Journalist says she took ‘utmost care’ in reporting Denis Donaldson allegation

The journalist who made the BBC Spotlight programme at the centre of a libel action by Gerry Adams has said she took the “utmost care” in reporting the allegation he sanctioned the murder of a British agent.

Jennifer O’Leary was giving evidence at the High Court in Dublin on Wednesday.

The former Sinn Féin leader is suing the BBC over the 2016 programme and an accompanying online article.

He denies the allegation, made by an anonymous contributor called Martin, that he gave the go ahead for Denis Donaldson’s killing in 2006.

Spotlight claimed it was carried out by the Provisional IRA, although the dissident group the Real IRA admitted responsibility three years later.

Ms O’Leary was cross-examined by counsel for Mr Adams, Tom Hogan.

She told him she did not treat the allegation “willy-nilly”.

Ms O’Leary stated she had more than 60 meetings after interviewing Martin and had his claim “corroborated” by five other sources, although they did not appear in the broadcast.

“I wouldn’t be here if I couldn’t stand over the programme,” she said.

Mr Hogan put it to her she was defending her journalism, but not the truth of the allegation against Mr Adams.

She replied: “I’m here defending the allegation that Martin made on the basis of five additional sources.

“The points of law on which the case is being defended are points of law.”

She went on: “An allegation is an allegation.

“Any reasonable person watching the programme would know we are making an allegation.

“Straight after the allegation was made we reflected Mr Adams’ denial.”

Ms O’Leary was questioned about a draft script of the programme which included a Donaldson family statement accepting the Provisional IRA’s denial of involvement and blaming the police for failing to protect him.

Mr Hogan claimed it was removed from the final broadcast as it would have “taken away” from the allegation against Mr Adams.

Ms O’Leary said it was not unusual for scripts to change and that the programme was focused on what she had investigated.

At one point Mr Justice Alexander Owens asked: “Did you yank this out in order to make the allegation against Mr Adams a bit bigger? To give it beef?”

Ms O’Leary replied: “That’s not true.”

She went on to reject Mr Hogan’s description of her corroborating sources as “dubious”.

Mr Adams denies any involvement in the 2006 killing of Mr Donaldson – who for 20 years was a spy for the police and MI5 inside Sinn Féin.

Mr Adams also alleges he was defamed in a BBC online article based on the broadcast, a BBC NI Spotlight TV documentary, which contained claims made by an anonymous source.

Mr Donaldson was once a key figure in Sinn Féin’s rise as a political force in Northern Ireland but he was found murdered in 2006 after it emerged he had been a spy.

He was interned without trial for periods in the 1970s.

After the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, Sinn Féin appointed Mr Donaldson as its key administrator in the party’s Stormont offices.

In 2005, Mr Donaldson confessed he was a spy for British intelligence for two decades, before disappearing from Belfast.

He was found dead in a small, run down cottage in Glenties, County Donegal.

Mr Adams was the president of republican party Sinn Féin from 1983 until 2018.

He served as MP in his native Belfast West from 1983 to 1992 and again from 1997 until 2011 before sitting as a TD (Teachta Dála) in the Dáil (Irish parliament) between 2011 and 2020.

Mr Adams led the Sinn Féin delegation during peace talks that eventually brought an end to the Troubles after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

He was detained in the early 1970s when the government in Northern Ireland introduced internment without trial for those suspected of paramilitary involvement.

Mr Adams has consistently denied being a member of the IRA.