Jarleth Kearney, Andersonstown News, 6 October 2003
Four days ago, exactly one year after the PSNI raids on local homes that precipitated the collapse of the Stormont Assembly, the Special Branch's former Belfast commander, Bill Lowry, addressed a conference in Washington.
The specific topic of the lecture was 'Terrorism Intelligence Analysis and Counter-Terrorism Operations'.
Lowry was joined in presenting a case study of 'intelligence analysis techniques used against the IRA' by the PSNI's current Head of Special Branch Operations, Superintendent John Short.
The conference in question was the annual Counter-Terrorism and Homeland Security Conference and Expo, held at the Renaissance Washington DC Hotel. Although still serving as a high-grade 'Branch-man', Short has joined Lowry as partner in a Stateside lecturing consultancy that provides 'paid-for presentations' to private and public agencies concerned with intelligence and law-enforcement issues throughout the United States.
It is understood that Short has the approval of the PSNI in his lecturing venture. Lowry left the PSNI in November last year - just weeks after he masterminded a high-profile Special Branch operation, codenamed Torsion.
Operation Torsion was a Special Branch exercise that lasted many months and that culminated, on October 4, 2002, in a high-profile raid of Sinn Féin's Stormont offices, and raids and arrests at local homes. Operation Torsion led to the subsequent charging of four people with possessing documents that could be useful to terrorists.
It has been reported in a recent book by BBC Security Editor, Brian Rowan, that Operation Torsion involved Special Branch breaking into private premises, bugging and tracking private property, and accessing, removing and handling documents - now crucial to the prosecution case - just days before the raids on October 4.
Bill Lowry left the PSNI in acrimonious and disputed circumstances after he was alleged to have been leaking confidential information about Operation Torsion - leaks which the Police Ombudsman subsequently characterised as coinciding with political events.
However, before Lowry left the PSNI, he was privy to one of the most significant, yet low-key, re-structuring exercises that ever took place in relation to Special Branch.
Late on Friday October 11, 2002, and a week to the day after the Stormont raid, a press release was quietly issued by the PSNI, announcing the establishment of a new unit. Not surprisingly, most of the media were wallowing in lurid and sensationalist leaks about those persons already charged - most of which were inaccurate - but which largely emanated from within the PSNI Special Branch.
The structure, implications and strategy of the new unit have never been analysed - until now. REMIT - the Regional Major Investigation Team - was set up under the auspices of the PSNI's Belfast Urban Region, which was then run by Assistant Chief Constable Alan McQuillan.
One consequence of this has been that REMIT has not come under any significant external scrutiny from those agencies charged with examining the restructuring of Crime Branch and specifically Special Branch - such as the Policing Board.
Indeed, in July of this year, a senior nationalist figure on the Policing Board told the Andersonstown News that he had no knowledge of REMIT.
REMIT's stated aim is "to be able to investigate the terrorist organisations themselves, in addition to any terrorist incidents which occur". ACC McQuillan announced that the commander of the new REMIT unit would be Detective Chief Superintendent Phil Wright.
In 1996, Roisin McAliskey - whose case quickly became a cause celebre - identified Phil Wright, then an Inspector, as one of her Castlereagh interrogators. Since then Wright has been consistently linked to a series of high-profile investigations that targeted leading republican figures.
In March 2002, Wright was personally appointed by the former Head of Special Branch and then Chief Constable, Ronnie Flanagan, to investigate the St Patrick's Day burglary at Castlereagh Special Branch offices. Within days of his appointment, the official line that the burglary was 'an inside job' had 'u-turned' to focus on alleged IRA involvement.
Following a familiar theme, nine people - including senior republican political figures - were rounded up in raids that yielded nothing in relation to the Castlereagh investigation. All but one of those arrested by Wright was released without charge, with the other - New Lodge man John O'Hagan - being detained on an unrelated charge.
Six months later in October 2002 Wright co-advised on Bill Lowry's Operation Torsion that led to the raids of local homes and of Sinn Féin offices at Stormont.
By this stage some restructuring of Special Branch was taking place under the pressure of international scrutiny, political negotiations and the Patten reforms. The old E4 department - with its four sub-sections A, B, C and D - was renamed and reorganised.
Special Branch is now known as C3 and has two divisions - intelligence and operations. As a stand-alone unit - ring-fenced within the Belfast Urban structure, but with activities across the North - it is thought that REMIT effectively manages key elements of both divisions of C3 (Special Branch) under the auspices of an ordinary, if specialised, investigation unit.
This structure has a prima facie or ostensible compliance with the National Intelligence Model - as directed by the Policing Board. However, so little is known about REMIT that this assertion is open to question.
One by-product of setting up REMIT is that it has effectively short-circuited external scrutiny of key structural elements of C3 (Special Branch), including its involvement in certain high-profile and controversial investigations.
Another feature of REMIT is that - alongside its apparently limitless resources being used against mainstream republicans - it also assumed responsibility for investigating loyalist and dissident republican activity.
It is believed that REMIT is composed of distinct teams in each regard - for instance, REMIT 1, 2 and 3 - all of which operate under the direct leadership of Phil Wright. Each section, however, also has the ability to transfer resources within the overall framework of REMIT to meet the needs of immediate and specific investigations, based entirely on priorities that are determined by REMIT itself.
These priorities were questioned earlier this year when a senior REMIT officer, Superintendent Roy Suitters, spoke about the murder of Catholic teenager Gerard Lawlor in North Belfast.
Superintendent Suitters publicly remarked on the apparent stagnation in the investigation.
"You have to make decisions at the start of your inquiry, whether it is worth your while, a week later, bringing two people in, who you know have burnt their clothes or got rid of anything that ties them to the murder.
"…the likelihood is that, in most of these cases, when your lines of inquiry come to an end we have to go to the family and say we have done all we can," he said.
In response, local priest Fr Dan Whyte questioned whether political cases such as the 'Stormont investigation' were being prioritised over murder cases such as Gerard Lawlor's.
REMIT has a significant personnel infrastructure ranging through Detective Constables, Sergeants, Inspectors and Superintendents - with Chief Superintendent Phil Wright as the unit's commander - the overall Senior Investigating Officer (SIO).
Initially, it was announced last October that 88 serving detectives would be attached to REMIT, despite the ongoing claims of a detective shortfall within Crime Branch. Crucially, given the time frame involved in training new detectives, most - if not all - of these 88 REMIT officers would have previously served in the RUC.
With REMIT gaining such internal priority status, the Chief Constable then subsequently had to apply to the Policing Board for permission to recruit a further 65 ordinary Detective Constables in July 2003.
The Andersonstown News understands that Criminal Intelligence Officers, Investigating Officers, seconded Headquarters Analysts, Support Ops Units, and specialised operatives from both intelligence and operations divisions of C3 (Special Branch), are all expressly forbidden from discussing their REMIT work with other colleagues in the PSNI. This secrecy is, apparently, even restricted to the answering of phones - with officers simply volunteering that the extension belongs to the "Enquiry Team".
Meanwhile in court cases that REMIT officers are responsible for managing, euphemistic phrases like the 'Stormont Investigation Team' or the 'Castlereagh Investigation Team' are invoked - but REMIT is never mentioned.
Despite the unit's high-profile activities, senior REMIT officer, Inspector Michael McErlean recently refused to comment about Operation Torsion during a court hearing for those arrested last October.
Legal sources have indicated that REMIT is currently pumping massive resources into analysing extraneous prosecution evidence in a number of ongoing cases, in a bid to implicate other individuals - presumably targeted and prioritised by REMIT. The existence of REMIT did not feature at all when the Chief Constable Hugh Orde outlined significant structural change to Crime Branch and to the hierarchy of the PSNI in July 2003.
Notably, Chief Superintendent Maggie Hunter - who has overseen the work of REMIT throughout the bulk of its existence in her capacity as Acting ACC for Belfast Urban Region - was yesterday revealed to be the new Head of C3 (Special Branch).
Following the announcement of PSNI restructuring by the Chief Constable in July, the SDLP issued a statement claiming that the new structures mark the effective end of Special Branch.
"These measures represent the dismantling of the 'force within a force'. The previous Chief Constable [Ronnie Flanagan], the current and previous heads of Special Branch [Ray White and Jackie Lamont] and the current head of crime [Chris Albiston] will have moved on by August 2003," said the SDLP.
Sinn Féin, on the other hand, has consistently pointed to reports of the old RUC Special Branch moving en masse to senior management and mainstream leadership positions within the PSNI, in order to mitigate the effects of restructuring.
The party has also demanded a significant programme for the progressive reduction of Special Branch, as well as a cap on the tenure of PSNI officers serving within any single department.
When contacted by the Andersonstown News yesterday, the PSNI could not provide any specific information about the implications of Crime Branch or Special Branch restructuring for the future of REMIT. A PSNI spokesperson simply said: "Crime Operations Department, under ACC Sam Kinkaid, will oversee the running of the REMIT teams."
A similarly non-specific statement was provided in July after the Chief Constable announced restructuring.
In his most recent report, the Police Oversight Commissioner, Tom Constantine referred to "the seriousness of this [the PSNI's] prolonged delay in fulfilling the intent of the Independent Commission [Patten] regarding Special Branch".
As the PSNI today announces the new structure of Crime Branch, nationalists and republicans are left wondering whether the changes will ever meet their needs.
What is certain is that scores of former RUC detectives were hand-picked - over the past 12 to 18 months - to join a new, tight-knit and tightly-run PSNI unit called REMIT. That unit is now responsible for issues of "subversive activity" and "national security" - or in the view of some, 'political policing'. This is the same 'remit' of activity that Special Branch is, and always has been, responsible for covering.
Jarleth Kearney, Andersonstown News, 17 July 2004
What does REMIT really do - that's the big question now being asked about one of the PSNI's most controversial units.
Within recent days contrasting definitions of REMIT's role have emanated from the PSNI press office and the former Special Branch boss Billy Lowry.
The establishment of REMIT (Regional Major Investigation Team) was announced by Assistant Chief Constable Alan McQuillan on October 11, 2002, and the unit was placed under the personal command of Detective Chief Superintendent Phil Wright.
This move brought together a large number of former RUC detectives who were linked to a series of high-profile, politically sensitive cases, particularly involving mainstream republicans.
REMIT is organised to target republicans, dissident republicans and loyalists through distinct 'teams'. It is believed to play a central role in identifying priorities and targets for Special Branch intelligence-gathering and operational units in order to pursue objectives agreed with investigating detectives.
Members of REMIT also have the function of managing cases against targets, if and when such cases get to court.
REMIT's influence was highlighted in the recent John O'Hagan case, which commenced with his arrest in March 2002.
Despite that, six months later REMIT assumed the function of managing his ongoing case, as well as overseeing ongoing 'lines of inquiry'.
Mr O'Hagan was found guilty last Friday of eight counts of possessing information that could be useful to terrorists, including the biographies of senior Conservative Party members John Major and Norman Lamont.
Sinn Féin's Gerry Kelly criticised the case against John O'Hagan as "political".
Established with an initial staff of 88 detectives, REMIT permits the internal re-allocation of resources according to new priorities or targets set by the unit.
These priorities were called into question last year after controversial comments from a senior REMIT member, former Detective Superintendent Roy Suitters, about the unit's failure to apprehend loyalists responsible for the sectarian murder of North Belfast Catholic Gerard Lawlor.
In response, local priest Fr Dan Whyte questioned whether political cases, such as the Operation Torsion/Stormont investigation that precipitated the collapse of the Assembly, were being given priority over the murders of innocent Catholics.
The controversy over REMIT's role has been re-ignited in recent days.
OCTOBER 11, 2002: According to ACC Alan McQuillan, REMIT was created as a "specialist unit which will concentrate on the most serious crimes and, in particular, terrorist crime.
"We want to be able to investigate the terrorist organisations themselves, in addition to any terrorist incidents which occur.
"These steps will allow us to target serious crime in Belfast much more effectively and at the same time ring fence local CID teams," he said.
JUNE 10, 2004: The PSNI - responding to queries from the Andersonstown News on Crime Operations Branch - issued the following statement through its press office: "REMIT teams were established to deal with the demands of murder investigations in Belfast prior to the creation of Crime Operations.
"These were staffed by detectives from CID seconded from districts. Murder investigations are now Crime Operations' responsibility. REMIT teams under the control of Belfast Region no longer exist."
JULY 11, 2004: In an interview published on the internet, former Belfast Special Branch boss, Bill Lowry - who was privy to the foundation of REMIT before he left the PSNI in disputed and acrimonious circumstances - described the unit in the following terms: "REMIT is a body that checks on the efficiency of investigations."
He continued: "it has nowhere near the powers or role that is suggested in the Andersonstown News".
So between "investigating terrorist organisations, in addition to any terrorist incidents which occur", and "dealing with the demands of murder investigations", as well as "checking on the efficiency of investigations", it appears that REMIT's 'remit' within the PSNI stretches even farther and wider than previously suspected.
Jarleth Kearney, Andersonstown News, 21 August 2004
Senior official sources have claimed that members of the Policing Board are "not satisfied" with the Northern Ireland Office's continued control over the Organised Crime Taskforce (OCTF), the Andersonstown News can reveal.
And the emerging difficulty could have implications for key political negotiations later this autumn.
The OCTF was established in 2000 and is a multi-agency group anchored in the office of the NIO Security Minister, involving various security agencies - including the PSNI.
It remains the only major aspect of policing in the North that the Policing Board does not have some involvement in overseeing, and the NIO's stranglehold over the OCTF is significant.
But with the issue of devolution of policing and justice power to a local Assembly moving to centre stage, the SDLP has instead launched a battery of attacks against Sinn Féin.
West Belfast Councillor Alex Attwood this week said that both the DUP and Sinn Féin "should understand the SDLP is the guardian of Patten".
"We will oppose… the placing of greater policing power in ministerial hands.
"There is no going back to the past and there is no future in an all-powerful Justice Minister riding roughshod over policing policies."
Last week the Policing Board member claimed that his party "is driving the campaign to undo the role of MI5 in the north, the big strategic issue, while Sinn Fein is silent".
This so-called "big strategic issue" of MI5's role in the North has become central to the SDLP's approach on devolution.
It is a position broadly shared by others, such as the Policing Board's Vice-Chairperson, Denis Bradley.
The SDLP has argued that the PSNI Special Branch - rather than MI5 - must hold the dominant position in terms of state-sponsored intelligence-gathering throughout the North in the future.
There are two primary reasons given by the SDLP to support this argument.
Firstly, the SDLP suggest that - unlike MI5 - the Special Branch can be held fully to account.
However, in recent comments to this newspaper, Denis Bradley stated that the PSNI can only be questioned by the Policing Board when operations are over - not before or during operations.
The same goes for the Police Ombudsman and the District Policing Partnerships.
There is, of course, a glaring contrast to this practice: the British Secretary of State and NIO Security Minister are routinely advised and consulted about ongoing day-to-day PSNI Special Branch 'political policing' operations - including the bugging of phones, cars and homes belonging to nationalist politicians (maybe even members of the Policing Board).
Likewise, both NIO Ministers have detailed access to the operational activities of the OCTF in relation to so-called "organised crime".
Secondly, the SDLP argues that MI5 has different strategic objectives from Special Branch in relation to intelligence-gathering in Ireland.
The party suggests that the Special Branch is primarily interested in policing, while the spooks are primarily interested in politics.
However, this argument is also challenged on a regular basis by the publications and directives emanating from the Home Office - MI5's de facto political wing.
These papers strongly suggest that there is no conflict between the long-term strategic objectives of MI5 and police Special Branches throughout Britain.
Both agencies are agreed on the need to construct an all-encompassing intelligence database of the general populace in Britain (including here in the North, and encroaching on the South of Ireland) to permit targeted pro-active and re-active actions.
Alex Attwood's attack on Sinn Féin this week coincided with the release of Home Office plans on the future of 'normal' policing throughout Britain.
Yet despite the important implications of this consultation paper for the North, it did not register a blip on the local political radar screen.
The proposed new powers-to-be mainstreamed into 'normal' policing include the widening of the circumstances in which citizens can be arrested; shifting the target of search warrants onto specific persons rather than specific properties; permitting DNA swabs, on-the-spot electronic photographing, covert fingerprint recording and covert footwear impressions - "for speculative purposes"; massively increasing the use of Automatic Number Plate Recognition; the introduction of even more draconian powers to restrict freedom of assembly outside Parliament; and establishing a range of new criminal offences.
Overall, Britain's domestic intelligence strategy is now being vigorously developed both structurally and practically.
On a structural level, the Home Office announced this week that the former head of MI5, Stephen Lander, will chair the new Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA).
SOCA is kind of Britain-wide version of the North's Organised Crime Taskforce.
When it becomes operational with 5,000 investigators in 2006, SOCA will become an umbrella agency for the cross-pollination of policing and intelligence activities across Britain to target "organised crime".
The involvement of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) - to which the PSNI is affiliated - alongside various domestic intelligence agencies in SOCA, is an important indicative factor for the North.
Similar co-ordinated efforts in relation to the targeting of political subversives and terrorist activists are also ongoing - such as former RUC Superintendent Bryan Bell's appointment as the National Co-ordinator of Special Branch earlier this year.
An NIO spokesperson said yesterday that the implications of SOCA for the North will become clearer when legislation passes through Westminster in the autumn.
Speculation is mounting, however, that the North's OCTF (involving input from the PSNI) could come within the ambit of the Britain-wide SOCA.
Meanwhile, at a practical level, the Home Office has announced that MI5 will double in size over the next two years.
A vast array of new technology is being deployed to monitor, track and control the general population.
Mandatory ID cards with unique biometric identifiers and intimate personal information will be legally in place for the whole population within a decade.
An ever-widening net of so-called evidence will become permissible in British courts, including phone and e-mail taps, as well as new powers to "compel witnesses".
A recent court decision has backed the British government's readiness to act on information adduced during torture sessions by other countries.
Sweeping new powers are being introduced to make the stopping, searching, arrest and detention of citizens easier.
Massive amounts of data relating to personal, business and community life are being retained by numerous government and private agencies for long durations. New technology is being exploited to increase the "mining" of such data in relation to targeted individuals.
Recovery of "criminal assets" is set to become routine, with agencies able to retain 50 per cent of what they seize.
And government agencies are becoming more strictly vetted to ensure that vast sections of the population are excluded from public service positions.
(The ban on Irish nationals in the NIO hierarchy and Senior Civil Service is an existing example.)
All of these developments are evidence of the ideological and operational coalescence of policing and intelligence agencies.
This strategic heave by powerful forces in Whitehall to mainstream the role of intelligence agencies into 'normal' policing has already been lab-tested in the North.
Informed observers believe, therefore, that the fight between MI5 and PSNI Special Branch over "control of intelligence-gathering" in the North (whether real or perceived) is now a secondary factor - and maybe even a distraction - in the devolution debate.
Practical politics dictate that in the long-term the influence of Britain's domestic intelligence agenda could only be frustrated in the North by the achievement of Irish independence.
But in the short-term, only the transfer of substantive powers to an authoritative stand-alone political ministry could frustrate MI5's role - and the PSNI Special Branch's malign influence - in policing.
The precedent for such political control has already been set by the examples of the NIO's stranglehold over the Organised Crime Taskforce and the Secretary of State's operational knowledge of Special Branch activities.
Whether locally accountable politicians can finally wrestle control over the political policemen away from the NIO and British government is something that will become clearer in the next few months.
Jarleth Kearney, Andersonstown News, 25 September 2004
The Andersonstown News has been told that one of the PSNI's most prominent detectives, Chief Superintendent Phil Wright, is in charge of the 'Tasking and Co-ordinating Group' (TCG) for Special Branch.
The Police Oversight Commissioner, Al Hutchinson, made the disclosure during an in-depth interview following the publication of his 11th progress report on the implementation of the Patten recommendations.
It is believed to be the first time that Detective Chief Superintendent Wright's current role in co-ordinating the activities of Special Branch (now known as C3) has been formally identified.
Over the past decade, Chief Superintendent Wright has risen to prominence in connection with a string of high-profile cases against mainstream republicans.
He is currently the most senior detective in the North and plays a central role in advising on the targets and priorities for investigations by the controversial Special Branch/Major Investigation Team (MIT - formerly known as REMIT).
The Force Level TCG - in which Chief Supt Wright now plays a lead role - is a key development within the PSNI's newly established Crime Operations Department (COD).
As well as highlighting Chief Supt Wright's current role, the Oversight Commissioner also explained that he had personally observed the TCG for Special Branch in session.
"Actually, I did attend one of those meetings, sat in and observed the Tasking and Co-ordinating Group as well, that is one where Phil Wright is in charge there. It's chaired by the ACC.
"I was there one time and I observed an interaction and it looked fine to me, but I don't know what happened the next day, but there is a co-ordinating group," explained Mr Hutchinson.
In his report the Oversight Commissioner found that Special Branch's staffing levels have only reduced by 17 per cent in the last five years - a figure which contrasts starkly with claims by some members of the Policing Board that Special Branch is down by 50 per cent.
And Mr Hutchinson also stated that the PSNI "has not provided" key statistics to him in relation to the way Special Branch allocates and uses its resources.
A key focus of Al Hutchinson's report related to the number of Catholics in the PSNI's civilian workforce which has risen from just 12.3 per cent of the total to 14.4 per cent in the last five years.
Meanwhile, the Policing Board also published its annual report this week, which revealed that the level of Catholic participation in the PSNI sat at just 11.9 per cent on January 1, 2004 - substantially behind the timetable laid down by Patten of 13.5 per cent by March 2004.
The SDLP's Policing spokesperson, Alex Attwood, welcomed the report of the Policing Oversight Commissioner, stating that "it is proof positive of the pace of policing change".
"All of this confirms that the SDLP called policing right and Sinn Féin keep getting it wrong. The SDLP also strongly agrees with the Oversight Commissioner's concerns over the continued threat to DPP members, the need to make police and DPPs work even better, increasing civilianisation and reducing sickness, and the recent delay in registration of notifiable interests," said Mr Attwood.
However, Sinn Féin's Policing spokesperson, Gerry Kelly, said that more work is still needed before a new beginning to policing is achieved.
"The transfer of policing and justice powers is crucial to this.
"To have the new beginning to policing promised by the Patten report there must be maximum transfer of powers.
"Sinn Féin again put the vital issue of the transfer of powers on policing and justice at the centre of the Leeds Castle negotiations.
"It is our view that we will achieve our goals on policing and justice and that the tenure of both the oversight commissioner on policing and the oversight commissioner of criminal justice should be extended to complete the job.
"We don't have accountable policing. We don't have representative policing. As events this summer in Ardoyne and Lurgan proved, the problem of political policing remains," said Mr Kelly.