The suggestion of a possible cover-up in the Claudy bombing raises profound questions for the Catholic Church, the British state and the police, writes Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor
Father Jim Chesney was a young, tall, handsome, extremely gregarious priest who liked to drive flash cars fast, according to former civil rights activist Ivan Cooper who knew him well. Long before yesterday's dramatic revelations he named him as the main Claudy bomber.
Mr Cooper wasn't aware of yesterday's shocking disclosures by the PSNI that the late Cardinal Conway, primate of the Catholic Church in Ireland, and Mr William Whitelaw, British secretary of state for Northern Ireland, discussed the priest's alleged role in the bombing this month 30 years ago.
But he was hardly that surprised. After all, before Cardinal Conway and Mr Whitelaw met in some oak-panelled room Mr Cooper had told a senior Catholic cleric and the RUC of his conviction that Father Chesney had led the IRA unit that bombed Claudy on July 31st, 1972, killing nine people, three of them children.
Perhaps what flowed from Mr Cooper's claim to senior police and church authorities led to the cardinal's palace in Armagh and the Northern Secretary's castle in Hillsborough. Follow this route, and it would seem that the RUC at a senior plateau was also involved in hiding a terrible truth.
In terms of natural justice one has to exercise a certain caution here. After all the three main protagonists - Cardinal Conway, Mr Whitelaw, Father Chesney - can't defend themselves. They are dead.
Assistant Chief Constable Sam Kinkaid at the press conference in Derry yesterday was rather too crafty for some reporters' liking. His statement strongly suggested an astonishing level of collusion between the Irish Catholic Church and the British state in seeing justice denied, but he wouldn't make that specific allegation.
Mr Kinkaid by implication invited journalists to speak of cover-up. It is a loaded phrase, and one strives to be fair, but listening to Mr Cooper and others who carry terrible memories of that day it is a phrase difficult to resist.
L.P.Hartley's famous line comes to mind: the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. Judging by the police and Mr Cooper's accounts, church and state did things very differently in 1972.
The suggestion is of a British agenda designed to allow the Catholic Church save face; another possible example of the church sacrificing truth and justice to save the institution.
An obvious reason for such action would be that at the time the British government was desperately anxious to keep the church on the side of moderate nationalism. Remember this was 1972, the worst year of the Troubles when 470 people died, and when the IRA was emerging as a powerful force with a growing popular appeal.
One also thinks of the church child sex abuse scandals and how the "solution" was to transfer the problem, i.e. the offending cleric, to another parish. This may have been the "solution" with Father Chesney.
With nine dead and 30 carrying woeful injuries and Father Chesney an obvious suspect, it beggars belief that he was never questioned. But that's what Mr Kinkaid confirmed yesterday. And it wasn't only Mr Cooper who suspected the priest. Derry journalist Eamon McCann remarked yesterday that within days of Claudy there was local talk of priestly involvement in the bombing.
Bishop Edward Daly even questioned Father Chesney a couple of years after the bombing, so there was quite clearly much talk and rumour of the priest's involvement. Father Chesney denied everything, according to the bishop.
Why didn't the police or British army put him through interrogation, a regular occurrence in the internment period of 1972? It's a question that obviously troubles Mr Kinkaid. He certainly invited reporters to speculate that they didn't do their job.
"It is clear that the relatives of those who died in the bomb attack on Claudy village and those who were injured have not obtained justice. I regret this very much and in particular that opportunities to arrest and interview all of the suspects were not taken in 1972," he said.
Why didn't they do it? Were they leaned on by the British state, acting to keep the main Irish church sweet, to allow Father Chesney slip out of the jurisdiction. It's a legitimate question. About a year or so after Claudy Father Chesney moved to Donegal. He died aged 48 in 1980.
The main case for the defence of the church was made by the present Bishop of Derry, Dr Seamus Hegarty. He said Father Chesney was "transferred across the Border on foot of personal threats made against him".
He defended the name of Cardinal Conway. He said he was "a man of great integrity, who was a former professor of moral theology, I think we cannot at this stage attribute any ulterior motives to him.
"The church has a very proud record in its defence of life, and this type of conduct, if it were true, would be the total antithesis of what priests and bishops and cardinals stand for," he added.
Mr Cooper, former SDLP MP and Stormont minister, was happy to pay tribute to the Catholic Church's overall positive role in Northern Ireland during the past troubled 30 years. But based on his own investigations - he is a native of the Claudy area - and based on what a conscience-stricken republican told him at the time he is in no doubt that Father Chesney was in one of the three cars that were driven into Claudy to create carnage and horror 30 years ago.
The strategic purpose of the bombing was to try to divert British army resources away from Operation Motorman in Derry city that day, the successful exercise to end the no-go IRA areas around the Bogside. The bombers tried to phone a warning from nearby Dungiven, but ironically the phone exchange had been earlier blown up by the IRA and contact couldn't be made.
Perhaps more detail will emerge of Cardinal Conway's discussion with Mr Whitelaw when the 1972 state papers are published in the new year. Meanwhile the PSNI investigation continues, and the Irish church, the British state and police of 30 years ago have profound questions to answer.
Part of the truth would out, according to Mr Cooper, if the IRA would admit its responsibility and confirm the involvement of Father Chesney. Confirming any church-state cover-up may be a more intricate business.