Gordon Brown was taken to task in the report Sir Peter said it could not have been and accused the BBC of making "very serious and harmful allegations" damaging "to the good name of the agencies." It concentrated on whether immediately before the bombing, it could have been stopped. It also turns out that Sir Peter's remit was more narrowly focused by the prime minister than was suggested at the time. The committee found this "repeated failure to confirm or clarify exasperating." In Sir Peter's non classified published report and in his evidence to the committee, neither he nor the Northern Ireland Secretary would confirm or deny if intercepts had even existed. However, the MPs criticise what they call "the unsatisfactory nature" of Sir Peter's inquiry "and subsequent report". Sir Peter was asked by the prime minister to review how "any intercepted intelligence was shared" after I disclosed on Panorama the existence of intercepts and that they and the numbers were withheld from the CID. The Committee's inquiry followed a report by the Intelligence Services Commissioner, retired appeal court judge Sir Peter Gibson, into the sharing of intercept intelligence. Once again, national security is said to be at stake. They are simply not prepared to subject to public scrutiny the decisions of the intelligence services and how they impacted on the police inquiry. Ministers appear to want to draw the final curtain on Omagh. I have been asking the same questions to different branches of the government and intelligence services for several months. Yet it's also clear the government doesn't wish to provide them. He makes a powerful case for getting answers. Sir Patrick describes this report as perhaps the committee's single most important report this Parliament. The MPs on the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee also say questions "remain about whether the bombing could have been pre-empted".Īs committee chairman Sir Patrick Cormack says: "Far too many questions remain unanswered." The least that the "bereaved or injured have the right to expect are answers to those questions." The intercepts were carried out by the government's eavesdropping centre GCHQ, as revealed by the 2008 Panorama: Omagh: What The Police Were Never Told. In particular, MPs want an inquiry into the "substantial" question of why intercepts of the mobile phones of the bombers en route to Omagh were not shared with the detectives trying to identify them. They can ask - but I would be surprised if they get any useful answers from the government, even though detectives haven't managed to successfully convict a single member of the dissident republican gang who bombed Omagh killing 29 people and two unborn children in August 1998. MPs have today asked a whole series of questions about the role of the intelligence services in the catastrophic failure of the police inquiry into the worst atrocity of the Northern Ireland Troubles. Reporter John Ware, who in a 2008 Panorama film first disclosed that GCHQ telephone intercepts had been withheld from the detectives investigating the Omagh bombing, gives his response to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee's call for a further investigation into the failure of the police inquiry. Twenty-nine people died as a result of the Omagh bomb
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