State Murder 3, Section 2

 

WEETON

The Weeton Trial: Lies From Liars Told

*) Thomas Maguire – Accused of conspiring with Patrick Magee and Patrick Murray and others unknown to cause an explosion in Britain between 1 January 1982 and 27 April 1983 (at Weeton, Lancashire).

*) Counsel for Defence – Mr. Michael Mansfield.

*) Counsel for Prosecution – Mr. Roy Amlot.

*) Chief Prosecution Witness – Mr. Raymond O'Connor.

*) Accused (Thomas Maguire) arrested Tuesday 25.06.85.

*) Trial Dates: Monday 15.09.86 to Tuesday 07.10.86

*) Thomas Maguire found not guilty by majority verdict.

Chief prosecution witness Raymond O'Connor, stepfather to Thomas Maguire, a long time thief and liar in the pay of MI5, lied to the court on behalf of the Security Service, lied to the IRA on behalf of the Security Service – and did so, remarkably, before and after the Weeton bomb operation was aborted "at the eleventh hour" by the chase-out of Magee and Murray by four police surveillance cars. Notwithstanding that he rented a flat, hired a car, rented a garage (in which to build a bomb) and bought a small van to transport it, and his non-arrest by the police, the IRA (the republican element of it, that is) did not twig that O’Connor was working for the authorities.

O'Connor, through his stepson Thomas Maguire, sold the dummy of Weeton army camp being a base for Northern Ireland to the IRA. Weeton was a set-up job, in that it was attractively baited with the lie of it being an SAS-RUC training camp. O'Connor, on direction from his handlers, sold this pup to Maguire who passed it on to the IRA, whose leadership were collectively induced to buy it. After one year's rumination in the bureaucratic fog of the republican decision making structures, the operation was given the go-ahead.

The chief local facilitator for the IRA was a man working for the British security forces and services, one Raymond O'Connor. O'Connor was a confident and even courageous man who lied face-to-face with senior members of the IRA on repeated occasions and did so successfully. Mr. O'Connor's name was not pulled out of a hat, nor was he a walk-in, as he was dressed up to appear, he was almost certainly in the pay of the security services for years, performing among other functions an oversight on his stepson Thomas.

He turned out to be a highly successful agent provocateur – and a good actór, as many who operate for secret state are. We can say this about O'Connor because the record tells us so. Yet were anybody to allege it without the support of evidence, they would be dismissed as cranks, or worse, by those in the media for whom truth in the news is an anachronism. If we have some proof of these claims, there is more we do not have. For reasons of great political-security sensitivity and embarrassment, that detail is kept under wraps.

After telephone calls from O'Connor to Maguire in Dublin, five letters (and maybe telephone calls) from Maguire to O'Connor in Blackpool, and following almost one year's lead-in, the mission to bomb the Weeton camp, or a nearby public house as it came to be, reached countdown. By end January 1983, when the operation had received the green light if not yet the order to roll, and O’Connor was just short of visiting IRA planners in Dublin (was the gilt-edged invitation card in his pocket?), he notifies the police. For it is only then, having something definite to communicate, that he informs and introduces the regular civil authority, the police, into matters. From the Criminal Investigation Department, one understands, O'Connor is passed over to the local Special Branch for operational control.

A simplistic reading of that would say the sting operation, which is what it was, had come in from the shadows to the light. Not so. The hidden hand of MI5-Special Branch in England, in cooperation with their Irish counterparts, would remain in control and continue to pull the strings. Mr. Raymond O'Connor, almost certainly long on MI5 watch, would carry on taking orders.

Very soon, under instructions from his handlers, O'Connor visited Dublin and met IRA members there. He then returned to Blackpool. Shortly afterwards he again travelled to Dublin. On this visit, the second in February 1983, he met Brendan Swords, known as "Charlie”, an alleged senior IRA member, a man he described as a "Gerry Adams look-a-like", a man called "Danny", another with a "pot belly" and a man he called "The Minder", because of his size, who was Patrick Murray. They discussed the plan to bomb the (Eagle and Child) public house. "(O'Connor would say) that Maguire had arranged a meeting for him with the IRA chief of staff in Dublin and had put him on a bus to travel to that meeting. He said that when he told police later about his meeting with senior IRA men, he was told: 'At last you have got to the top.'"

It is important to say that happenings in the Blackpool-Lancashire area and in Dublin were under the control of the respective national security services, that is MI5-Special Branch in England and Garda (Special Branch) intelligence in Dublin. Those listed above as "Charlie”, "Danny", "pot belly", "The Minder”, and the man described as a "Gerry Adams look-a-like" had real names. Those names, the credits ascribed to their owners, and their positions in the IRA hierarchy, were known to the Irish and British authorities.

You can understand, therefore, the excitement of O’Connor’s handlers – the sting operation had advanced to the highest level in the IRA and was progressing to plan. "At last you have got to the top" in direct quotation marks, reflecting O'Connor’s words to the court. "At last you have got to the top". Hold on there, for a moment, for one sees in that "at last…" a glaring contradiction with what else was said in the trial report.

"An IRA informer who became a police spy told an Old Bailey jury yesterday that a Special Branch detective put so much pressure on him that he constantly lied to the police over two years and named innocent individuals as being involved in terrorist activities....Mr. O'Connor, the chief prosecution witness, said that Detective Sergeant Wrench of Blackpool Special Branch was 'on his back' nearly every day after he went to the police in (end) January 1983 with his suspicions about the IRA plot to blow up the Weeton army camp and then the army pub nearby. 'They wanted results and wanted them fast. I gave them a lot of false information. I told them lies to get a bit of peace and quiet,' he said."

Mr. O'Connor was no more an "IRA informer" than was Sergeant Wrench of Blackpool Special Branch. He was an agent provocateur. His purpose was to provoke entrapment. O'Connor was not and never had been a member of the IRA. For him to sell Weeton army camp to the republican movement it had to be dressed up in false colours, that it possessed a Northern Ireland-SAS-RUC dimension. This was bait to induce an IRA involvement. Not being in the IRA he used his stepson as a conduit to the republican movement.

Raymond O'Connor reported the matter to the police at end January 1983 and was days on, in February 1983, at the top of the IRA tree selling them an MI5-Irish sting operation. What a remarkable and expeditious success story that was – if you believe in fairy tales.

Let us look at O'Connor's descriptive language or, as you may wish to call it, script writing. O'Connor, aged 50, said in court his 27 year old stepson asked him if he was interested in "helping the cause". O'Connor said, "I had an idea what he meant. I agreed to help". The lines are laughable, corny and conform to a stereotypical British notion of stage Irish.

He insisted that he only agreed to help Maguire "to see where it would lead" and "just to string him along". He claimed to have informed the police after almost a year because "he could no longer bear what was going on". "I didn't want to get involved. This was too heavy."

Yes, O'Connor was stringing Maguire along, and the IRA, all the way to an ambush. And he was doing it for a price, a very handsome price if the truth were known. No doubt too a bonus on a successful outcome, a possible bloody outcome. At least he didn't get that.

Can you detect the excitement in the words of O'Connor's Special Branch/MI5 handlers: "At last you have got to the top". Are the words at last not evocative? Do they not conjure up an image of rapport between O'Connor and his handlers, a year long familiarity with an operation to sell an inviting target to the IRA?

 

Yet, according to court evidence, these words were expressed to a man who had just walked in from the street only days before.

The game plan was working: "At last you have got to the top". The sting was on the road. "At last" matters were coming to a head.

But events didn't go according to plan. Hence the legal backtracking and lies to the court. The case being known to the police, the cat was out of the bag and due process of a kind was obliged. Better to prosecute a flawed case against Thomas Maguire in the hope that he would walk free, than to expose the truth of the Weeton fiasco and win. An appeal and a public campaign could resurrect embarrassing skeletons.

How to lose a case? One way is to devalue the chief prosecution witness. An easy job, especially as the witness would lend a helping hand.

A police officer said O'Connor was "given to drink". "Mr. Roy Amlot, prosecuting, said that O'Connor's evidence should not be accepted without corroboration and that he should be treated as an accomplice. 'He told the police many lies about highly significant matters'….."

"Mr. Amlot told the jury that O'Connor had numerous convictions, mainly for dishonesty, and they would be invited not to rely on his word without independent corroboration."

"Further questioned by Mr. Mansfield, for the defence, O'Connor admitted implicating innocent people in his account of the plot to the police. One man named Doyle he had met on the Irish ferry. 'He had nothing to do with it, but I wrote him into it,' O'Connor said. 'It was a blatant lie. He is not the only one – there were quite a few.' He said he was reprimanded by police at one stage for telling lies and he promised he would tell no more. But he continued to lie to them on numerous occasions. He was under pressure from the police, he said."

Given such admission, it was hardly surprising that Mr. Mansfield felt able to call O'Connor a liar. In that he had O’Connor’s support.

Do note that this is the same man who sold the IRA a pup and did so on behalf of MI5-Special Branch. O’Connor was obviously level headed, confident, convincing and consistent in what was transacted with the IRA – think of the potential consequences if it were otherwise.

Contrast that performance with his alleged dealings with Lancashire Special Branch and ask yourself which is the real Raymond O'Connor.

O'Connor acted out his role convincingly with the republican movement, encouraging an IRA interest in the Weeton camp. But that was only in keeping with expectations. You see, MI5 chose O’Connor because they felt he could deliver – and deliver he did.

O'Connor went to Dublin, indubitably subject to precautions worked out on his behalf between the British and Irish authorities, to meet the IRA at the behest of the security services on a mission they believed sufficiently important to justify the risk, even if the risk was more measured than apparent. They evidently trusted O'Connor and thought him capable of the undertaking.

Can you believe that MI5-Special Branch would ask of and subject a man who had just walked in from the street to take such a risk? No. They would have to know their man long and well to make that judgement. Yet if you take the word of the British, they only knew O'Connor for days before despatching him to Dublin to enter the lion's den of IRA leadership.

 

O'Connor showed courage and a cool head in his exchanges with the IRA. Compare that with his alleged dealings with the Lancashire police, as portrayed by court reports, and you will see the behaviour of an aberrant schoolchild, one who is slapped on the wrist for telling fibs.

It is a contrast which provokes the question as to which theatrical performance is real and which is false. Having concluded on that oxymoron, you can then ask: why the lies to the court?

By a majority verdict on Tuesday 07.10.86 the jury at the Old Bailey found Thomas Maguire not guilty.

"Mr. Justice Boreham rejected a defence application for costs. Commenting to Maguire's counsel: 'The less I say about this, the better.'"

The latter sentence is laden with hidden message.

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