The PTA and Channel Four
01 September 1992
For the first time ever, the Prevention of Terrorism Act has been used in an attempt to force journalists to reveal their sources. In October 1991, Channel Four broadcast a Dispatches programme made by Box Productions which claimed the existence of a 60-strong committee of loyalist paramilitaries, members of the UDR, councillors, business people, solicitors and a group of RUC officers known as the "inner circle". According to the programme, this committee was involved in organising the assassination of republicans and those thought to be republican sympathisers. After the broadcast, Channel Four sent the RUC a dossier of evidence including the names of 19 members of the committee. The RUC's response was to seek an order under the Prevention of Terrorism Act requiring Channel Four to hand over more material, including the names of any sources they had used - Box Productions had interviewed more than 100 people when researching the programme but the RUC was particularly interested in "Source A".
The order was obtained under a 1989 revision to the PTA which copied similar provisions under PACE. Section 17 of the PTA confers powers on the police to collect information for the purpose of investigating terrorism. Under Schedule 7, the police can apply to a circuit court judge for a warrant to obtain any information for which there are "reasonable grounds" for believing that the said information will be in the "public interest" for the police to have, or will be of "substantial value" in the investigation of terrorism. The hearing was in camera and the order granted. In January 1992, Channel Four informed the court that it had no more material to offer. Channel Four and Box Productions were then sued in the High Court for contempt. At the end of July, they were fined £75,000.
Following the judgment, RUC Chief Constable, Sir Hugh Annesley, took the unusual step of placing half-page advertisements in The Irish Times, the News Letter, The Belfast Telegraph and the Irish News. The advertisement begins with a quote from Sean McPhileney of Box Productions saying, "if we had not given an unqualified undertaking to our sources, no one would ever have known that members of the RUC have been running death-squads". Describing the allegations as without foundation, the advertisement goes on to say that "extensive investigation" now shows that the idea of an inner circle within the RUC and an overall organising committee was an invention of someone with a political grudge against the RUC. This person made a statement to his solicitor which said: "I considered that the RUC was being used to implement the Anglo/Irish Agreement and to suppress any loyalist opposition to it...I decided that l would attack any credibility that the RUC had been given by the minority community as a result of this exercise. I invented the story about there being an inner Circle in existence within the RUC and that members of this Inner Circle were prepared to take part in a coup in the event of a United Ireland.."
Channel Four responded by saying they know of the RUC's witness when making the programme but that he had in no way been connected to the programme. Furthermore, the solicitor to whom the statement was given was one of the 19 named members of the committee which Channel Four had given to the RUC.
The day before the advertisement appeared, it was revealed that the Chief Constable had refused to handover police interview notes for ESDA testing in relation to Seamus Mullen who claims he was convicted In the mid-1980s on the basis of uncorroborated and fabricated verbal statements. A letter to Mullen's solicitor states that: "the Chief Constable is obliged to bear in mind that if he grants your request he maybe faced with similar requests in respect of a large number of criminal trials".