Michael Doherty with a letter that initially featured in the Derry Journal on April 2014.
Sir,
With the latest figures showing that Derry tops the Unemployment and deprivation Leagues yet again, and being aware that we are facing into another set of elections, I would ask what voting for any Party here has done for the people of this City?
Sir,
With the latest figures showing that Derry tops the Unemployment and deprivation Leagues yet again, and being aware that we are facing into another set of elections, I would ask what voting for any Party here has done for the people of this City?
The annual Brendan Hughes Memorial Lecture will take place on Saturday 3rdMay at 7.00pm in The Donegal Celtic Social Club, Belfast.
The guest speakers will be renowned human rights advocate Gareth Peirce and Independent TD Clare Daly. The theme is be “Draconian Laws, Draconian Government”.
TPQ Features the first in a batch of political cartoons by the late Brian Mór, kindly submitted by Radio Free Eireann's John McDonagh.
By the time the country’s foreign minister Anna
Lindh was stabbed to death in September 2003 while shopping, the notion
of Sweden as being in possession of some form of immunity certificate
that shielded it from what other societies were susceptible to had
dissipated. No longer could it be conceived of as a peaceful place
apart.
This book sits comfortably in the niche of spy novels as well as pitching its tent in the traditional genre of crime fiction. The characters, and there are many of them, are well developed. The one drawback is there is a tendency for some of them not to realise their potential to the full. As this is but the first in a trilogy hopefully they will re-emerge rather than having been written out of the script.
While the death that holds the reader’s attention throughout this book is that of an American journalist, there is no real disguising its real purpose: this novel explores the murder of Olaf Palme.
There are around 600 pages to the book which puts it on the longish side. Finding the time to complete it rather than finding it difficult to read is what prolonged it for me and probably diminished the enjoyment to be derived from it. That is a reader problem not a writer one. Yet uncertainty remains as to what makes this novel work. It has the potential to crash on takeoff with so many side narratives and characters all ploughing their own furrow. Yet it does work and works well. The author, who for 16 years was a professor in criminology at the Swedish National Police Board, brings a certain dry style to his writing which is balanced by an equally dry humour. The end product is a well oiled narrative that never jars with the literacy senses. The book’s success probably lies in the characters Persson manages to create, many of them obnoxious, seedy and sleazy, and most of whom are cops.
To underline the shadowy world the characters are denizens of, all of them seem to have a tendency to think rather than vent their thoughts. Everybody holds their cards tightly to their chests. The author repeatedly and at times irritatingly announces what people are thinking during a conversation although the thought never leaves their lips. ‘But he didn’t say that’ is a constant qualification throughout.
When an American journalist falls from the 16th floor of his Stockholm accommodation, suspicion is aroused by the fact that one of his shoes follows ... a few seconds later ... and kills a dog. Why the time lag? In one of the shoes was a hollowed out heel containing a note with a message for one of Stockholm’s senior detectives, Lars Johansson who had never heard of the victim. While the official narrative had suicide inscribed on it, investigations proceed along the lines that it might have been something else. Johansson took a trip to New York for a police conference but while there visited the former partner of Krassner to get a better feel for the victim. It is clear he would not mind getting a feel for her as well but...
Johansson is the all round good guy here, the type mothers but perhaps not wives dote on. Divorced, he has an interest in women which doesn’t seem to reach fruition. He thinks about them more than he dates them. But his perspective is much healthier than the misogynistic manipulator from the secret police which makes for an interesting character contrast.
John P. Krasner was the nephew of a US Intelligence agent who had once been a handler for a source who later went on to become one of Sweden’s most prominent political personalities. The US had for long been engaged in a European theatre battle in the shadows with the USSR in the post war period. Krasner before he died had been working on a book that would have exposed the personality as an erstwhile agent for another state: quite possibly a motive for tossing him out a window.
When the interest is initially developed through the character Lars Johansson, the lanes shift and suddenly the reader is drawn into the world of SePo, the Swedish Secret Police and its “external operation” which is monitoring the rise of a far right element within the country’s police. There is a sense of FFS at the initial cold turkey prompted by withdrawal from Johansson’s character but Erik Berg and Claes Waltin at SePo soon become an adequate substitute. They seem to work well together but the turf war tension exists and Berg comes to view Waltin as Lenin did Stalin, a likely successor but not the preferred one. In his personal life Waltin, an inveterate hater of his now late mother, indulges his dark domineering passion either for younger female partners in the police or the wives of fellow cops. One of them fed up with being spanked and left with a sore jaxy wishes he would just screw like everybody else. His urge to dominate just doesn’t permit that.
The relationships between Berg and the Prime Minister’s shrewd special advisor whose name remains undisclosed is slow, yet tense rather than torturous. The reader might just benefit from a liberal dose of the type of patience a chess aficionado is known for. Moves, countermoves, stratagems and subterfuge abound.
Persson is a former cop and explores through the novel just how fit for purpose the Swedish Intelligence services was in the run up to the murder of Palme. With skill and methodological persistence he has created a longing the reader does not want to end.
Leif G.W. Persson, 2010, Between Summer's Longing And Winter's End. Transworld: London. ISBN: 978-0-552-77468-0.
To underline the shadowy world the characters are denizens of, all of them seem to have a tendency to think rather than vent their thoughts. Everybody holds their cards tightly to their chests. The author repeatedly and at times irritatingly announces what people are thinking during a conversation although the thought never leaves their lips. ‘But he didn’t say that’ is a constant qualification throughout.
When an American journalist falls from the 16th floor of his Stockholm accommodation, suspicion is aroused by the fact that one of his shoes follows ... a few seconds later ... and kills a dog. Why the time lag? In one of the shoes was a hollowed out heel containing a note with a message for one of Stockholm’s senior detectives, Lars Johansson who had never heard of the victim. While the official narrative had suicide inscribed on it, investigations proceed along the lines that it might have been something else. Johansson took a trip to New York for a police conference but while there visited the former partner of Krassner to get a better feel for the victim. It is clear he would not mind getting a feel for her as well but...
Johansson is the all round good guy here, the type mothers but perhaps not wives dote on. Divorced, he has an interest in women which doesn’t seem to reach fruition. He thinks about them more than he dates them. But his perspective is much healthier than the misogynistic manipulator from the secret police which makes for an interesting character contrast.
John P. Krasner was the nephew of a US Intelligence agent who had once been a handler for a source who later went on to become one of Sweden’s most prominent political personalities. The US had for long been engaged in a European theatre battle in the shadows with the USSR in the post war period. Krasner before he died had been working on a book that would have exposed the personality as an erstwhile agent for another state: quite possibly a motive for tossing him out a window.
When the interest is initially developed through the character Lars Johansson, the lanes shift and suddenly the reader is drawn into the world of SePo, the Swedish Secret Police and its “external operation” which is monitoring the rise of a far right element within the country’s police. There is a sense of FFS at the initial cold turkey prompted by withdrawal from Johansson’s character but Erik Berg and Claes Waltin at SePo soon become an adequate substitute. They seem to work well together but the turf war tension exists and Berg comes to view Waltin as Lenin did Stalin, a likely successor but not the preferred one. In his personal life Waltin, an inveterate hater of his now late mother, indulges his dark domineering passion either for younger female partners in the police or the wives of fellow cops. One of them fed up with being spanked and left with a sore jaxy wishes he would just screw like everybody else. His urge to dominate just doesn’t permit that.
The relationships between Berg and the Prime Minister’s shrewd special advisor whose name remains undisclosed is slow, yet tense rather than torturous. The reader might just benefit from a liberal dose of the type of patience a chess aficionado is known for. Moves, countermoves, stratagems and subterfuge abound.
Persson is a former cop and explores through the novel just how fit for purpose the Swedish Intelligence services was in the run up to the murder of Palme. With skill and methodological persistence he has created a longing the reader does not want to end.
Leif G.W. Persson, 2010, Between Summer's Longing And Winter's End. Transworld: London. ISBN: 978-0-552-77468-0.
Press Release from Dr John Coulter announcing his new e-book.
Dr John Coulter an author and journalist from a Unionist background, has just published a new e-book on a non-violent, pro-Christian Irish Republican ideology.
Entitled An Saise Glas (The Green Sash): The Road to National Republicanism, the launch of the e-book has been timed to coincide with traditional Republican commemorations of the Easter Rising.
Dr John Coulter an author and journalist from a Unionist background, has just published a new e-book on a non-violent, pro-Christian Irish Republican ideology.
Entitled An Saise Glas (The Green Sash): The Road to National Republicanism, the launch of the e-book has been timed to coincide with traditional Republican commemorations of the Easter Rising.
The following piece penned by Thomas 'Ta' McWiliams initially featured in Ardoyne Republican
on 20 April 2014. Ta McWilliams is a republican prisoner currently held in Roe House (3) in Maghaberry. He is aligned to Cogús and is also a former H-Block political prisoner.
"On Friday the 7th March I went out to see the medic due to having chest pains. I seen the doctor was Waqar Ahmed. He told me my pain was angina and gave me tablets and an ENT spray. My blood pressure was very high 100+. The pains continued over a period of ten days and my blood pressure only dropped when I used my spray. I continued to see the doctor every day to have my blood pressure taken and each day it was very high. I told a medic I was having severe chest pains which were now going into my throat.
on 20 April 2014. Ta McWilliams is a republican prisoner currently held in Roe House (3) in Maghaberry. He is aligned to Cogús and is also a former H-Block political prisoner.
"On Friday the 7th March I went out to see the medic due to having chest pains. I seen the doctor was Waqar Ahmed. He told me my pain was angina and gave me tablets and an ENT spray. My blood pressure was very high 100+. The pains continued over a period of ten days and my blood pressure only dropped when I used my spray. I continued to see the doctor every day to have my blood pressure taken and each day it was very high. I told a medic I was having severe chest pains which were now going into my throat.
Arrest Adams now for McConville murder says ex-republican prisoner
Suzanne Breen
Sunday Life
20 April 2014
A former republican prisoner says the PSNI should immediately arrest Gerry Adams over Jean McConville's murder.
Sandy Boyer with his weekly update on what Radio Free Eireann will be serving up to its listeners on Easter Saturday.
Radio Free Eireann will interview Ron Kuby about the Central Park carriage horses on Saturday April 19 from 1-2 pm New York time. Kuby is the attorney for the carriage horse drivers.
Bellaghy Easter Commemoration: assembling @ 2.30 Saturday 19 April 2014.
Michael Shaw Mahoney with a review of a book on the drugs trade in the North of Ireland. Michael Shaw Mahoney gained a M.A. in Irish Studies, Queen's University Belfast (1997). He currently resides in Louisville, Kentucky, USA.
Northern Ireland is the
most studied, most dissected spot on the planet. As an object of
fascination, as a place where there remains a problem to every solution,
the six county state demands fresh perspectives and analytical
ingenuity. John Lindsay provides just that. With his recent book No Dope Here? Anti-Drugs Vigilantism in Northern Ireland, Lindsay
explores the history of illegal drugs and their control from onset of
The Troubles to the present day. Such a perspective shines a new light
on paramilitarism. It also reveals the shifting values of a
traditionally conservative place, a small place that lies at the fringes
of a much more liberal, less reactionary Europe.
- The panel found evidence that South Yorkshire Police carried out a systematic cover-up to exonerate senior officers and took part in a smear operation to put the blame on fans for being drunk and violent – Independent
 |
It is one of those events which precludes forgetting where I was at the time I heard the news: in a H Block cell on a Saturday afternoon having just settled down to listen to radio coverage of the FA Cup semi final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. 25 years ago to this day 96 fans who made their way into Sheffield’s Hillsborough Stadium failed to make it back out. 766 others sustained injuries at the same venue: victims of a frenetically engineered crush for which many in officialdom sought to blame the victims in their need to crush the truth.
In 2012 ‘the Hillsborough Independent Panel said that 164 accounts from South Yorkshire police had been changed, apparently to shift the blame from the police on to fans.’ Since then ‘the Independent Police Complaints Commission said it had uncovered evidence that a further 55 officers had amended their statements.’
Rewriting history for sure. A pervasive feature of law enforcement it would seem is lie enforcement, as people with even scant knowledge of policing in the North of Ireland can readily testify. Whether it is soccer fans crushing themselves in football stadia or Irish republicans beating themselves up in RUC interrogations centres, the police lie is both generic and institutional. Cover up and smearing is a universal police trait, one reason the policing institutions should never be trusted despite society deeming their existence vital to the good order. The public good and the police good are concepts that often clash with each other. The need to scrutinise police behaviour and discourse is an intrinsic element of a democratic ethos.
Fans who survived the event of 25 years past have spoken of intimidation by police who threatened them with prosecution. They were branded criminals and left wing agitators by a force determined to avoid the truth.One neutral fan who attended the game because he had been given a free ticket spoke of his experience of trying to assist police inquiries.
I'd been wearing a Free Mandela T-shirt ... This prompted aggressive questions. "Was I a student agitator? Was I a member of the Socialist Workers Party? I'm just a fan at a game of football. He then turned on me and said I was a criminal with a grudge against the police.
Nor of course were the police alone in smearing Liverpool fans. Extremely dispiriting was finding that one of the harshest critics of Liverpool fans was Brian Clough, the manager of Nottingham Forest on the day of the disaster. A man who often poked officialdom in the eye, took down class snobbery, was frequently praised for his left wing perspective and disdained from on high for his working class earthiness, Clough seemed to have purged his soul of the any residual radicalism when on page 260 of his autobiography he fed into the narrative of officialdom with the comment:
I will always remain convinced that those Liverpool fans who died were killed by Liverpool people. This is my opinion, made not in the heat of the moment, or the immediate angry aftermath. But following all the publicity and the official inquiry. All those lives were lost needlessly ... if all the Liverpool supporters had turned up at the stadium in good time, in orderly manner and each with a ticket, there would have been no Hillsborough disaster.
Clough’s sentiments were those of someone who had clearly uprooted and relocated elsewhere in the social milieu. Many people boycotted his book but his response was ‘half of them can’t read and the other half are pinching hub caps.’ It looked as if Clough was trying to outshine Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie whose paper had, amongst other slurs, labelled the fans as flashers, accused them of thieving from the dead, and exonerated the police whom the fans were blasted for supposedly attacking.
Even he later accused the police of lying:
Now I know – you know, we all know – that the fans were right ... but it took 23 years, two inquiries, one inquest and research into 400,000 documents, many of which were kept secret under the 30-year no-publication rule, to discover there was a vast cover-up by South Yorkshire Police about the disaster.
For those interested, a great book that tackles the issues associated with the disaster is Hillsborough The Truth by Phil Scraton. On its back cover a reviewer for The Independent is quoted: ‘I read this book in a fog of anger ... a scarcely believable story of incompetence and mendacity.’ People familiar with Professor Scraton’s work on prison related issues in the North will recognise immediately a rare bird in academia, someone who is not a push over professor ever eager to acquiesce in the power of the state. First published in 1999 Hillsborough The Truth is a searing indictment of the scurrilous institutions of the powerful to whom truth was very much a liability. Since then a Panorama feature, Hillsborough: How They Buried The Truth, has added to police discomfort.
Yet long before both it and the Hillsborough Independent Panel, which ultimately damned the police, Scraton had uncovered the cover-up. Indeed he was ‘the force behind the 398-page report’ which the panel unanimously delivered.
From August 1990 when 'the DPP decided not to bring criminal prosecutions against the police or any officials at Hillsborough’ it was clear the battle would be long and hard. But as the journalist and lifelong Liverpool supporter Brian Reade would write ‘Hillsborough mothers refused to let their lost children down.’ The police driven criminal conspiracy to deny justice was upended: crooked cops stopped in their crooked tracks.
Like the Mothers of the Disappeared who relentlessly deconstructed to the point of destruction the narrative of the Argentine military regime, the mothers of Liverpool persevered in search of a missing truth, buried by the police. Today they should be honoured as their children are remembered.
Sandy Boyer outlining what Radio Free Eireann is bringing to its listeners this weekend.
Radio
Free Eireann will cover Martin McGuinness and the Queen with republicans on
both sides of the border on Saturday April 12.
Paddy McHugh, a
singer-songwriter from Brisbane, will be with us live in the Brian Mor
O'Baoghill Studio in Rocky Sullivan's of Red Hook 34 Van Dyke Street in
Brooklyn.
Radio Free Eireann is heard Saturdays from 1-2 pm New York time on
WBAI 99.5 FM and wbai.org on the web where is archived for
10 days.
Alfie Gallagher with a critical overview of the reliability of Sean O'Callaghan. It initially featured on his blog Left From The West on 9 April 2014.
When I see his haunted eyes staring at me from this photograph in the Irish Post, I feel very sorry for Sean O'Callaghan. He looks weary now and weighted down. Whatever one's opinion of the man, it would be inhuman to take pleasure in his obvious suffering.
Gone are the swagger and self-importance that characterised his writings and media appearances in the years following his release from prison in 1996. In those days, O'Callaghan seemed to relish the notoriety of being the most senior PIRA informer to have emerged at that point. (Scap was still in the closet then of course.) Certainly the opportunities for public recognition and financial reward came thick and fast - a series of articles in the Sunday Times was followed by a six-figure book deal, a speaking tour in the US, and even a spell as an advisor to David Trimble.
Things are different now. O'Callaghan's dire warnings about the peace process proved to be bogus, and since the formal end to the PIRA campaign in 2005, his media star faded fast. Sean O'Callaghan seems forlorn now, and he looks older than his sixty years. Shunned by his devoutly republican family in Kerry, he lives alone in London and he tells the Irish Post that he now spends his days working with gangs and the vulnerable inner-city teens they attract.
My instincts are to leave Sean O'Callaghan be. Indeed, I had written the bulk of this critique almost two years ago during a discussion on Facebook about O'Callaghan with one of his most steadfast supporters, my dear friend Ruth Dudley Edwards. I had no intention to revisit the issue again. However, Ruth has recently written an article for the Daily Mail about the PIRA and she cited Sean O'Callaghan in support of her argument. Shortly after, she sent me a link to the Irish Post's interview with O'Callaghan and asked me to read it.
Though we have little time for each other's politics, Ruth has been a kind and generous friend to me, and unlike so many others in the media, she is remarkably tolerant of those who disagree with her. All things considered then, I think that it is right for me to put forward my own views on Sean O'Callaghan, his claims and his credibility.
Perhaps O'Callaghan's most astonishing allegation is that the PIRA ordered him to kill Prince Charles and Princess Diana in 1983 by bombing a charity concert that the royal couple would be attending. O'Callaghan's supporters in the media argue that his story was corroborated by former taoiseach Garret Fitzgerald in 1996. 1 However, to my knowledge, all that Garret Fitzgerald confirmed was what he himself had been told by the Gardaí in 1983: a Garda agent in the PIRA had informed his handler of his involvement in a plot to kill Charles and Diana, but the agent had managed to abort the operation without blowing his cover.
But if O'Callaghan had in fact become a member of the highly effective PIRA unit responsible for the bombing campaign in England, how is that he could not provide his handler with sufficient intelligence to undermine the unit's activities? And if the PIRA did not suspect their plot had been uncovered, why didn't they have another volunteer plant the bomb? In fact, given such an unresolved security risk, it is astounding that the royal couple still attended the concert, which went ahead as planned on 20 July.
Moreover, the brutal incineration of Charles and Diana at a charity fundraiser would have been a massive PR blunder for a movement then trying to make headway in electoral politics. Gerry Adams, who had just been elected MP for West Belfast in June 1983, was well aware of the value of a good public image. At the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis later that year, he spoke of the need for "controlled and disciplined" IRA operations to protect Sinn Féin's electoral strategy. As Ed Moloney points out, Adams warned his supporters about this again in June 1984 following Sinn Féin's poor performance in the elections for the European Parliament:
Of course, I doubt that Gerry Adams would have been greatly perturbed by the gruesome killing of the royal couple or any of the other concert-goers that evening. However, in light of the political career he was starting to build for himself, it is unthinkable that he would have allowed it to be jeopardised by such a horrific and electorally noxious attack.
Thus, I simply don't believe the plot really existed. In my view, a much more plausible explanation for what happened is that Sean O'Callaghan invented the plot and his foiling of it. I believe he did this in order to curry favour with the Gardaí and boost his profile in their eyes. Indeed, the Gardaí themselves came to regard O'Callaghan's claims as unreliable. 3
What kept Sean O'Callaghan in the headlines before the Belfast Agreement in 1998 was his spiel about the peace process being "a sham". In December 1996, O'Callaghan claimed that when both men were imprisoned in Crumlin Road Gaol six years previously, senior Provo Danny Morrison revealed to him the hollowness of the peace process and the Provos' true intentions. As O'Callaghan told the Irish Times, these intentions were "to call a ceasefire before the next British general election, usurp the SDLP as the majority nationalist party in Northern Ireland and then relaunch its military campaign to create a major security crisis." 4
Leaving aside the fact that the alleged secret strategy turned out to be bunkum, is it likely that Danny Morrison - who was in jail himself because of an informer’s tip-off - would reveal something as sensitive as this to a suspected informer? As far as the Provos were concerned, O'Callaghan had left Tralee under a cloud in 1985 and went into hiding for about three years. Republicans in Kerry suspected him of being an informer and of stealing money from PIRA coffers. 5 He then handed himself over to the police in England in 1988, confessed to two killings and was transferred to a secure annexe in Crumlin Road Gaol where supergrasses and informers were housed.
O'Callaghan claimed that he managed to convince the PIRA of his bona fides, and that that was why he was taken onto the republican wing of the prison. However, it was not uncommon for those who had given information to the security services to be accepted onto the republican wing provided they agreed to be debriefed by PIRA prison leaders. For example, this happened to Eamon Collins. In any case, given what republicans did know about O'Callaghan, it is utterly incredible that he would be trusted with something as significant as the "secret strategy" behind the peace process.
O'Callaghan's last high-profile allegation was his smearing in 2003 of the late Pat Finucane, a respected Belfast solicitor who was killed by loyalist paramilitaries in 1989. Two public investigations concluded that elements within the British security services colluded in his murder. Following the publication of the conclusions of the Stevens Enquiry 3 in April 2013, Sean O'Callaghan claimed that Pat Finucane was a senior PIRA intelligence officer who used his position as a solicitor to act as "a trusted conduit between the IRA prisoners and the leadership on the outside". This was the very same reason the UDA/UFF gave for killing him.
It is telling that O'Callaghan never claimed that Pat Finucane was a Provo until after John Stevens concluded in April 2003 that British security forces colluded in Finucane's killing. Indeed, O'Callaghan chose not to mention it in his 1998 autobiography The Informer or in the multiple articles that he wrote or interviews that he gave.
It is true that Pat Finucane's brothers were PIRA members, but the claim that Finucane himself was a member has been rejected by by every single investigation into his killing, including the one carried out by the RUC. Indeed, the Cory Collusion Inquiry Report states that "there is nothing in the RUC files which indicates that Patrick Finucane was a member of PIRA, the IRA or the INLA." As Judge Peter Cory points out, the senior officer in charge of investigating Finucane's murder stated at the inquest that "[w]e have no evidence to suggest that Patrick Finucane was a member of PIRA". The presiding coroner drew the following conclusion:
To my mind then, the journalist Sam Symth gives the most plausible explanation for O'Callaghan's very tardy smear:
Even if we ignore the dubious and self-serving nature of his claims, there is a much more compelling reason to doubt Sean O'Callaghan. Essentially, he is a person who believes that telling lies is a means justified by the end: undermining the Provisional Republican Movement. Of course, no one would expect him to have been honest with the PIRA when he was an informer, but he has told quite spectacular lies to the RUC, the Gardaí, and numerous journalists. The lies continued even after he had revealed himself as an informer and an enemy of the IRA.
When being debriefed by the RUC in 1988, O'Callaghan described in graphic detail how he murdered two American hostages and burned their bodies. As he later admitted, these hostages never existed and the episode was a figment of his imagination. Thus, it is hardly surprising that a British security source described O'Callaghan as "cunning, charismatic and manipulative".7 The Gardaí didn't trust him either. In March 1997, senior Gardai told the Irish Independent that O'Callaghan's claims about his role in the IRA were "highly exaggerated".8
Worst of all, O'Callaghan told at least three journalists in three separate interviews - Ger Colleran in 1986, Liam Clarke in 1992, and Kevin Cullen in 1994 - how he had killed fellow PIRA informer Sean Corcoran on a farm in Kerry in 1985. Cullen reported O'Callaghan's account of the killing as follows:
"I took the mask off him,' he said. "It was just the most pathetic sight. To the very end, I was hoping the Guards would come through the door, just take Corcoran and his wife away somewhere, give them a new life, a new identity.' Instead, O'Callaghan says, convinced there was no other way, he walked over and shot Corcoran in the head." 9
1 Garret Fitzgerald, "The Only Clear Thing About IRA Strategy Is Uncertainty", Irish Times, 4 Jan 1997↩
2 Ed Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA (London: Penguin Books, 2007), p.317↩
3 Tom Brady, "Gardaí Dismiss IRA Informer's Murder Claim", Irish Independent, 3 Mar 1997↩
4 Jim Cusack, "Killer-turned-informer Warns Ceasefire Is A Sham As IRA Plan Major Security Crisis", Irish Times, 14 December 1996↩
5 Senan Moloney, "IRA 'Jackal' Surrenders To Clear Name", Irish Independent, 2 Dec 1988↩
6 Sam Smyth, "Killer and Liar Bids to Subvert Stevens Report", Irish Independent, 22 April 2003↩
7 "'I Spared Diana and Charles': Suspicion As An IRA Killer Seeks 'Public Recognition'", Daily Mail, 30 November 1992↩
8 See note 3 above↩
9 Kevin Cullen, "IRA Man Tells a Tale of Betrayal", Boston Globe, 29 Jan 1995↩
When I see his haunted eyes staring at me from this photograph in the Irish Post, I feel very sorry for Sean O'Callaghan. He looks weary now and weighted down. Whatever one's opinion of the man, it would be inhuman to take pleasure in his obvious suffering.
Gone are the swagger and self-importance that characterised his writings and media appearances in the years following his release from prison in 1996. In those days, O'Callaghan seemed to relish the notoriety of being the most senior PIRA informer to have emerged at that point. (Scap was still in the closet then of course.) Certainly the opportunities for public recognition and financial reward came thick and fast - a series of articles in the Sunday Times was followed by a six-figure book deal, a speaking tour in the US, and even a spell as an advisor to David Trimble.
Things are different now. O'Callaghan's dire warnings about the peace process proved to be bogus, and since the formal end to the PIRA campaign in 2005, his media star faded fast. Sean O'Callaghan seems forlorn now, and he looks older than his sixty years. Shunned by his devoutly republican family in Kerry, he lives alone in London and he tells the Irish Post that he now spends his days working with gangs and the vulnerable inner-city teens they attract.
My instincts are to leave Sean O'Callaghan be. Indeed, I had written the bulk of this critique almost two years ago during a discussion on Facebook about O'Callaghan with one of his most steadfast supporters, my dear friend Ruth Dudley Edwards. I had no intention to revisit the issue again. However, Ruth has recently written an article for the Daily Mail about the PIRA and she cited Sean O'Callaghan in support of her argument. Shortly after, she sent me a link to the Irish Post's interview with O'Callaghan and asked me to read it.
Though we have little time for each other's politics, Ruth has been a kind and generous friend to me, and unlike so many others in the media, she is remarkably tolerant of those who disagree with her. All things considered then, I think that it is right for me to put forward my own views on Sean O'Callaghan, his claims and his credibility.
Bluntly put, Sean O'Callaghan is not a credible source. Indeed, I would
require substantial independent corroboration before I would accept any
of his claims about the PIRA. I say this not only because his most
outlandish allegations are implausible per se, but because Sean
O'Callaghan is - by his own admission - an accomplished liar who has
often lied to the Gardaí, the RUC, and the media. I think the best way
to put forward my argument is to examine some of O'Callaghan's most
dubious claims.
The Plot to Kill Prince Charles and Princess Diana
Perhaps O'Callaghan's most astonishing allegation is that the PIRA ordered him to kill Prince Charles and Princess Diana in 1983 by bombing a charity concert that the royal couple would be attending. O'Callaghan's supporters in the media argue that his story was corroborated by former taoiseach Garret Fitzgerald in 1996. 1 However, to my knowledge, all that Garret Fitzgerald confirmed was what he himself had been told by the Gardaí in 1983: a Garda agent in the PIRA had informed his handler of his involvement in a plot to kill Charles and Diana, but the agent had managed to abort the operation without blowing his cover.
But if O'Callaghan had in fact become a member of the highly effective PIRA unit responsible for the bombing campaign in England, how is that he could not provide his handler with sufficient intelligence to undermine the unit's activities? And if the PIRA did not suspect their plot had been uncovered, why didn't they have another volunteer plant the bomb? In fact, given such an unresolved security risk, it is astounding that the royal couple still attended the concert, which went ahead as planned on 20 July.
Moreover, the brutal incineration of Charles and Diana at a charity fundraiser would have been a massive PR blunder for a movement then trying to make headway in electoral politics. Gerry Adams, who had just been elected MP for West Belfast in June 1983, was well aware of the value of a good public image. At the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis later that year, he spoke of the need for "controlled and disciplined" IRA operations to protect Sinn Féin's electoral strategy. As Ed Moloney points out, Adams warned his supporters about this again in June 1984 following Sinn Féin's poor performance in the elections for the European Parliament:
“[T]here are a number of people who, while they voted for us in June 1983, may not have been able to tolerate some aspects of IRA operations. ... I think it is fair to say there are varying degrees of tolerance within the Nationalist electorate for aspects of the armed struggle.” 2
Of course, I doubt that Gerry Adams would have been greatly perturbed by the gruesome killing of the royal couple or any of the other concert-goers that evening. However, in light of the political career he was starting to build for himself, it is unthinkable that he would have allowed it to be jeopardised by such a horrific and electorally noxious attack.
Thus, I simply don't believe the plot really existed. In my view, a much more plausible explanation for what happened is that Sean O'Callaghan invented the plot and his foiling of it. I believe he did this in order to curry favour with the Gardaí and boost his profile in their eyes. Indeed, the Gardaí themselves came to regard O'Callaghan's claims as unreliable. 3
The "Sham" Peace Process
What kept Sean O'Callaghan in the headlines before the Belfast Agreement in 1998 was his spiel about the peace process being "a sham". In December 1996, O'Callaghan claimed that when both men were imprisoned in Crumlin Road Gaol six years previously, senior Provo Danny Morrison revealed to him the hollowness of the peace process and the Provos' true intentions. As O'Callaghan told the Irish Times, these intentions were "to call a ceasefire before the next British general election, usurp the SDLP as the majority nationalist party in Northern Ireland and then relaunch its military campaign to create a major security crisis." 4
Leaving aside the fact that the alleged secret strategy turned out to be bunkum, is it likely that Danny Morrison - who was in jail himself because of an informer’s tip-off - would reveal something as sensitive as this to a suspected informer? As far as the Provos were concerned, O'Callaghan had left Tralee under a cloud in 1985 and went into hiding for about three years. Republicans in Kerry suspected him of being an informer and of stealing money from PIRA coffers. 5 He then handed himself over to the police in England in 1988, confessed to two killings and was transferred to a secure annexe in Crumlin Road Gaol where supergrasses and informers were housed.
O'Callaghan claimed that he managed to convince the PIRA of his bona fides, and that that was why he was taken onto the republican wing of the prison. However, it was not uncommon for those who had given information to the security services to be accepted onto the republican wing provided they agreed to be debriefed by PIRA prison leaders. For example, this happened to Eamon Collins. In any case, given what republicans did know about O'Callaghan, it is utterly incredible that he would be trusted with something as significant as the "secret strategy" behind the peace process.
The Finucane Smear
O'Callaghan's last high-profile allegation was his smearing in 2003 of the late Pat Finucane, a respected Belfast solicitor who was killed by loyalist paramilitaries in 1989. Two public investigations concluded that elements within the British security services colluded in his murder. Following the publication of the conclusions of the Stevens Enquiry 3 in April 2013, Sean O'Callaghan claimed that Pat Finucane was a senior PIRA intelligence officer who used his position as a solicitor to act as "a trusted conduit between the IRA prisoners and the leadership on the outside". This was the very same reason the UDA/UFF gave for killing him.
It is telling that O'Callaghan never claimed that Pat Finucane was a Provo until after John Stevens concluded in April 2003 that British security forces colluded in Finucane's killing. Indeed, O'Callaghan chose not to mention it in his 1998 autobiography The Informer or in the multiple articles that he wrote or interviews that he gave.
It is true that Pat Finucane's brothers were PIRA members, but the claim that Finucane himself was a member has been rejected by by every single investigation into his killing, including the one carried out by the RUC. Indeed, the Cory Collusion Inquiry Report states that "there is nothing in the RUC files which indicates that Patrick Finucane was a member of PIRA, the IRA or the INLA." As Judge Peter Cory points out, the senior officer in charge of investigating Finucane's murder stated at the inquest that "[w]e have no evidence to suggest that Patrick Finucane was a member of PIRA". The presiding coroner drew the following conclusion:
"The police refute the claim that Mr Finucane was a member of PIRA. He was just another law-abiding citizen going about his professional duties in a professional manner. He was well known both inside and outside the legal profession. He was regarded in police circles as very professional and he discharged his duties with vigour and professionalism."If it is true that Sean O'Callaghan knew Pat Finucane to be a senior member of the PIRA since 1980, how is that there is no documentary evidence of O'Callaghan imparting this information to either MI5 or the RUC when he was debriefed by them in 1988? If he didn't tell either organisation, why not? It must also be said that there was a large percentage of informers in the PIRA. Indeed, it has been suggested that about a third of all PIRA members were British agents. It is absolutely incredible that none of these agents mentioned Pat Finucane’s membership to their handlers and there is nothing in RUC files to suggest that they did.
To my mind then, the journalist Sam Symth gives the most plausible explanation for O'Callaghan's very tardy smear:
"Sean O'Callaghan's attempt to undermine the Stevens report was as breathtakingly brazen as it was shamelessly self-serving. By posthumously branding the late Pat Finucane a member of the IRA last week, he tried to mitigate the role played by his paymasters and protectors in the murder of the Belfast solicitor." 6
Lying for the Cause
Even if we ignore the dubious and self-serving nature of his claims, there is a much more compelling reason to doubt Sean O'Callaghan. Essentially, he is a person who believes that telling lies is a means justified by the end: undermining the Provisional Republican Movement. Of course, no one would expect him to have been honest with the PIRA when he was an informer, but he has told quite spectacular lies to the RUC, the Gardaí, and numerous journalists. The lies continued even after he had revealed himself as an informer and an enemy of the IRA.
When being debriefed by the RUC in 1988, O'Callaghan described in graphic detail how he murdered two American hostages and burned their bodies. As he later admitted, these hostages never existed and the episode was a figment of his imagination. Thus, it is hardly surprising that a British security source described O'Callaghan as "cunning, charismatic and manipulative".7 The Gardaí didn't trust him either. In March 1997, senior Gardai told the Irish Independent that O'Callaghan's claims about his role in the IRA were "highly exaggerated".8
Worst of all, O'Callaghan told at least three journalists in three separate interviews - Ger Colleran in 1986, Liam Clarke in 1992, and Kevin Cullen in 1994 - how he had killed fellow PIRA informer Sean Corcoran on a farm in Kerry in 1985. Cullen reported O'Callaghan's account of the killing as follows:
"I took the mask off him,' he said. "It was just the most pathetic sight. To the very end, I was hoping the Guards would come through the door, just take Corcoran and his wife away somewhere, give them a new life, a new identity.' Instead, O'Callaghan says, convinced there was no other way, he walked over and shot Corcoran in the head." 9
O'Callaghan later repudiated this account,
as he would deny telling Ger Colleran in 1986 that he had killed a
total of six people. He argues that he falsely confessed to killing Sean
Corcoran in order to get the Gardaí to investigate the killing, but
this rings hollow. Indeed, it demonstrates that telling lies is Sean
O'Callaghan's modus operandi, the first resort rather than the last one.
As such, we can never really know where his lies end and where the
truth begins.
I don't think Sean O'Callaghan is a bad person. Indeed, I believe that there are far more mendacious and unscrupulous individuals leading Sinn Féin and the DUP today. O'Callaghan's work with vulnerable youngsters is truly admirable and I hope he finds the redemption that has eluded him thus far.
I don't wish to criticise Sean O'Callaghan any further. I will leave him in peace. Instead of trumpeting his tall tales in the media, perhaps his friends should do the same.
Peace and Redemption
I don't think Sean O'Callaghan is a bad person. Indeed, I believe that there are far more mendacious and unscrupulous individuals leading Sinn Féin and the DUP today. O'Callaghan's work with vulnerable youngsters is truly admirable and I hope he finds the redemption that has eluded him thus far.
I don't wish to criticise Sean O'Callaghan any further. I will leave him in peace. Instead of trumpeting his tall tales in the media, perhaps his friends should do the same.
1 Garret Fitzgerald, "The Only Clear Thing About IRA Strategy Is Uncertainty", Irish Times, 4 Jan 1997↩
2 Ed Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA (London: Penguin Books, 2007), p.317↩
3 Tom Brady, "Gardaí Dismiss IRA Informer's Murder Claim", Irish Independent, 3 Mar 1997↩
4 Jim Cusack, "Killer-turned-informer Warns Ceasefire Is A Sham As IRA Plan Major Security Crisis", Irish Times, 14 December 1996↩
5 Senan Moloney, "IRA 'Jackal' Surrenders To Clear Name", Irish Independent, 2 Dec 1988↩
6 Sam Smyth, "Killer and Liar Bids to Subvert Stevens Report", Irish Independent, 22 April 2003↩
7 "'I Spared Diana and Charles': Suspicion As An IRA Killer Seeks 'Public Recognition'", Daily Mail, 30 November 1992↩
8 See note 3 above↩
9 Kevin Cullen, "IRA Man Tells a Tale of Betrayal", Boston Globe, 29 Jan 1995↩
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
