felt comfortable then, in view of Lord Widgery's
2 remarks, about sending some of those soldiers back to
3 duty the next morning?
4 A. Well, I would not have had the remarks the next morning,
5 it was several months later.
6 Q. The month after he made these remarks?
7 A. The morning after they were published, you mean?
8 Q. Certainly. If it is right it ought to have dented your
9 faith in the paratroopers, or anyone's faith?
10 A. I think one has to get this into proportion. There were
11 say 500 or 600 Parachutists. It may be that one or two
12 were described by Lord Widgery as having acted
13 "recklessly". It does not affect one's feeling for the
14 battalion as a whole any more than you could say "good
15 gracious, a few people in one of the battalions has done
16 this, I am worried about my whole Brigade," if you
17 follow me. You are looking at a very few people in one
18 place and it would not -- it would have been entirely
19 proper for the Commanding Officer, if he had reason to
20 think that particular members of his regiment were --
21 doubtful, he would have got rid of them, probably.
22 Q. Some people may say it ought to affect you. I am not
23 dealing with that point at the moment, I am asking about
24 the effect it had to your attitude or any commander's
25 attitude to these individual soldiers?
1 A. Well, the individual soldiers would be dealt with by
2 their commanding officer. It did not have the effect on
3 me of saying, "The Parachute Regiment as a whole or one
4 battalion, 1st Battalion was in any way unusable," or
5 anything of that sort.
6 Q. Although I have made it clear that some people might
7 suggest that, for the purposes of this question I am
8 merely asking you about the individual soldiers, and if
9 it be the position that no action was taken against them
10 but that apparently they were allowed to resume normal
11 duties, does that not say something about the Army's
12 protective attitude to soldiers, particularly with
13 soldiers who killed people in Northern Ireland?
14 A. I think the answer is that we do not know. Here I do
15 not know what happened to the however many individuals
16 it was. But it is very likely that the commanding
17 officer would have taken steps to prevent those people
18 getting involved again in anything of the sort, but
19 I would not know about that.
20 Q. You certainly would have expected, at the very least,
21 that that would have been done?
22 A. I would expect obviously that if they had done something
23 wrong, he would have taken steps to make sure that they
24 did not do it again.
25 Questioned by MS McDERMOTT
1 MS McDERMOTT: General Kitson, I represent the family of the
2 late Patrick Doherty and I have just a few questions for
3 you, please.
4 You were describing to the Tribunal earlier this
5 morning the formal system of internal security in aid of
6 the civil power which existed at one time; do you
7 remember that?
8 A. I do.
9 Q. You were describing how the banner would be produced,
10 written in whatever language you were in and so on and
11 then you said it was not used, this system was not used
12 in Northern Ireland.
13 First of all, may I ask you: why was that?
14 A. Because the rules of engagement in Northern Ireland were
15 quite different. There was no -- well, the Yellow Card
16 gives you an example of rules of engagement which do not
17 permit you to act in that particular way.
18 Q. Was there a reason that you are aware of why the rules
19 of engagement were different in Northern Ireland?
20 A. I imagine the whole -- well, the legal background was
21 completely different. The Yellow Card derives, if you
22 like, from the legal background. If a fellow sticks
23 entirely to it, he cannot have done something which is
24 against the law; that is what it amounts to. It is also
25 the Government's way of saying to you, the Army, what
1 you can and you cannot do and clearly the system of
2 internal security that was described this morning with
3 the banner and that was nothing to do with what would
4 happen in Northern Ireland because the background
5 arrangements were totally different.
6 Q. And the civil unrest which was being experienced in
7 Northern Ireland at that time was unprecedented, was it
8 not?
9 A. I do not know it was unprecedented, it took place in
10 circumstances that had not existed elsewhere because,
11 for example, in, I cannot think where they were -- say
12 Singapore or something, the background rules would have
13 been different.
14 Q. I am sorry I meant to say it was unprecedented in the
15 United Kingdom?
16 A. Again, the rules in the United Kingdom, if you go back
17 far enough, were different. You had a totally different
18 system of the magistrate reading the Riot Act, then
19 handing over to the military commander who took certain
20 action, but you are going back a long way. I do not
21 think -- you know, you are probably not interested in
22 a historical situation of a long way back.
23 Q. If I may move on and ask that CK1.9 be put on the
24 screen, please. While that is being done,
25 General Kitson, this is an answer. If the top half of
1 the page could be highlighted, please, at 6(a) this is
2 an answer you gave to one of a number of questions asked
3 of you after you made your original statement. I am
4 looking at the second line of your answer, beginning:
5 "The question of converting soldiers from being
6 ready for high intensity war to low intensity operations
7 is important and was an issue that applied to all
8 battalions sent to Ireland, especially if they came
9 directly from Germany. At the start of the troubles no
10 such retraining was available, but soon afterwards units
11 were sent to training areas set up in both England and
12 Germany where exercises involving the handling of
13 shooting incidents and riots took place."
14 Can you remember when that type of retraining was
15 begun?
16 A. No, is the answer. I had not seen, before I went to
17 Ireland, these. They were sort of ranges that were set
18 up in these places which tried to duplicate the
19 surroundings of an urban area in which this sort of
20 thing could happen and I did visit some after I left
21 Ireland, but I cannot answer your question as to when
22 they were first set up.
23 Q. You just do not know whether they were in existence
24 before January 1972 or not?
25 A. I would think they were before January 1972, but
1 probably not before September 1970 when I went to
2 Ireland.
3 Q. Can you say whether 1 Para had been involved in any
4 exercises like that?
5 A. I would think not.
6 Q. In January 1972?
7 A. I would think not, because they arrived in September
8 or October 1970, but they used to send companies to
9 England to do their parachute training, and that is what
10 they had to do to keep reserved and it is possible that
11 companies were put through this. I rather doubt it, you
12 would have to -- I am not saying this in any impolite
13 way, but it is something you would have to ask the
14 officers of 1 Para.
15 Q. I appreciate that, but clearly these sorts of exercises
16 were considered important for soldiers who were going to
17 be involved in handling shooting incidents and riots?
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. You were in charge of 39 Brigade at the time of the
20 introduction of internment; were you not?
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. Do you recall an incident on 10th August, in the early
23 hours -- a series of incidents, I should say, in the
24 early hours of the morning of 10th August in Ballymurphy
25 where 1 Para was involved in the shooting dead of five
1 people?
2 A. No, I do not -- the whole of, I think I am right in
3 saying the 10th August came very soon after internment
4 started.
5 Q. It was the day after, in fact really the night and early
6 morning of the day of the introduction of internment?
7 A. The answer is, no, I am afraid I do not.
8 Q. If I were to mention to you the names of two of the
9 people who were killed: Father Hugh Mullan, a Catholic
10 priest, and Mrs Joan Connolly, a 50-year old woman; does
11 that help to jog your memory at all, so that you
12 remember it?
13 A. No, I am afraid I had not looked at any of that. A lot
14 of what we have been talking about in January 1972,
15 one's memory, as you put it, has been jogged, but I have
16 not been back over the period of the previous year at
17 all.
18 Q. If I were to tell you that the five deaths were a matter
19 of considerable public controversy and that it was
20 alleged that the members of 1 Para had quite improperly
21 shot and killed these people; does that assist you?
22 A. No. What would have happened, like any shooting
23 incident, there would have been an inquiry and there
24 undoubtedly would have been in this case.
25 Q. Was there an inquiry?
1 A. Well, I do not know, but there would have been.
2 Q. If you take it from me for the moment that there was no
3 prosecution, can you tell the Tribunal whether there was
4 a court's martial of any sort?
5 A. No, I am sorry, I cannot tell you anything about it.
6 Q. You have no recollection of any of the soldiers
7 concerned having been disciplined by you, or at all?
8 A. Well, they would not have been disciplined by me. The
9 system of what you might call court's martial action is
10 in any theatre, it is not typical of Northern Ireland.
11 It goes from the battalion to the division, that is to
12 say the two-star level have the dealing with this and it
13 goes to HQ Northern Ireland.
14 So if there was a prosecution it would have been
15 ordered in that way, by 1 Para and thence to -- HQ
16 Northern Ireland would have produced the military part
17 of the investigation and then that would have led, if it
18 did, to a prosecution.
19 Q. There was certainly no civilian prosecution as it were,
20 no prosecution in the ordinary courts. In any event,
21 you have no memory either of the incident or series of
22 incidents or of anything happening as a result of it?
23 If I may ask you one final thing: you mentioned
24 earlier in your evidence, I think with reference to
25 Northern Ireland, that at one time the strategy or
1 tactic had been employed of sealing off an area and --
2 I paraphrase what you were saying -- pumping a lot of
3 gas into it, a lot of CS gas in the hope that rioters
4 would get tired. Were you in Belfast in July 1970?
5 A. No, I was not.
6 Q. Do you remember hearing of that strategy being employed
7 in the Lower Falls area?
8 A. I did not know particularly what. I did know that there
9 had been an operation of some sort in the Lower Falls
10 area, as I thought it was something to do with searching
11 for weapons.
12 Q. Involving a curfew?
13 A. Yes, I believe it was, yes.
14 Q. Was that strategy of pumping gas into an area which,
15 again if you will take it from me for the moment, was
16 used on that occasion, employed again or was that
17 something which the Army decided should not be done?
18 A. I do not think it was quite sealing an area and pumping
19 gas in, sealed in the sense of keeping the gas in. What
20 it was is that if they had surrounded an area and they
21 were being -- and rioters were throwing stones at them
22 and so on, gas was a weapon used rather as rubber
23 bullets was later. It was a method of controlling
24 rioters, it was not like trying to gas all the people
25 inside.
1 But as I also mentioned earlier --
2 Q. Though that did happen, did it not?
3 A. That is what happened and that is why, as we developed
4 different riot tactics, we stopped using gas.
5 Q. That was what I was asking you about, whether you had in
6 fact stopped using gas. Sorry, did you say "as we
7 developed different riot tactics"?
8 A. Exactly, instead of standing still in a line, being --
9 having stuff chucked at you and chucking back gas, we,
10 over a period, developed the business of sending in
11 snatch squads to arrest and take to court rioters.
12 This was a different way of doing it and it was
13 done, largely, because of the ill effect the gas was
14 having on the people who were not involved in the riots.
15 Q. There had been people who had died of the effects of
16 gas, had there not, in the particular example that
17 I mentioned to you, but other than the snatch squads,
18 was there any other tactic that you developed once you,
19 and I say you, I mean the Army, in general decided to
20 abandon gas?
21 A. The Army in general did not, it was in Belfast. We did
22 not entirely abandon it. Gas was still carried in small
23 patrols because if a patrol gotten circled they were
24 allowed to use it to get out and it was not a standard
25 system for dealing with a riot.
1 (2.15 pm)
2 Q. But was there anything else that you developed other
3 than the snatch squad?
4 A. No.
5 Q. Which you described, that was --
6 A. The different ways of managing to snatch rioters was the
7 way it developed, yes.
8 Q. And that had been being developed, as it were, from
9 about the middle of 1970; would that be right?
10 A. I think, this is a long way back, I think what happened
11 was after some rioting that had been going on, not the
12 one you are talking of in July, but some heavy riots in
13 the Shankhill in September, the assistant chief
14 constable and myself asked the deputy assistant chief
15 constable, his number 2, and somebody else to look into
16 it and make suggestions and one of the suggestions was
17 that we should stop using gas in that way.
18 So I think probably from late 1970, early 1971, we
19 stopped using gas in that way.
20 Q. And developed the snatch squad as a tactic?
21 A. Yes, as an alternative.
22 Questioned by MR MANSFIELD
23 MR MANSFIELD: General Kitson, there are three areas I want
24 to deal with. I represent some of the families of those
25 who were killed and injured that day.
1 The first is a development of the last point, namely
2 the use of snatch squads instead of just standing in
3 a line in Belfast; that is the area. Because, as you
4 will now appreciate, the killings that took place on
5 Bloody Sunday arose out of what was called a scoop-up
6 arrest operation; you appreciate that. That is why
7 I want to ask you these questions.
8 If, in Belfast, you were conducting a legitimate
9 arrest operation using soldiers, whether they be
10 paratroopers or not I leave to one side, first of all,
11 in a legitimate operation, would you expect that the
12 soldiers who are going to conduct the arrest or scoop-up
13 operation are able to clearly identify who the rioters
14 are who they wish to snatch?
15 A. The answer is: they would come in, if possible, from
16 a flank and snatch people who were in the business of
17 throwing stones or whatever they were throwing. So they
18 would know who they were, yes; not by name, but they
19 would know which ones they wanted to snatch.
20 Q. What I am suggesting to you is: they would need to be in
21 a position to see the people who are conducting
22 themselves in a riotous manner so that they could then
23 arrest them; do you agree?
24 A. That would be their aim, certainly.
25 Q. If in fact, of course, a soldier is out of sight of any
1 rioter and does not see the rioter, whether it is
2 because he is in fact some way away around a corner or
3 in the back of a Pig, that would make it impossible for
4 a soldier to make a legitimate arrest of somebody who
5 has been rioting out of his sight, would it not?
6 A. Not necessarily because he might jump out of the Pig and
7 this chap would still be rioting.
8 Q. But if in fact there was no chap there, what should the
9 soldier do?
10 A. He would not be able to arrest him if there was no-one
11 there.
12 Q. I appreciate it all stands to reason, but this may be
13 relevant to what actually happened; do you follow, and
14 I am not asking you to comment on what actually
15 happened, because you were not there.
16 If in fact he is confronting a situation in which
17 there are no obvious rioters in front of him, what
18 should the individual soldier do to begin with?
19 A. I think the point is that if these were people who had
20 been rioting and they had stopped rioting just at the
21 moment he arrived but they were obviously the people who
22 had been chucking the stones, he would probably pick
23 them up and arrest them.
24 Q. How would he know?
25 A. Well, because there probably would not be anyone else
1 there that was not involved with them.
2 Q. The question I want to ask you is: were soldiers in fact
3 trained to arrest anybody who had been in the vicinity
4 of somebody who had thrown a stone?
5 A. They would undoubtedly occasionally get somebody who, by
6 pure accident, happened to be in the middle, but
7 normally if a riot is going on and people are throwing
8 stones and then no-one who does not want to be involved
9 would stay there, would they, because they would get
10 something coming back.
11 Q. That is what I am wanting to, as it were, elicit from
12 you. Were you involved with the training of the
13 soldiers who had dealt with snatch squads?
14 A. Well, only indirectly. I mean, it was, as I explained,
15 a group looked at the problem and then it was tried by
16 various units and somebody would have told me, the
17 commanding officer probably, "We tried that new idea for
18 snatching some people last night and it seemed to work,"
19 or, "it did not work". I mean, I was involved in that
20 sort of way. I was not involved in a pair of gym shoes
21 rushing around trying to snatch.
22 Q. I was not suggesting you were involved in the actual
23 snatching, but it is the training of soldiers in
24 relation to snatch squads. Were you aware --
25 A. I think, you see, that "training" is a difficult word to
1 use in circumstances where operations are going on. It
2 is really thinking of ways to doing, experimenting with
3 it, seeing if it works. It is not actually laying out
4 a training programme, "tomorrow what we are going on
5 with is training in snatch squads," sort of thing.
6 Q. If in fact the rioters had disappeared altogether and
7 they have to go down a road in a Pig in order to
8 discover anybody, it really is an impossible situation
9 for an individual soldier to be able to identify who had
10 been rioting when he did not see it; would you agree?
11 A. It would be usually difficult, but it would not
12 necessarily follow that you could not arrest someone,
13 and after all inevitably sometimes the wrong fellow got
14 arrested, he would be talked to and said, "Sorry, mate"
15 and away he would go.
16 Q. Would he?
17 A. Of course, or he may be taken back to the police and
18 then the police would investigate it. They would not
19 put him in court if he was completely the wrong man.
20 Q. A snatch squad, of course, is meant to operate on the
21 basis that the rioters have come forward, are
22 identifiable and the snatch squad can go in quickly and
23 snatch people within range; that is the idea of it, is
24 it not?
25 A. More or less, certainly.
1 Q. And if that is not happening, it can hardly be called
2 a snatch arrest operation, can it?
3 A. It could be called an abortive snatch arrest operation.
4 Q. I want to move forward: in Belfast, had something called
5 a scoop-up operation been practised?
6 A. The term is not -- I think we used the term "snatch
7 squad", but it seems to mean the same thing.
8 Q. It may not, you see, and I want to ask you more
9 particularly: had there been any scoop-up operations in
10 Belfast, scoop-up in the sense that it was cutting off a
11 whole area and anyone within it was going to be caught
12 up and arrested; had that kind of operation happened in
13 Belfast?
14 A. I would think not.
15 Q. You would think not. Therefore anything back, there had
16 been no training that you are aware of to deal with
17 a scoop-up operation of the kind you have just
18 described?
19 A. It would be something that was unusually practised.
20 I mean, if it happened -- when I say "practised," I do
21 not mean practised in the training sense, I mean unusual
22 to happen. But it could have happened. I mean,
23 hundreds of times there were riots, big riots, little
24 riots, they were all slightly different. Whether you
25 called one a snatch squad and one a scoop-up is really
1 terminology, but all sorts of different situations
2 arose, for all sorts of different people, in all sorts
3 of different regiments over a period of a year or so.
4 Q. General Kitson, I appreciate it may be terminology, but
5 for someone on the ground the terminology may be
6 extremely important for the individual soldier to know
7 what it is they are letting themselves in for; do you
8 appreciate?
9 A. Of course.
10 Q. If it is being called a scoop-up operation in which
11 soldiers are being deputed to run round the back of
12 a certain area, they need to know their function is, for
13 example sealing off roads or sealing off a particular
14 area; they need to know that, do they not?
15 A. I think what a soldier will get is not a word like
16 a "snatch squad" or a "scoop-up". He will be told,
17 "Your job, your section's job, your group's job is to go
18 there and then come in there and arrest people who are
19 at the back of the crowd throwing stones." He would not
20 be told it was a scoop-up or a snatch squad, these are
21 just terms. He would be given specific orders of what
22 he was supposed to do.
23 Q. Again, implicit in what you have just said is that if he
24 has to come round the back, he is arresting somebody who
25 is actively rioting at that point?
1 A. He might be, or he might be having a slight rest from
2 rioting at that point.
3 Q. So you would arrest him?
4 A. Well, if he was one of the group that was doing it.
5 MR TOOHEY: General Kitson, what if the soldiers engaged in
6 the snatch operation see someone who is rioting; by the
7 time he gets close enough to that person, he has
8 disappeared, gone round a corner, down the street or
9 what you will. Is the soldier expected in those
10 circumstances to follow the rioter until he makes
11 contact with him, or are there any sort of guidelines as
12 to how far the soldier will pursue the rioter who has
13 disappeared from his view?
14 A. Yes, there would almost certainly be, from the immediate
15 boss of the soldier concerned, "after them, but do not
16 go beyond there". That is quite likely the man would
17 have slipped into a house or something.
18 But these would have to be orders given by the
19 Commander of them at a fairly low level, saying what
20 this particular little group, a section perhaps, was
21 going to do within the broader plan that they had been
22 given orders of before.
23 MR TOOHEY: You mean if appropriate he would lay down the
24 containment line, as it were?
25 A. Exactly, but a containment line would probably come from
1 further up. The section Commander would say, "see if
2 you can get him before he gets to that corner".
3 I think, because I have never been in that -- you know,
4 operating at that level.
5 MR TOOHEY: I take it a soldier who was given that sort of
6 order would be expected to comply with it?
7 A. Yes, if he could, but if he suddenly saw that it was
8 impractical for some reason or another, if he was not
9 too far he would be caught himself, he would slip back
10 or something like that.
11 MR MANSFIELD: So far as the 1st Battalion of the Parachute
12 Regiment was concerned, did each company have within it
13 trained snatch squads, or were they all trained in --
14 I am using that word particularly, not "scoop-up" but
15 "snatch" -- are they all trained in snatch arrests?
16 A. I would have thought so, yes, not just the Paras, but it
17 was a day-to-day thing for all battalions in Belfast to
18 be able to do. It is not something which requires
19 a special skill, you know, you have just got to do it,
20 so to speak.
21 Q. It requires accuracy and speed, does it not?
22 A. It certainly requires speed on occasions.
23 Q. And accuracy?
24 A. Well, if you are talking of the target you want to get
25 the right fellow, certainly.
1 Q. I want to move on to a second topic that has been
2 touched on today. Could we have on the screen CK1.2,
3 please. It is part of your statement
4 dated February 2000. It is paragraph 11. The context
5 is that you were away and you returned somewhere around
6 3rd February, after these events had occurred.
7 I think you will agree, as the Commander at that
8 time of the Brigade, you would have known fairly early
9 on upon your return that there had been a number of
10 shootings and deaths in Derry; do you agree?
11 A. Absolutely.
12 Q. And as the Brigade Commander, you would have wanted to
13 know, as soon as possible, for your own information as
14 the Brigade Commander, how these came about; would you
15 not?
16 A. No, not necessarily in detail. I would want to know how
17 did it come that it had happened: answer, "We were shot
18 at, we got involved in a fight and killed some people".
19 Q. The paragraph we have on screen does not indicate that
20 you asked any questions about it; do you follow? Please
21 read it again, if you wish. (Pause)
22 A. It says:
23 "I realised that members of 1 Para would be required
24 to give evidence," in the normal way, regarding those
25 who had been arrested.
1 Q. I appreciate it does say that, that is the mechanics?
2 A. Well, I could not have realised it unless I had also
3 learnt that something had happened that would involve
4 that sort of thing happening.
5 Q. What was the something you learnt had happened? In
6 other words, how it had come about?
7 A. What, that I discovered?
8 Q. Go back to the precise question: wanting to know how it
9 had happened that -- the total figure is 27, but let us
10 say a large number of people had either been killed or
11 wounded by members of a reserve brigade under your
12 command; what did you discover about how it had
13 happened, generally?
14 A. I discovered that they had been involved in a riot and
15 had been shot at and had returned fire and some people
16 had been killed.
17 Q. Who did you discover that from?
18 A. Normally if you come back from leave your staff give you
19 a note of things that have happened while you have been
20 away and in it would have been this, but indeed I knew
21 before I got back from reading the papers that something
22 had happened, so probably my -- one of the staff would
23 have said, "This is what had happened," and I said,
24 "Good Lord, how did that happen," and they would have
25 said and then no doubt soon afterwards I would have seen
1 Colonel Wilford and got his version of it.
2 Q. That is what I wanted to come on to, because you have
3 been asked the question and you say you have no
4 recollection. I want you to think carefully, if you
5 would not mind helping the Inquiry as to what Major
6 General Ford and also Lieutenant Colonel Wilford, both
7 of whom were there on the day, were saying to you about
8 how this had happened?
9 A. What they said was roughly speaking what I have just
10 said, they said that the troops came under fire and
11 returned the fire and some people were killed.
12 Q. So no suggestion --
13 A. And arrested, and this was the point I am mentioning
14 now, because it was the arresting that would involve
15 people going back and giving evidence. The inquiry
16 might involve the same thing, but it would probably be
17 done in Belfast.
18 Q. The inquiry was going to go beyond the arresting?
19 A. I am not talking of the Inquiry by Lord Widgery, I am
20 talking about the SIB, civil police investigation that
21 happened when anyone was shot.
22 Q. So you would be particularly anxious to know what it is
23 that soldiers or certainly the hierarchy, the higher
24 officers were saying about the event, would you not?
25 A. My sphere of interest was mainly how many of these
1 people are going to be taken up going to inquiries and
2 how will it affect the strength of my reserve. I might
3 also, if there had been a morale problem, been
4 interested to know if 1 Para were very upset, if it was
5 likely to affect their performance; those would be the
6 things that would have interested me.
7 Q. Just on that one issue: did you gather that the morale
8 of 1 Para were affected?
9 A. No, I think I was told they were fine.
10 Q. They were fine?
11 A. Well, I was told they could do their jobs, put it that
12 way.
13 Q. A final question on this aspect: does it follow from
14 your recollection of what you were told that no senior
15 officer, that is Major General Ford or Lieutenant
16 Colonel Wilford, ever suggested to you that 27 people
17 had been fired at by accident and that the real people
18 had got away?
19 A. They did not put it in that way, but gradually over
20 a period, when one heard there was to be the
21 Widgery Inquiry or Tribunal or whatever it was called,
22 and then one heard people say they were going to it and
23 I naturally took an interest in how it went, but not
24 a detailed interest.
25 Q. I am just dealing with the period before the
1 Widgery Inquiry. Is it right from what you are saying
2 that no senior officer suggested to you, in that period
3 of time, that any of their men had fired at people who
4 were not carrying weapons or even near people who were
5 carrying weapons and that in fact it was an accident?
6 A. No, that was not suggested.
7 Q. I have one final area. Could we have on screen, please,
8 OS2.24. It may be by now you have had a chance to see
9 this. Have you seen this today or not? It is an
10 extract from a book by Peter Taylor, part of a trilogy
11 of books, written quite recently, but it concerns
12 interviews with Paras and others.
13 The book, so you know the title, is called "Brits:
14 The War Against the IRA," that is the third volume and
15 it is page 76 at the bottom where you are mentioned.
16 I want to ask you whether in fact the observations
17 that are made here you agree with. Do you see right at
18 the bottom, on the left-hand side:
19 "With Kitson commanding the Army's 39 Brigade in
20 Belfast, there was to be no nonsense. When Republican
21 barricades went up, they were immediately taken down,
22 giving the IRA no chance to seal off and make them no-go
23 areas."
24 I pause there; is that correct?
25 A. That is correct, except that it was not in the tense
1 that -- the implication here is afterwards, if it
2 happened, but it had been the policy all the way
3 through, although the intention was not specifically
4 related -- well, it was to make them -- give them no
5 chance to seal off and make them no-go areas, that was
6 part of it. But I mean, it was just part of the overall
7 thing, that we did not have places blocked in Belfast.
8 Q. I appreciate what you are saying. Could we look at the
9 next sentence, at the top of page 77:
10 "The notion that there could be sections of the
11 United Kingdom into which the Army could not venture was
12 an anathema to Kitson."
13 Was that true?
14 A. It would have been but it did not have to be because it
15 was the policy of HQ Northern Ireland, with the
16 exception of Londonderry.
17 Q. "As far as he was concerned there was no part of the
18 realm in which the Queen's writ did not run, at least in
19 the Belfast area that he controlled."
20 Is that correct?
21 A. It comes out of the other thing. I did not think of it
22 in those terms, I thought of it in terms of HQ
23 Northern Ireland policy is not to allow barricades in
24 Belfast or most of Ireland, in fact.
25 Q. Paratroopers plainly would have been aware that that was
1 the policy in Belfast, endorsed by you?
2 A. It was the policy throughout the Province, exclusive of
3 Londonderry, and of course it was endorsed by me,
4 I could not have unendorsed it, it was General Tuzo's
5 policy.
6 Q. "Two of his toughest barricade-busters were 1st
7 Battalion, the Parachute Regiment, stationed in Belfast
8 on their two-year tour and the Royal Green Jackets."
9 Is that right?
10 A. I think it is unfair on all the other battalions that
11 busted plenty of barricades.
12 Q. Were they -- it is put in these terms, that the
13 Parachute Regiment "was one of the two toughest
14 barricade-busters"; it is put in, I appreciate,
15 journalistic language; is that right?
16 A. It is journalism, as you say. I do not think they were
17 tougher or less tough than other battalions. Any
18 battalion could take down a barricade. Furthermore,
19 most battalions -- I mean most barricades would be taken
20 down by the battalions in whose area they were and
21 1 Para would only take them down or help to take them
22 down if they had been brought in to help a battalion
23 that was hard pressed for other reasons.
24 Q. Did you know what paratroopers themselves were saying
25 about their role as "barricade-busters", using the
1 journalistic language, at the time?
2 A. No, but I mean I am sure they would have said they were
3 jolly good at it.
4 Q. If you look at page 77, further down, I am only dealing
5 with 1 Para:
6 "The adjutant of 1 Para confirmed [he is dealing
7 with what another officer from another regiment said]
8 'Those barricades would be defended by the IRA and their
9 supporters. We would be going in to restore law and
10 order and to remove the so-called 'no-go' areas and we
11 would be resisted. It is not a situation in which
12 half-hearted measures are going to be successful. If
13 they were half-hearted, you would be taking inordinate
14 risks with the lives of your own soldiers. Belfast was
15 run in a no-nonsense way."
16 Does that reflect, it has been called the mindset of
17 the time, in Belfast by paratroopers?
18 A. It records the reality of the situation by all the
19 battalions in Belfast, including the Parachutist --
20 I mean the paratroopers, sorry.
21 Q. The next paragraph, particularly:
22 "The Parachute Regiment's Support Company that was
23 to play a crucial role on Bloody Sunday was never far
24 away. It became colloquially known as 'Kitson's Private
25 Army'."
1 Was that a term you were aware of at the time?
2 A. I had no knowledge and I am completely convinced it
3 would not have been used by any particular company of
4 any particular battalion.
5 Q. Have you ever heard that term used before, of Support
6 Company?
7 A. No. I mean, I do not know which -- you know a company
8 of Para there would not be -- "Support Company" merely
9 means they had the mortars and anti-tanks in normal
10 circumstances. In Belfast they would be just like any
11 other company.
12 Q. I appreciate what comprises of it, in fact the next
13 sentence indicates mortar, machine-gun, anti-tank
14 platoons and so on:
15 " ... was the Battalion's hard edge and made up some
16 of the Battalion's most experienced and toughest men,
17 many of them veterans of Aden."
18 Is that right?
19 A. I think the point about the Support Company being the
20 specialist weapons people, they tended to be older
21 because they will have done time in a rifle platoon and
22 then got further training.
23 Now, Aden is mentioned, for some reason. Aden was
24 only four or five years back on this and quite likely,
25 if 1 Para was in Aden, which I do not know, there would
1 have been more -- a higher proportion of that particular
2 company than another company. But the fact that they
3 had been in Aden would have, I would have said, no
4 bearing on this whatsoever.
5 Q. Were they regarded as the battalion's hard edge?
6 A. Not by me they were not.
7 Q. The quotation, allegedly from the Mortar Platoon's
8 sergeant:
9 "We were very experiences, and very highly
10 motivated ... When barricades went up in Belfast, they
11 came down very quickly. The whole training of the
12 Parachute Regiment is built on aggression and speed and
13 you can't afford to hang around. This gets through to
14 the blokes and they get very hard-minded about their
15 work. They know what they're doing and they're good at
16 it. I don't think there was a better battalion at that
17 time in the world, never mind the British Army, in terms
18 of internal security. They'd seen it all in Belfast.'"
19 That is a quote from one, as it were, individual.
20 Again, does that reflect the attitude at the time of
21 individual paratroopers, insofar as you knew it?
22 A. I would agree, and I certainly agree that there was no
23 better battalion at the time, I do not say in the world,
24 but they were an extremely good battalion. I would not
25 say the best because there were probably others that
1 would regard themselves as the best and I would not be
2 saying "you are better than you," but these people knew
3 their job absolutely.
4 Q. "... built on aggression and speed"?
5 A. Naturally if you are going to take down a barricade you
6 want to do it forcefully and fast under circumstances --
7 if you are being resisted. If there is no resistance,
8 you can do it at whatever speed you like.
9 Q. Yes, thank you.
10 Questioned by LORD GIFFORD
11 LORD GIFFORD: My name is Anthony Gifford and I represent
12 the family of James Wray. First of all, one or two
13 questions about accountability: you have told us that
14 you and your fellow brigade commanders were directly
15 answerable to Commander of Land Forces, General Ford.
16 A. Correct.
17 Q. And he in turn to General Tuzo?
18 A. Correct.
19 Q. Help us a little on the respective roles of those two
20 Generals; why were the two in one comparatively limited
21 area?
22 A. I think what happened was, when the Troubles started in
23 1969, there would have been a GOC and a Chief of Staff,
24 who would have been a Brigadier. Troubles happened all
25 over the place, there was only one Brigadier, it varied
1 to start with in peace time before, and the Chief of
2 Staff was rushed out to take charge of this, General
3 Freeland rushed off somewhere else and they got into
4 a situation where they could see they needed more help.
5 So the next thing was that General -- I mean the Chief
6 of Staff was made a Major General and then in time he
7 was relieved by another one, General Ackland, and then
8 General Freeland found that he could not handle all the
9 events popping up through, by then, two or three
10 Brigadiers and the political aspect of it, which was
11 going to the Joint Security Council, dealing with the
12 Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, dealing with the
13 people in England and so on.
14 And so it was decided, because General Freeland was
15 then pretty heavily stressed -- I am talking now
16 probably about June or July of 1970, say nearly a year
17 after it happened -- that he better have, what was in
18 effect, a deputy who dealt with the people downwards
19 while he was free to concentrate on the political side
20 and all the administrative side and so on.
21 Q. By January 1972 the reality was that General Ford would
22 be the main man dealing with the military issues?
23 A. He would certainly deal with all the subordinate people
24 such as the brigade commanders. General Tuzo would have
25 to obviously know and approve all the military measures
1 as well, but he would not have the business of running
2 around from one place to the other talking to the
3 brigade commanders.
4 Q. To whom would you say General Tuzo was accountable?
5 A. General Tuzo was accountable to the CGS in London from
6 the military point of view, but he was the Director of
7 Operations. He therefore had a seat on the Joint
8 Security Committee in Northern Ireland, which was
9 chaired by the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland. So
10 he was, in a sense, accountable to him as well, but he
11 was really straightforward, like any subordinate
12 Commander in the United Kingdom, to the Chief of the
13 General Staff.
14 Q. So the Joint Security Committee, including
15 Northern Ireland politicians, was a body which the GOC
16 had to take careful notice of?
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. But was it a decision-taking body, in your view?
19 A. I am not very sure, but the point was that Stormont was
20 responsible for security in Northern Ireland. The
21 police had been totally disarmed, as a result of the
22 Hunt Commission at the end of 1969, whenever it sat, and
23 therefore he had the only force that could cope in
24 a shooting environment.
25 Q. Given that highly politicised context, the Chief of
1 General Staff, Lord Carver, would be directly
2 accountable to the Secretary of State?
3 A. For defence.
4 Q. And through him to the British Cabinet?
5 A. Exactly.
6 Q. And was it your experience and knowledge that at that
7 time any decision, any military decision which might be
8 of an unusual nature or involve particular risk of loss
9 of life, would have to be approved in London?
10 A. I could not tell you to be honest, but I should guess --
11 no, you could not say that would involve any loss of
12 life because almost anything that happened could
13 involve -- you know, bombs were going off, people were
14 being sniped all the time, soldiers I mean, but any
15 major activity, and certainly anything that involved
16 increasing force level in Northern Ireland, i.e. getting
17 further troops in, would obviously go to the UK.
18 Q. So whatever the plan was for dealing with the march in
19 Derry on 30th January, it would be likely to have been
20 submitted for approval to London?
21 A. I do not know whether the details of the actual plan
22 would have been, but certainly the background, I think,
23 but I did not know at the time. That is perfectly --
24 what I am basically going on is Lord Carver's
25 autobiography.
1 Q. We have also drawn on Lord Carver and I was going to
2 cite to you -- and I will cite it without calling it
3 up -- a view expressed by Lord Carver, that how to deal
4 with the march was something that was decided by the
5 British Government, which would be through these
6 channels that you described?
7 A. I would think so, but again I cannot say from first-hand
8 knowledge.
9 Q. Can I move on to two more operational questions: you
10 were asked whether people involved in snatch squads
11 needed special skills, and you said no. Were there
12 people in various regiments who had special skills in
13 marksmanship?
14 A. Snipers, in other words?
15 Q. Were they called snipers, were they also called
16 marksmen?
17 A. No, a marksman, when the whole battalion, any battalion,
18 infantry, does its annual classification, according to
19 the scores they get graded as a marksman, first colours
20 shot, second class shot and so on and you might find the
21 company sergeant major was a marksman and so on, anyone
22 could be whatever their scores were.
23 Snipers are separate. There is often, in an
24 infantry battalion, a section of snipers who are people
25 who would be trained, probably in England at the School
1 of Infantry, or anyhow the corporal would be and then he
2 might train them and they would be trained particularly
3 in sniping skills, camouflage and so on and so forth.
4 That is not related to Northern Ireland, that is just
5 the general terminology of what a sniper is.
6 Q. Taking you up on snipers, would there have been such
7 a section in 1 Para?
8 A. I would think so, but I mean I did not --
9 Q. Would its members be deployed in one particular company
10 or would they be attached to every --
11 A. I would think probably if there was in general war, they
12 would have a section, possibly in Headquarter Company or
13 Support Company, but where they --
14 Q. Was that the case in Northern Ireland in 1972, that
15 a particular company, you mentioned Support Company, was
16 the company where the snipers were?
17 A. I do not know whether they even had snipers by then,
18 I could not tell you, but I guess they would have had
19 some somewhere, some people who had been trained as Army
20 snipers in the skills of camouflage, accurate shooting
21 at long-range and so on.
22 Q. In an operation where a battalion is being deployed and
23 it is feared that there may be enemy fire directed at
24 them, are particular duties assigned to the snipers?
25 A. There would be people probably told, "You are there to
1 give the covering fire for this, that or the other." If
2 there was a search squad going in, then any group of
3 people, they would not need to be trained in long
4 distance shooting or anything, they would be told, "You
5 provide the covering fire if necessary," that would be
6 a perfectly natural thing to happen.
7 Q. One further technical matter I want your assistance
8 with: in the conditions of fighting in urban situations
9 in Northern Ireland there were particular problems, were
10 there not, in dealing with IRA gunmen. Was one of the
11 problems that you did not know at any time where the
12 gunmen were?
13 A. Yes, obviously.
14 Q. And you did not know whether, and if so when, they might
15 fire on you?
16 A. Obviously.
17 Q. Was it a tactic that was used, in your experience in
18 Belfast, to try to provoke a reaction from the enemy
19 gunman, to flush him out as it were, so you could deal
20 with him and find out where he was?
21 A. Like raising a tin hat on a stick and --
22 Q. I am asking you, General, flushing him out, luring him
23 into action?
24 A. I mean, that would be a perfectly sensible sort of thing
25 to do, put a dummy up and see if someone shot at it. If
1 you thought someone going into an OP was going to be
2 shot because someone was shot in an OP somewhere, you
3 could put a dummy up, say, and see if anyone took a shot
4 at it, and watch for where the shot came from. These
5 sort of things are just not tactics, they are just the
6 sort of sense things that you could do if you did not
7 want to be killed.
8 Q. Would another sort of thing that you might do be to open
9 fire yourself and fire some shots in order to draw out
10 the enemy?
11 A. No, because you could not do that according to the
12 regulations, you were not allowed to take pot shots into
13 the --
14 Q. Was it not a tactic that would be within the range of
15 reasonable tactics so far as you are concerned?
16 A. No, it would not, because it would clearly -- if by any
17 chance you hit someone doing that, it would almost
18 certainly not be a gunman and then you would be in grave
19 trouble. So you could not expect a soldier to do that
20 sort of thing.
21 Q. If you were ever found out. Thank you very much.
22 Questioned by MR KENNEDY
23 MR KENNEDY: General Kitson, my name is Kennedy and
24 I represent two of the injured parties on the day in
25 question.
1 I have a very brief question for you about the Joint
2 Security Committee which you mentioned. That is the
3 Northern Ireland Ministers' unions, Ministers' committee
4 where senior police and Army advisors advised them and
5 met with them about tactics and so on; is that correct?
6 Did you ever attend any of the meetings that the
7 Joint Security Committee had?
8 A. No, I was much too junior. There was the top committee.
9 Then there was another thing called the Director of
10 Operations Committee and I was not in on that either.
11 Q. Were you ever asked to advise, obviously directly or
12 indirectly through others, that committee about the use
13 of the Paratroop Regiment in riot control?
14 A. No.
15 Q. Thank you.
16 LORD SAVILLE: Mr Clarke, do you have any further questions
17 for General Kitson?
18 Questioned by MR CLARKE
19 MR CLARKE: Just a few matters to conclude with: do
20 I understand you to say that you do not make any
21 distinction between something called a snatch operation
22 and something called a scoop-up operation, or that you
23 do make such a distinction?
24 A. No, "scoop" is not a term that I had come across,
25 I think probably before this thing started. But neither
1 of them were formal -- they were not formal military
2 terms, they were just terms that related to a particular
3 job.
4 Q. How often did a snatch or a scoop-up operation take
5 place in Belfast?
6 A. It varied colossally according to what people were doing
7 in Belfast. Where there were riots, little riots, there
8 would be little snatch squads working, not necessarily
9 every time by any means.
10 On the big riots, which were usually incidentally
11 Protestant, all the big rioting, most of 1 Paras were
12 probably, was with Protestants rather than the
13 Catholics, but when there were big riots then endlessly.
14 Q. You were asked whether you had had any discussions with
15 General Ford or Colonel Wilford about what happened on
16 the day. Do I understand it correctly from your answers
17 that there was not a session in which you and the two of
18 them or indeed anybody else sat down and said, "What
19 lessons have we learnt from the events of
20 Bloody Sunday"?
21 A. I do not remember anything like that.
22 Q. Could we have a look at CK1.4, this is an attachment to
23 your statement. These are some notes that we have
24 obtained from the Sunday Times archive and what it
25 appears to be are notes by a journalist called Moynahan,
1 who is a name that appears in the top left-hand corner,
2 of interviews with you some time prior to the date and
3 time that appears at the top right-hand corner, 4th
4 February, 15.55. The note records:
5 "This is non-attributable to Brigadier Kitson ...
6 I have interviewed him twice, once arranged at Lisburn
7 and then by chance to the Gloucester's headquarters
8 after the Divis Flats operation."
9 (3.00 pm)
10 Do you remember speaking to somebody on an
11 unattributable basis from the Sunday Times very shortly
12 after the events of the day?
13 A. No, I certainly do not remember it, but I was quite
14 often asked by HQ Northern Ireland, could I give an
15 unattributable background brief of what was going on and
16 the fact that I cannot remember it does not mean, I mean
17 I probably did it several times. Not a huge lot, it
18 was -- if it was purely Belfast the fellow was
19 interested in or if General Tuzo did not want to see him
20 or the people in Northern Ireland could not answer it,
21 I was sometimes anyhow asked and this looks like exactly
22 the sort of thing I could have given him as an
23 unattributable interview.
24 Q. There is only one matter that I wanted to ask about it
25 which is not entirely self-evident from the note. Could
1 we go to the next page and highlight section 7. The way
2 in which the note has been taken records this:
3 "7. Kitson made the point about reserve troops from
4 different brigades only being used in static positions,
5 or in areas where only 'three right turn' would be
6 needed to get into position."
7 Is that a reflection of the point you were dealing
8 with shortly before lunch, that all other things being
9 equal, it is appropriate to use people who are coming
10 into the area in static as opposed to dynamic positions?
11 A. Yes, but what I did say was that the -- a reserve unit
12 coming in would be almost -- almost certainly be used in
13 a reserve job like standing behind. Now the static
14 positions may be doing all the work, they may be the
15 important people, they know what is going on, they even
16 know some of the crowd, probably, and therefore, if you
17 just wanted someone to push through them and pick up
18 a few people, I would not say that that meant a mobile
19 job, that was not what I was -- I do not want people to
20 use that to say that launching snatch squads is a mobile
21 job.
22 If you had been talking about an operation to clear
23 the whole Bogside, then probably you would not be
24 thinking of sending your reserve battalion to the
25 furthest quarter; do you see what I mean? I am just
1 trying to say this is just common sense, really.
2 Q. I suppose what it boils down to is: the position in
3 which you put people in and how much knowledge they have
4 to have of the area, depends on what exactly it is you
5 are asking them to do, it is as simple as that?
6 A. Exactly, and what time it is they are going to get
7 there.
8 Q. Sorry?
9 A. And when they are going to get there.
10 Q. The last matter I ought to show you, in the light of
11 what you were asked, is, could we have on the screen
12 L16. Could we highlight the text of that? You were
13 asked about what you may or may not have discussed with
14 Colonel Wilford. This is a newspaper article shortly
15 after the events dealing with the question as to whether
16 or not Army units in Belfast had made informal requests
17 for the paratroopers to be kept out of their area.
18 Colonel Wilford is reported as saying that it is untrue
19 and, if you go to the third full paragraph just above
20 the blotch on the left-hand side, the report reads:
21 "Colonel Wilford was treating these reports with
22 contempt and added [I think it then must say] that he
23 had been in touch with the Brigade Commander, Brigadier
24 Frank Kitson.
25 "'He assured me that no requests, formal or
1 informal, had been made by any unit', said
2 Colonel Wilford. The Colonel also denied that his
3 soldiers were rough with civilians."
4 Do you have any recollection now of being asked at
5 the time, very shortly after 30th January, by
6 Colonel Wilford himself, as to whether or not any
7 requests had been made by any unit?
8 A. I do not remember him asking me, but if he had that is
9 almost certainly the answer he would have got.
10 MR CLARKE: I have no further questions.
11 LORD SAVILLE: General Kitson, thank you very much indeed
12 for coming here to assist us.
13 What we will do now is we will rise, Mr Clarke, for
14 10 minutes, and then come back and continue Mr Wallace's
15 evidence.
16 (The witness withdrew)
17 (3.10 pm)
18 (A short break)
19 (3.25 pm)
20 LORD SAVILLE: Mr MacDonald, I think you were about to ask
21 some questions. Before you do, I think there is
22 something further Ms McGahey wants to pick up with this
23 witness.
24 MR COLIN WALLACE, (continued)
25 Questioned by MS McGAHEY (continued)
1 MS McGAHEY: Just one issue that my learned friend
2 Mr Blaxland drew to my attention and I should put to
3 Mr Wallace. Could we have on the screen, please, the
4 first statement of Hugh Mooney at KM6.2.
5 Mr Wallace, I understand that over the break you
6 have had an opportunity to look at this statement and
7 also at a set of supplementary questions and answers
8 that Mr Mooney supplied to the Inquiry.
9 I think you will have to say yes or no, because if
10 you nod it is not picked up on the transcript.
11 A. Yes, I have.
12 Q. If you look at paragraph 12, Mr Mooney says:
13 "IP branch were still finding its feet
14 in January 1972. The PR failure on Bloody Sunday, after
15 the earlier PR disaster over internment, led the
16 Ministry of Defence to take over the PR handling of
17 Bloody Sunday and its aftermath."
18 Stopping there for the moment, is it right that the
19 Ministry of Defence took over the PR handling of
20 Bloody Sunday?
21 A. No, that is incorrect. The Widgery Tribunal was set up
22 on the 1st February and thereafter for sub judice
23 reasons we were not allowed to make any comment to the press
24 about what had happened on Bloody Sunday.
25 Q. Going on, he says:
1 "I remember Colonel Tugwell giving short shrift to
2 a suggestion made by Colin Wallace that the IRA had
3 posed as Paratroopers wearing uniforms stolen from a
4 Londonderry dry cleaners."
5 Were you aware at the time of Bloody Sunday that
6 a substantial number of Army uniforms had been stolen
7 some three weeks earlier?
8 A. We were aware that uniforms had been stolen but I am not
9 sure exactly when that took place.
10 Q. I would like you to look at two documents, both of which
11 you have seen before. They are annexed to the first
12 statement. Could we have G64.380, please. This is the
13 first page of the Special Branch assessment for the
14 period ending 19th January 1972. You have commented on
15 it in your statement and you say you believe you would
16 have seen it at the time?
17 A. I think I might have, yes.
18 Q. Could we go, please, to G64.384, a later page in the
19 same document, paragraph 27, please. It says:
20 "200 combat suits were stolen from a drycleaner's
21 shop in Londonderry on 19th January. Official IRA
22 spokesman said said that the uniforms had been sent to
23 units in the six counties and will also be used at
24 training camps."
25 I should pause there to say that this paragraph
1 comes under the heading "Goulding IRA", so "Official IRA
2 spokesman" should have a capital O for Official?
3 A. Yes, that is right.
4 Q. Do you remember now the statement being made to the
5 effect the Official IRA had stolen these uniforms?
6 A. I do not know. If it was attributed to the Official
7 IRA, but I imagine that is the same incident, yes.
8 Q. The second document, G67.412, again this is the first
9 page of the HQNI int summ 30th January 1972, dated
10 20th January 1972; you have seen this before?
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. I think your evidence last week was you would expect to
13 see HQNI int summs?
14 A. Yes.
15 Q. Could we have page 415, a later page in the same
16 document, and paragraph 19:
17 "A Goulding IRA spokesman has said that the 150
18 camouflaged combat suits [a slightly different figure
19 given this time] stolen from a drycleaners shop in
20 Londonderry on 9th January 1972, have been sent to IRA
21 units and will be used at training camps [that reflects
22 the Special Branch assessment]. Some of these suits
23 have been seen worn by youths in the Creggan area of
24 Londonderry."
25 Do you recollect knowing of that intelligence at the
1 time of Bloody Sunday?
2 A. I do not recall it, but I am sure we would have.
3 Q. Did you suggest to Colonel Tugwell that the IRA had
4 posed as paratroopers wearing these stolen uniforms?
5 A. No, I do not believe we would have, because immediately
6 after Bloody Sunday, the Monday obviously was
7 particularly hectic and the following day the
8 Widgery Inquiry was announced, so we would not have been
9 discussing any of this in the context of the media.
10 Q. The question I asked was: did you suggest this to
11 Colonel Tugwell -- by you I meant you personally, and
12 the answer you gave was "we"?
13 A. I certainly did not, I am not sure if anyone else in
14 Information Policy did.
15 Q. Could we have a look, please, at Mr Mooney's further
16 evidence on this topic at KM6.3, paragraph 12 to the end
17 of the document. Mr Mooney was asked further questions
18 about paragraph 12 of his first statement, that is the
19 paragraph in which he talks about this suggestion. He
20 is first asked:
21 "Question: When and in what circumstances was this
22 suggestion made?
23 "Answer: ... in the days after Bloody Sunday, he
24 does not think it was the Monday, presumably by
25 implication not the Thursday or Friday.
1 "At for the circumstances, the conversation took
2 place in the sitting room at my home, 10 North Circular
3 Road, Lisburn. There was no one else present and it was
4 not in any sense a formal meeting. I cannot recall any
5 other occasion when Tugwell, Wallace and I spoke there
6 together."
7 Does that bring back any recollections at all?
8 A. I cannot recall any meeting with Colonel Tugwell and
9 Hugh Mooney at his home around that period.
10 Q. "I remember asking how we could square the Army account
11 of what had happened with the nationalist account. As
12 part of his reply, Wallace mentioned the uniforms and
13 the possibility that there were people posing as
14 paratroopers in Derry that day. Tugwell cut him off
15 angrily and the discussion ended."
16 Do you have any recollections of that?
17 A. No, indeed and if it was after the Monday we would not
18 have been discussing it because of the Widgery Tribunal.
19 Q. The question was then asked.
20 "Question: Was it in order to explain why so many
21 shots had been fired by the paratroopers?
22 "Answer: No. I think Wallace mentioned the
23 uniforms in connection with Simon Winchester of the
24 Guardian, who had alleged that a soldier had shot at
25 him. Winchester reported in the Guardian on Monday,
1 31st January: 'army snipers could be seen firing
2 continuously towards central Bogside streets and at one
3 stage a lone sniper on a street corner fired two shots
4 as I peered around a corner."
5 Do you remember having any discussion with
6 Colonel Tugwell or Mr Mooney about Mr Winchester's
7 allegation?
8 A. No, I do not.
9 Q. Do you remember having any discussion with anyone about
10 that allegation?
11 A. No, the Winchester story would have been taken into
12 consideration as part of Widgery, but I do not remember
13 discussing it with anyone else at the headquarters.
14 Q. I would like you to look at an extract from a book which
15 is annexed to Mr Mooney's statement at KM6.5, please.
16 Could we have the bottom half, the last paragraph of the
17 left-hand side. It says -- this is an extract from
18 Mr Curtis's book, "Ireland: The Propaganda War." There
19 is a reference there, on the Saturday, this is the
20 Saturday after Bloody Sunday and immediately before the
21 civil rights march that is to take place in Newry:
22 "On the Saturday the Mirror fell for a blatant piece
23 of British Army propaganda. 'Fake troops peril in
24 Ulster' and 'Army warned of an IRA murder plan' were the
25 front page headlines. Reporter Chris Buckland told how:
1 "Army chiefs were warned yesterday of an IRA plot to
2 start fresh bloodshed in Ulster. They were told that
3 terrorists disguised in stolen uniforms will be in
4 Newry, County Down, for tomorrow's illegal civil rights
5 march."
6 Do you recall any discussion about the prospect that
7 terrorists, disguised in stolen uniforms, would be in
8 Newry that weekend?
9 A. I do not, but I imagine it would be a normal warning
10 that the Army would have put out prior to that march.
11 Q. Was that because the Army was aware that uniforms had
12 been stolen?
13 A. I would imagine so, yes.
14 Q. Were you aware of any similar warning being given before
15 what became Bloody Sunday?
16 A. No, I was not.
17 Q. So why would a distinction be drawn between Newry, for
18 which a warning was necessary, and Londonderry, for
19 which it was not?
20 A. I imagine it was in response to the statement issued by
21 the Official IRA.
22 Q. The statement to the effect --
23 A. That they were using uniforms at camps in the south.
24 Q. That warning appeared to have been issued before
25 30th January 1972?
1 A. Yes, indeed. I am saying the Army obviously did not
2 think that was of any significance at that time, so it
3 must have been issued later.
4 Q. I think we have seen the document I have showed you,
5 which was the HQNI Int Summ, was dated
6 20th January 1972, so it does appear that 10 days before
7 the Londonderry march the Army knew that the Official
8 IRA were claiming to have these uniforms and to have
9 distributed them.
10 So it being the case that they did know about this
11 before Bloody Sunday, why, can you tell us, was
12 a warning given for the Newry march about the use of
13 these uniforms but not the Londonderry one?
14 A. I do not know. I imagine it is because we did not
15 believe the IRA were going to be involved in the
16 Londonderry march, that this warning was not relevant to
17 that particular event.
18 Q. Did you have any involvement in putting out a story to
19 the effect that terrorists in stolen uniforms might be
20 present at the Newry march?
21 A. I do not think so, that would have come out from the
22 Army press office, because it was an on-the-record
23 statement.
24 Q. How do you know that it was an on-the-record statement?
25 A. Obviously if there is a warning, it says here "Army
1 chiefs were warned yesterday", that does not appear to
2 be background briefing.
3 Q. Could we go on to the second half of this page, please:
4 "It was not until the end of the story that Buckland
5 [that is the reporter] noted briefly 'civil rights
6 leader in Newry dismissed the story as propaganda to
7 clear the Army of responsibility for last Sunday's 13
8 killings in Londonderry.'"
9 Did you ever suggest to any journalist that IRA men
10 dressed as soldiers had been present in Londonderry on
11 30th January?
12 A. No, I did not, because no such story was published. In
13 any event we were not allowed to make comments on such
14 matters after the Widgery Inquiry was set up on
15 1st February.
16 Q. Thank you very much, those are all the questions I have.
17 Questioned by MR MACDONALD
18 MR MACDONALD: Mr Wallace, my name is MacDonald, I represent
19 some of the families. Can I ask you first about the
20 nature of psychological operations --
21 LORD SAVILLE: Mr MacDonald, could you possibly pull that
22 microphone a little closer to you. Thank you.
23 MR MACDONALD: If I could ask you firstly about the nature
24 of psychological operations in Northern Ireland in the
25 early 1970s. You have said the psychological operations
1 during this period took a variety of forms, some
2 innocent and perfectly harmless, hearts and minds work;
3 is that right?
4 A. Yes, that is correct.
5 Q. But you have made no secret over the years of the fact
6 that these operations included deception?
7 A. Indeed.
8 Q. And dirty tricks?
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. Including disinformation?
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. Black propaganda?
13 A. Yes.
14 Q. Falsifying documents?
15 A. Yes.
16 Q. Forging documents?
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. And spreading false rumours?
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. And all of those were designed to invent or distort
21 facts and/or the truth that may have been perceived in
22 such as way as to cast the Army in a good light and cast
23 the enemy in a poor light?
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. In this context the enemy would have included obviously
1 the IRA, but presumably did it include others who were
2 perceived as threatening the state in some way?
3 A. Yes, it would include Loyalist paramilitaries as well,
4 or political organisations deemed to be in support of
5 paramilitary groups on both sides.
6 Q. Would it have included organisers of illegal marches,
7 such as the march on Bloody Sunday?
8 A. It could have, if the Intelligence Services believed
9 that they were in contact with the paramilitaries.
10 Q. In general during this period before Bloody Sunday would
11 NICRA leaders have been regarded as enemies who were
12 involved in some way with the IRA campaign?
13 A. I think some of them certainly would have been targeted
14 as such, yes.
15 Q. I would like to take you through some documents which
16 have been scanned on to the system. First of all,
17 OS1.614. This is an excerpt from a book by Liz Curtis,
18 on "The Propaganda War in Ireland". I would like to
19 draw your attention to the bottom left-hand corner,
20 first of all, under the heading "Black propaganda".
21 According to this:
22 "In 1980 Colin Wallace, who had by then left his
23 Army job, admitted to David McKittrick of the
24 Irish Times that much of the information he had given
25 journalists in the north was what he called 'black
1 propaganda' or various information aimed at discrediting
2 various individuals or groups."
3 And then McKittrick explains how that came about and
4 referst to the fact that you would have had access to
5 the highest levels of intelligence.
6 Towards the middle of page 236 at OS1.615:
7 "Some of the black propaganda stories supplied by
8 Wallace and his colleagues were true, some were partly
9 true and others were entirely fabricated."
10 Is that all correct?
11 A. I think that is accurate, yes.
12 Q. OS1.610. On the left-hand side, under the heading
13 "Fantasies," it is said:
14 "Coverage of the IRA has produced a remarkable crop
15 of stories with no foundation in reality. These
16 fantasies both satisfy the popular papers' need for
17 drama and serve propaganda purposes of the authorities.
18 "Manufactured atrocity stories, often featuring
19 women, children or animals were common in the early
20 years when the British Army's Information Policy Unit
21 was at its heyday."
22 Is that accurate?
23 A. Yes, that is accurate.
24 Q. And then on the next page, the other side of this page,
25 the first full paragraph.
1 "1972 [which is the period, of course, we are
2 dealing with] was a fruitful year for manufactured
3 atrocity stories. John McGovern recorded how, in the
4 same week as ITN carried the story of the children's
5 bombing expedition, London's Evening News and the Sun
6 both carried lead stories about IRA men raping young
7 girls at gunpoint in the Market's area of Belfast and
8 alleging that four of the girls had become pregnant.
9 Subsequently, however, the RUC issued a statement
10 admitting that the story was completely false."
11 There is another reference to another story in 1972,
12 looking at the end of that paragraph:
13 "Time Out attributed this and the other horror
14 stories of the period to Army press officers Colonel
15 Maurice Tugwell and Colin Wallace."
16 Is that accurate?
17 A. I do not remember the particular stories, but it could
18 be.
19 Q. In relation to the second story there, in relation to
20 dogs being shot by soldiers and a suggestion that Time
21 Out had attributed this to you and to Colonel Tugwell
22 could it have been right that Colonel Tugwell was
23 involved in putting out stories of that kind?
24 A. It is possible. I am not sure whether Time Out dealt
25 directly with Colonel Tugwell or not at that time.
1 Q. 617, the right-hand side of the page, under the heading
2 "Northern Ireland Office Committee," the second
3 paragraph:
4 "In July 1974, reporters were given a briefing at
5 Lisburn at which the Army blamed a recent upsurge in
6 violence directly on the release of 65 internees. An
7 Army spokesperson said that intelligence reports
8 suggested that well over half of all released internees
9 became reinvolved in violence within a couple of months.
10 As Colin Wallace later admitted to David McKittrick,
11 Army intelligence had falsified the figures in an
12 attempt to change Reece's policy of phasing out
13 internment. The true figure was less than 20 per cent."
14 Is that accurate?
15 A. Yes, I remember that one.
16 Q. That was an example of people in the Army falsifying
17 official statistics in order to influence Government
18 policy?
19 A. Yes, I am not sure the original source of the
20 information was purely Army, but certainly that did
21 happen.
22 Q. People in official sources?
23 A. Yes, that is correct.
24 Q. Or in official places. Then at OS1.601, this is an
25 extract from a book by Lashmar & Oliver, entitled
1 "Britain's Secret Propaganda War." If you look about
2 seven or eight lines down:
3 "Wallace claimed that, not only were IRD" -- is that
4 Information Research Department of the Foreign Office?
5 A. Yes, that is correct.
6 Q. "... were IRD distorting political and public
7 understanding of the nature of the Irish problem, but
8 they were also distorting the facts themselves."
9 Is that correct?
10 A. There are two parts to that statement. I think again
11 that is -- IRD was dealing predominantly with political
12 disinformation, whereas Information Policy was dealing
13 largely with information relating to terrorist groups.
14 Q. Was there anything about this sentence that is
15 incorrect?
16 A. No, basically that is correct.
17 Q. "This is vigorously denied by IRD sources involved at
18 the time, who claim that IRD was not wittingly involved
19 in any of what, they admit, were black propaganda
20 operations. Nevertheless, according to Wallace most of
21 the stuff we were doing was fictitious, which was
22 supposed to be confusing the terrorists."
23 Is that correct?
24 A. That is correct.
25 Q. "Disinformation, from whatever source, threatened to
1 undermine Britain's own operations as well as those of
2 the IRA. Wallace recalled that, 'disinformation put out
3 by Information Policy ran the danger of colouring our
4 own Intelligence operations because an Intelligence
5 Officer would come to us with reports which we had
6 actually fed out'."
7 Is that correct?
8 A. Yes, I think the co-ordination during 1972, 1973 was
9 very poor and this did happen on occasions.
10 Q. More than once?
11 A. Yes, on a number of occasions.
12 Q. In fact some of the intelligence came back to you graded
13 as A1?
14 A. Certainly as reliable, yes.
15 Q. "Disinformation, from whatever source, threatened to
16 undermine Britain's own operations as well as those of
17 the IRA ... In 1972 Colin Wallace and Hugh Mooney
18 carried out a classic black propaganda operation to
19 prove Soviet involvement in Britain's Cuba. Wallace and
20 Mooney approached Trevor Hannah, a Northern Ireland
21 journalist working for the Ulster News Agency in
22 Belfast."
23 Then it describes how you became involved in a plot
24 to sell Mr Hannah a story of Russian submarines landing
25 KGB trained subversives off the coast of Ireland; do you
1 remember that?
2 A. Yes, I do.
3 Q. That is Mr Hugh Mooney of the IRD?
4 A. That is right.
5 Q. Towards the bottom of that paragraph:
6 "Wallace said, '... the Russian submarine classic
7 IRD faked photographs taken by us, all the sort of
8 peripheral back-up intelligence to support that was all
9 produced by us. That was again a straight IRD
10 operation."
11 Is that all correct?
12 A. Yes, we have no idea where the Russian submarine
13 photographs were taken, but they were built into the
14 story to give it local connection.
15 LORD SAVILLE: Mr MacDonald, I can understand general
16 questions along the lines of black propaganda and the
17 like, but I am not actually following the relevance of
18 going through alleged specific instances.
19 MR MACDONALD: They are not alleged, sir, first of all.
20 This witness is confirming that these events occurred.
21 LORD SAVILLE: To put it another way, then, I am not sure
22 that the fact that these events occurred, these specific
23 events occurred, is helping us very much. I understand
24 the general line of your questioning and this witness
25 has said: yes, there was black propaganda,
1 misinformation, disinformation and all the rest. What
2 is the purpose of delving into the detail?
3 MR MACDONALD: What I am seeking to establish, sir, is that
4 all information and all documentation of this period
5 coming from official sources, and certainly that
6 information and documentation that could have emanated
7 from or could have been influenced by PsyOps personnel
8 was liable to be false and misleading.
9 LORD SAVILLE: Why do you not ask Mr Wallace that general
10 question?
11 MR MACDONALD: Because that is not sufficient, sir. What
12 I have to do, in my respectful submission, is to
13 demonstrate to the Tribunal how extensive PsyOps
14 operations were at this time and the respects and
15 manners in which PsyOps operations were carried out.
16 The purpose of this, of course, is to enable the
17 Tribunal to evaluate the documentation and the
18 information that has been supplied to the Tribunal from
19 both the Army and the Government, both from 1972 or
20 thereabouts and more recently.
21 The Tribunal will only be in a position to assess
22 the weight to be placed on all publicly provided
23 information if it has a proper and full understanding of
24 the extent of PsyOps at the time, and indeed the
25 capabilities of PsyOps personnel to fabricate material,
1 to forge documents, to falsify official statistics, to
2 produce faked photographs, to produce all the
3 intelligence back-up required to put out a convincing
4 story.
5 The mere recitation of a formula to the effect that
6 PsyOps personnel were engaged in black propaganda is,
7 with respect, not sufficient to enable the Tribunal to
8 discharge its function of assessing all the material
9 that is put before the Tribunal, and there is
10 a substantial bulk of material emanating from official
11 sources.
12 I should say, sir, I do not intend to take an awful
13 lot of time over this, in fact I was trying to summarise
14 the position by reference to particular passages in the
15 relevant literature so I would not have to spend a lot
16 of time.
17 LORD SAVILLE: Do not spend too long, Mr MacDonald, and
18 would you please confine yourself to at least the period
19 surrounding 30th January 1972, rather than years down
20 the line or, indeed, years before.
21 MR MACDONALD: I was dealing with the period between about
22 1971, 1973 or 1974, because that was the period when
23 Mr Wallace was engaged in operations then and indeed
24 others whom he mentioned, such as Mr Mooney.
25 LORD SAVILLE: That sort of period of time is acceptable as
1 far as I am concerned, yes.
2 MR MACDONALD: All the excerpts I have read, sir, refer to
3 that period and indeed to the personalities who will be
4 giving evidence before this Tribunal, including
5 Colonel Tugwell and Mr Mooney.
6 LORD SAVILLE: Carry on, Mr MacDonald, but do bear in mind
7 a mass of detail of this kind is not necessarily
8 helpful.
9 MR MACDONALD: I bear that in mind, but I am seeking to put
10 before the Tribunal only material that is helpful.
11 If I could ask you to look at OS1.605, this is again
12 an extract from Lashmar & Oliver's book. Towards the
13 bottom of the page there is a reference to secret plans
14 that had been captured from the Provisionals in Belfast
15 in May 1974.
16 Without going into the details of this, is it right
17 to say that some plans and documents were captured from
18 the Provisional IRA about that time?
19 A. Yes, that is correct.
20 Q. And the Prime Minister of the day made extensive
21 reference to this in the House of Commons?
22 A. Yes, that is right.
23 Q. But in fact the information as presented to him had been
24 distorted, had it not?
25 A. It did not match up to a similar plan by the IRA two
1 years earlier.
2 Q. Going over the page at OS1.606, to the second paragraph:
3 "However, in 1974, further documents which added
4 some detail were found. These were passed to Wallace,
5 who recalled we were simply given the documents and told
6 to prepare them for a press conference, which would
7 announce to the world that an IRA plan had been
8 uncovered to blow up half of Belfast, including large
9 areas occupied by ordinary people. Despite the plan
10 being defensive, a fact that Wallace raised, Wallace
11 went to work to prepare those parts of the maps and
12 documents which would reveal the IRA plan and to take
13 out anything in them which gave a clue to their
14 defensive purpose."
15 In other words, you were tasked to distort the
16 meaning of these documents?
17 A. Yes, the documents we were dealing with were primarily
18 plans, we did not actually see the supporting material
19 that was given out at the press conference after that.
20 Q. If I could refer you to OS1.627. On the right-hand side
21 of the page, page 203, about halfway down there is
22 a paragraph starts with the words:
23 "In 1983 allegations were beginning to surface,
24 quietly at first, that Northern Ireland was a theatre
25 for dirty tricks and for fashionable fighting between
1 MI5 and the MI6 in the early to mid-1970s. The source
2 of these allegations was Colin Wallace."
3 It goes on to refer to how:
4 "... this fitted into Kitson's development of
5 counter-insurgency policy since the gathering of
6 information, its analysis and dissemination,
7 misinformation and black propaganda are essential to
8 PsyOps."
9 It records how you became a central figure to Army
10 Information Policy Unit. Then it says that:
11 "Information Policy activities were carried out at
12 three levels of consciousness". The third says
13 "a totally undeniable", it should be "deniable", should
14 it not?
15 A. "Totally deniable".
16 Q. It reads "totally undeniable", it should read "totally
17 deniable role in which black operations, popularly known
18 as 'dirty tricks', were used."
19 Over the page at 628, it is there that there appears
20 the suggestion that:
21 "The need-to-know principle was taken to such
22 lengths that I frequently found Information Policy
23 disinformation appearing on intelligence summaries
24 graded as A1."
25 Is that right?
1 A. Yes, that is correct.
2 Q. Of course we have the document that appears in your
3 statement as appendix 5 to the second statement, that is
4 at KW2.218. Without going into this document, which has
5 been opened to some extent, this entire document was
6 a false document, was it not, false in the sense that it
7 purported to be a confession of disaffected IRA man?
8 A. Yes, that is right.
9 Q. There was some intelligence information that had been
10 introduced into it, but I think much of it was purely
11 fictitious?
12 A. Some parts were false, quite a lot of it was also
13 factual.
14 Q. Is this the document that was originally appendix 24 of
15 your first statement, do you know?
16 A. I am not sure.
17 Q. The reason I ask is because you suggest at paragraph 6
18 of your second statement that this was a larger version
19 of part of a document that appeared as appendix 24 in
20 your first statement. But we never saw appendix 24 of
21 your first statement; I am wondering whether that was in
22 your first statement?
23 A. I am not sure.
24 Q. If I could take you to KW2.27, paragraph 122 of your
25 statement. That paragraph has been redacted from your
1 statement. If there was a good reason for that, I do
2 not want you to say what the contents were, but do you
3 know what the reason was?
4 A. No, I do not, without seeing the full document.
5 LORD SAVILLE: Perhaps Ms McGahey can help on this,
6 Mr MacDonald.
7 MS McGAHEY: Sir, yes, the reason for the redaction was that
8 paragraph 122 dealt with information that had come from
9 the document that we know as the witness X document.
10 A decision was taken in around 2000, before the
11 statement was distributed by the solicitor to the
12 Inquiry, I understand from him in consultation with
13 others, but I do not know with whom, to delete that
14 paragraph in its entirety because of that reference.
15 Unfortunately, and through nothing to do with
16 Mr Wallace, that redaction was then overlooked and no
17 further action was taken to consider how the paragraph
18 might be reinstated with appropriate redactions.
19 The statement was recalled for other reasons and on
20 its reissue the total omission of paragraph 122 by then
21 having been noticed, paragraph 122 was then reinstated
22 with partial redactions. That does now appear in the
23 bundle at page KW2.28.
24 LORD SAVILLE: Thank you very much.
25 MR MACDONALD: Could I ask you to look, Mr Wallace, at
1 KM6.31. This is an extract from Mr Mooney's statement.
2 At paragraph 66 at the bottom of the page, he says:
3 "Over time I learned from INQ1873 ..."
4 Do you remember who that was -- I do not want you to
5 say; do you remember?
6 A. Yes, I do.
7 Q. "... and Colin Wallace separately about the PsyOps they
8 had carried out [over the page] ..." there are three
9 examples given there.
10 One relates to the use of 'Beatles' wigs and the
11 other two relate to writing letters and also he says
12 that in late 1973 he was in command of the printing
13 press which was used to forge press cards -- to print
14 forged press cards?
15 A. I remember (a), possibly (c) and certainly INQ1873 was
16 at that time in charge of the printing press.
17 Q. Insofar as Mr Mooney suggests that this was the extent
18 of PsyOps in Northern Ireland in 1971 to 1973, that is
19 completely wrong, is it not?
20 A. Yes, it is.
21 Q. In fact, insofar as it suggests that all PsyOps
22 operations were completely innocuous, that is wrong as
23 well, is it not?
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. The reality is that dishonesty, deceit, falsehood, were
1 the stock and trade of PsyOps operatives, and had to be;
2 is that right?
3 A. It depends on your interpretation of those words in the
4 circumstances that prevailed at the time.
5 Q. Is it right that dissent, dishonesty, deceit and
6 falsehood were features of PsyOps work?
7 A. Quite frequently, yes.
8 Q. PsyOps required the co-operation of the Intelligence
9 Service as well, did it?
10 A. Yes, it did.
11 Q. In fact you worked closely with Intelligence Services?
12 A. Yes, indeed.
13 Q. Indeed I think you said in your statement that you were
14 part of the Army Intelligence Services?
15 A. We were part of G Branch, which included the
16 Intelligence Service, yes.
17 Q. And you worked closely with IM5 and MI5?
18 A. Yes, more often from 1973 onwards.
19 Q. MI6 was operational in 1972, was it not?
20 A. Yes, it was.
21 Q. When I say "operational," I mean operational in
22 Northern Ireland?
23 A. That is correct.
24 Q. PsyOps was, strictly speaking, part of Army public
25 relations, was it not?
1 A. No, it was not, there was quite a clear line between the
2 two. In fact there was quite a bit of internal
3 friction, because at times the two functions did
4 overlap, though they were two separate functions.
5 Q. PsyOps personnel were part of the PR staff, Army PR
6 staff, were they not?
7 A. Not until 1973.
8 Q. Was it not the case in 1972 that the PR staff
9 organisation would have included not only yourself but
10 also Colonel Tugwell and INQ1873?
11 A. No, I was based in PR but I was doing work for IP.
12 Colonel Tugwell, INQ1873 and Mr Mooney at that time were
13 actually located separately from the PR branch.
14 Q. PsyOps units and Intelligence units were capable of not
15 only being unscrupulous but also quite callous, were
16 they not?
17 A. I cannot really answer that without an example.
18 Q. Kincora was an example, was it not?
19 A. I would disagree with that, because I was instructed in
20 1974 to draw the attention of the press to what was
21 going on in Kincora, so there was an attempt at that
22 stage by Army intelligence to cover up what was
23 happening at Kincora.
24 Q. I am not making any criticism of you, Mr Wallace, in
25 relation to this. Just to summarise the position: is it
1 right to say that Army Intelligence were aware of
2 a homosexual vice ring at a boy's home in Belfast?
3 A. I think the Intelligence Services were. I am only aware
4 of one other Army Intelligence Officer who knew in
5 addition to myself.
6 Q. When you say Intelligence Services, do you mean MI6 and
7 MI5?
8 A. MI5 particularly in 1974.
9 Q. But they allowed that ring to operate for some years
10 because it facilitated Secret Service operations?
11 A. I think that is probably true, from the inquiries that
12 have been carried out to date.
13 Q. I will not take you to it, but there is a reference, for
14 the record at OS1.69, in relation to these matters.
15 As well as that, during this period you were aware
16 that Army intelligence operatives, including for example
17 Captain Holroyd, were either involved in or aware of
18 assassinations of persons perceived to be enemies?
19 A. I think that is an allegation he has made. Basically,
20 we believed that there was collusion between elements of
21 the Security Forces and paramilitaries, but those
22 investigations were never concluded.
23 Q. For the purpose of assassinating people?
24 A. Yes, that is right.
25 Q. Is it correct to say, then, that all information and
1 documentation emanating from or influenced by PsyOps
2 personnel, and indeed the Intelligence Services, was
3 inherently reliable and potentially false?
4 A. Some of it was false but of course one of the values of
5 a lot of the material we were using, of course, was that
6 it was not false, because the size of material quite
7 often showed divisions between people and organisations
8 and it had to be accurate to have any effect.
9 Q. I think I said inherently reliable, I should of course
10 have said inherently unreliable. In circumstances where
11 some of the material was known to be false, it must
12 follow that all of the material emanating from that
13 source or influenced by people involved in PsyOps must
14 be inherently unreliable for that reason?
15 A. Potentially, yes.
16 Q. Unless you know how the document has come into being,
17 you cannot say whether or not the document is reliable
18 and genuine?
19 A. That is true.
20 Q. And likewise for the information?
21 A. Yes, that is why the information tends to be graded.
22 Q. In fact, all official Army and Government information
23 and documentation from that period could have been
24 influenced by PsyOps personnel?
25 A. Potentially that is the case, but that is not actually
1 my experience.
2 Q. It is really impossible to tell, is it not, unless you
3 were personally involved in the production or
4 dissemination of the information or documentation in
5 question?
6 A. It is very difficult.
7 Q. Your own involvement in PsyOps was authorised by senior
8 officials, is that right?
9 A. That is correct.
10 Q. Again I do not need to take you to it, but the reference
11 for the record is OS1.624 in relation to Mr Peter
12 Broderick's authorisation of your work?
13 A. Yes.
14 Q. Of course that authorisation was denied by the
15 Government, was it not, until 1990?
16 A. That is correct.
17 Q. If I could ask you to look at OS1.551. This is an
18 extract from Hansard and is it right that on
19 30th January 1990 a question was asked in the House of
20 Commons about your case?
21 A. That is correct.
22 Q. Mr Archie Hamilton, on behalf of the Government,
23 indicated records had been found which had brought to
24 light new information?
25 A. That is correct.
1 Q. Do you know what records they were?
2 A. No, because although we asked for access to the
3 documents, they were not released and the (inaudible)
4 Select Committee also asked for the documents and they
5 were withheld as well.
6 Q. This is by the MoD?
7 A. By the MoD, yes.
8 Q. Over the page at 552 there is an explanation of the
9 background. We do not obviously want to get bogged down
10 in the background of this particular matter, but the
11 background was that you had been dismissed from Army
12 Intelligence Services; is that right?
13 A. I was posted out of Northern Ireland and then
14 subsequently disciplined and forced to resign.
15 Q. There was an issue at your appeal about whether or not
16 you had been authorised to become engaged in PsyOps-type
17 operations, specifically to give off the record,
18 unattributable briefings?
19 LORD SAVILLE: What is the relevance of this line of
20 questioning, Mr MacDonald?
21 MR MACDONALD: This establishes also that the Ministry of
22 Defence and the other agencies of the Government have
23 a track record of concealing and withholding relevant
24 documentation, documentation concerning in particular
25 the operations --
1 LORD SAVILLE: We could go on forever like this, could we
2 not, because if you go down this path, then we would
3 have, surely, to re-open all these facts and matters and
4 allow those against whom things are said to come along
5 and say, if they wish, that it is not the case.
6 As far as Mr Wallace is concerned, we are
7 principally, if indeed not exclusively, interested in
8 what he can tell us about what was going on at the time
9 of Bloody Sunday, by which I include both immediately
10 before, immediately after from the point of view of
11 information or, if you like, disinformation or black
12 propaganda being issued by his department or his offices
13 in relation to the matters with which we are concerned.
14 A general history of PsyOps in Northern Ireland over the
15 last 20 years is simply not going to help us.
16 MR MACDONALD: Sir, I have tried not to offer the Tribunal
17 a general history of PsyOps in Northern Ireland over
18 that period. What I am trying to do is to establish
19 that much of the material that has been provided to the
20 Tribunal may be unreliable, at the very least and
21 potentially false.
22 LORD SAVILLE: Can you give us any idea of the sort of
23 material you have in mind that you say may be
24 unreliable?
25 MR MACDONALD: Yes, sir, the Tribunal have been provided
1 with various documents relating to intelligence matters
2 suggesting the involvement of the IRA on the day and
3 what IRA plans were for the day and you have been
4 provided with official documents after the day.
5 LORD SAVILLE: I think quite a lot of those have already
6 been shown to Mr Wallace, have they not?
7 MR MACDONALD: Some of them have, sir, some of them have
8 not.
9 LORD SAVILLE: He has been able to comment on them. What
10 you really perhaps ought to do is to list out these
11 documents, show them to Mr Wallace and say, is he able
12 to tell us whether any, and if so what of these contain
13 false information and if they do, what parts of that are
14 false and so on.
15 We are not being very much helped by the fact, as
16 Mr Wallace says, the British Government was running
17 a PsyOps campaign which included disinformation, because
18 what we are interested in, if there is anything in it,
19 is whether any of the matters which you have now
20 specifically mentioned, any of those documents are false
21 or contain misinformation, disinformation or what you
22 like. That is what we are interested in.
23 MR MACDONALD: There are two aspects of this. The first is
24 whether or not the documentation and information that
25 purports to come from the period is reliable. The
1 second is whether or not the Ministry of Defence has,
2 since the beginning of this Inquiry in 1998, supplied
3 the Tribunal will all the relevant material.
4 I had actually moved on to the second aspect, sir,
5 I am sorry if it was not obvious, in order to show that
6 in this particular case of Mr Wallace's, arising out of
7 his experiences in the particular matters concerning
8 PsyOps at this period, at this time, that the British
9 Government, in particular the Ministry of Defence,
10 withheld documentation, concealed documents --
11 LORD SAVILLE: I do not think, Mr MacDonald, you are going
12 to be able to begin to establish that by demonstrating,
13 even assuming we allowed you to do so, that Mr Wallace
14 was wrongly treated by the Ministry of Defence because,
15 even assuming that he was, that does not begin to
16 establish that the Ministry of Defence have also set out
17 to deceive this Inquiry. The one simply does not follow
18 from the other.
19 MR MACDONALD: What I can do, sir, by reference to Hansard,
20 is to show to the Tribunal admissions made in Parliament
21 by Government ministers, in particular the Minister of
22 State for the Ministry of Defence and the Secretary of
23 State for Defence at the material time, to the effect
24 that they did conceal documents.
25 LORD SAVILLE: In relation to the case of Mr Wallace?
1 MR MACDONALD: Yes, sir, concerning --
2 LORD SAVILLE: I repeat -- my colleagues will tell me if
3 they think I am wrong -- the fact that Mr Wallace may
4 have been treated wrongly by the MoD in the way you
5 suggest does not begin to establish that documents have
6 been withheld from the Inquiry or doctored or anything
7 else. The one simply does not follow from the other.
8 MR MACDONALD: Sir, with respect it does, because these
9 admissions concern material in relation to PsyOps
10 operations at the material time, because the issue was
11 whether or not Mr Wallace had been authorised by the
12 Government or by senior officials to carry out these
13 operations and the Government persistently claimed that
14 he had not been authorised to do this and it was only in
15 1990 that the Minister of State at the Ministry of
16 Defence and also the Secretary of State admitted that
17 documents had been concealed, indeed that the Government
18 itself had been misled, that Parliament had been misled
19 and that inaccuracies had been recorded.
20 If it is the case that Army and Government officials
21 were prepared to mislead the Government itself and
22 Parliament through Government ministers about the very
23 issues concerning PsyOps and the authorisation for the
24 conduct of such operations, then it follows, in my
25 respectful submission, that the same Government may have
1 been prepared and able to withhold documentation about
2 Bloody Sunday. Indeed, I am going to come to a chart
3 that was given to this Tribunal by the Government in
4 relation to Bloody Sunday to show to the Tribunal how
5 the Tribunal was misled about PsyOps in relation to this
6 period.
7 LORD SAVILLE: I think what we will do, Mr McDonald, is to
8 stop now. Could you please prepare and give to
9 Ms McGahey, who in turn, I think, can give to Mr Wallace
10 a list of the documents concerning the events of
11 Bloody Sunday which you say may have been doctored or
12 invented by the British Government or authorities, that
13 is actual documents that we have in the bundles.
14 MR MACDONALD: With respect, sir, that is not an appropriate
15 way to proceed in relation to this.
16 LORD SAVILLE: Why not?
17 MR MACDONALD: First of all, I have made it clear what the
18 basis of my questioning is. I am not in a position to
19 identify the particular documents that were falsified by
20 Mr Wallace --
21 LORD SAVILLE: I thought you did, Mr MacDonald, you talk
22 about intelligence summaries and the like. Are you
23 saying you do not in fact put forward any positive case
24 that any document that we have seen at the moment,
25 contemporary document is either doctored or a complete
1 false document provided to this Inquiry for the purpose
2 of misleading it?
3 MR MACDONALD: Sir, I am seeking to explore with this
4 witness, who was concerned with PsyOps at this time,
5 whether or not there was a policy of fabricating
6 information, fabricating documentation, falsifying
7 information, engaging in black propaganda to such an
8 extent that all information and documentation emanating
9 from that source is unreliable.
10 LORD SAVILLE: I am going to ask Mr Wallace
11 a question: Mr Wallace, are you aware of any document
12 that you have been shown by Eversheds or you have come
13 across in your reading for giving evidence to this
14 Tribunal, any document emanating from Government
15 authorities and provided to this Tribunal that you know
16 or believe to be either doctored, in the sense part of
17 it is false, or completely false in the sense of it
18 being a document made up for the purposes of deceiving
19 this Inquiry; are you aware of any such document?
20 A. Not that I have seen so far, sir.
21 LORD SAVILLE: From your work at the time in 1972, was any
22 work done, either before or after Bloody Sunday, of
23 inventing or producing misinformation on the events of
24 that day which would mislead us if we did not know that
25 they were in fact a product of PsyOps.
1 A. Not that I can recall, no.
2 LORD SAVILLE: We will leave it there this evening,
3 Mr MacDonald, and come back to this at 9.30 tomorrow
4 morning. I am bound to tell you at the moment it is
5 unlikely that the Tribunal will allow you to continue
6 with this line of questioning because it does seem to
7 me, and my colleagues will persuade me if I am wrong,
8 that merely to seek to blacken generally Government
9 departments for producing misinformation over the years
10 does not begin to establish that that has been done in
11 relation to Bloody Sunday.
12 MR TOOHEY: Mr MacDonald, just to give you something further
13 to think about overnight, I am not clear from what you
14 have been saying whether the allegation is confined to
15 misinformation, using that in its broadest sense, or
16 does it include the withholding of documents?
17 MR MACDONALD: It includes the withholding of documents,
18 sir, because we are not in a position to know whether
19 documents have been simply falsified or withheld or
20 both, but what we can do is to demonstrate to the
21 Tribunal a track record of falsifying information and
22 also withholding documentation.
23 MR TOOHEY: It is just it will be necessary, I would think,
24 for you to deal with both aspects in response to what
25 the Chairman has said.
1 MR MACDONALD: Yes.
2 LORD SAVILLE: We will leave it, Mr MacDonald, now. 9.30
3 tomorrow morning, please.
4 MR MACDONALD: I wanted to raise one other matter in
5 relation to a witness that is scheduled on Thursday?
6 LORD SAVILLE: Raise it now? By all means, if you would
7 like to raise the point now.
8 MR MACDONALD: It is in relation to Mr William Smyth. On
9 16th September of this year we wrote a letter to the
10 Inquiry indicating that we had not yet received
11 a statement from Mr Smyth. He was the secretary to the
12 Widgery Tribunal and we indicated that we would not be
13 in a position to adequately prepare questioning of this
14 witness unless a statement was received without further
15 delay. That was 16th September.
16 Sir, we only received Mr Smyth's statement this
17 morning, just before we sat. I have had an opportunity
18 to glance at the statement itself, but have not had an
19 opportunity to look at the exhibits to the statement.
20 He is an important or potentially important witness. It
21 will be necessary to cross-check his statement, the
22 contents of the exhibits with other material and I am
23 not sure that we can do that -- I am quite certain we
24 cannot do it properly.
25 LORD SAVILLE: Mr MacDonald, I can see you have your hands
1 full at the moment, but on the other hand your
2 instructing solicitors, who are a very large team of
3 counsel and indeed solicitors -- what I would suggest
4 they do is to do their best to see if they can deal with
5 the matter by the time Mr Smyth --
6 MR MACDONALD: The day after tomorrow, sir.
7 LORD SAVILLE: Mr Smyth is scheduled to give evidence. If
8 we run into difficulties, as always we will act in order
9 to avoid any unfairness to any party.
10 What we will do is we will keep Mr Smyth in
11 position, ask your team and indeed everybody else to do
12 their best and if difficulties do arise, we will cross
13 those bridges when we come to them.
14 (4.20 pm)
15 (Proceedings adjourned until 9.30 am
16 on Wednesday, 25th September 2002)
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19 GENERAL SIR FRANK KITSON, sworn .............. 2
20 Questioned by MR CLARKE ...................... 2
21 Questioned by MR ELIAS ....................... 44
22 Questioned by MR LAVERY ...................... 56
23 Questioned by MS McDERMOTT ................... 112
24 Questioned by MR MANSFIELD ................... 121
25 Questioned by LORD GIFFORD ................... 140
1 Questioned by MR KENNEDY ..................... 147
2 Questioned by MR CLARKE ...................... 148
3 MR COLIN WALLACE, (continued) ................ 153
4 Questioned by MS McGAHEY (continued) ......... 153
5 Questioned by MR MACDONALD ................... 162
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