There was no political motive behind the decision to drop charges against three men accused of spying at Stormont, the British attorney general said yesterday.
In a letter to an influential committee of MPs which has been pressing for more information on the affair, Lord Goldsmith said the decision not to proceed with the case against leading Sinn Féin member Denis Donaldson; his son-in-law, Ciaran Kearney; and civil servant William Mackessy followed information from Chief Constable Hugh Orde.
The Northern Ireland Affairs Committee had been pressing the British prime minister for more information following the sensational withdrawing of the charges last month on the grounds that the case "was no longer in the public interest". This led to suspicions that the charges were dropped on political grounds.
In a letter to Tony Blair last month, Northern Ireland Affairs Committee chairman Sir Patrick Cormack urged Mr Blair to put as much information out in the public domain as possible, given that the original arrests had had huge political implications.
A short time later Mr Donaldson admitted publicly that he had been a British agent for more than 20 years.
In his letter Lord Goldsmith wrote: "I may give you ... my absolute assurance that there was no political interference and there was no question of the decision being taken to cover any possible embarrassment to the government."
However, he recognised that the decision to drop charges had the potential to damage confidence in the North's new Public Prosecution Service. Despite this, he claimed he could give no further information. "To do so might be liable to give rise to the very damage the decision to discontinue was intended to avoid."