Mr Martin McGuinness quit the IRA nearly 30 years ago, he told the Bloody Sunday Inquiry tonight.
As he questioned the independence of Lord Saville's £155 million sterling investigation, the 53-year-old former paramilitary chief insisted he left the Provisionals in the early 1970s.
He even claimed he had never read the IRA's so-called "green book" issuing guidelines to all volunteers. The Sinn Fein chief's claim directly contradicted the assessment of security chiefs in Belfast, who believe he was heavily involved in the upper echelons of the terror organisation after it declared its 1994 ceasefire.
Facing intense questioning on his second day in the witness box, he was challenged to reveal if he had ended his terrorist career.
Mr Edwin Glasgow QC, representing most of the paratroopers who were in the Bogside on Bloody Sunday when 13 unarmed civilians were shot dead in January 1972, asked: "When did you leave the IRA, if you did?"
The Mid Ulster MP, annoyed by the line of questioning, accused the inquiry of being fixated by his past. But finally relenting, he claimed: "I left the IRA in the early part of the 1970s."
Earlier, Mr McGuinness resisted pressure by the Inquiry to reveal the locations of the IRA's command centre and arms dump in the Bogside on Bloody Sunday.
The self-confessed IRA commander said he had last night contacted people who had provided assistance to the terror group but they had urged him not to reveal the addresses.
"Family members would be put at grave risk of attack by loyalist paramilitaries who have killed republicans and continue to target republicans."
Even though Mr McGuinness's landmark decision to tell the hearing about his role as second in command of the IRA in Derry at the time of the shootings, Mr Glasgow asked why he had waited so long to co-operate with an inquiry he had campaigned for.
Mr McGuinness said: "I accept that it is a distinguished tribunal but I do not accept that it is independent."
Amid claims that people in Derry were too scared to give evidence contradicting Mr McGuinness's version of events, Mr Glasgow said the IRA had exacted horrific punishments on those who crossed it.
He referred to the murder and secret burial of Belfast mother of ten Jean McConville, whose funeral only took place last week more than 30 years after the Provisionals abducted her.
The widow's crime was to tend to a wounded soldier in a staunchly republican area of the city, Mr Glasgow said. Asked if he had used his influence in persuading the IRA to help locate Mrs McConville's body, Mr McGuinness agreed that what had happened was wrong.
"I would like to think that I have, with others, played a role in trying to alleviate the plight of relatives who have suffered a great injustice," he added.
Agencies