Spotlight at 40 Spotlight

language and scenes which some viewers may find upsetting.

It is 40 years since BBC Northern Ireland's longest running programme

took to the air. Tonight in a special programme, we will be

looking back through the archives to see how much has stayed the same and

how much has changed. Welcome to Spotlight.

The music I remember more than anything else. My dad would kick the

dog and say, this is important. It is asking questions about why, who,

how and where and not prepared to take bullshit for an answer. How

many people have you killed? We call it current affairs. Sometimes it is

live, sometimes it is electric. As a family, we would watch Spotlight

every week as I still do. This is you, isn't it? Now is a good time to

tell you, I am Jennifer O'Leary from BBC Spotlight. You go onto the radio

show the day after and the fans are going mad because everybody has been

talking about it. The job of Spotlight has always been to ask

questions. Sometimes it has found surprising and controversial

answers. How did you get the money? Two checks. Written out to me. Three

years ago a programme on the business dealings of Iris Robinson

created a sensation. Iris Robinson sought and received a total of

?50,000 from two well-known property developers in 2008. Two cheques to

the tune of ?25,000 were made out at her behest to Kirk McCambley. We

have spent months piecing together piecing together the story of the

Red Sky affair. Earlier this year, a Spotlight investigation into the

contractors for the Housing executive meant that the Stormont

was recalled. Then he told me that he wanted me to go against the

decision of the board on the extension of the contract. I said to

him, I do not think I can do that. The Red Sky programme had its

critics. The BBC have been absolutely scandalous. Spotlight

three years ago did a special targeted at another representative

who just happens to be the First Minister. Subsequent to that

programme, there was a series of investigations by the police, as I

understand it, and the parliament to ombudsman and others, and the result

of those, I understand, was that the thrust of that programme was not

upheld. Also its fans. It exposed a real scandal in Northern Ireland. It

did it in such a way that it conveyed the human aspect as well as

the serious political applications. It was brave. Why did you bring

Jenny Palmer and tell her to change her vote in the Housing executive

board? -- why did you ring? Mr Brimstone sent as a solicitor's

letter in which he does not accept the accuracy of his reporting of his

telephone conversation with Jenny Palmer and does not accept he put

pressure on her. One of the really significant parts of that programme

was the fact that EDU be in that case were communicating via

solicitors letters and they were constantly declining chances to

explain themselves in an interview like this and it gave an impression

of a very close mentality towards journalism and towards someone who

was trying to go beyond just reporting what had happened that

day. In the 40 years of its existence, Spotlight has asked

questions of everyone, from gangsters to government. Generations

of journalists have passed through the office with the aim of telling

me fruit and revealing things the audience did not know before. That

is a philosophy that is as relevant today as it was back when it all

began. October, 1973. People across Northern Ireland tuned into a new

programme. Some of them in places you might not expect. When the first

programme was broadcast, I was in Long Kesh. One black and white

television. We followed political events through the programme. That

month in Northern Ireland, there were 300 shootings and 80 bomb

attacks. Spotlight looked at issues that were a long way from being

controversial. Local government, traffic congestion and even the job

of a lollipop man. In its infancy, Spotlight did have -- did not have

much in a way of a coherent identity. It took some time for the

programme to find its feet. But there were signs that it was not

afraid to tackle controversial and to boot subjects. I remember a

programme about domestic violence. What sort of beatings did you get?

Gloria Hunniford was one of the first Northern Ireland reporters to

look at domestic violence. It made a big impression on some viewers. My

parents used to fight with each other. There was fighting on the TV

and I became interested in it because I thought they were related

somehow. I thought the fighting on the streets in the North had come

into our house in some way. The troubles were just a few years old

but by the mid-70s they had already claimed hundreds of lives. One early

programme explored a theme Spotlight would return to time and again over

the next four decades. The grief suffered by those who had lost loved

ones in the violence. This lady's husband was killed while working as

a bin man. It is two years since I lost my husband. I had heard that

there had been a driver killed and I knew the driver of my husband's

squad and I asked had he been killed and he said no. I knew the way he

said that he been killed. The subject matter for Spotlight

programmes was extremely diverse. It even did celebrity profiles and

interviews. In 1979, Spotlight caught up with Northern Ireland's

most famous son George Best. The sound quality on this tape has

deteriorated over time but in this interview he told Spotlight he was

interested even men in returning to the game he loved. The ball comes

along and it looks good. No one will ever take advantage of me again. The

question was whether his social life played a part in cutting short his

career. I have had the same life of everybody else but because I was the

best player, my social life was opposed to be wilder. The reporter

put it to George Best that he was an alcoholic. I didn't ever said I

would was an alcoholic. Angela has got ideas to keep me busy. A few

kids to keep him busy. Not everyone might be soft focus. Some like its

newest reporter Jeremy Paxman felt it needed to concentrate on the big

issues of the day. The 16 men making up the trade mission to Iran were

trying to do the Eastern equivalent of selling refrigerators to

Eskimos. Strange politics, a system of government, , there was a war

going on. That was not reflected in Spotlight at all. It existed in a

parallel universe London made the big programmes. They got the

resources, the money, the time and the space. We were not talking about

ourselves, we were talking to ourselves.

Spotlight spent much of its time reacting to the news. Jeremy Paxman

and his colleagues wanted to set the agenda. One of his earliest scoops

was an investigation into a new terror group, INLA. We met one of

their leaders. How many people have you killed? I am not prepared to

say. The government went into denial mode and claimed that Jeremy Paxman

had been hoaxed. All credit to the bigwigs who were in charge, they did

not try to stop us broadcasting. By now, ambitious young journalists

were beginning to gravitate towards the toxic mix of Northern Ireland's

Troubles. Roisin McAuley moved back from London to Belfast to take up a

job as a reporter. I was coming from a free city into a city that was

very much under a sort of clamp-down. I remember this feeling

of nervousness when you walked past an unattended parked car, for

example. Gavin Esler arrived at the end of the 1970s. By now, Spotlight

had evolved. It had decisively moved away from arts and entertainment and

was delivering investigations which were often controversial. In 1980,

Esler reported on a programme which would turn out to be hugely

significant. He looked at whether a West Belfast man languishing in

prison in England had really been a key figure in a bomb-making factory.

Then obscure, the imprisoned man's cause was soon to become famous. We

did the story about Giuseppe Conlon which threw doubts on the entire

case against a number of other people in the so-called Aunt Annie's

Bomb Factory, in which there were no bombs. Were you in the IRA? Was I in

it? Nah. I was in the scouts. And because of that, because they got

off, it also raised doubts about the Birmingham Six. So it is one of the

proudest moments in my journalistic career that an innocent man, who

unfortunately died before he could be proved innocent to the public,

had been traduced by the British court system. Which eventually put

it right, but too late for Guiseppe Conlon, unfortunately.

Spotlight's job was increasingly to get to the story behind the news

headlines. Roisin McAuley was asked to look at the disappearance of Army

Captain, Robert Nairac, who had gone missing in South Armagh. Robert

Nairac's mission on that May night has never been made clear, so what

sort of soldier was it that got so caught up in the Troubles of

Northern Ireland that, in the end, he even tried to assume the identity

of those people he was fighting? He was a Lawrence of Arabia-type figure

with all those characteristics of being a loner, thinking that you

could kind of win wars on your own. I remember being told this was the

case of the spy who didn't come in from the cold. Because it was a May

evening and Captain Nairac was wearing a donkey jacket. I was told

that, this had made some people in the pub suspicious because he hadn't

taken his jacket off. Spotlight gained a reputation as a forum for

extended and hard-hitting interviews. When, Gavin Esler met

the mother of a hunger striker, he was taken aback by her loyalty to

the cause. Part of the context was Connor Cruise O'Brien, the Irish

politician had said, I think he said that republicanism is a genetic

defect and too often it is the mother who is the carrier. Are you

prepared to see the protest go to the death? Am I prepared to accept

it? Yes. I know the men, and short of their five demands, they will

hunger strike to death. Many people will find it extraordinary that your

son doesn't take his full remission, come off the protest and come out of

prison as soon as possible. I think one thing that you people do not

seem to understand is that those men are not criminals. It seemed to be

in some ways almost against nature. Or against what you would expect.

And I thought of my mother. Would my mother ever say that about me? It's

right for you to die for something you genuinely believe in? Looking

back through the archives, it's clear that the Troubles formed the

backbone of Spotlight in the late 1970s and 1980s. After all, it was

the story unfolding on the doorstep. But that wasn't all that Spotlight

turned its attention to. It also tried to deal with the big social

issues of the day in Northern Ireland. And looking back on some of

those programmes now, it shows just how much things have changed. Jeff

Dudgen is 30. He is a junior executive in industry and he enjoys

a busy social life outside his job. At first sight he is like thousands

of other young men in Ulster. Except that Jeff is a homosexual. Nearly 40

years later, in a very different Belfast, we met Jeff again. I asked

him about his memories of the programme. I do remember one aspect

of the programme was the vox pops of the people in the street and there

were six or seven different people, four or five of them were generally

sympathetic. I feel sorry for them. Everybody to their own thing.

Everyone to their own, really. In 1976, homosexuality was still a

criminal offence in Northern Ireland. If he practices his

beliefs, he could be convicted in court and sentenced to life in jail.

So in that context, to appear on television, to talk about this

issue, was brave. Well, it was brave, but maybe it was wise.

Because if we were going to go down, it was probably going to be harder

to send us down having appeared on TV. So it was calculated. People

were nervous of being nasty to people who had been on TV. After the

programme, Jeff went to the European Court of Human Rights and won a

landmark case leading to the decriminalisation of homosexuality

in Northern Ireland. At times, Spotlight tried to find the local

angle on global issues. And one of the biggest was the ever-present

threat of nuclear war. For almost 50 bemused local government officers,

it's the first step towards preparing Northern Ireland unity for

the consequences of a nuclear attack. One memorable edition of the

programme looked at how Northern Ireland would fare if the button

were ever pressed. If a two megaton nuclear megaton bomb fell on the

centre of Belfast it would cause death and destruction on an enormous

scale. And I remember thinking at the time that it was quite bizarre

because the only place in the United kingdom that was blowing itself up

was going to be a target for somebody else to blow up. If you

were in the Kremlin in 1983 you were clearly going to turn round and say,

well, no need to blow up Belfast, they seem to be doing a reasonable

job of that themselves! What's been forgotten about the Troubles is that

for most people, they were just distant bangs and news reports. You

needed to be involved or very unlucky to be caught up in them. The

threat of nuclear was what really kept us awake at night. Spotlight

followed a Civil Service exercise dealing with a fictitious nuclear

attack on Northern Ireland. In Northern Ireland, Coleraine,

Ballyclare, Crossgar, Aughnacloy and Enniskillen were deemed targets.

Their strategic importance uncertain. It named all these places

that were going to be wiped out. And, of course, shopkeepers in these

towns were watching that episode of Spotlight, thinking to themselves,

brilliant, get a claim in. Some of Spotlight's early programmes remind

us of how much things have changed in Northern Ireland and beyond. But

some show us that certain types of stories pop up again and again.

Stories, for instance, about the way politicians use public money. In one

memorable programme, Spotlight followed a group of Belfast city

councilors on a junket to Spain. It was a trip they would come to

regret. Reporter Wendy Robbins followed the councilors to a

conference in Spain. But when she went to the conference, they were

nowhere to be seen. We've been in Spain for full two days and there

has been no sign of Councilor Kobain or Councilor Proctor. When she did

catch up with one of them, it turns out they had gone on their own

excursion. We decided to drive up to Barcelona to see Barcelona. I mean,

that's what we decided to do. But at the ratepayers' expense? Yes. Do you

not see anything incongruous? What benefit has it been to the

ratepayer? I have seen ideas that will assist the council in providing

jobs in the city. One Spotlight ended what was a running sore in the

council and that was the whole culture of junketeering. One

programme stopped it. Keeping an eye on how politicians used public money

or services would become a running theme with Spotlight. The programme

revealed that another politician had been wrongly using the disabled

Motability scheme to acquire the use of a car. This is the West Car Park

at Stormont buildings. And this is a Motability car. The car has, in

fact, been hired out to a disabled person. But it appears to be being

used by one of its named drivers, Sinn Fein councilor Alex Maskey as a

means of getting to work. Spotlight wrote to Alex Maskey to ask him if

he would talk about this subject but he declined. So we decided to come

to Stormont to talk to him about this issue. Hello, Mr Maskey. It's

Andy Davies from the spotlight programme. The answer was no. I seem

to remember Alex Maskey being dubbed Motability Maskey in the end. But by

now a new generation was coming through to learn their trade in

Northern Ireland. It wasn't an easy position to get. Working here was

seen as the best job in journalism. For a young journalist this was a

place where people sorted out their differences through bombs and

bullets. And there was the marching season. I mean, that, to a young

Englishman's eyes, looks like something out of Borneo. You cannot

imagine how alien that looked. Early on, Thompson was asked to look at

the shootings of three IRA members by the SAS in Gibraltar. We looked

in that direction and saw a chap with a white shirt reeling backwards

with a man standing maybe four feet away from him and firing a gun and

following him down as he fell. They look like they were just shot. It

seemed to me this was a deliberate shooting to kill. My overall

impression that it did shine a light onto issues. I was unhappy with some

of the focus in terms of that which well glamourised the terrorists,

almost providing an excuse for them. Here were the days of the state

saying they weren't fighting a war so therefore they were fighting

according to the norms of civilian laws. So therefore you couldn't have

assassination squads, murder squads running about killing people that

you didn't like. It was to become one of the most controversial and

contentious programmes Spotlight would ever make. SAS men actually

had to apologise to people as they charged past, trying to conceal

their guns. Spotlight would allege that the official account of the

shootings was flawed and present evidence to the contrary. It was the

government which had first gone. They were setting out but they said

had happened. The journalist job is to say, hold on, is that what

actually happened? You speak truth to power. . Why wouldn't Spotlight

do that? The Government, led by Margaret Thatcher, was outraged. The

danger is that witnesses whose evidence is vital to the matters are

questioned without any of the safeguards which we can get in

courts of law or before tribunal 's have tried. It is one of the

proudest bastions of liberty that the rule of law is upheld. Spotlight

went ahead and ran the programme, despite masse political opposition.

But Spotlight investigations weren't always about the Troubles. In fact,

some of the most memorable were undercover investigations into

crime. For me, Spotlight and the people behind the programme, the

programme planners, still took time out to produce programmes that were

not Troubles related and that was a great barometer. Of a secret world

and a hidden and unknown world. For the birds themselves, there is only

one prospect to be forced to fight to the death. In 1994, Spotlight

investigated the world of illegal cockfighting. Two exhausted birds

are forced together. The white bird has been skewered through the neck

attached to its opponent's leg. By the time I arrived on Spotlight the

cockfighting investigation had been underway for some months. But then

we needed to bring it on to the next stage, which was to get hold of the

people responsible and put it to them what they had been doing. That

is you, isn't it, Mr Quinn? No, it's not. It is you, isn't it, Mr Quinn?

Hang on a minute. Are you detectives or something? Hey, Rosemary, let the

show that, see if you show that show that, see if you show that

camera? I will personally locking shove it down your throat. For me,

unless someone from Spotlight is actually chasing someone up a lane,

knocking at a window of a farmhouse where potentially grievous bodily

harm will take place? There was no real fear in Spotlight. OK, let's

just take a cameraman and a reporter and we're going to go to a remote

farmhouse. And then confront them with a moral point that I wouldn't

even do in a studio. The problem with locking yourself in the back of

your own van is what to do you do next. He preferred the indignity of

burying himself. Can I do this through the window? Jeremy the

reporter put the pictures through the small space in the window and

confronted him. Is this you? Is this you, Mr? Whatever his name was. I

think one of the significances of that film was that it got picked up

by the Royal Television Society the next year for an award. And I think

it gave the programme a confidence that you know this was our terrain,

we could be doing this. But the world of politics and paramilitary

violence was still the day-to-day subject matter for Spotlight.

Sometimes it would try to investigate paramilitary

organisations. Often, it simply tried to count the human cost of

their violence. I knew the boys were dead. I cursed and I screamed

because I knew there was no way they were getting out of there. I keep

asking myself why it was not me? I have had a good innings. By 1994,

things were changing fast. Spotlight journalists had become used to the

fact that covering death and destruction would always be part of

the job but the events of August, 1994, meant they had to think again.

There was a real sense we were living through history. I found

myself right in the middle of the team. On the eve of the cease-fire,

Spotlight went to meet the leading Republican Bernadette McAliskey. I

think that for Republicans the war is over. I think the good guys lost.

That is the kind of interview clip we remember. Within a day, we saw

the IRA cease-fire announcement. The first response came in Belfast

itself. For that autumn season of Spotlight, there was only one big

story. What the cease-fire actually meant for people living here. The

cease-fire makes a big difference. I no longer have to worry about people

sitting behind me going to blow my head. I never went into town since

the troubles were on. The cease-fires changed the political

dynamic. Suddenly, the onus was on politicians to talk to one another

and their voters about the best way forward. Spotlight brought them into

the studio to do just that and sometimes there were fiery debates.

It is called motion 79. Use tabled it at your general assembly -- you

tabled it. There was a party paper. You carried the cloth and glorified

the death of a man who murdered mercilessly. I think you have made

your point. I regard you because you were born in Ireland as an Irish

person. When the first cease-fire broke down with the Canary Wharf

bomb on a Spotlight decided to name the men at the heart of IRA

decision-making. Spotlight spoke to many sources and all of them agreed

that this is one of the most senior men in the IRA. The most intelligent

monetary operator that the RA has produced is Brian Keenan. Those who

do not want peace, they will get war. The people in Northern Ireland

did not know whether the IRA would lay down in weapons again, but they

did know the identities of the men who were making the decisions. The

BBC took the view that we had very substantial evidence to justify the

assertion that these men were running the IRA and frankly only the

BBC is big enough and had sufficient cloud to say, we are going to name

them. If they want to sue us, we will see them in court. --

sufficient clout. Social attitudes were changing too, however slowly.

20 years after looking at laws that homosexuality, Spotlight went back

to the issue in a memorable programme. It was a programme about

the Brigadier's son who was gay and came back to Belfast. John Lyttle

was the son of Tucker Lyttle. He agreed to come back to Belfast from

London to explore what life was like for gay people here. He encountered

some opposition. I am gay. That is my gift from God. No, it is not. It

is like blonde hair and blue eyes. This book tells differently. Do you

believe homosexuals should be treated differently under the law? I

have no problem with that. I came away from that programme thinking,

we are not just as bad as people make out, we are not as backward, as

nasty and homophobic. Not everyone was a fan of the

programme. It is not that important for us to know that the leader of a

loyalist paramilitary group. Sun had a different sexuality to his

father. I do not know how important matters. Just before the programme

went out, Tucker Lyttle asked to meet with the reported to discuss

it. I explained what we were trying to do and it was not a hatchet job.

It was very amicable. At the end of the conversation, I put my hand in

my pocket and I got a business card out and I reached it over to him and

I said, here is my card, you can bring me any time you like. John put

don't need to give my daddy or card, don't need to give my daddy or card,

I am sure he knows where you live anyway. -- my dad your card. The

Spotlight archive is a document of how much things have changed here in

Northern Ireland. For those who remember the dark days of the

violence, and arguably the biggest change of all is peace. Looking at

40 years of programmes, you can see how we got here, gradually and with

the old certainties being chipped away at year after year. We fight

because the people want us to fight. Total cessation of all violence. No

guns, no government. Republicans are serious about discussions. I

asked... Not everybody wanted to move forward. Some refused to lay

down their guns. Others went looking for more. In this programme, we went

on the trail of a dissident arms smuggling operation in the Balkans.

He took out a rocket launcher 200 metres from MI6. The crucial thing

for us was to be able to place two of these dissident republicans in

Croatia. We had heard about a hotel they might have been staying at. We

went there one night. We bought the night porter a glass of whiskey and

persuaded this very nice chap to hand over the hotel logs over the

last few years and low and behold there they were, the two names

signed and dated. There was, the Croatian connection in

black-and-white. Would you like to respond to comments made in the... ?

The team put their evidence to one of the men, the man alleged to be

the leader of the continuity IFA, Joe Fee. Can I have a word with you,

for just one moment, please? The Croat connection, incidentally, I

consider it to be one of the pieces of journalism that I am most proud

of in all of the years I have been working as a journalist. Every

journalist dreams of a big breakthrough, when they get enough

evidence to tell a really important story. In 2000, Spotlight gained

access to secret security services surveillance footage that allowed

them to tell the story of an IRA quartermaster who had been shot dead

by armed police in London. MI5 had been following Diarmaid O'Neill and

his associates because they believed he was planning a bombing campaign.

The operation ended up with a man shot dead. The surveillance tapes

broadcast by Spotlight show just how the killing came about. Slowly

coming across. Brian McHugh is another who believes Diarmaid

O'Neill was surrendering. He was in the room when he is shot. He is

currently in the republican wing in the maze prison. It was during the

making of the programme that someone made contact with us and said they

have got some material that we should really look at. We were

presented with a bin bag full of tapes. They were security service

surveillance tapes and there were dozens of them and they were tapes

of footage of the down crisscrossing London. Diarmaid O'Neill and his

colleagues in the park, in a street, in cars.

We then realised that we had something that had never been seen

on British television before. We had security service surveillance

material and we had the commentary of the officers in their cars while

they were watching the gang. Going straight on. The programme also had

access to police audio recordings of the moment when the gang was

apprehended in their hotel room and Diarmaid O'Neill was shot dead by

armed police. In terms of the footage, things like

that rarely happen in your career. Every journalist hopes for the

envelope being posted under his door.

We gave people an insight into the security services operation that

they had never seen before and we were able to count the story of

Diarmaid O'Neill and his final hours in a complete way that no one else

had done before because we had that footage. From investigating

dissident republicans to state security services, Spotlight was

breaking new ground and in 2003 it was the turn of loyalists. The

programme gained unprecedented access to loyalist paramilitaries at

a time when they were at war with each other. The Spotlight are member

most was about the UDA. Spotlight first looked at John White in 2000.

He was associated with the UDA, an organisation that had been accused

of widespread criminality. Spotlight asked him how he had come by all of

the trappings of wealth. I have worked hard all of my life. When I

was 11, I worked. While I was imprisoned, I worked very hard also.

I was able to save the money I made out of hand across -- handicrafts. I

knew when he said it, it was one of those golden moments. I invested in

the stock exchange. I was watching it sitting in a terraced house in

Portadown. I could hear my neighbours roaring with laughter.

Three years later, Kevin Magee met John White again. I never received

extortion at all. What do you think the public think? You are getting

into things that I do not want to talk about. URA public figure. They

are jealous. People constantly ask, where does John White get his

money? You are driving a Jaguar. I don't drink or smoke. Spotlight also

met loyalist Sammy Duddy to discuss the ongoing feud. Gunmen had

attacked his house and while he and his wife escaped unscathed one of

his pet dogs did not. The dog died within an hour. Why wife got up and

shouted out the window at them. What did you shout? I shouted, you have

killed my Chihuahua! Kevin was given access to the infamous Big Brother

house, home to Johnny Adair. He wanted to bring the cameras in. He

wanted us to see him in his lair. Johnny Adair was outside and had

fallen out with the others and it was a short space of time at the

peak of the feud that is when they were all trashing each other. That

programme was made in a very short space of time, in about 24 hours.

When a question is booked that Johnny when a question is put that

Johnny Adair does not want to answer, the atmosphere changes.

A large element of this feud is that you were trying to muscle in on

their turf. Most people, there is a graduation towards a point of anger

and you can feel your way in a conversation. But not on those

occasions. I used to feel that these guys were on very short fuses. Their

lives were under threat. Sometimes people at the heart of a big story

did want to talk. And in early 2005, no story was bigger than the

Northern bank robbery. After the bank robbery, there was only one

story in town. Chris Ward was the bank employee who had been forced to

help the robbers rob the bank. I was astounded when he walked into the

office that day. I did not think he would turn up. The interview was

broadcast the next day in a special programme. How much do you estimate

was in the second consignment? Iit would help allay any lingering or

lurking suspicion that he was somehow involved. Did you feel like

you're under suspicion? When you read, you try not to read into

stupid media articles. But when you read things like that or if Joe

Bloggs in the street would read things like that, they would think,

your wee man must be involved. And then I remember once the interview

was broadcast, and my phone just went, it was red hot, I remember.

And there were journalists on from Australia, from Germany, from

everywhere. And they all wanted to know more about the Chris Ward

interview and the Northern Bank robbery, which at that time was one

of the biggest in the world. Not everyone is willing to sit down for

a spotlight interview. But sometimes questions have to be asked anyway.

That's where the doorstep interview comes in. Often it happens in a

public place, and for Spotlight reporters, door-stepping is part of

the job description. How are you doing? And this is the

stuff and definitely this is diazepam. And now is a good time to

tell you that I am Jennifer O'Leary, a reporter for BBC Spotlight. I just

wanted to find out from you where are you getting those drugs? You

know this is illegal? I wouldn't come any further. You're having a

laugh? No. You better be slagging me, mate. We've been filming you for

the BBC. You're having a giraffe! We have, we've been filling you for the

BBC and we want to ask you what you're at. And what you're getting

up to. Stephen Walker, BBC Television. Why are you selling

clocked cars? It's nerve-wracking, it's

frightening, you are worried that you are going to get the words wrong

because you have only got one chance. You know, it's a bit like

taking a penalty kick at Wembley in front of 100,000 people. You've only

got one chance. Bishop Hegarty, Darragh McIntyre, BBC Spotlight. I

was wondering could we have a wee word with you about Father Eugene

Greene? Yeah. Did the Church handle the issue of father Eugene Greene

appropriately? Oh, yes. Any chance of people getting their money back?

I will not answer your question. Mr McIlhome, Ciaran Tracey from BBC

Spotlight. Can we ask you about your waste smuggling operation, Jimmy?

How much money are you making? BBC Northern Ireland, are you going to

compensate the victims of IRA violence? Mr McGuinness, where is

Captain Robert Nairac's body? I Captain Robert Nairac's body? I

haven't got a clue. Mr McGuinness. Mr Gonzales, my name is Mandy

McAuley, I'm a reporter with the BBC, I want to ask you about illegal

dogfighting. You've been holding illegal dogfights at your home. At

this point, police stepped in to arrest him. Do you like watching

animals suffer? One tool journalists available to Spotlight journalists

when following a story is secret filming. It's only allowed in

limited circumstances, but over the years Spotlight has come to

specialise in long-term undercover investigations. We will never engage

expeditions of just sending cameras expeditions of just sending cameras

or recording equipment somewhere in the hope that something might turn

up. That is untoward. We need good evidence that something is wrong

before we will contemplate secretly recording it. Sometimes it can be

dangerous. In 2002, Spotlight asked two young Lithuanian journalists to

go undercover as they were illegally trafficked to Northern Ireland to

work on farms. The programme was called People for Sale. In order to

deceive immigration, Juarate is sending them on a less direct route.

We're in Helsinki airport and Saulius and Loreta are right behind

us over there in that queue. Now, they're about to board a flight to

Dublin and there they'll be met by an agent, and he's going to drive

them North of the border. The only thing that can scupper the entire

plan is passport control at Dublin airport. But whilst undercover in

Lithuania, one of the journalists, Loreta, had a dangerous encounter.

She met with a people trafficker, and went with him to a restaurant.

Spotlight journalist Emma Tolland watched them from outside. Two black

cars pulled up outside. And about eight very burly, well-built men

walked into the building. They didn't look like they were there for

a meal. They weren't. They were there to attack the man Loreta had

just met. She was caught in the middle of a Lithuanian gang feud.

And she was wearing a secret camera. All of the curtains were closed in

the restaurant and the front door was bolted shut.

Luckily, Loreta had been trained well, and as soon as she smelled the

danger she got up from the table and well, and as soon as she smelled the

left and stood in a corner with the other customers in the restaurant to

keep herself safe. The programme ended with Spotlight putting

questions to those involved in the people-trafficking ring, both in

Northern Ireland and in Lithuania. Hello, Mr Kernan, my name's Declan

Lawn, I'm from the BBC. I was wondering, could you talk to me

about your involvement in the trafficking of illegal workers into

Northern Ireland? If the police see you, first of all, you're on

holiday. And that's it. And in the farm there will be no problem? No.

In 2007, Spotlight investigated the hidden world of illegal dogfighting.

We had to hire undercover operates who would pose and live as members

of a dogfighting gang here in Northern Ireland for one-and-a-half

years. There was blood splattered all over the ring, all over the two

handlers. Blood was everywhere. It was an absolute bloodbath. These

were very, very dangerous people and if our undercover operates had been

rumbled, they were in serious, serious trouble. Mandy McAuley and

undercover reporter Steve found themselves in a remote part of rural

Finland where illegal pitbulls were being trained to be killing

machines. I remember looking up and seeing dogs hanging from their jaw

and this was all part of strengthening their jaws for the

fight. And standing there and Steve digging me in the ribs and hissing,

smile. For god's sake smile and laugh. We're dog fighters. We don't

care. The undercover footage revealed a world of intense cruelty.

There were times when just the tears filled up. You see what these

horrible people are doing to these wonderful animals. If I had my way

they would be locked up and jailed for life. But death was to be at the

hands of Robert Gonzales. Gonzales lifted the dog and took it to a side

building. The first that we knew that something was up was that all

the lights in the barn went off. It wasn't until afterwards that he said

that he took the dog into a shed and put a crocodile clip onto its tail

and a crocodile clip onto its ear and threw a bucket of water over the

dog and rigged it to the main electricity system to kill it. Steve

was a guy, very tough, never really showed his emotions. But he came out

and he was disturbed. It wasn't just the undercover reporter who was

disturbed. Over the following days, Spotlight and the BBC were inundated

with reaction from the audience. I remember when the dogfighting

programme went out and that is indicative of what Spotlight's all

about. It's at the very heart of Spotlight, that you're actually

seeing what's going on in Northern Ireland. But until Spotlight does

it, it's hidden. And then it's hitting you up the face, this is

happening here. This is happening in our country, and then everybody

wants to talk about it. Four years later, and Mandy McAuley was

revealing another type of secret world. But this was one had been

created by a killer. She met a young woman who was coming to terms with

the fact that her father had murdered her mother almost 20 years

before. At the end of the day he's my father and I love him and I can't

help having those feelings for him and I don't apologise for having

those feelings for him. I love him very much and, like I say, although

I'll never understand how he could have done that, he is the only one

really who can give me some of the answers that I need. It was the case

of Colin Howell. Aided by his then-lover, Hazel Stewart, Howell

had murdered his wife, Leslie, and Stewart's husband, Trevor Buchanan.

The powerful series of interviews with the children of those involved,

almost 20 years after the crime, with the children of those involved,

made a big impression on audiences. Your mum has been convicted,

unanimously convicted, by a jury of murdering your father. There are

people watching who will say by standing by your mum you have in

some way betrayed your father's memory. We love our father and our

mother, you know? So we are not taking any sides. We wouldn't have

wanted what has happened to her. Not ever to happen. But we have lost? We

lost our dad and this? Nearly feels like we are going to lose our mum.

The grace and dignity that they showed in those interviews, it

really was humbling, very wise heads on young shoulders, very moving. And

they had waited so long, they had waited so long to tell their side of

the story. In a new, post-conflict Northern Ireland, Spotlight has

changed with the times. But dealing with unanswered questions about the

past will always be part of its role. And that's why, in 2007,

Spotlight returned to an issue it has first looked at almost 30 years

previously. The death and disappearance of Captain Robert

Nairac. And when the programme makers set out on their

investigation, they started here. The search began in the vaults of

the BBC. And I remember in particular the day we went across to

this big warehouse and found our way to one particular shelf and there

was a box labeled Captain Robert Nairac and it was dated 29 years

earlier. And you opened up the box and there were all these tapes from

back then and in particular there were these documents. They were the

transcripts of the different trials of various people who had already

been processed for their role in the killing of Captain Robert Nairac. I

was astonished to open up, all those years on, to have all that body of

evidence ready to use. Which Roisin McAuley's team had left behind for

us to follow up all those years later. I hope he could read my

handwriting! One of the men involved in the killing had gone on the run

immediately afterwards. He settled in America, and until Spotlight

knocked on his door, he had never been traced. Terry McCormick has

been on the run in America for the past 30 years. His account of what

happened that night is exclusive to Spotlight, and it is the first time

that anyone involved in the killing has spoken publicly. I ran in behind

him and put my finger to the back of his head, hoping he would think it

was a gun. I asked him for his licence. He turned around swiftly, I

punched him in the face. I heard what I assumed to be a gun. Terry

McCormick told Spotlight how he had been struggling to live with his

part in the killing ever since. There's not a day that goes by that

I don't say a prayer for Captain Nairac. Spotlight's two

investigations into the death of Captain Robert Nairac - 30 years

apart - both, in their own way, broke new ground. But the final

chapter of the tale has yet to be written. And it remains to be seen

if it ever will be. I'm very glad that someone followed through.

Because Captain Robert Nairac's body is still out there and the IRA in

South Armagh is simply not ready to give up its dead. Over the last few

years, Spotlight has found itself doing a different kind of

investigation. More and more in a post-conflict society, it's

following the money. Is your family hiding millions? Oh, billions. In

the past, Spotlight, like everybody else, would have been concentrating

heavily on security and the world of paramilitaries. These days it is

politics, it is business, it is all the more complicated areas. If we

are going to move into a normal political environment, you are going

to need fewer paramilitary experts and more accountants. The

investigation into Sean Quinn's financial collapse and its

consequences in Northern Ireland and the South took the spotlight team

around the world. Well, it was such a complicated area which had such

wide ramifications for the Border counties of Ireland, North and

South. But also the wider Irish economy. And to explain this amazing

money trail from Stockholm to Ukraine and ending up at literally

this small keyhole post box in Belize. This is the registered

office of a company which owns a $100 million in Moscow. It is

difficult to see who else would have had the resources to do it properly.

But that was a very effective investigation. So this is what $60

million of prime retail real estate in Kiev looks like. I think it's

really important in this day and age that there is still room for

in-depth investigation where every stone can be unturned. One of

Spotlight's most significant investigations in recent years was

into financial issues surrounding Iris Robinson's affair with Kirk

McCambley. I was asked to go to speak to somebody about a story

which they thought they had and I went to speak to this particular

person. This source. And they explained to me the gist of it and I

looked at them and I just thought you are winding me up here, this

can't be true. Spotlight revealed how Iris Robinson had solicited

money from two property developers to help set her 19-year-old lover up

in business. Two cheques, each to the tune of ?25,000, were made out,

at her behest, to Kirk McCambley. How did you get the money? Two

cheques. Written out to you? Yes, written out to me. I remember the

day that the editor of Spotlight brought that story to me and told me

about it. Do you think this is a story that we can do? And my answer

to him was, not is it a story that we can do. On the basis of what you

have told me, it is a story that we must do. Spotlight interviewed a

former confidant of Iris Robinson, Selwyn Black, who set out in detail

the sequence of events. In talking to the BBC, there is no personal

gain in this for me. Sorry. The programme caused a sensation. It was

one of the best pieces of investigate journalism, television

journalism, certainly in this country, that I have ever seen.

Revelation after revelation after revelation and the country must have

sat and watched that with a sense of disbelief. But not everyone feels

the investigation was worthwhile. I think as a unionist, I would say

there are far more deserving cases that could have have? I mean, like

the paedophile brother of the leader of republicanism has never been

made. Why? But yet, people have a go at the unionist MP or the wife of a

unionist leader who has medical issues. Would they have done that on

anyone else? I don't know. The key point about that story was the

?50,000. That an elected politician thought they could take ?50,000 from

two property developers and do with it what they would. What part of

that did Iris Robinson think was right? Spotlight, like Northern

Ireland, has changed beyond recognition over the last 40 years.

But some things are the same. In the future, the programme will still try

to tell people the truth about things that matter and that they

didn't know before. After all, as the old saying goes, life begins at

40. It's wanting to ask questions about why and who and how and where

and not wanting to take full hit for an answer. Clearly, the programme

has been in rude health and continues to do the important thing,

which is to find people in positions of power who are abusing people

without power and kissing them right off. So here's to another 7000 years

of Spotlight. # Happy Birthday to you. I think it is absolutely

wonderful that it is 40. I will open a bottle of champagne. # Happy

birthday to you. Happy birthday, Spotlight. Happy birthday, dear

Spotlight. Happy Birthday. Giz a job! Stay safe up those lanes when

you're trying to track men down who are potentially very scary. # Happy

birthday to you.