A top loyalist who ordered Belfast solicitor Mr Pat Finucane's murder went "berserk" after a paramilitary colleague began talking about the killing, it was claimed today.
An explosive documentary into allegations that British intelligence units colluded with terrorists to target Catholics in Northern Ireland will name the Ulster Defence Association chief it says set up the lawyer for assassination.
UDA man Ken Barrett told the BBC's Panorama team the UDA chief began "cracking up" after William Stobie, the organisation's ex-quartermaster charged in connection with the Finucane murder, turned police informer. Barrett said his boss told him: "Stobie will be lucky if he sees his f****** trial."
The paramilitary boss's fury was stoked by Stobie's allegations that he had asked him to supply the guns used to shoot the solicitor in February 1989.
Although he was acquitted when a key prosecution witness failed to testify, Stobie was gunned down at his north Belfast home last December.
In tonight's second part of the film, A Licence To Murder, more damning allegations that covert military operatives and Royal Ulster Constabulary Special Branch figures allowed loyalists to target Catholics are disclosed.
Barrett is named as the man who pulled the trigger in the Finucane killing. Loyalists suspected Mr Finucane - who represented senior IRA men in court - was also a member of the organisation.
Both the IRA and his family categorically deny the allegation. Barrett said an unnamed Special Branch officer urged him to take out what he called a "thorn in the side" and gave him vital assistance by ensuring the roads were clear on the night of the shooting.
Secretly filmed while in hiding, he also claimed the UDA chief - described as one of the "untouchables" in loyalist north Belfast - introduced him to the police officer.
"He says: `You're more, how do you put it, you're more the psychopath than what (the UDA boss) is. You're more a one for business here aren't you?'," Barrett claimed he said.
He was provided with detailed intelligence on his target by Brian Nelson, the double agent used by the Army's most secret wing, the Force Research Unit, to infiltrate loyalist terror gangs.
But subsequent allegations of collusion between paramilitaries and intelligence operatives have been so strong that Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir John Stevens is now preparing to report on his third inquiry into the claims.
A retired Canadian judge has also been appointed to examine the Finucane killing and five other controversial murders in Northern Ireland.
In tonight's programme the security chief who recruited Nelson is confronted in a bid to answer the accusations.
Brigadier Gordon Kerr, now the British military attache in Beijing, has always defended the use of Nelson to take over UDA intelligence gathering by claiming it was meant to save lives.
IRA men were harder targets than innocent Catholics, he reasoned, so loyalists redirecting their guns gave his unit and the RUC more time to foil the murder bids.
Brigadier Kerr has insisted security unit involved made every possible effort to inform police of all available intelligence on planned UDA attacks. He claimed 730 reports passed on 217 targeted individuals.
But incredulous Stevens team members rejected his assessment, with one detective finding only two cases where Nelson's information helped thwart attacks.
The programme makes a damning assessment of FRU's efforts to prevent the assassination of Mr Gerard Slane at his west Belfast home in September 1988.
PA