[2] In September 1989 RUC chief constable, Sir Hugh Annesley, ordered the initial enquiry about the circumstances following the August 1989 death of Loughlin Maginn.
Although Maginn had no paramilitary connections,[4] the UDA claimed he was a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) intelligence officer.
[5] Stevens would later claim in a book he wrote that from the investigation's outset there was a concerted campaign to discredit the inquiries among elements of the British media.
[7] Following their discovery of the then-unknown Brian Nelson's fingerprints on security documents, the Inquiry team encountered a wall of silence as they tried to investigate further: Brian Fitzsimmons, Acting Head of the RUC's Special Branch, became evasive, telling Stevens: We can't help you with this man; and, at the Grosvenor Road station, Nelson's card in the intelligence card system was initially whipped away from the investigators.
The report found that members of the security forces in Northern Ireland colluded with the UDA during the paramilitary's killing of Catholic civilians in the 1970s and 1980s, including the solicitor Pat Finucane in 1989.
The security forces units accused of colluding with the UDA included the FRU and the Royal Ulster Constabulary Special Branch.
Stevens noted, under "Obstruction of my Enquiries": There was a clear breach of security before the planned arrest of Brian Nelson and other senior loyalists.
[12]Stevens concluded: 4.6 I have uncovered enough evidence to lead me to believe that the murders of Patrick Finucane and Brian Adam Lambert could have been prevented.
The unlawful involvement of agents in murder implies that the security forces sanction killings.4.9 My three Enquiries have found all these elements of collusion to be present.
[14]Under "Other Matters concerning Collusion", Stevens noted: 2.17 My Enquiry team also investigated an allegation that senior RUC officers briefed the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for the Home Department, the Rt Hon Douglas Hogg QC, MP, that ‘some solicitors were unduly sympathetic to the cause of the IRA’.
In its aftermath, Loyalists began out-killing the IRA for the first time in decades,[16][17] leading up to the eventual ceasefires and Good Friday Agreement.