THE glaring similarities between the Vatican “whitewash” letter to the Government and Richard Nixon’s denial during Watergate and Willie Whitelaw’s stance on Bloody Sunday are typical of what cynics expected.

I COMMEND the letter by Fergus O’Leary headlined ‘Claudy: a grave injustice by people at the top’ (September 7).

The Claudy bombings of July 31, 1972, in which nine innocent people – five Catholics and four Protestants – were killed in Co Derry are now history, but they have an immediacy with the publication yesterday of the report of the Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman, Al Hutchinson.

THE deteriorating relationship between the Government and Sinn Féin slumped to its lowest point since the Good Friday Agreement yesterday.

Pressure is mounting on authorities in the North to launch a full inquiry into claims that the British government and the Catholic Church colluded in covering up the involvement of a priest in the 1972 Claudy bombing.