A document in the possession of the Bloody Sunday inquiry, and already referred to several times at the hearings, suggests that around the end of 1971 the IRA was planning to assassinate a senior Catholic RUC officer in Derry, but was dissuaded from doing so.
The intention was to shoot Chief Supt Frank Lagan, the head of the RUC in the city, as he took his child to a local school, according to the document, the status of which is to be investigated in depth later in the hearings.
Meanwhile, the introduction this week of alleged British secret service documents in which an unnamed informer claims Mr Martin McGuinness admitted firing at troops on Bloody Sunday continues to cause reverberations. It has intensified the debate among senior republicans and former IRA figures on whether or not to offer themselves as witnesses to the inquiry.
While individuals who were active and in key locations on the day are considering their personal options - and a few have already come forward - a general policy by the present-day republican movement may have become more problematic.
Up to 40 individuals who may have been members of one or other wings of the IRA at the time of Bloody Sunday have already been contacted by the tribunal's solicitors, with a very limited response so far.
However, various names and alleged rankings have already come into the public domain at the hearings this week, and it is evident that some or all will be subpoenaed to attend if they do not do so voluntarily.
The secret service material has revived memories of the sharp dispute between Sinn Fein and the British government in the mid-1990s over secret exchanges between the IRA and government emissaries.
Mr McGuinness was also at the centre of that controversy. The two sides issued different versions of the exchanges, and the then Northern secretary, Sir Patrick Mayhew, eventually admitted to "typing errors" in the British version.