McKeown was no stranger either to killing or to getting away with talking about it. He was by his own admission one of a handful of “triggermen” in mid-Ulster, and experienced enough to be able to pick and choose his weaponry. The small-calibre .22 pistol he had used for this killing was “ideal if you could get up close”, he had told me, as the small bullets did not exit the skull but ricocheted around inside, ensuring death. And as one of the original “supergrasses” from the trials of the early 1980s he had already told all once and then just walked away from it when, amid dramatic scenes in the courtroom, he recanted his evidence. Again, when I met him he was serving a lengthy prison sentence for several armed robberies after having talked freely about his actions to police. A few months later, however, he was released on appeal when it was held that he had not been under proper caution when he had made his admissions. He walked again. This time though he was to go down. Earlier this year he was sentenced to a stipulated minimum of 24 years imprisonment.

For Michael McGoldrick's widow, Sadie, who had been pregnant with their second child at the time of the killing, his death left a scar that would never entirely heal. Poignantly, he had graduated only days before as a mature student from Queen's University Belfast and was well on his way to his goal of becoming a teacher. For his parents, too, the shock marked a turning point. They publicly forgave their son's killers at his funeral and turned their grief away from seeking justice and into sustained efforts for charity.

For the local community, the unsolved murder reinforced their sense of vulnerability and the conviction that the police were incapable of making a difference. To add insult to injury, the killing of McGoldrick, the first carried out by the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF), had prompted a U-turn on the part of the then Chief Constable, Sir Hugh Annesley, who allowed a contentious Orange march in neighbouring Portadown down the largely Catholic Garvaghy Road after banning it a few days previously, citing the risk of further violence as his reason. The tactic chosen by renegade loyalist Billy Wright of spreading terror by randomly choosing a victim had paid off.

Wright's close associate, McKeown was always the prime suspect but I and another journalist had gone to see him, not to ask about the McGoldrick murder but because we had heard that he was seriously ill and we hoped that, as a talker, he might give us information more generally, especially about collusion. My colleague backed out after the first interview but I was to see him a total of five times between June and October that year, and he came to trust me. Towards the end of our third meeting he sidled into the topic of the McGoldrick murder by telling me that it had been a birthday present for Billy Wright, whose birthday was indeed 7 July. This was a shocking secret and he had sworn me to confidence before revealing it. After further probing and a reiteration of my promise, he confessed to having carried out the murder. Later I got the full story from him, and even though the piece by me that appeared in The Sunday Times in December that year kept back some crucial forensic detail, it got the full attention of the police.

The case set a precedent in that it was the first to hinge upon a confession made to a journalist as opposed to a policeman or prison cellmate. Journalists are no strangers to courts of course. Take Donal McIntyre for example. For him court cases seem to be practically part of the editing process. But I broke an undertaking I had given as a journalist, as opposed to being a journalist who gave a perfidious undertaking while pretending to be someone else. The effect on public confidence is thus arguably not the same. Equally, journalists often end up in court for refusing to divulge their sources. I, however, appeared against my source after having given an undertaking of confidentiality. Understandably therefore there was an outcry in some quarters after the verdict.

My actions have been contrasted unfavourably, especially in Northern Ireland, with Ed Moloney's decade-long keeping of his promise to the loyalist police-informer William Stobie. In fact Moloney not only advised me against publication when I consulted him in late 1999 but has since contacted me to tell me he thought what I did was “despicable”. But Moloney's case was very different from mine. Stobie's role in the murder of Pat Finucane was limited to supplying weaponry, whereas Clifford McKeown had personally fired five bullets into Michael McGoldrick's head. Further, Stobie had given the police sufficient information, and sufficiently early, for them to have prevented the crime. There was, however, no suspicion of police foul play in the murder of Michael McGoldrick.

McKeown broke off contact with me, while Stobie maintained it with Moloney. McKeown was happy at the notoriety he won through publication of his story, while for Stobie publication would have meant disaster. Moloney, moreover, sought Stobie's confidence in the full knowledge of what he was about to hear, having had the story first from his original source, Neil Mulholland. I was landed with something I didn't fully expect, even though I knew McKeown was the prime suspect, and I had only a split second in which to take a decision or perhaps forever lose the opportunity. Stobie was a classic whistle-blower potentially lifting the lid on matters of urgent public interest. McKeown was a boastful murderer whose protection would have served no public interest after he had broken an understanding that he would provide me with further information about collusion and the LVF. There was a clear public interest in solving a murder.

An absolutist stance on confidentiality is akin to total pacifism or to not telling a lie even to save a life. It is an eccentricity that has little to offer realworld journalism. What if someone told you about a murder he or she was going to commit? What if an egregious paedophile revealed all? Odd then to find absolutism championed in Northern Ireland, where the journalism is often as messy as the politics. But it is not just in Northern Ireland that the chimera of neutrality is cruelly exposed. The embeds in Iraq similarly compromised some of their independence in return for privileged access. The answer is not to take a black and white view, but to face up to the difficult balances we have to strike as journalists with values, and be prepared to defend those values. In exceptional cases, and this was one, striking the right balance can involve over riding the principle of extending confidentiality to sources. After all, how often do hardened killers simply tell all to journalists? And, as I said at the trial, I felt McKeown had calculated that he would be untouchable even if the story did come out.

The principle of confidentiality, important though it is, is not an end in itself but ultimately a means to disclosure which must remain for journalists – as Liam Clarke of The Sunday Times has argued – our primary purpose. This was the thrust of advice given to me by Chris Frost, chair of the NUJ Ethics Committee, when he told me in a pre-publication consultation that it was sometimes permissible to “act as a citizen”. For me, much more difficult than breaking the original story or agreeing to help the police was the dilemma I faced mid-trial when I was told it would simply collapse unless I agreed to full disclosure of all the journalistic material I had on Northern Ireland, all my notes and tapes, even completely irrelevant ones.

It was put very acutely by Martin O'Hagan, one of my closest contacts until he became the first journalist to be killed in the troubles when he was murdered 18 months ago by the same LVF that killed McGoldrick. He said McKeown did not deserve ethical niceties, but that he would never speak to me again if I handed over notes of our conversations. Journalistic privileges not being legal privileges, the defence was able to force full disclosure by maintaining that I had concocted the confession in an abortive attempt to extort information about collusion from McKeown in order to help another contact of mine who was embroiled in a substantial libel case at the time. There was not a shred of evidence for this and it may be relevant that there was a history of litigation between that contact and McKeown's solicitor. On the strength of an unsupported allegation by McKeown, my Northern Ireland material was carted off wholesale by the police. Needless to say this has had consequences and I have already received death threats from a former source who has been hit by the fall-out.

Had I been a psychiatrist, this would have been unthinkable. If the defence had alleged that I had concocted the notes of one patient in order to help another they would hardly have been given the run of my entire patient-list in an attempt to bolster their theory. Not if all they had was an allegation plucked out of thin air. But that is effectively what happened to me. McKeown never even took the stand to back up his accusation. He did not utter a syllable throughout the entire proceedings.

For this reason I could not recommend to any other journalist that they should go down the path I did without a change in the law. Had I known that the legal system was going to treat confidentiality in such a cavalier manner, I doubt whether I would ever have undertaken to help the police. In some ways I was on trial as much as McKeown. Had my evidence been thrown out there would have been a life-long question mark over my credibility. During a gruelling four weeks, the legal process stripped me of my quality as a journalist and failed to protect me from protracted and unnecessary questioning despite my poor health (I have ME) and the obvious strain it placed me under. Until now I would have jumped on the liberal bandwagon of supporting the “human rights” of defendants, but it is sobering to see the impact those rights have on the rights of witnesses. It no longer surprises me in the slightest that witnesses fail to appear in court or to come forward in the first place.

Still, I do not regret continuing with the trial. Someone who might well have killed again will now almost certainly never have the chance to do so, and the public appreciation expressed by Sadie McGoldrick for my role makes all the difference to me. My only regret is that Martin O'Hagan is no longer around to hang up the phone on me. McKeown's gang, the LVF, had shown it was prepared to kill reporters by murdering him. How can I not be glad I helped put him in jail?