What if the IRA was not responsible for the Northern Bank robbery on December 20th? asks Vincent Browne
What if Hugh Orde is wrong and, again, there has been an "intelligence failure"? But, even if the IRA was responsible, what if the leadership of Sinn Féin did not know of it, did not approve of it, do not condone it?
Along with most others, I believed from the outset that the IRA was to blame. What other organisation in Northern Ireland has the capacity, the military precision, the logistical know-how and the manpower to undertake an operation such as this? It seemed to me unlikely that any loyalist organisation has that capacity and if there is a criminal gang around Belfast with this ability, they seemed to me to have been very quiet to date?
So, along with almost everyone else, I assumed that the IRA did it. I also assumed that the IRA leadership authorised it and that that meant that Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and Gerry Kelly, the three Sinn Féin negotiators, were in on it. Now I am not so sure.
I am not so sure because of the vehemence with which Martin McGuinness and Gerry Kelly have criticised the operation. Gerry Kelly said outright that the operation was "wrong". Martin McGuinness has condemned the bank raid and the organisation responsible, accusing it of being "hostile to the Sinn Féin agenda and the peace process".
I am not naive enough to believe Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and Gerry Kelly would not tell a lie if they felt they had to. After all, Gerry Adams regularly denies ever having been in the IRA, and I know that to be a falsehood. But the condemnations of this action are another matter. If it were the case that Gerry Kelly and Martin McGuinness were in on the bank robbery and then subsequently condemned it, their credibility within the movement would be severely damaged, and I don't believe they would risk that. And if Martin McGuinness and Gerry Kelly did not know of the robbery, I do not believe Gerry Adams did.
So I think the balance of probabilities at this stage is that these three did not know of the robbery in advance. Believing that, I find it very hard to believe that an operation of this magnitude could have been planned by the IRA over the length of time which would have been entailed without these three knowing about it.
And there is a further point. Is it plausible that the IRA would have planned this operation, with the connivance and approval of Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and Gerry Kelly, over a protracted period, for execution at a time when these expected to have concluded a deal with the DUP on power-sharing and the all-Ireland institutions?
Now it emerges that £41,000 was being laundered in Craigavon over the last few days and, apparently, this has nothing to do with the Northern Bank robbery. Where did this money come from? Either it came from the £26 million haul or from somewhere else. If it came from the £26 million, then how, if the IRA was responsible for it, are we not being told how those arrested have IRA connections?
If the money did not come from the haul, then there is some other outfit active up there which is into acquiring fairly considerable amounts of hot money. Could that outfit not have been responsible?
But there is another point. Is it really believable that Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and Gerry Kelly would have negotiated with the two governments and the DUP, knowing of this massive imminent IRA job, and expected that there would be no fall-out politically from it? These people are not fools. They would have known how an IRA operation of this magnitude would have scuttled any agreement they had concluded.
The suggestion that they approved the operation after the negotiations fell through is ridiculous. Is it really being suggested that an operation of this size could have been set in place in the space of a few weeks? So I think it is very unlikely that Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and Gerry Kelly were in on this bank robbery. If this surmise is correct, then either the IRA did not do it or the IRA is no longer under the control of these people. Either way, it seems unfair to fasten them with the responsibility for it.
But if it is the latter - that the IRA did do it and it is no longer in the control of these three - then this is very serious. If they are not in a position of procuring the IRA's abstinence from operations such as this, then what assurances do we have that the IRA will abstain from anything?
If, after three months, no hard evidence is produced to link the IRA to the robbery, what then? If, after six months, there is no evidence? If someone connected to the IRA is charged and if, after six months or a year, the charges are dropped, what then?
Is it good enough to put the whole political process on hold on the word of a police officer? Albeit a police officer respected for his impartiality and integrity? Do we not now know that police officers and intelligence chiefs get it wrong again and again?