Sinn Féin was dismissive of Police Service of Northern Ireland's claims it had broken a large-scale IRA espionage operation that had penetrated to the heart of the Northern Ireland Executive, and that was also directed against the old RUC Special Branch at Castlereagh.
Sinn Féin's policing spokesman Mr Gerry Kelly launched a personal attack on the PSNI's new acting deputy chief constable, Mr Alan McQuillan, suggesting a conspiracy and that police were involved in a "damage limitation" exercise.
Such comments had little effect on Mr McQuillan or Det Chief Supt Phil Wright, who is in charge of the "huge" investigation. As far as they were concerned, police had broken an IRA spying operating at Castlereagh and Stormont which was of massive proportions.
They looked very pleased with themselves when they addressed the media yesterday. If there was a "damage limitation" job to be done, republicans had to do it, not the police, seemed to be their view.
They weren't prepared to entertain any conspiracy theories. The alleged data on judges, police officers, soldiers, prison officers and others in the hands of the IRA and the huge haul of allegedly incriminating documentation that will take police months to read and assess, proved that police had the goods on the IRA, was the line from the officers.
The IRA has the reputation of running a formidable intelligence gathering operation but, according to the officers, it was far from impenetrable. Said Mr McQuillan: "There is a large quantity of documents apparently copied or stolen from government offices. We also have recovered with the documents a significant number of documents that originated within the IRA itself, and a small number of those appear to relate to matters concerning agents working for the Provisional IRA in government." Mr McQuillan would not say how many alleged IRA agents were working in the NIO, apart from stating it was a "small number". The investigation would continue, and more details will unfold over the coming months, he indicated.
The SDLP leader, Mr Mark Durkan, referring to the arrest last week of a civil servant from nationalist west Belfast who worked in his office when he was Deputy First Minister and in the office of former First Minister Mr David Trimble, warned against people being judged by "post code".
The civil servant was not charged but is suspended on full pay. This also prompted Sinn Féin's Mr Kelly to claim that there was a "witch hunt against Catholics who work in certain areas in the civil service and who live in working-class nationalist districts." Addressing such concerns, Mr McQuillan said it was "absolutely not the case" that police were involved into a general investigation of Catholics working in the civil service. He suggested, however, that the IRA exerted pressure on some civil servants to carry out work for the organisation.
A spokesman for Ulster Unionist leader Mr David Trimble said that Mr McQuillan had "nailed the Sinn Féin lie" that police were operating "some form of pogrom against Catholics working in the civil service".
Mr McQuillan indicated that while the alleged IRA infiltration was on a large scale, it did not denote a threat to the IRA ceasefire. "We have no information of an intention to use that intelligence in any offensive way," he said. "I see nothing in the information in my possession that indicates there is any intention to use this information in the near future," added Mr McQuillan.
