Liam Cosgrave

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