WBAI 99.5FM Pacifica Radio
New York City
26 September 2015
(begins time stamp ~ 40:55)
SB: We're
going to be talking to Ed Moloney who's the author, of course, of A Secret
History of the IRA and blogs at The Broken Elbow. Ed, thanks very much for
being with us.
EM: No
problem, Sandy.
SB: And if you listen to the show at all you know
that the Irish peace process once again is in free fall and various people
pulled out of the Stormont government and there's a mad scramble to get it back
up again. But before we get to the details on that, Ed - Just this morning
there's a development: Bill Clinton says he's available to ride to the rescue
and save the situation. And of course, if you read The Irish Voice and
listen to Niall O'Dowd you know that Bill Clinton was behind the whole thing in
the first place.
EM: Absolutely. And Hillary will not be far
behind him one presumes as well and any sort of beneficial effect to her
flagging presidential campaign will of course be entirely coincidental but
maybe I'm just being a wee cynical about that. I doubt whether he's actually going
to be needed to be quite honest with you because there's a sort of an air of
falseness about this crisis and you know I don't myself believe that it is as
serious as people make out to be. It began with disclosure that the IRA was
still around and that its members were responsible for killing a guy called Kevin McGuigan
in East Belfast. Well I mean, from all the available evidence it's clear to me
that every single party to the agreement, including the DUP, were aware that
the IRA was still around, was likely to be armed, needed to be armed in case
there were dissidents and everyone was giving a nod and a wink to it. And all
that happened is that the slip has been shown as it were and they have to do
something in public to pretend that they're all upset and angry about it. So
maybe again I'm being cynical but I don't think this will need Bill Clinton or
even Hillary Clinton to rescue it.
SB: I don't know how you could be cynical about
the Irish peace process Ed, but as I said now they're trying to put the pieces
back together again and the latest ploy is that they're going to set up another
committee to investigate whether there is an IRA still around and shooting
people and you had...
EM: ...Well,
actually it was - sorry, go on, Sandy, sorry.
SB: You have some interesting information on who
is going to be on this committee and what their background is.
EM: Yeah actually, it won't even do that – it
won't investigate itself. What it's
there to do is to listen to a bunch of MI5 people and a bunch of PSNI people
tell them what they think - and we know already what they think - and do they
or do they not believe what they're been told by the police and by the spooks?
And clearly you know when - you know this is a very, very old and tried tactic
by British governments, and I'm sure other governments do the same thing as
well - when you have a problem like this and you know that it can be only be
solved in a certain way you choose people to head a commission or head an
inquiry who are all dependable - whose form as it were is well known to the
government and, therefore, what their conclusions are likely to be and that
seems to be the case in this instance. There are three people. One of them is a
- what I've described as a clappy happy
born-again Christian - a QC who does an awful lot of work for...
SB: ...Sorry, Ed, our listeners may not know that
a QC is a senior barrister.
EM: That's right, yes. And he has all sorts of links with
the DUP so he's clearly Peter Robinson's man and he's there to give
Peter Robinson cover. So when he comes out and says: Yes, I agree with the PSNI
and I believe MI5 Peter Robinson turns out and says: Look! See this guy – he's
like a good Christian – you couldn't help but believe him. Another one is a
female, Catholic ex-civil servant who I'm told is the safest pair of hands at Stormont
who's never has taken a risk in her life and was the permanent Secretary or
senior civil servant in the Ministry of Culture and Arts and what she knows
about the Provos could probably be written on a half page of note paper.
And then the third one is more interesting:
He's a guy, an English guy, although he's been associated with Northern Ireland
politics secretly, we're now learning, for some time and he's called Lord Carlile,
who was known before he was elevated to the peerage as Alex Carlile. He was a
Liberal Democrat MP and he was on the right wing of that party and we've
discovered since he was appointed to this job that he has a secret role in
Northern Ireland in which he liaises with the PSNI and MI5 as a one-person
court of appeal for members of the establishment who have their close
protection, ie their police protection, withdrawn. And of course, the police,
the PSNI, are trying to withdraw a lot of these protection units because
they're first of all they're expensive - they require an awful lot of manpower
- and secondly the threat, in their view, has gone down. And the people that
they normally give protection to are like judges and prosecutors and senior civil servants but I'm
led to believe or I am told by reliable sources that a lot of these people are
kicking up about the withdrawal of their protection - that they feel that there
is still a threat to them and that the protection shouldn't be withdrawn. And
they are accusing this character, Lord Carlile, of taking the word of the PSNI
and MI5 far too readily and far too often. In other words, the police come to
him and tell him X, Y and Z don't need protection anymore - he says: Okay,
that's fine by me and the protection is then withdrawn.
Now, the importance of
that of course is that he's got to do the same sort of job with this assessment
of the IRA that this committee of three is supposed to monitor and assess and
if he has a record and a track record and a history of acquiescing in whatever
the police tell him then it's very likely that he will do the same in relation
to the PSNI's view about the IRA which will be, you can be absolutely sure,
will be exactly the same as the view that they gave
after Kevin McGuigan which is that: Yes, the IRA still exists, some
of the IRA members were involved in the killing of Kevin McGuigan but of course
the Sinn Féin nor IRA leadership knew nothing about it ~ which is a very
difficult thing to accept if you know how an organisation like the IRA works.
So that's the sort of conclusion that will be presented to this committee and
this character, Lord Carlile, who will be obviously dominating the group of
three because he's the one who knows more about these things than they do, are
likely then to just to rubber stamp and once they rubber stamp it then Stormont
will be back and then the gravy train will chug out of the station and everyone
will be happy again.
SB: And also Lord Carlile is the only one of the
bunch with a top level security clearance so he could just say: Excuse me, I
know. You guys don't really know but I know what's going on.
EM: Yes, yes. I'm not sure if he's a Privy
Counsellor but if he's a Privy Counsellor, which is a quaint sort of post
created in Tudor times in the Middle Ages by the English government, he'd also
be getting like top secret briefings from MI5 and people like that and he'll be
able to say: nudge, nudge, wink, wink - I know an awful lot I can't tell you
about but take my word for it blah, blah, blah. So yes I mean, I think the
outcome of this is more or less a foregone conclusion. And it all reminds me –
you know there's an event that takes place every year in Northern Ireland on
the thirteen of July, the day after the Twelfth of July Orange parades, and
it's held in the village of Scarva in Co. Down and they reconstruct the Battle
of the Boyne. And you have King James in his green outfit on his horse and you
have King William in his orange outfit on his horse and soldiers behind them
and they stage a mock battle but everyone knows how the battle ends because
it's re-enacting history; King Billy beats King James. And it's called the Sham
Fight at Scarva and there's a element of the sham fight
about this crisis at Stormont.
SB: Well Ed, thank you very much. We're talking
to Ed Moloney, the author of A Secret History of the IRA and Ed blogs at
The Broken Elbow and for some strange reason Ed is very cynical about the
future of this peace process. So again, Ed, thanks very much for being with us.
EM: No problem. Bye now.
(ends time stamp ~
50:50)
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