Did the intelligence officers and SAS have another option or was the Loughgall operation inevitable? The intelligence expert who regards the ambush as ‘an act of revenge’ says there were several choices open to them. First, if E4A did have the explosives under observation for days or weeks, then Weapons Intelligence Unit specialists might have been able to make the bomb components inert. This would have meant the people inside the RUC station would not have been at risk, even if the operation had been allowed to proceed. That they did not render the explosives safe may be seen in terms of their desire for a ‘clean kill’ – had the men been shot at the site without the digger blowing up, it would have been harder to justify the need for an ambush.
Second, the covert operators had the chance to step up UDR patrols, as they had done, according to the intelligence expert, with the same IRA group on several previous occasions. Third, they could have arrested the men as they came to fit the explosives in the digger. They could also have arrested Lynagh or Kelly, if they knew where they were, shortly before the attack. Finally it is also possible that the security forces could have allowed the attack to go ahead, keeping the group under surveillance, and then attempted to arrest them as they returned to their homes. However this last option involved unacceptable risks for the people of Loughgall, as there was no guarantee that nobody would be killed by the bomb.
In November 1989 a court in Armagh awarded £2652 damages to the Buckleys, the couple who had taken cover in a ditch during the firing, for the nervous distress they had suffered. In April 1991 the Ministry of Defence paid Anthony Hughes’ widow ‘substantial’ compensation in an out of court settlement. The Crown lawyers insisted that the payment did not constitute an admission of liability.
The lawyers’ stance may have reflected the belief of the three SAS soldiers who shot the Hughes that the brothers were in fact part of the IRA operation. They told colleagues that they had seen Oliver Hughes climb into the Citroën after soldiers opened fire on the Toyota van. Although SAS men administered first aid to Oliver Hughes, some believe he would have died but for an RUC HMSU officer insisting that an ambulance be brought for him immediately.
The SAS soldiers’ belief notwithstanding, all other evidence points to the Hughes brothers being law-abiding citizens who inadvertently wandered into the ambush. Although they wore boiler suits, neither had gloves, balaclavas or weapons. Since this shooting was the only blemish on the security forces ‘clean kill’, security chiefs would clearly have preferred to have announced publicly, if it were true, that the brothers were IRA men and one had been arrested. Local nationalists, people deeply critical of the IRA, deny that the brothers were members of that organization.
The Sunday Times journalists, in their book Ambush, say that after the incident speculation was rife, ‘newspaper reports quoting the usually unnamed intelligence sources “revealed” that a high ranking “sleeper”, a mole in the IRA’s ranks, had been activated to divulge forthcoming IRA plans that would allow the security forces to set up an ambush and score a quick victory to counter the swell of republican pride that had greeted the news of Judge Gibson’s assassination.’ The journalists despatched such speculation saying, ‘In fact the ambush was handed to the SAS on a plate. The east Tyrone Brigade had devised a plan so ambitious, yet so cumbersome, that routine surveillance and good detective work had given the RUC plenty of warning.’
IRA statements also discounted the possibility of an informer. It was not the right time for them to sling allegations that the men had been betrayed from within their own community. Later suggestions emerged from within the republican community that the police had known about the forthcoming raid because two Provisionals on a reconnaissance mission had been recognized after their car broke down in Loughgall. As in other incidents, both the security forces and the IRA wanted to deflect attention from treachery within the nationalist community.
The intelligence expert who was familiar with the operation says there was indeed an informer. The confidence of the Sunday Times journalists in ruling out the likelihood of a mole must be questioned in the light of events which took place in 1989, a year after their book appeared.
On 21 May RUC officers stopped a car outside Ardboe in Tyrone. In the back, hidden under a coat and nearly hysterical, was a woman in her late thirties, Collette O’Neill. Also in the car was John Corr, later claimed by Crown lawyers to be the commander of the IRA in Coalisland, and Brian Arthurs, brother of one of the men killed at Loughgall. The odds of a police patrol making such a discovery by chance were slim.
There was speculation that Mrs O’Neill was the Loughgall informer and that she had activated her ‘panic button’ transmitter shortly before her abduction. The Irish News suggested that the IRA had discovered her identity by taking documents from the car of two senior RUC officers killed in south Armagh in March 1989.
Following the incident O’Neill and her two children were taken into protective custody and housed at HQNI, Lisburn. Three weeks later she was taken to Nottingham to a safe house where she was protected by RUC officers. Meanwhile the Crown prepared a case of kidnapping against Corr and Arthurs.
Such is the power of community ties that O’Neill soon became unhappy in her exile. It appears that her husband and others in her village disowned her.
