Murdered journalist Mr Martin O'Hagan was threatened by a well-known loyalist less than a week before his death, it has been reported.
Mr O'Hagan, who worked for the northern edition of the Dublin-based Sunday World, was shot dead as he walked home with his wife Marie from their local pub in Lurgan, Co Armagh.
Senior security sources believe that the LVF, which has a strong presence in Lurgan and nearby Portadown, carried out the killing under the cover name the Red Hand Defenders.
The newspaper has given police the name of the man who had singled him out close to his Westfield Gardens home.
Sunday Worldnorthern editor Mr Jim McDowell said: "He was told by a certain individual 'we have you clocked walking up and down this street'. The man who spoke to him is a loyalist fanatic."
Mr O'Hagan had recently been working on a number of stories, involving members of the LVF, the hard-line terror group, which split from the Ulster Volunteer Force in 1996. Detectives are to examine these stories carefully to catch his killers.
The reporter had a history of run-ins with the LVF leader Billy Wright, who was himself gunned down by republicans in the Maze Prison in December 1998.
In 1993, he was forced to flee Northern Ireland after receiving death threats from Wright.
Mr McDowell said his colleague had remained courageous to the end, adding: "Marty threw Marie into a hedge and shielded her with his body as the gunmen fired. He took two of the bullets."
The murder was condemned by Northern Ireland Secretary Dr John Reid as an attack on freedom of speech and by the MP for the area, Mr David Trimble, who described the murder as "cowardly".
PA