Unsafe phone used for fatal visit, judge told

A SENIOR RUC officer made as many as two trips a week from Armagh to Dundalk Garda station and arranged his last, fatal visit over an unsecured phone line, the Smithwick Tribunal heard yesterday.

Retired Garda superintendent Pat Tierney told the tribunal he had been concerned Supt Bob Buchanan also repeatedly used the same car to travel to the Republic in the months before he was killed in an IRA ambush.

Mr Tierney said he met Supt Buchanan 12 times in six weeks before the ambush. Nine of the meetings were in the Republic, seven of them in Dundalk Garda station. He said the RUC officer had had a relaxed and easy-going manner, generally travelling in his own Northern-registered red Vauxhall and parking it in the same car park in front of Dundalk Garda station, or on a nearby street.

Supt Buchanan and RUC colleague Chief Supt Harry Breen were murdered by the IRA as they returned from one such meeting in Dundalk on March 20th, 1989.

The tribunal is inquiring into suggestions Garda members or other State employees colluded in the fatal shootings, which took place just north of the Border as the two RUC officers returned to Armagh.

Mr Tierney, a Garda district officer in Dundalk at the time of the killings, said a number of phone calls were made between Dundalk Garda station and an Armagh police station on the morning of the killings, but a “scrambler” for use on sensitive calls would not have been used as the Armagh police station did not have a compatible scrambling system.

Mr Tierney said he believed a conversation between his superior officer in Dundalk and Supt Buchanan could have been electronically overheard. He told Judge Peter Smithwick he had left on a patrol of Border crossings at about 11.30am with Insp Frank Murray, now deceased.

He said Insp Murray had mentioned as they returned to Dundalk about 1.45pm that Supt Buchanan was travelling from Armagh with a colleague that day.

Mr Tierney said he had “a snack” in the town and was back in the station soon after 2pm. Later he took a call from a colleague in the RUC asking whether the officers had left, as the RUC was hearing reports of an ambush involving a red Vauxhall car near Meigh, Co Armagh. Mr Tierney checked and reported the officers had left Dundalk station.

He told Judge Smithwick he feared the worst as he and a colleague went to the Border crossing. From the southern side he could see a Red Vauxhall sideways on the road and concluded it was indeed Supt Buchanan and Chief Supt Breen who had been murdered.

Asked by counsel for the Garda whether he had had concerns about the RUC officer’s safety, Mr Tierney replied: “I certainly was a little apprehensive. I was conscious of the fact that he was coming quite often in the same car. It was a concern.”

He agreed the low wall at the Garda station would have made the red Vauxhall visible when it was in the car park, and its yellow number plates would have made it more noticeable.

He said the open nature of the Garda station, with gates on to separate roads, made it possible to observe it from a variety of angles. He said he had no evidence the station had been under IRA observation, but would not be surprised to learn it was.

Retired garda George Flynn said he took the first call from Armagh at about 9.15am, and while he did not see Supt Buchanan that day, he said the officer was there at least once a week. “Twice a week was possible. His car was pretty regular around the place.”

He said the Garda station had been firebombed during the Troubles, and gardaí would have been at some risk themselves. In 30 years’ service there he had not known of any officer who would compromise the safety of anyone in the station, he said.