Watch towers in the south Armagh area were not as effective as the local population perceived them to be, a senior British army officer has told the Smithwick Tribunal.
Referred to only as Witness 79 and giving evidence from behind a screen, the officer said he had served three tours of duty with the Royal Fusiliers where he was officer commanding Y Company, based in Forkhill army barracks.
His duties included rostering patrols and he was radio contact with the towers, patrols on the ground and army HQ at Bessbrook, Co Armagh.
He said two British army observation towers, which were used to to survey a wide area north and south of the Border, offered "a very large arc view".
He also said they carried a range of technical equipment and it was possible “to focus on one area” for the purposes of observing paramilitary activity in south Armagh. But he said the task of remaining concentrated for watch tower personnel, was “a challenge”.
Witness 79 said while he had no doubt there was "a very significant deterrent" created by the towers, he thought the local population believed them to be more effective than they were. People believed the towers "could actually see far more than was being recorded", he said.
Witness 79 also said the army had not known all of the movements of RUC personnel though the area they were patrolling. He said his company did not know of the movements of chief supt Harry Breen and Bob Buchanan on March 20th, 1989, the day the two officers were killed in an IRA ambush in south Armagh.
Witness 79 said information would have been restricted to a "need to know" basis on the theory that the fewer people who know about such movements of personnel the tighter was the security. He said he had not known the RUC had taken part in such cross-border meetings with the gardaí and he had not been told by anyone of fears of collusion with the IRA.
Mr Breen and Mr Buchanan were murdered within minutes of leaving a meeting in Dundalk Garda station. The tribunal is inquiring into suggestions that members of the Garda colluded in their murders.
Jim O'Callaghan SC, for former Det Sgt Owen Corrigan of Dundalk Garda station, told the witness that evidence had been heard that unusual levels of IRA communications activity had been detected from about 11.30am on the day of the killings. He said it was therefore "untenable" that a member of the Garda could have tipped off the IRA in a "set up" based on observing the men arrive in Dundalk at 2.10pm.
Mr O'Callaghan asked Witness 79 if he would agree that it was untenable, in the light of the detected communications activity, that the IRA operation could have been "set up" by a tip off from gardaí in Dundalk later in the day.
Witness 79 said he agreed with Mr O'Callaghan.
