http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/article1129719.ece?token=null&offset=12

What Stevens didn’t know then was that Nelson, who worked as an agent for the FRU, had provided the video camera that had sealed Maginn’s fate.

Moreover, a full nine months earlier, Nelson had passed the video to his FRU handlers who had done nothing to ensure that Maginn and others on the video were warned that their lives were in danger. This was part of a pattern of collusion later unearthed by Stevens.

However, Stevens has recently discovered that Annesley had instructed Sir John “Muddy” Waters, then the army chief in Northern Ireland, not to provide Stevens with any army intelligence. The RUC Special Branch was under a similar instruction. Although the FRU had also sent Special Branch a copy of the video Nelson had given them, it instructed the branch’s deputy head, Detective Chief Superintendent Brian Fitzsimmons, not to divulge the contents.

Fitzsimmons was one of 29 senior Special Branch, military intelligence and MI5 officers killed in June 1994 when their RAF Chinook helicopter crashed into the Mull of Kintyre.

However, both Annesley and Waters will be questioned under caution by the Stevens inquiry. Whether it was Annesley’s initiative to ensure that Stevens did not get access to military intelligence, or whether he was responding to a request from Waters, is a key issue that Stevens is still investigating.

What is clear is that Annesley’s directive appears to have been interpreted by the army as a green light to obstruct the Stevens inquiry. First, Nelson’s FRU handlers were promised full protection by their senior officers. As one handler later told Stevens: “I was told the FRU files would never be looked at and . . . I would never be interviewed.”

Annesley’s directive might also explain why, in response to a question from one of Stevens’s detectives at a special army briefing for the inquiry team, a senior military officer denied categorically that the army ran any agents at all.

Helped by his handlers, Nelson had prepared hundreds of targeting files on IRA suspects to be shot. Within a week of Stevens’s arrival, these were seized on the orders of FRU’s commanding officer, Colonel Gordon Kerr. Unfortunately for the FRU, by then Nelson had already copied scores of files to loyalist death squads other than the UDA and therefore beyond his control.

This proved to be FRU’s undoing because when Stevens finally got access to these files, he identified Nelson’s fingerprint on one of them. On the eve of Nelson’s arrest, Stevens’s headquarters in the Northern Ireland Police Authority — supposedly one of the most secure buildings in the province — were burnt down. Stevens told his team he was convinced it was arson and an attempt to get them to pack their bags for home. Wilf Monaghan, then assistant chief constable of the RUC, had told Stevens: “This is the work of FRU.”

Stevens has no doubt that his telephone conversations were routinely intercepted. Having been burnt out from his police authority offices, he moved to RUC Antrim Road where, to the chagrin of his team, RUC officers played Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire on the canteen jukebox.

In 1991, Stevens officers asked the Special Branch to provide 38 personal files on nationalists and republicans that Nelson had targeted. A Special Branch detective chief inspector told them in a statement under caution that no such files existed. It was not until 1999 that the inquiry recovered all of them.

The hostility of Special Branch to Stevens made Brian Fitzsimmons distinctly uncomfortable. Some of the heaviest pressure came from the army. Waters, who had experience of dealing with terrorists in Britain’s colonial days in Aden and Borneo, made it clear to Stevens that he risked destroying their intelligence network. This became the mantra whispered by hostile senior soldiers and policemen to journalists and unionist politicians.

The Human Rights group set up in memory of assassinated human rights lawyer Pat Finucane has released to the media reports of a private conversation between the group and a former member of the Northern Ireland Police Authority.

The conversation shows that the RUC had prior knowledge of the murder attack on Pat Finucane and failed to take any measures to thwart the attack.

Mr Paul O'Connor, a representative of the Pat Finucane Centre in Derry, revealed the contents of a conversation he had with a member of the Police authority two years ago.

This conversation provides strong evidence of RUC collusion in the UFF murder of Pat Finucane.

Whilst the unnamed P.A. member claims that the then head of RUC special branch Brian Fitzsimmons had no prior knowledge of the murder attack, he then goes on to confirm that the RUC were informed a number of hours before the murder by British Army intelligence who were running UFF commander Brian Nelson as one of their agents.

Mr. O'Connor said he made an immediate note of the conversation and lodged it with the murdered lawyer's law firm.

He went on to say that the P.A. member then attempted to explain why the RUC could not act on information - he claimed that the RUC had difficulties in providing security cover on Sundays.

Mr. O'Connor concluded, "There is in fact considerable reason to believe that the RUC were well aware of the plot in advance but if we take the explanation offered by the former P.A. member at face value it still begs the question... Was a simple phone call to warn Mr. Finucane of the potential danger out of the question?"

The IRSP's justice spokesperson Paul Carson commenting, on the case, said, "Many within political and legal circles throughout the world are supporting the call for a full and independent inquiry into the UFF assassination of Pat Finucane. The IRSP echo those calls. This case also exposes the major weakness in the so-called Mitchell Principles of non-violence. These principles specifically left the role of British forces in Ireland out of the equation, meaning that the nationalist working class community have no means of redress against British military operations in the six counties."

It seems Fitzsimmons was an undercover army agent. he was working in the south Armagh area and was killed in 1998. His death just read that he was “security” but its noted that his funeral was a military affair. His uncle was the commander of Special Branch in Newry (also Fitzsimmons) but the highlight was on the younger nephew Don Fitzsimmons, he was thought to be from the Tandragee area in County Armagh and was responsible for the kidnapping of innocent men they thought to have links in IRA membership around the south Armagh area.

The Fitzsimmons family in the Armagh area have strong links to the army and its rumoured that 2 of the men are in special forces, as well as RUC special branch and army intelligence.