A key witness who said he and a colleague obtained a sawn-off shot gun and planted it on a Travellers' encampment in north Donegal eight years ago became a "favourite son" of senior Garda authorities in Dublin, a Letterkenny Circuit Court was told yesterday.
Det Sgt John White (50) is charged with planting the firearm at a camp at Burnfoot near the Donegal-Derry border in May 1998, the day before the weapon was discovered during a search, following which seven men were arrested and held before being released without charge the following night.
The key prosecution witness, Det Garda Thomas Kilcoyne, made his statement to the Carty inquiry three years later, in June 2001.
"He became the golden boy of An Garda Síochána and he became the favourite son of Special Branch in Dublin," Det Sgt White said. "He became the favourite son of the Garda authorities."
He rejected previous evidence from assistant commissioner Dermot Jennings that work involving a source who provided information on planned dissident republican attacks was drying up by June 1998. "I can assure you before God, that is not the case," he said.
Det Sgt White said that between July 24th and August 14th, 1998, he passed on information orally to Mr Jennings. Forty-eight hours before a bomb was detonated in Omagh, Co Tyrone, on August 15th, 1998, he gave information to the assistant commissioner and "none of this was passed on to the Northern Ireland authorities, and I know that".
Det Sgt White said he met Mr Jennings in a Dublin pub on August 11th or 12th and "informed him there was another operation coming on, a special order had been requested by the Real IRA for a car for terrorist activity". This information was included in a report he wrote on August 18th, he said.
"He informed me the informant was coming under serious suspicion by people in south Armagh," Det Sgt White said. "He said to me, John, we're going to let this one go through." Det Sgt White did not know the destination of the bomb, but he had not known the proposed target in other cases either, and those had been successfully intercepted.
The sergeant said he was willing to take a lie detector test and was "isolated for the past five years" while Det Garda Kilcoyne, who made "a false statement", had been granted immunity from prosecution.