Hugh Mooney

Northern Ireland Information organisations in January 1972

Hugh Mooney was a member of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office’s Information Research Department (IRD). He has also worked as a journalist, including as a sub-editor on the Irish Times.

Middle East

As a Reuters Correspondent in the Middle East, Mooney spent six months in Aden in 1966, and reported on the Arab-Israeli War of 1967.

Information Research Department

Mooney left BBC External Services in 1969 to join the IRD. By this time the Department's remit had been widened from fighting communism to countering all hostile propaganda.

Mooney told the Bloody Sunday Inquiry:

For example I spent some weeks in Bermuda advising on countering black-power propaganda and during 1971, I started to visit Northern Ireland, where the Government of the Irish Republic had financed pro-republican propaganda.

Northern Ireland

Mooney first visited Northern Ireland in March/April 1971 at the request of the UK Government Representative, Ronnie Buroughs.

Mooney was seconded to the Home Office for the purpose of an appointment in Northern Ireland which he took up in June 1971.

He told the Bloody Sunday Inquiry:

My brief was to assist the Army, the RUC and the Northern Ireland Government Information Service to counter hostile propaganda and improve their public relations activity.

Mooney continued to work with the Army PR and Information Policy teams until the end of 1973.

In a supplementary statement to the Saville inquiry Mooney claimed not to have been involved in psyops operations in Northern Ireland, though he confirmed that INQ 1873 was engaged in such activities. Mooney also claimed, contra Colin Wallace, that psyops were not considered significant in Whitehall. Mooney further stated that his only role regarding psyops was strictly confined to "keep an eye on" such activities and keeping Ronnie Buroughs briefed: "My function in relation to any psyops activity was to keep an eye on what was going on and report to UKREP if necessary."

In his statement Mooney also claimed that all psyop activity in NI ceased in 1971 as the emphasis was shifted to Public Relations techniques with the formation of the Information Policy Unit in September of that year. Mooney was emphatic in his statement that IP was not a psyops committee: "IP most definitely was not a psyops committee."

Bloody Sunday

Mooney spent the day of Bloody Sunday manning phones at HQNI. Following the shootings, David Gilliland called from Stormont and urged him to get out an Army statement as soon as possible:

By this time it was too late to get anything into the first editions of the London newspapers which would be read in Ireland. The best the Army could do was to put its side of events on the early morning radio bulletins. I decided to offer the local BBC correspondent, Chris Drake, an interview with Maurice Tugwell, who had spent the day in Londonderry with Major-General Robert Ford, Commander Land Forces. When Tugwell returned, I told him what I had done and he agreed it was in the Army's interest to do the interview. I remember him saying something like: "We had better see if Int have traces on any of these people."

I then went home but came back to sit in on the interview with Drake. Tugwell then told me that four of the victims were "wanted" or "on the wanted list". By that I took him to mean that Int had some trace of involvement with the IRA. He said as much in the interview. Drake played the tape back to Tugwell and commented that he sounded a bit mild and conciliatory, and suggested that Tugwell might do it again in a harder tone of voice. This Tugwell did. The broadcast was a last-minute, improvised, damage-limitation exercise. It became necessary because no provision had been made for a coordinated public relations response at HQNI, simply because the Bloody Sunday killings had not been foreseen.

Mooney also told the Bloody Sunday Inquiry that army officer INQ 1873 told him the following day of a conversation he had with Major General Ford the day after the shootings:

"Make sure you get that on the front page", the general had said. [INQ 1873] told me he was kicking himself for not responding: "I guarantee it, General".

In his statement to the inquiry Mooney made reference to a fallacious claim that on bloody Sunday IRA gunmen had impersonated British paratroopers using stolen uniforms and had themselves fired on the demonstrators in order to discredit the Army. Describing how the story appeared in the Daily Mirror under the byline of Chris Buckland on the 5th of April 1972, Mooney describes the story as "obviously the result of an army PR briefing..."