this information, according to "the times", included new details of how the operation against dominic mcglinchy had ended in a "murderous farce", building on what had come out at the trial of ruc constable john robinson. more widely, the newspapers identified questions arising from what the programme presented of the role of the ruc's informant in the ira. it appeared that, simply on his say-so, he had been able to get the ruc to target, with lethal consequences, the men he claimed were responsible for the kinnego embankment explosion. allegedly he had also been in a position to send these same men out on an operation to kill an ruc reservist, into the line of fire of a police ambush, making him an "agent provocateur" and, as hugh hebert put it in "the guardian", "creating the conditions in which assassination is inevitable". darker still were questions around how the explosives used at kinnego had got out of a hayshed that was supposedly being monitored. had it just been an equipment failure? the film suggested that the inquiry had seriously considered the possibility, voiced by the thorburn character, that the explosives might have been deliberately allowed out of the hayshed, and the three uniformed policemen deliberately allowed into a dangerous area leading to their deaths, to preserve the credibility within the ira of the special branch source.