The loyalist gang which assassinated solicitor Patrick Finucane also planned to shoot two more lawyers, the Canadian judge launching a new Finucane inquiry is to be told.
The lawyers targeted were Patrick McGrory and his one-time pupil, Mr Oliver Kelly, according to a front-page report by BBC Panorama reporter John Ware in today's Guardian newspaper.
The former Canadian Supreme Court judge, Mr Peter Cory, arrives in London next week.
The hitherto unknown assassination plans against the two lawyers were discovered by the Stevens inquiry, led by the current Metropolitan Police commissioner, Sir John Stevens, whose team is to brief Mr Cory.
Mr McGrory, doyen of Belfast's criminal solicitors, who died of a heart attack in l994, aged 71, was on the council of the Law Society of Northern Ireland. Like Mr Finucane, Mr McGrory and Mr Kelly often represented clients on IRA charges.
Mr Kelly said: "This is what the cops were feeding out to loyalists: if you defended someone in court you were acting against the state.They felt that you should throw in the towel; you shouldn't defend someone to the best of your ability."
Neither lawyer was warned their lives were in peril. Mr McGrory acted for the families of three unarmed IRA members who were shot dead by the SAS in Gibraltar.
Although neither Mr Kelly nor Mr McGrory was shot, in the case of Mr McGrory, details of the lawyer's movements were collected by the British army's intelligence agent, Brian Nelson. The draft Stevens report says the failure to provide a warning was "another Finucane tragedy in the making".
The Stevens inquiry draft says that an "explicit targeting document" on Mr McGrory supplied by Mr Nelson should have rung "all the alarm bells, for this could clearly be solicitor number two".
According to Mr McGrory's son Barra, within hours of Mr Finucane's murder, Irish government officials at the request of Mr Charles Haughey sought assurances from the British government and the RUC about his father's safety.
Mr McGrory, who is a partner in his late father's practice in Belfast, said a senior Irish government official came to their home the day after the Finucane murder and made "telephone representations to the RUC at a very high level that lawyers like my father should be protected, and that the security forces should be aware of the dangers".
Senior RUC officers arrived at Mr McGrory's home and offered to provide him with armed escorts. He declined this, but did take up the option of a personal protection weapon.