Captain James Kelly’s family phone was tapped

By David Burke.

The family phone of Captain James Kelly and his wife Sheila, in Terenure, Dublin, was tapped by the gardai in 1970. Captain Kelly was one of the Arms Trial defendants who went on trial 50 years ago this week. He was acquitted.

It is inconceivable that Mícheál Ó Móráin, who served as minister for justice until early May 1970 would have permitted such an intrusion on an officer of military intelligence.

Equally it is impossible to believe that Des O’Malley, who succeeded him, would have done any differently unless – as is sadly possible – the Garda presented him with compelling information from their valued ‘informer’ Seán MacStíofáin. Unfortunately, MacStíofáin was a peddler of deceit who spun the most amazing yarns which his gullible Garda handlers swallowed whole. Hence, if O’Malley signed a warrant, he did so in good faith. Perhaps O’Malley will clarify this issue should the State permit him to address the issue.

It is more probable that there was no warrant and none of the politicians was aware of what was afoot.

I will provide some additional details about the tap in ‘Deception and Lies, the Hidden History of the Arms Crisis’ next week. I will be able to show that tape recordings were made of an unhinged individual who set out to terrify the children who answered the phone. The tapes of the horrific things he said to them were reviewed by the gardaí in charge of the surveillance. To their credit, they admitted the tapping was taking place unofficially and helped identify the culprit.

The Kelly family is entitled to know when the tap was placed (and possibly renewed) and if it was continued after their father was acquitted at the second Arms Trial of October 1970.

If it transpires that there was no warrant it means that officers of the gardai were tapping phones illegally behind the back of their minister.

The late James Downey described in his biography of Brian Lenihan how, after the Arms Crisis had erupted, ministers were placed under surveillance. “For the Lenihan family”, Downey wrote, “this was a terrible time. Anyone associated with Haughey and Blaney came under suspicion … Telephones were tapped…”. Downey’s source was a “senior official of the Department of Justice” who informed him that the Special Branch had “filled an entire room in Dublin Castle with tapes of tapped conversations, mostly involving ministers”. According to Downey, “Men, presumably from the intelligence services, lurked outside Lenihan’s house. He was ‘shadowed/ on his way to work and social functions”.

A few years later, the dilapidated RIC toilets at Garda HQ at the Phoenix Park were packed with files which were burnt on the orders of the then Assistant Garda Commissioner Ned Garvey who was in overall charge of Garda Intelligence. This was in either 1974 or 1975. It is likely that the transcripts of the phone-tap targets were destroyed at this stage along with other records and files.

However, there is no reason to suspect that the original warrant for any legal tap was destroyed in Garvey’s bonfire. The originals would have been kept in the Department of Justice.

The Department should still hold any of the warrants issued to permit the tapping of the phones described by Downey.

It is looking increasingly likely that the State will finally apologise to the family of Captain Kelly for the many wrongs occasioned to him. Whether the tap on his phone was legal or not, any such apology should include this invasion of the privacy of the entire family. The level of intrusion was so intense that – in a repeating vignette illustrative of the seamy side of Irish political life in the 1970s – Mrs Kelly often had to ask the Garda tappers who she could hear chatting to each other on the line to go away while she rang her mother.

OTHER STORIES ABOUT THE ARMS CRISIS AND RELATED EVENTS ON THIS WEBSITE:

Misrepresenting Haughey’s relationship with the Provos. The Irish Times promoted the Official IRA’s version of the Arms Crisis.

The Official IRA planned the murders of journalists Ed Moloney and Vincent Browne.

Dick Walsh’s covert committee monitored OIRA media enemies. Future Irish Times Assistant editor put colleagues on lists.

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.

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.

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

Vilification Once More

British Secret Service Smear sheet: the document that proves Charles Haughey was the target of MI6 vilification after the Arms Trial.

[Expanded] British Intelligence must have known that Seán MacStíofáin was a Garda ‘informer’.

Vandalising history. How the truth about Ireland’s Arms Crisis was corrupted by a gang of NI paedophiles, a dissembling Taoiseach, Private Eye magazine in London, some British Intelligence black propagandists as well as an Irish Times reporter who was an ally of the Official IRA.

The long shadow of the Arms Crisis: more to Haughey’s question than meets the eye

Minister for Justice confirms existence of unreleased “sensitive” Garda files about Arms Crisis but fails to commit to their release after Seán Haughey TD describes Seán MacStíofáin of the IRA as mis-informer in Dáil Éireann.

‘Deception and Lies’: A thrilling history that confirms Lynch not Haughey as unprincipled and explains how a named IRA double agent deceived the nation and the record.

Paudge Brennan, the forgotten man of the Arms Crisis

The Forgotten Arms Crisis Scoop: how a London newspaper reported details of what became known as the Arms Crisis nearly seven months before it erupted in Ireland.

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.

How the Irish Times got its biggest story of the last 50 years wrong.

Charles Haughey did not run guns to the IRA in 1970 but his father Seán did decades earlier. And on the orders of Michael Collins!

Dishonest Jack. A new book on the Arms Crisis of 1970 demolishes the reputation of a former Taoiseach