Suspended detective: Garda chiefs wanted me as a scapegoat

A suspended garda at the centre of the Morris Tribunal’s current investigations today said he believed Garda chiefs wanted to ’scapegoat’ him for corruption in the force in Co Donegal in the 1990s.

Detective Sergeant John White also revealed that he began seeing a psychiatrist for depression after an internal Garda inquiry led by Assistant Commissioner Kevin Carty began in the north-west in 1999.

The experienced detective recalled an interview with “stony-faced and very, very adversarial” officers from the Carty team in Letterkenny Garda Station in March 2000.

He said: “I felt that the Carty agenda was to find a scapegoat or two for what was going on in Donegal and I felt threatened that I was that scapegoat.”

“I feared that I was being set up but I knew they had no evidence against me.

“The situation got so bad for me that I contacted a psychiatrist and went to see him and I’ve never seen a man like that in my life before.

“My state of mind in those days was fear, apprehension and mistrust.”

The detective was later arrested by the Carty team on suspicion of being involved in false statements made by Sligo petty criminal Bernard Conlon.

However he was acquitted in Letterkenny Circuit Court earlier this year on charges of perverting the course of justice and making false statements.

The 50-year-old, who broke down in the witness box yesterday, earlier today blamed his depression for memory lapses during cross-examination by the tribunal’s lawyers.

He is into his third day of evidence in the ’Silver Bullet’ module and denies all corruption allegations by Mr Conlon.

Pressed for specific details on certain incidents by tribunal counsel Paul McDermott, SC, Det Sgt White said: “I’m suffering from depression and I regularly attend a psychiatrist and I’m just not able to have a memory for all these things. I’m telling the truth.”

“I’m very anxious after five-and-a-half years to show clinically that I’m innocent.

“My life has been consumed by this – telephone calls, meetings, reading thousands of documents…”

Mr Conlon claims that in August 1997, Det Sgt White told him to get caught after-hours drinking in a Raphoe pub owned by the McBrearty family and later act as a state witness in a prosecution case.

The Sligo man also alleges that the detective told him to make up a story that two members of the Brearty family later came to this doorstep and threatened him with a silver bullet if he gave evidence against them.

Det Sgt White today angrily refuted the claims: “I was entrusting my entire career on a crazy, crazy scheme with Bernard Conlon? It would have been career suicide for me.”

Det Sgt White, who is a native of Bansha, Co Tipperary, was suspended from duty in 2001 while serving in the Special Detective Unit in Dublin’s Harcourt Square.

He broke down during cross-examination yesterday after he challenged the tribunal to call his elderly mother and wife to support an alibi against one of Mr Conlon’s claims.