Det Sgt John White, charged with planting a shotgun near a Donegal Traveller site eight years ago, was working to stop a massive bomb attack in Northern Ireland, a Circuit Court jury in Letterkenny heard yesterday.
Statements from a key prosecution witness were amended when it became clear that mobile telephone records concerning the anti-terrorist operation contradicted his initial account of the gun-planting incident, a defence barrister said.
Det Garda Thomas Kilcoyne, giving evidence for the third day, said he saw his colleague, Det Sgt White, obtain, test-fire and bring a sawn-off double-barrelled shotgun to the north Donegal Travellers' site near the Border on the night of May 22nd, 1998.
The sergeant received a telephone call from an informant and contacted a senior intelligence officer, Chief Supt (now assistant commissioner) Dermot Jennings, the trial heard. The information resulted in a Garda operation which intercepted two cars, one carrying a 940 lb bomb, heading for the Border. Two men were later convicted and sentenced to 14 years in prison.
Defence barrister Damien Crawford said Det Garda Kilcoyne's 2001 statements made no mention of a trip to Letterkenny to change cars. Instead, Det Garda Kilcoyne initially said the pair "drove to Gortahork". The barrister said that mobile phone records for Det Sgt White showed he could not have travelled straight to Gortahork, obtained and test-fired a weapon, and made it north to the area near Letterkenny where the mobile phone mast received his call to Chief Supt Jennings in the 21 minutes since Det Garda Kilcoyne said the plan was proposed and he phoned his wife.
The call related to a planned dissident attack in the North, Mr Crawford said. "That's what Sgt White was doing that night, relaying that information. What Sgt White was doing that night was much more significant than searching a Traveller camp."
Det Garda Kilcoyne said the importance of Sgt White's other work made it "equally difficult for me to go to say 'look, we're after planting a gun'."
But Mr Crawford put it to Mr Kilcoyne that his first statement in June 2001, and a later one in September 2001, made no mention of a trip to Letterkenny to change cars."You added the trip to Letterkenny," Mr Crawford said. "It was only when the tribunal went through the evidence you realised that the phone mast evidence tripped you up."
Det Garda Kilcoyne said Det Sgt White "was not just my sergeant, he was my friend. I trusted him." The jury would "have to decide whether I am telling the truth, [ Supt] Kevin Lennon is telling the truth, or John White is telling the truth".
The trial resumes on Tuesday.