South Armagh, 1989: The Ambush at the Border

On 20 March 1989, the IRA ambushed and killed Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan of the RUC on the Edenappa Road near Jonesborough, South Armagh, a few hundred yards north of the border. They were the highest-ranking RUC officers murdered by the Provisional IRA. This documentary follows their last journey from Armagh and Newry to Dundalk Garda Station and back, then traces the 24-year effort to find out how the IRA knew where to wait. The film is built on the evidence of the Smithwick Tribunal, which heard the witnesses from the station and from the road. The morning began with Bob Buchanan's 10:15 phone call arranging a 2 p.m. meeting, prompted by concern at Stormont over fuel smuggling at Slab Murphy's border farm. The film covers the tea break in Dundalk's District Office, an Army patrol withdrawn from the Edenappa Road at 11 a.m., and radio traffic that witnesses said began to rise at about 11:30. The officers arrived at the station no earlier than 2:20 p.m., and an IRA unit was placed on the Edenappa Road at 2:30. From there the film follows the IRA checkpoint, the ambush, Harry Breen's white handkerchief, and the scene that police and soldiers found. It also explains why Harry Breen was the IRA's target. After the SAS ambush at Loughgall in 1987, he had shown the recovered weapons to the television cameras. It then follows the inquiries that came afterwards. The RUC Chief Constable said there was "no mole". Garda investigations in 1989 and 2000 found no collusion. Toby Harnden's Bandit Country reopened the question in 1999, and Judge Peter Cory's 2003 report concluded that there must be a public inquiry. The Smithwick Tribunal received the IRA's own written account of months of surveillance from a house opposite the station. In December 2013 Judge Smithwick found "no smoking gun", but concluded on the balance of probabilities that someone inside Dundalk Garda Station had helped the IRA. He could not say who, and found that none of the officers examined by name had been shown to have colluded in these killings. The film sets out the apologies that followed, the retired Garda officers who rejected the finding, and what remains unanswered. Where accounts conflict, the film gives each side and says so.