Police Phone Checks Followed Report on Murder of MI5 Agent Inside Sinn Féin
Disclosures about a 2006 operation targeting journalist Brian Rowan have widened scrutiny of historic surveillance of reporters and their confidential sources in Northern Ireland.
A 2006 police operation examined a journalist’s mobile-phone contacts after he reported on the murder of Denis Donaldson, an MI5 and police agent who had operated within Sinn Féin, newly disclosed case papers show.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland launched Operation Mally after Brian Rowan, then security editor for BBC News Northern Ireland, published a Belfast Telegraph article on Donaldson’s final meeting with his handlers.
The operation checked whether Rowan’s mobile number had interacted with police phones in an effort to identify his sources.
Donaldson’s family said the disclosure had caused them concern.
His daughter, Jane Donaldson, said the family believed it too might have been subject to some form of phone-data surveillance and was considering asking the Investigatory Powers Tribunal to investigate.
Rowan said police had not informed him of the operation.
He learned of it through proceedings brought before the tribunal with the journalist Vincent Kearney.
“If that’s what was happening in the peace process, what was happening in the conflict period?” Rowan said.
“This is where this all goes deeper and where the more significant questions can be asked.
What else were they up to?
What were the other intrusions?”
The chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, Jon Boutcher, said he was willing to meet Rowan.
“Mr Rowan is a professional and respected investigative journalist, and I am happy to meet with him to discuss any issues or concerns he may have,” he said.
Rowan said he was not yet ready to take up that offer.
“I want to find out more about this, I want to dot my I’s and cross my T’s,” he said.
“What we’re dealing with is at two different levels - what I know, and what I suspect.
They’re two different things.” He said he was considering all options and believed a potentially “much more serious intrusion” might yet be uncovered.
The revelations add to a wider case concerning Kearney, whose phone data was unlawfully accessed by MI5, the Police Service of Northern Ireland and other police bodies between 2006 and 2018. The tribunal found that the surveillance was disproportionate and unlawful, and ordered MI5 and the Police Service of Northern Ireland to pay Kearney 10,000 pounds each in damages.
Kearney suspects that an MI5 operation directed at his phone in 2006 may also have been connected to his coverage of Donaldson’s murder.
MI5 did not disclose, during his tribunal case, why it unlawfully accessed his communications data.
An independent review published last year found that surveillance of journalists by the Police Service of Northern Ireland was not “widespread or systemic”.
The review, led by lawyer Angus McCullough KC and covering the period from 2011 to 2024, found that eight journalists besides Kearney had been subjected to unlawful monitoring intended to identify their sources.
Operation Mally fell outside that review’s timeframe.
It was expanded into broader checks for unauthorised contact between journalists’ phones and police phones, a practice Boutcher has ended.
The chief constable said changes in law and procedure had transformed the safeguards governing such applications.
“Significant changes to practice and policy have been implemented since the defects in the 2007 Communications Data code were remedied by the Home Office in 2015,” he said.
He added that McCullough had found no further breaches of the code had been authorised by the Police Service of Northern Ireland since then, reflecting the effectiveness of the oversight now required.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland launched Operation Mally after Brian Rowan, then security editor for BBC News Northern Ireland, published a Belfast Telegraph article on Donaldson’s final meeting with his handlers.
The operation checked whether Rowan’s mobile number had interacted with police phones in an effort to identify his sources.
Donaldson’s family said the disclosure had caused them concern.
His daughter, Jane Donaldson, said the family believed it too might have been subject to some form of phone-data surveillance and was considering asking the Investigatory Powers Tribunal to investigate.
Rowan said police had not informed him of the operation.
He learned of it through proceedings brought before the tribunal with the journalist Vincent Kearney.
“If that’s what was happening in the peace process, what was happening in the conflict period?” Rowan said.
“This is where this all goes deeper and where the more significant questions can be asked.
What else were they up to?
What were the other intrusions?”
The chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, Jon Boutcher, said he was willing to meet Rowan.
“Mr Rowan is a professional and respected investigative journalist, and I am happy to meet with him to discuss any issues or concerns he may have,” he said.
Rowan said he was not yet ready to take up that offer.
“I want to find out more about this, I want to dot my I’s and cross my T’s,” he said.
“What we’re dealing with is at two different levels - what I know, and what I suspect.
They’re two different things.” He said he was considering all options and believed a potentially “much more serious intrusion” might yet be uncovered.
The revelations add to a wider case concerning Kearney, whose phone data was unlawfully accessed by MI5, the Police Service of Northern Ireland and other police bodies between 2006 and 2018. The tribunal found that the surveillance was disproportionate and unlawful, and ordered MI5 and the Police Service of Northern Ireland to pay Kearney 10,000 pounds each in damages.
Kearney suspects that an MI5 operation directed at his phone in 2006 may also have been connected to his coverage of Donaldson’s murder.
MI5 did not disclose, during his tribunal case, why it unlawfully accessed his communications data.
An independent review published last year found that surveillance of journalists by the Police Service of Northern Ireland was not “widespread or systemic”.
The review, led by lawyer Angus McCullough KC and covering the period from 2011 to 2024, found that eight journalists besides Kearney had been subjected to unlawful monitoring intended to identify their sources.
Operation Mally fell outside that review’s timeframe.
It was expanded into broader checks for unauthorised contact between journalists’ phones and police phones, a practice Boutcher has ended.
The chief constable said changes in law and procedure had transformed the safeguards governing such applications.
“Significant changes to practice and policy have been implemented since the defects in the 2007 Communications Data code were remedied by the Home Office in 2015,” he said.
He added that McCullough had found no further breaches of the code had been authorised by the Police Service of Northern Ireland since then, reflecting the effectiveness of the oversight now required.
