A former British army intelligence officer yesterday denied trying to justify the Bloody Sunday shootings by inventing claims that four of the men killed were on a wanted list.
Mr Maurice Tugwell, who was the Colonel General Staff (Information Policy) at Headquarters Northern Ireland in 1972, told the Saville Inquiry sitting in London he had made "an honest mistake".
He originally made the claim in a radio interview after seeking oral intelligence checks on the 13 unarmed men shot dead by British paratroopers on a civil rights march on January 30th, 1972.
Mr Barry MacDonald QC, representing many of the bereaved families, asked if the rumour had been started to support the shootings.
Col Tugwell replied: "Thank you for asking that because I would like the opportunity to refute that. I did not invent that at all, it was an honest mistake."
He has apologised to the inquiry for the comment.
The inquiry was also told that army records regarding the order to send in the paratroopers do not fully reflect the decisions made at the time. The Quartermaster General at Ebrington Barracks, the headquarters of the 8th Brigade covering Derry, was in the room when the order was given.
The officer, identified only as INQ 1900, was taken through every entry of the brigade log and paratrooper log for that day.
He could not recall specifics of the actual order given to 1 Para's commanding officer although he could remember a summary of it.
Written orders show there was a call to go in behind one barrier for an arrest operation, and permission for that was given.
In fact three companies of 1 Para entered the Bogside. They went over that barrier and also another in armoured vehicles.
INQ 1900 said sending in one unit would have been military "nonsense" for an arrest operation, and there must have been a "misunderstanding" in the logs.
INQ 1900 said he believed the actual order had been for 1 Para to carry out the arrest operation and for a sub-unit to go through Barrier 14 at the same time. The logs do not accurately reflect this, he said.
Lord Saville said: "As I understand you to say militarily it does not make much sense because if you are going to go and do an arrest operation you would want to send units, not just one barrier or barricade, but through a number so you could in fact get round behind and encircle the hooligans." The written orders call for one unit to be deployed through Barrier 14 to "pick up yobbos in William Street/Little James Street".
INQ 1900 remembered advice that they were not to conduct a running battle down Rossville Street where it is believed they could have been drawn into a possible sniper attack. Some soldiers who opened fire during Bloody Sunday committed "blatantly wrong" breaches of the army's rules of engagement, INQ 1900 said.
Hand-written statements from soldiers to the Royal Military Police, taken from the soldiers on Bloody Sunday, had left him with "concerns" that the rules of engagement contained on the Yellow Card document had been broken.
INQ 1900 said "it was clear to me that much of what had occurred was outside" the requirements of the Yellow Card after reading just two or three of the statements.
He told the brigadier in command of his fears and could tell from the officer's body language he was "pretty depressed" about the situation. The hearing was adjourned until today.