Just a few years before the Troubles began, the Home Office knew so little about the Orange Order that it resorted to...
Read Full Article
A secret Army paper in 1984 expressed concern the RUC might get more involved in “the mucky end” of intelligence-gath...
Read Full Article
The largest single payment to an informant in Northern Ireland during the first 13 years of the Troubles was £15,000 ...
Read Full Article
Sinn Féin pressed to get on the run Provo Kevin McGuigan back into Northern Ireland in 2000 — 15 years before the IRA...
Read Full Article
Long before the government legislated to give an amnesty for all Troubles crimes, its own files show it had been warn...
Read Full Article
For years, Sinn Féin has been at the forefront of the campaign against the Government’s Troubles amnesty.
Read Full Article
Despite his hardline public stance, Jeffrey Donaldson privately said if the IRA allowed its arms dumps to be inspecte...
Read Full Article
Peter Robinson was “well aware” that DUP support for an independent unionist candidate in the 2001 General Election w...
Read Full Article
The Government had a “private understanding with Sinn Féin” – and recorded it in written form – that it would set up ...
Read Full Article
The south Armagh watchtowers had a function which was so secretive that British security agencies did not even tell A...
Read Full Article
Tony Blair worked behind the scenes to avoid a full public inquiry into the murder of Pat Finucane after a conversati...
Read Full Article
Despite his denials, secret documents discovered by the Belfast Telegraph show that the Government believed Noel Litt...
Read Full Article
Contrary to Peter Robinson’s claim that the UK Government was hiring a mercenary to murder him after his ‘invasion’ o...
Read Full Article
A Garda officer saved Peter Robinson from being handcuffed and taken to Mountjoy Prison after a court appearance rela...
Read Full Article
The reform of policing was more damaging to the UUP than the lack of IRA decommissioning, the UUP told the Government.
Read Full Article
Sinn Féin “undoubtedly” stole votes in the 2001 General Election — the first time the party overtook the SDLP — the N...
Read Full Article
Almost half of the DUP’s candidates for Newtownabbey Borough Council in 1993 had some links to loyalist paramilitaris...
Read Full Article
Two months after the first IRA ceasefire in 1994, Britain’s top intelligence unit had evidence the Provos needed mone...
Read Full Article
Peter Robinson privately briefed the NIO on his desire to re-enter political talks in the early 1990s and worked with...
Read Full Article
The IRA leader in charge of decommissioning was secretly in America under an illegal name looking to import new guns ...
Read Full Article
For years, secrets which should have been opened to the public of Northern Ireland have instead been hidden from us.
Read Full Article
About half of all fuel sold in Northern Ireland was being smuggled from the Republic, according to declassified paper...
Read Full Article
The Head of the Civil Service was appalled at the “outrageous sum” being quoted for journalist Jon Snow to lead a sem...
Read Full Article
Almost a year before the DUP appointed its first Executive ministers, the NIO privately knew Ian Paisley’s party was ...
Read Full Article
Senior NIO officials were split on whether the Government should break off contact with the political representatives...
Read Full Article
The Queen requested that those invited to summer garden parties at Buckingham Palace should include Irish passport ho...
Read Full Article
An 80-year-old file from the Second World War which has just been declassified reveals the alarm within Stormont caus...
Read Full Article
Despite claiming to love transparency, Stormont is getting more secretive, with a dramatic decrease in the number of ...
Read Full Article
Just eight months before the IRA’s first major ceasefire in 1994, intelligence showed there was a “close to 50/50 spl...
Read Full Article
A high-profile Irish American priest launched a libel action against BBC journalist Seamus McKee and others after bei...
Read Full Article
Almost 60 years ago, a civil servant sent a detailed reply to a member of the public who suggested filling in a stret...
Read Full Article
There were believed to be just 30 or 40 transgender people living in Northern Ireland in 2000, the First and Deputy F...
Read Full Article
A Stormont department paid US lobbyists the equivalent of more than $2,000 a day to oppose Irish-American activists p...
Read Full Article
For 12 years, I have covered the government files declassified at the Public Record Office in Belfast.
Read Full Article
The Irish government claimed to be “plagued” by the families of Bloody Sunday victims, who pressed for their lawyers ...
Read Full Article
The NIO’s most senior official — who would go on to head up the inquiry in the Iraq War — referred to “the nationalis...
Read Full Article
The name of the historian and columnist Ruth Dudley Edwards "infuriated" the Irish government because she had critici...
Read Full Article
An Irish diplomat privately told the Foreign Office in 1999 that if Stormont collapsed, he would not expect north-sou...
Read Full Article
Escalating parading disputes in the 1990s were in large part due to Sinn Fein orchestrating protests, the NIO believed.
Read Full Article
