Des O'Malley Archives - Village Magazine

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The Artful Dodger: O’Malley nit-picks with RTE over timing trivia while still ignoring all the important questions about the Arms Crisis.

by admin 20 June, 2021 0 Comments

By Sean Brennan. I have just read the article in the Sunday Independent [20 June] concerning whether RTE contacted Des O’Malley first while the station was producing the GunPlot series. It is the second article which the Sunday Independent has produced about the issue. The earlier one – written by Des O’Malley – appeared on 13 June. The article in today’s Sunday Independent [20 June 2021] concerns RTE’s apology to O’Malley and his family over a statement it issued last week about who made the first move to establish contact. This is truly a case of a very minor issue being blown up out of all proportion. It hardly undermines the quality and brilliance of the GunPlot series. One thing is absolutely clear now: it is not correct to say – as Des O’Malley claimed on 13 June – that RTE “never attempted to contact” him. Even as he says himself, his son talked at length to the producers on his behalf. O’Malley seems upset that he was not approached before the GunPlot podcasts were broadcast. However, they were aired over nine weeks. Hence, there was plenty of time to make contact with O’Malley as they rolled out. Surely O’Malley does not think he can dictate when he should have been approached? Surely the producers should be able to dictate their own pace? I have spoken to David Burke, author of a recent book on the Arms Crisis. He featured heavily in episode 8 of the podcast series (about the two Arms Trials). He was not interviewed until after episode 6 had been broadcast. (Some quotes from him in the earlier podcasts were taken from a lengthy interview he gave for the TV version of GunPlot. The TV interview was recorded earlier in the year.) Overall, O’Malley’s complaints are bewildering. He has spent well over 40 years dodging questions about the Arms Crisis. So why does it matter how contact between him and RTE was established: he was never going to answer the hard questions which he has been ducking for decades. In December 1980 Vincent Browne, the editor of Magill magazine, raised a number of issues about the Arms Crisis which involved O’Malley. Browne wrote: “Magill attempted to have Mr. O’Malley explain his side of this story for the July [1980] issue but he declined to speak to us. The offer of space to state his case is still available.” O’Malley’s silence in the interim has been deafening. In his Sunday Independent article of 13 June, O’Malley gave the impression that he has always been open about his knowledge of the scandalous series of events that surround the Arms Crisis; moreover, that he was ever willing to share it if only asked. Further, that there was a malign conspiracy at RTE to censor him. Will he now agree to do a fullscale interview for an additional episode of the GunPlot podcast? Is he now finally prepared to answer any and all questions? Will he answer the questions Magill raised over 40 years ago? Will he now agree to do a fullscale interview for an additional episode of the GunPlot podcast? Is he now finally prepared to answer any and all questions? Will he answer the questions Magill raised over 40 years ago? Des O’Malley declined to be interviewed by RTE in 2021 on the grounds of ill health. (It has presumably passed because he is now capable of writing at length for the Sunday Independent.) Yet, while in good health, he spent decades avoiding the hard questions about the Arms Crisis. The process began in earnest in 1980 after Magill magazine described two meetings he had had: one with Charles Haughey and a second one, after it, with Peter Berry of the Department of Justice. They will be examined in detail later in this article. O’Malley has failed to answer questions raised by Vincent Browne in that edition for over 40 years. In the meantime, other questions have arisen for O’Malley to answer. None of them have been addressed by him. O’Malley failed to raise and answer the difficult Arms Crisis questions in 2001 during a four-part TV series broadcast on RTE which was dedicated to his life. He also had an opportunity to put what he knew about these events in his 2014 memoirs. Instead of a thorough analysis, his book was a huge disappointment to historians who attacked it for its lack of real content. Now, he is jumping on utter trivia about who rang whom first instead of answering the really important issues about this monumental scandal. Now, he is jumping on utter trivia about who rang who first instead of answering the really important issues about this monumental scandal. Village has published a number of articles concerning Des O’ Malley’s role in the events in 1970. These articles included a number of matters which Village believes have not been addressed and satisfactorily answered by O’Malley concerning his role and actions in 1970. See: Ducking all the hard questions. Des O’Malley has vilified an array of decent men and refuses to answer obvious questions about the Arms Crisis and the manner in which the Provisional IRA was let flourish while he was minister for justice. See also: The ‘Last Man Alive’ is still saying nothing. Des O’Malley’s silence about his role in the Arms Trials and Arms Crises of 1970 has become thunderous. And: Vilification Once More For the sake of clarity, I will summarise some of the more important questions which Des O’Malley needs to answer, starting in the next section. Please also note that extracts from the December 1980 edition of Magill which addressed the O’Malley-Haughey and O’Malley-Berry meetings are reproduced at the end of this article. A letter by author Michael Heney to the Sunday Independent is also reproduced towards the end of this piece. Mr Heney was replying to O’Malley’s article of 13 June last. Army Directive dated 6 February 1970. This directive documented an order which was given by the Minister for Defence,

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Politics

Vilification Once More

by admin 13 June, 2021 0 Comments

Des O’Malley, the Minister for Justice in 1970, continues to ignore the hard questions about the Arms Crisis. Instead, he persists in smearing anyone who dares to disagree with him. Some of his latest slurs question the integrity of those in RTÉ responsible for the ‘GunPlot’ series. It is now time to stop throwing the mud and answer the hard questions. By Sean Brennan. Introduction I have just read in the Sunday independent Des O’Malley’s article about GunPlot, the RTE television documentary on the Arms Crisis 1970 and the RTE Radio Podcast Series. Des has a problem in accepting the truth, particularly when the truth contradicts Des’s preferred narrative. The big lie as propagated by Jack Lynch and Jim Gibbons about what happened during the Arms Crisis in 1970 has finally been definitively nailed and, unusually, history has been rewritten. The purpose of the lie was to protect Jack Lynch’s position at all costs. Des O’Malley has given oxygen to this false narrative for the last 50 years. His article in today’s Sunday Independent is no surprise. O’Malley has made a career out of maligning decent men. He often does this in a cowardly way, waiting until the person to be maligned has died. O’Malley’s article today is practically the same as the article which he wrote on 27 September 2020. Both articles contain no evidence to support O’Malley’s assertions and are based purely on bluster and spoof. In contrast to O’Malley’s article, my article below contains incontrovertible documentary evidence from State papers that were hidden and suppressed by the State from the Arms Trials in 1970. RTE did invite Des O’Malley to participate in GunPlot. One of O’Malley’s claims in the Sunday Independent is that he was not asked to participate in GunPlot by RTE. RTE have just issued a statement which reveals he was invited but declined, instead nominating his son Eoin to talk on his behalf. Perhaps if he been man enough to face the cameras, he would have featured heavily in the TV broadcast and podcasts. However, that would also have meant he would have had to answer all the hard questions. According to the RTE statement: “The truth matters. And the truth is that RTÉ did make contact with Des O’Malley to ask him for an interview for the series. Des O’Malley declined to be interviewed by us and nominated his son Eoin to take part in the series in his place. The truth does matter.” Complete silence about O’Malley’s secret meeting with Charles Haughey. What might RTE have asked O’Malley? I wrote an article for Village Magazine on 17 April 2021, titled “The ‘Last Man Alive’ is still saying nothing. Des O’Malley’s silence about his role in the Arms Trials and Arms Crisis 1970 has become thunderous”. The ‘Last Man Alive’ is still saying nothing. Des O’Malley’s silence about his role in the Arms Trials and Arms Crises of 1970 has become thunderous. In my article I raised many very important questions for Des O’Malley to address but he has failed to reply. The most serious one concerns his secret meeting with Charlie Haughey just two weeks before Haughey stood trial for criminal conspiracy and sedition in the biggest criminal trial that this country has ever seen. Here we had the Minister for Justice meeting a man who stood accused of the most serious crimes surreptitiously, to discuss the evidence that a prosecution witness was to give at the forthcoming trial. Until O’Malley addresses our concerns as to why he met Charlie and what they discussed and why he forwarded Charlie’s requests to the witness, Peter Berry, the Secretary of the Department of Justice, there will be questions over O’Malley’s character. Haughey’s request was to ascertain whether Berry could be induced or intimidated or persuaded to change his evidence to suit Haughey’s case. There was also a subtle threat that Berry would be roasted while in the witness box by a particularly aggressive and brilliant lawyer, Seamus Sorohan. The fact that Berry said that O’Malley was biting his knuckles when he was relaying Charlie’s request to Berry would suggest that O’Malley was nervous. The question is: why was he nervous? Berry also said that he felt nauseated by the fact that O’Malley was pretending to Haughey that he was Haughey’s friend. Berry also said that he felt nauseated by the fact that O’Malley was pretending to Haughey that he was Haughey’s friend. What I cannot get over is the fact that O’Malley was prepared to meet Haughey behind Jack Lynch’s back. This was a disloyal and deceitful thing to do to someone who just four months earlier had promoted O’Malley to ministerial ranks. With friends like that who would need enemies? The arms importation operation was not ‘illegal’. Des O’Malley says that RTE put a gloss on the crisis that the then-Taoiseach Jack Lynch was somehow involved, that he knew all about the plot to import arms “illegally”. The jury at the Arms Trial held that the plot was not illegal. What is undeniable is that Lynch knew of the plan to import arms legally as follows: Berry told Lynch in Mount Carmel in October 1969 about the meeting in Bailieboro which was attended by Captain Jim Kelly and citizens from the North, and during which the plan to import guns was first discussed. Lynch confirmed the fact that Berry told him of this meeting to Jim Gibbons who was the Minister for Defence. Gibbons informed Colonel Hefferon of what Lynch told him. Casting doubts over Ben Briscoe While David Burke was carrying out research for his book on the arms crisis, ‘Deception and Lies, The Hidden History of the Arms Crisis 1970’, he spoke to Ben Briscoe, who was a friend of Jim Gibbons and George Colley. Briscoe told Burke, and later confirmed to the RTE Gunplot Podcast team, that he knew about the arms-importation operation months before the Arms Crisis erupted and that when the attempt to import the arms was

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RTE’s ‘Gun Plot’: Why has it taken so long for the true narrative of the Arms Crisis 1970 to emerge?

by admin 29 April, 2021 0 Comments

By Sean Brennan. The documentary titled ‘Gun Plot’ which was shown on RTE 1 last night was fascinating television. The RTE production team should be commended for this brilliant documentary on a very important and significant political and legal event which occurred 50 years ago but has not been properly addressed by the media up until now. These events in 1969 and 1970 shaped politics in Ireland forever and also had a huge impact on how the troubles in Northern Ireland unfolded after 1970. What was very compelling was the fact that the documentary included the actual tape recordings of the second trial. This was the first time that an Irish court hearing was tape recorded. It was the judge, Mr. Justice Henchy, who ordered the hearings to be recorded. It is important to remember that the actual transcripts of the trial have been lost. The fact that the transcripts of the most important criminal trial in the history of the state are lost is incredible and some might even say sinister. In summary, RTE have performed a great service to the citizens of this country and historians in that they have finally portrayed much of what really happened in 1969 and 1970 but was previously hidden, concerning the events that are commonly referred to as the Arms Crisis and the Arms Trials in 1970. The documentary highlighted certain facts that suggest that Taoiseach Jack Lynch and Jim Gibbons, the then Minister for Defence, had a much greater knowledge and involvement in the plan to import arms for a possible distribution to Nationalists in Derry and Belfast in extreme circumstances than was ever admitted by Lynch and Gibbons. The programme refers to the Army Directive of 6th February 1970. This directive was issued by the Minister for Defence, Jim Gibbons to the Army Chief of Staff, General Sean McEoin, in the presence of Colonel Michael Hefferon, the Head of Military Intelligence on 6th February 1970. The directive stated that the Minister had been instructed by the Government to direct the Chief of Staff to prepare the army for incursions into Northern Ireland and to make surplus arms available for distribution to Nationalist in Northern Ireland for defensive purposes. The documentary also covers the events on 2nd April 1970 when it was feared that the Nationalist population in Ballymurphy in Belfast would be left defenceless against armed and arson attacks by loyalist mobs and B Specials and would be slaughtered. Arising out of the instructions which were given to the Minister for Defence which resulted in the Army Directive dated 6th February 1970 mentioned in the last paragraph, the Minister issued an order for the army to transport army weapons from an army barracks in Dublin to the army barracks in Dundalk so as to ensure that these weapons could be distributed in a short space of time to the defenceless Nationalists in Belfast in the event of them being subject to murderous assault and arsonist attacks. A total of 500 Irish Army rifles were transported in Irish Army lorries to Dundalk. This was exactly the type of situation which was envisaged in the Army Directive dated 6th February 1970. As it transpired, the expected loyalist attacks on the Nationalists in Ballymurphy did not materialise. Of the 500 rifles transported to Dundalk, only 350 were immediately returned to the barracks in Dublin. The remaining 150 rifles were kept in Dundalk pending the arrival of arms to be imported from the Continent. Unlike the army rifles which were sent to Dundalk, these imported arms could not be indentifiable and traced back to the Irish Army. The purpose of importing unidentifiable arms was to avoid or at least mitigate the possibility of damage to our diplomatic relations with the UK. After all it was part of the Government’s emergency plans to supply arms to UK citizens in Northern Ireland which was part of the UK. This could be regarded as an act of war. Secrecy was therefore critically important. Only Jim Gibbons could have ordered the Army to deposit 150 rifles in Dundalk after the rest of the arms were returned to Dublin. This was hidden from the jury at the Arms Trials. Only Jim Gibbons could have ordered the Army to deposit 150 rifles in Dundalk after the rest of the arms were returned to Dublin. This was hidden from the jury at the Arms Trials. The documentary also dealt with the army training camp in Fort Dunree , Co. Donegal. Men from Derry were inducted into the FCA and trained in the use of arms in Fort Dunree. This training was called off temporarily when the media got word of it. It was obvious that the people who were being trained into the use of arms might be supplied with arms to use in extreme circumstances as otherwise the training would have been pointless. It was obvious that the people who were being trained into the use of arms might be supplied with arms to use in extreme circumstances as otherwise the training would have been pointless. The documentary also mentions the meeting in Mount Carmel Hospital in October 1969 when the Secretary of the Department of Justice, Peter Berry informed the Taoiseach Jack Lynch that Captain Kelly met Northerners in Bailieboro, Co Cavan to discuss the importation of arms. Berry had been briefed by the Special Branch about the Bailieboro meeting and regarded it of such importance that he asked Jack Lynch to come to visit him in Mount Carmel so that he could tell Lynch face to face about what he had been told about the Bailieboro meeting. Lynch always denied that Berry told him about the Bailieboro meeting and the discussions concerning the importation of arms. The documentary was measured and overall it suggests that Captain Kelly and John Kelly believed that they were participants in a legal government sanctioned plan to import arms for the defence of Nationalist in Northern Ireland in the event of a

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The ‘Last Man Alive’ is still saying nothing. Des O’Malley’s silence about his role in the Arms Trials and Arms Crises of 1970 has become thunderous.

by admin 17 April, 2021 0 Comments

By Sean Brennan The purpose of this article is to examine Des O’ Malley’s Role in the events which are commonly known as The Arms Crisis and The Arms Trials 1970. The Arms Crisis erupted during the early hours of 6 May 1970, when a press release issued by the Government Information Service announced that the Taoiseach Jack Lynch had sacked his two most powerful Ministers, Neil Blaney and Charles Haughey, the Minister for Agriculture and the Minister for Finance respectively. The Minister for Local Government, Kevin Boland had also resigned in protest at the manner in which his colleagues, Blaney and Haughey had been dismissed from Government. I should state at the outset that I am the son of Paudge Brennan, Fianna Fáil TD for Wicklow for 25 years, who resigned his position as a junior Minister reporting to Boland in sympathy with these other resignations. The reason for the sackings was allegations that Blaney and Haughey had been involved in a conspiracy, carried out behind the Taoiseach’s back and without his knowledge, to illegally import guns and ammunition. It was also rumoured that the guns were for the IRA. There were also imputations that the purpose of arming the IRA was to abolish partition, by force. The IRA hardly existed at this stage and was mocked by Northern nationalists with the taunt “IRA equals I Ran Away”. It was further suggested that Blaney and Haughey were involved in some sort of coup d’etat, whereby it was their intention to overthrow Jack Lynch as Taoiseach. I will prove in this article that this, conventional, narrative of the Arms Crisis was a deliberately fabricated lie. This lie was concocted by Jack Lynch in order to protect his own position. It turns out that Lynch was an inveterate liar. In fact, the author Michael Heney has shown that Jack Lynch lied on more than 30 occasions in matters pertaining to the Arms Crisis and Arms Trials. Lynch was aided and abetted in his lies and deceit by his Ministerial colleague Jim Gibbons who perjured himself while giving evidence at the Arms Trials. It has been commented on by colleagues and friends of Gibbons that he was never the same man again after giving the perjured evidence that he gave at the Arms Trials. Some friends even went as far as saying that Gibbons was a broken man after the arms trials. Gibbons was a practising catholic and it would appear that he suffered severe bouts of guilt and remorse for his dishonest actions during the arms trial. Lynch on the other hand continued to perpetuate the lie about the arms crisis and appeared to be quite comfortable in doing so. However, all may not have been as it seemed. Maybe Lynch was not as comfortable with this big lie as it appears. To be fair to Jim Gibbons, while his behaviour in perjuring himself at the two trials can never be excused nor forgiven, he too may have been a victim of Lynch’s deceit. It might appear that Lynch was protecting Gibbons when he did not sack him together with Blaney and Haughey on 6 May 1970. But this was not the case. Lynch was protecting himself. Lynch could not sack Gibbons as this would risk Gibbons declaring Lynch’s knowledge of the approved arms plan and Lynch’s position would be exposed. By ‘protecting Gibbons’, Lynch was effectively setting Gibbons up and manipulating him into a position where he would be ‘pressurised’ into perjuring himself while being cross-examined by the top lawyers in the country a total of eight times. This must have been humiliating for Jim Gibbons and would have had a devastating impact on him emotionally and psychologically. When Gibbons was promoted to Agriculture and not sacked on 6 May 1970 nobody told him that he would have to perjure himself. If he had known that that was going to be the price of holding on to his position in Cabinet he might very well have taken a different position and the course of Irish history would have been a lot different. Gibbons did Jack’s dirty work, paid the price for doing that and Jack kept his hands clean. Jack always kept his hands clean. Lynch was also aided and abetted in the continuation of his lies and deceit by the media and lazy journalism. The only journalist who contested Lynch’s dishonest narrative was Vincent Browne, who wrote about the Arms Crisis and Arms Trials in Magill Magazine in 1980 using as his source the diaries of Peter Berry, the former Secretary of the Department of Justice, who was a key player in the events. Browne found it impossible to get an Irish printer to print these editions of Magill as printers were fearful of crossing the government and the consequences that this might have for their business and future printing contracts. So these issues of the magazine had to be printed in the UK. It has been suggested that the reason for the media acting in concert with Lynch’s lies is that the media, particularly RTE and the Irish Times had been infiltrated by Official/IRA, Official Sinn Féin and Workers Party members such as Dick Walsh, who reviled FF and in particular Charles Haughey. Last Year marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Arms Crisis/Trials. Such Anniversaries normally involve acknowledging the relevant events or occasions, celebrating them and then moving on. However, the fiftieth anniversary of the Arms Crisis was different to the extent that it marked a complete change and correction of the false received narrative of the events that had been promulgated for the previous fifty years. This revision was as a direct result of two brilliantly researched books on the Arms Crisis written by two experts on the subject. The books, ‘The Arms Crisis of 1970 – The Plot That Never Was’ and ‘Deception and Lies – The Hidden History of The Arm Crisis 1970’ written by Michael Heney and David Burke respectively are based on

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General

Ducking all the hard questions. Des O’Malley has vilified an array of decent men and refuses to answer obvious questions about the Arms Crisis and the manner in which the Provisional IRA was let flourish while he was minister for justice.

by admin 22 November, 2020 0 Comments

The print edition of Village magazine posed a number of questions to Des O’Malley about the Arms Crisis but he ignored them. They arose out of an article he had published in the Sunday Independent in September. He also used that article as a platform to attack recent research on the crisis without addressing any of the evidence which has appeared in two new books. His Sunday Independent article vilified the organisers of the Citizen Defence Committees (CDC) alleging they were supporters of the Provisionals. He has yet to withdraw the smears about the CDC organisers. The original article with a small amount of new material is reproduced below. By David Burke. Introduction. Des O’Malley served as Chief Whip and Junior Minister for Defence to Jack Lynch’s government in 1969 and 1970. In May 1970 he was appointed as Minister for Justice by Lynch, though he was only 31 years of age – just as the Arms Crisis was erupting. Despite his youth and inexperience, Lynch chose to place him in this crucial position. On top of this, the appointment was made as the Provisional IRA was learning to crawl. The Provos maintained a low profile throughout 1970 and some of 1971 while its leaders focused on recruiting volunteers in competition with the Marxist Official IRA. So low was its profile that Martin McGuinness joined the Officials unaware that the Provisionals even existed. Cleary, O’Malley did not appreciate what was afoot either. O’Malley has recently descended from retirement claiming to be “duty bound” to set the record straight on new revelations about the controversial arms importation attempt that sparked the Arms Crisis. The new – and not so new – evidence about the crisis O’Malley contests portrays his hero Jack Lynch in a very poor light. It indicates that Lynch knew about the arms importation that sparked the Arms Crisis; moreover, that it was a secret but legal manoeuvre of the State. In making his case O’Malley pointedly vilified the memory of Captain James Kelly and a multitude of others in the Citizen Defence Committees (CDCs) whom he has recklessly and inaccurately portrayed as midwives to the Provisional IRA. Unfortunately, Des O’Malley has not engaged with any of the evidence which has emerged in recent times, not to mention that which has been in existence for decades. His account is a conceited fantasy in which he and Lynch saved the State from civil war despite daunting odds and the treachery of disloyal Fianna Fáil colleagues who were aided and abetted by menacing allies in military intelligence. All he seems prepared to offer is an assertion that Lynch was a man of great integrity incapable of deceit and that – for some bizarre reason – the authors of two new books on the Arms Crisis – Michael Heney and myself – have claimed that Jack Lynch was a party to a plot to arm the Provisionals. This is an astonishing misrepresentation for neither of us made any claim that even remotely chimes with this. I would like to test O’Malley’s account of his struggle to save Ireland from doom by reference to a number of documents which contradict his mythmaking. The Smoking Gun Document That Refers to the Taoiseach. How, if the arms importation operation which was at the centre of the Arms Crisis was conducted behind Lynch’s back, does O’Malley explain the content of a document which came into existence on 10 February 1970? It was prepared by the Department of Defence. It was withheld from the jury at the Arms Trials but eventually released by the National Archives. It was reproduced in a book by Angela Clifford entitled ‘Military Aspects of Ireland’s Arms Crisis of 1969-70’ in 2006. In other words, O’Malley has had at least 14 years to provide his account of it. He ignored its existence in his memoirs which appeared in 2014. He did not mention it in his recent Sunday Independent article. O’Malley was the Junior Minister for Defence when the document – from his Department, remember – came into existence. The document specifically referred to the Taoiseach Jack Lynch and was entitled Addendum to the Memo of 10/2/70, Ministerial Directive to CF: It stated that: “The Taoiseach and other Ministers have met delegations from the North. At these meetings urgent demands were made for respirators, weapons and ammunition the provision of which the Government agreed. Accordingly truckloads of these items will be put at readiness so that they may be available in a matter of hours”. There is no sign this document, despite it’s unimpeachable pedigree, has yet registered with O’Malley. Question 1: How do you reconcile this document with your assertion that Jack Lynch did not know about attempts to supply weapons to the citizens of the North? The ‘Secret’ Military Document That Refers to the 150 Rifles Which Were Stored in Dundalk. It was Withheld From the Arms Trial jury. In early April 1970 panic swept across Ballymurphy, a Catholic estate in Belfast, that the British Army was about to abandon the Catholics who lived there to an onslaught by Loyalist murder and arson gangs: in other words, a repeat of the violent killings and forced evictions of August 1969. The fear proved ill-founded and was short lived. While the panic was abroad, (senior) Minister for Defence James Gibbons ordered the transport of some of the Irish Army rifles that had been set aside under the orders given in February 1970. He did so without input from Jack Lynch who could not be contacted. A transport of army trucks with 500 rifles, 80,000 rounds of ammunition and respirators was sent to the North but did not cross the border. Instead, the trucks parked at Dundalk Barracks in the Republic. According to a Military Intelligence file, there was insufficient room to store all 500 of the rifles so 350 were returned to Dublin. The remaining 150 were kept in Dundalk. This contradicts the Gibbons-O’Malley-Lynch version of events which would have us believe

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Government must release Des O’Malley, the former Minister for Justice, from the shackles of official State-imposed secrecy – for the sake of history. UPDATE: O’MALLEY IS GOING TO TALK TO THE SUNDAY INDEPENDENT.

by admin 26 September, 2020 0 Comments

UPDATE: Des O’Malley is going to reveal what he knowns about the new allegation that Seán MacStíofáin was a Garda informer in The Sunday Independent tomorrow. Hopefully, O’Malley will answer the 10 questions Village raised in the original version of this article In the event that O’Malley does not address these questions in The Sunday Independent, these pages are open to him to answer them here. By David Burke. To his credit, Des O’Malley is one of a small number of former government ministers who have taken the trouble to publish a memoir. In this respect Ireland compares poorly to other modern democracies where memoirs are more common. O’Malley was Minister for Justice at a crucial moment in our recent history fifty years ago this week. The Official Secrets Act was hardly designed to deny the citizens of this nation the insight of figures such as O’Malley who occupied sensitive positions such a long time ago. Seán MacStíofáin, the former Chief of Staff of the Provisional IRA, masqueraded as an IRA informer for years. Helen McEntee, the present Minister for Justice, indicated earlier this week that she is open to the possibility of declassifying some of the files the State possessses about him. Surely it follows that the government could relax the restrictions on former ministers such as O’Malley so that they too can provide their memories of MacStíofáin, the key figure in the creation of the Provisional IRA? When O’Malley was Minister for Justice in 1970, Chief Superintendent John Fleming was Head of Garda Special Branch while Peter Berry was in charge of the Department of Justice. To a greater or lesser extent, all of these key figures have revealed that the State was running a high-level informer, albeit that none of them ever named him in public. There was another high-level informer but he was in a separate paramilitary group called Saor Éire. For the avoidance of any confusion, it must be stressed that MacStíofáin was never a genuine informer. He abused his position to mislead and deceive the Irish State true to his agenda which was to bring about a military campaign to end partition. For the avoidance of any confusion, it must be stressed that MacStíofáin was never a genuine informer. On the contrary, he abused his position to mislead and deceive the Irish State. He was always true to his agenda which was to bring about a military campaign to end partition. In the event, he created one of the most dangerous and violent paramilitary organisations in Western Europe, the Provisional IRA. MacStíofáin went to his grave with a lot of blood on his hands. From a historical perspective, MacStíofáin’s masquerade as a mole is far too important to let sink into oblivion. As things stand, his deceitful machinations will make the work of historians extremely difficult to unravel. This is particularly unfair on all of the victims of the Provisional IRA for MacStíofáin was the key individual in its creations. The gardai have a serious question to answer over its staggering negligence in its handling of MacStíofáin. We now, after the dust has settled, have some important information about him from the key sources: PETER BERRY: The fact of the existence of a high-level informer became apparent when Vincent Browne published the ‘diaries’ of Peter Berry in Magill magazine in 1980. They were replete with references to the information which an unnamed informer had provided to the Special Branch in 1969 and 1970. The Berry papers included a reference to an allegation made by a high-level IRA source with access to the deliberations of the IRA Army Council, one of which was that “the previous week a Cabinet Minister had [held] a meeting with the Chief of Staff of the IRA [i.e. Cathal Goulding], at which a deal had been made that the IRA would call off their campaign of violence in the Twenty-six Counties in return for a free hand in operating a cross Border campaign in the North”. The fact that the then Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, had spoken out against the IRA on 19 August did not dent Berry’s confidence in the ‘information’ he was being fed. Instead of realising he was being played by MacStíofáin, Berry wrote that the Army Council “could not understand the Taoiseach’s statement on 19th August as it had been accepted that the Cabinet Minister was speaking to their Chief of Staff with the authority of Government”. A wiser man might have suspected that the story was a vortex of lies. An operation to test the information MacStíofáin was providing could have been set in train. Instead MacStíofáin continued to furnish information which was accepted as fact until June/July 1972 when it finally became clear MacStíofáin had been playing the Gardaí all along. Micheál Ó Móráin has been much derided – especially by Berry – despite the fact he never fell for the diet of lies which was being fed to the Branch. JOHN FLEMING: We also know there was an informer from the evidence provided by CS Fleming to the Public Accounts Committee in 1971. He alleged that the source had alleged that Irish military intelligence had provided funds to Cathal Goulding, the chief-of-staff of the IRA. The information was a potage of lies. DES O’MALLEY: In his memoirs, Des O’Malley wrote about a “tip-off” that the Garda received in April 1970 about a flight that was due to arrive at Dublin Airport with arms. This was the event that sparked the Arms Crisis. According to O’Malley: “Those involved had planned to bring arms through Customs without the consignment being examined; but the Gardaí had received a tip-off about the plot, as well as intelligence that Haughey, as Minister for Finance, had authorised passage through Customs”. (See pages 50-51). O’Malley’s memoirs also reveal that earlier, in the ‘autumn of 1969 the Special Branch received further information that small consignments of arms were being imported through Dublin Airport at times when a sympathetic customs officer was