A secret service officer said today he was not aware that an account he received about Bloody Sunday from an informer he regarded as reliable was nonsense.
The MI5 officer, known only as 'Julian', said he did not make any formal assessment of Observer B's reliability when he took over handling his case from army intelligence.
Observer B claimed he was told the IRA fired the first shots on Bloody Sunday, and alleged he saw IRA members carrying out military drills in the city in the week before British soldiers shot dead 13 civil rights marchers. The informer died last year.
'Julian' told the Saville Inquiry in London today that he understood from Observer B's intelligence that paratroopers were pinned down at a rubble barricade by firing coming from Glenfada Park on January 30th, 1972.
Mr Barry MacDonald, QC, representing most of the families of the dead and injured, said: "Did you subsequently establish that that was nonsense?"
"No," Julian replied.
"Did you make any effort to establish whether or not this information you received from Observer B accorded with the facts as suggested even by the paratroopers?" Mr MacDonald asked.
"No, we did not have any communication with the paratroopers, nor would it have been my job to do so," 'Julian' replied.
When asked was it not his job to test the reliability of the information he was receiving, 'Julian' replied: "It was my job to rely on the reliability of the agent who supplied the information and on that I was perfectly satisfied."
Mr MacDonald added: "We already know the soldiers did not get to the barricade and were not pinned down at the barricade and did not run along that line that you have outlined on the map?"
"I was not aware of that and I had no reason to doubt what Observer B was saying," Julian replied.
The MI5 officer said it was possible Observer B could have been mistaken in his dating of when he saw the drilling of IRA members as in the week before Bloody Sunday.
PA