Chief Constable Hugh Orde came to Dublin yesterday to rebut Sinn Féin's charges that "Stormontgate" was a police con job, writes Mark Hennessy
Hugh Orde became Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland a month before police arrived at Stormont in large numbers on October 4th 2002, to search one Sinn Féin office. The television images of officers, one or two accompanied by Alsatian dogs, leaving the building doomed the Northern Executive and Assembly.
Speaking yesterday, following his meeting with Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, Mr Orde acknowledged: "I am on record as saying that the search at Stormont could have been done better.
"I said that within 24 hours. I was the first chief ever to criticise his own officers, apparently. I said that that was not done very well. But we only searched one office, and we had a warrant," he said.
The one office searched belonged to Denis Donaldson, the man who confirmed last week that he was a British spy for the last two decades.
"If I had wanted to make mischief I would have searched every single one. The way we did it was clumsy. I have said that. But that's the sad reality of the culture of the place.
"If for 30 years every time you do a search someone tries to kill you, then you turn up with a reasonable number of people. No one thought, 'This is Stormont'. No one thought, 'This is just one office, or that we could do this in a different way,'" he told The Irish Times. Furthermore, Mr Orde is adamant that the PSNI had nothing to do with bringing television cameras to Stormont to witness the death knell of the North's political institutions.
"We did not get media there. That is just nonsense. It was the Shinners that were herding the media about. That is not me saying that, it is the media."
Mr Orde insists that one single camera crew was present at Stormont to film Northern Ireland's then environment minister Dermot Nesbitt's plea to Northern shoppers to use less plastic bags.
"They did not know we were coming. There was a camera crew up there because he was announcing something about plastic recycling. The people up there got a great scoop.
"The people ringing up to get the rest of you up there were Sinn Féin, not us. My officers don't want to be photographed. They spent 30 years not wanting to be photographed," he said.
Despite Sinn Féin's denials, the Chief Constable insists that IRA had gathered intelligence at Stormont, some of it straight from the NI Secretary of State's office.
Besides addresses for police, prison officers and others, the intelligence haul taken from underneath Mr Donaldson's west Belfast bed included transcripts of conversations between senior politicians.
"Why would I copy transcripts of conversations between the Taoiseach and the prime minister, or notes of conversations between the prime minister and President Bush? There were notes of meetings between the prime minister and other political parties. Note the emphasis on the word 'other'. Why would I copy that? Why would I put that in a rucksack in west Belfast," he said. Under law, the Chief Constable cannot confirm, or deny whether Denis Donaldson was a British informer, even though he complains that it means that he cannot defend the PSNI properly against Sinn Féin criticism.
"Sinn Féin knows this. All I can do is get as many of the facts as I can out so that people can form their own judgment from an informed point of view."
Criticising Sinn Féin for failing to acknowledge the changes made in the PSNI since the Patten Report recommendations, he said: "We have done everything that was asked of us.
"We proved on the 10th of September that we can defend nationalists. Not one loyalist broke through police lines.
"My guys deployed under live fire to stop that. Have they even acknowledged that? Give me one example of a Sinn Féin leader saying nothing, or saying that we did a reasonable job, or saying that we did sort of okay. Not one, not one."
Opinion: David Adams - page 14