Sergeant ‘threatened’ garda interviewers with notes and tapes
John White made the comment as he walked out the door of the interview room in Letterkenny Garda Station on St Patrick’s Day in 2000, following his arrest earlier that day.
Chief Supt Joseph McGarty, who was in charge of the interview, said the comment came out of he blue.
“He said: ‘I have tapes and notes of conversations with senior officers (to Inspector Tadhg Foley). There is no need to go searching my house, everything is with my solicitor’.”
Judge Frederick Morris asked Mr McGarty if he had taken any action against him. “Does it not have all the hallmarks of a threat? If you blow the whistle on me, I have things I can say about other officers?”
Mr McGarty replied: “It was a form of threat but I didn’t ask him. I didn’t pursue it any further.”
Mr McGarty was part of the Carty team, the internal garda inquiry that was investigating Sgt White’s involvement with a witness who falsely claimed that members of the McBrearty family had issued death threats against him.
Mr McGarty said he believed Sgt White had made the statement to throw the Carty team off track in their investigation.
The tribunal heard that Sgt White told officers his solicitor, Paudge Dorrian, had advised not to say anything during the interview.
In a further interview on March 20, 2000, Mr Dorrian was told he would not be allowed to sit in, and terminated the interview.
Sgt White, 50, from Bansha, Co Tipperary, was later charged with perverting the course of justice and making false statements. He was acquitted in Letterkenny Circuit Court in January but remains suspended from the force.
The Morris Tribunal is due to take closing submissions on the Silver Bullet module on Friday. It will then begin the next module, which will look at the Garda investigation into an arson attack at Ardara, Co Donegal in 1996.
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