Readers might remember a controversial speech made by the Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams a couple of years ago during a fund-raising trip to New York in which, in the context of the modern Irish Independent’s hostility towards himself, he recalled how during the Tan war, Michael Collins had dispatched IRA Volunteers to Middle Abbey Street to bash up the Indo’s printing press while holding the editor at gunpoint.

Gerry was the target of a lot of criticism, and not just from the usual suspects, since his remarks strayed into that ambiguous strip of land that separates amusing anecdote from veiled threat.

Well have you ever wondered what a printing press looks like after the IRA has had an angry word or two with it? I came across this photo of a printing press destroyed by the IRA in August 1922. It belonged to the Cork Examiner and was taken out of commission just prior to the arrival of Free State troops in Cork during the civil war, an event the Examiner was apparently looking forward to.

A very interesting and disturbing piece, at least for those who care about principled journalism, from the Center for Public Integrity about US journalists backing the two candidates in the presidential election.

Not just with their coverage but with their pocket books. And no surprise either that of the two main runners, Hillary Clinton is the overwhelming favourite of the fourth estate. Another way in which this election will leave America in a different place.

The North’s Police Ombudsman’s office (PONI) has agreed to investigate a complaint from Liam Adams, brother of Gerry Adams and a convicted sex offender, that the PSNI had refused to question the North’s Director of Public Prosecutions, Barra McGrory about Gerry Adams’ prior knowledge of allegations that Liam Adams had sexually assaulted his daughter, Aine Dahlstrom.

The complaint arises out of a consultation Mr McGrory had with Gerry Adams that took place in 2007, two years before the allegations against Liam Adams became public and some six years before he was found guilty of sexual assault and sentenced to sixteen years in jail.

At the time Mr McGrory was Gerry Adams’ solicitor. Four years after the consultation with Gerry Adams he was appointed the North’s Director of Public Prosecutions. He had been fast-tracked prior to this to the Northern Bar.

The significance of all this lies in a statement that Gerry Adams gave to the police in 2007 denying any knowledge of the accusations against his brother.

If the allegations had been discussed with Barra McGrory in the consultation, which had taken place prior to him giving the statement to the PSNI, this would show that his police statement was false and Gerry Adams could be accused of lying to the police and withholding information, potentially serious criminal charges.

The refusal of the PSNI to question Barra McGrory arises from the discovery by the DPP in February 2015 of a file containing notes about the consultation with Gerry Adams some eighteen months after Liam Adams’ conviction and a few days before his appeal began in the Belfast High Court. Mr McGrory said he had found the file on a home computer, not a computer from his law offices.

Mr McGrory’s discovery of the file led the senior Crown counsel in the case to ‘advise’ the PSNI to question the DPP about what he knew, arising from the consultation, of Gerry Adams’ knowledge of the sexual assault claims against his brother – in other words what did Gerry Adams know, and when did he know it?

This the PSNI did not do, nor did they act on a criminal complaint lodged by Liam Adams’ legal advisers arising from this, hence the complaint lodged with the Police Ombudsman.

A June 2015 report by the North’s Attorney-General, John Larkin recommended that Gerry Adams should not be prosecuted for withholding evidence. The report was issued some three months after Mr McGrory discovered the computer file and alerted the authorities but since the PSNI never questioned him, it is unlikely that the Attorney-General could have advanced the story.

Asked about the status of the Liam Adams’ complaint, the Ombudsman’s office responded: “This is an ongoing investigation and are (sic) enquiries are continuing.”

However the decision by the Ombudsman to take the case appears to represent a volte-face by his office. In September the Ombudsman had rejected the complaint. One source familiar with the interaction told thebrokenelbow.com:

‘….the PONI (were) today (September 7th) saying they were not taking any action re his complaint because when they contacted the police officers involved, the PONI were informed that the officers had been advised by senior officers that Liam’s complaint was a legal matter not criminal and that it was being addressed by the Bar.’

Back in September 2015 I wrote a lengthy piece describing in some detail the background to the case and I reproduce it here, for the benefit of readers who are coming fresh to what is a complex and tangled case. Below that is a copy of recent correspondence between Liam Adams’ legal advisers and the Police Ombudsman’s office.

Here it is. Enjoy:

There is growing disquiet in the North’s legal world over the failure of the N.I. Director of Public Prosecutions, Barra McGrory QC to disclose to the PSNI a file he had kept containing details of a legal consultation held with the Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams in February, 2007 concerning allegations that his brother, Liam Adams had sexually abused his daughter, Ainé.

Mr McGrory was Gerry Adams’ solicitor at the time. He was appointed Director of Public Prosecutions in succession to Sir Alastair Fraser in November 2011.

The file was eventually disclosed by Mr McGrory but not until February 2015, eighteen months after Liam Adams was tried and convicted on charges that he had sexually abused his daughter and almost exactly eight years after the consultation had taken place. This was only days before Liam Adams began an appeal against his conviction.

The senior Crown counsel involved in the case then ‘advised’ the PSNI to question Mr McGrory about what he knew about Gerry Adams’ knowledge of the abuse allegations. He could have ‘instructed’ the PSNI to do this but chose to ‘advise’ instead.

The PSNI chose not to follow this ‘advice’. Had they been ‘instructed’ to question him, they would have had no choice and Northern Ireland would have witnessed, albeit second hand, the spectacle of the Director of Public Prosecutions being questioned by police about allegations that he may have withheld evidence about a crime involving the most famous IRA-linked family in Ireland.

Instead, Mr McGrory’s response came in an unsigned statement on two A4 size sheets of paper which Mr McGrory’s solicitor sent to the Public Prosecution Service – which is headed by Mr McGrory, but who had recused himself from the Liam Adams’ case.

The contents of that explanation, which were passed on to the Liam Adams’ legal team, cannot be revealed because of a condition attached to its disclosure which said that it could only be used or revealed in legal proceedings.

Others present at the consultation were another Adams’ brother, Patrick, better known as Paddy Adams – who is a former Belfast Commander of the IRA – and the Sinn Fein president’s personal aide and press officer, Richard McAuley. Paddy Adams was a member of an IRA firing party at the funeral of hunger striker Joe McDonnell in 1981; he was shot and wounded and arrested by British troops.

The consultation took place just after Liam Adams had been arrested – on February 15th, 2007 – and questioned by PSNI detectives. Liam Adams’ daughter, Ainé had just revived a complaint she had first lodged in 1987, but had then withdrawn, and his arrest was leaked, apparently by the police, to The Sunday World newspaper. Liam Adams was not named in the report which instead referred to the arrest of a relative of a high-ranking republican.

Six years later, Aine Adams told The Belfast Telegraph that in 2007, Gerry Adams attempted to persuade her to seek a court injunction which would ban publicity about the scandal:

“He frantically phoned me about twenty times”, she told the newspaper, when he heard about the planned story. “He said he needed to make sure it didn’t get into the press to protect me. Looking back, he was buttering me up.”

According to sources familiar with the file, it also describes how Mr McGrory agreed to arrange a meeting between then PSNI Assistant Chief Constable, Peter Sheridon and Gerry Adams.

Allegedly, the document – or ‘minute’, as it is officially described – details that Mr Sheridan agreed to meet Mr Adams before he gave a statement in June 2007 to PSNI detectives investigating claims from Ainé Adams that she had been sexually assaulted by her father as a young child.

Contacted for comment by thebrokenelbow.com, Mr Sheridan, who quit the PSNI in 2008 and now heads Co-operation Ireland, said that he had “no recollection” of meeting Gerry Adams:

“I would have had no reason to, I was not part of the investigation team”, he said.

Contrary to what the ‘Gerry Adams’ file says, Mr Sheridan maintains that the leak about Liam Adams’ arrest did not come from the PSNI but from the republican community.

The question of Gerry Adams’ 2007 statement to the PSNI would later assume special significance, for in that statement he made no mention of any admission to him from Liam Adams that he had sexually abused his daughter Ainé.

However, eighteen months later, in 2009, he remembered that Liam had made an admission, allegedly during ‘a walk in the rain in Dundalk’, and included this in a fresh statement made to the PSNI.

He gave that statement a few weeks before being interviewed for a UTV documentary during which both Ainé and her mother claimed they had told Gerry Adams all about the sexual abuse. That led Liam Adams’ barrister, Eilis McDermott QC to accuse him of remembering the incident, ‘to save his political skin’.

Barra McGrory’s failure to hand over the 2007 file meant that the PSNI were not able to interview possibly important witnesses, including Paddy Adams, Richard McAuley and Peter Sheridan, about Gerry Adams’ knowledge of the sexual abuse allegations at that time. Nor was Liam Adams’ legal team able to question them in court.

The file, marked ‘Gerry Adams’, was found on Mr McGrory’s home computer. Liam Adams’ legal team had, before the first trial in April 2013, made a third party disclosure application for all relevant files kept by Mr McGrory’s then legal firm, PJ McGrory & Co dealing with Gerry Adams and the child sexual abuse allegations against Liam Adams.

His father, the late Paddy McGrory, had founded the firm and was one of the North’s ablest and best known criminal lawyers. He also was Gerry Adams’ lawyer and Barra McGrory inherited the SF leader as a client,  along with other prominent republicans – Bobby Storey was one – when his father died. (Full disclosure: he was also a friend of this writer and is dearly missed.)

The ‘Gerry Adams’ file was not amongst the documents handed over. The questions thus arise: was the file ever on the PJ McGrory computer system and if so, how and when did it make its way to Mr McGrory’s home computer?

A letter from the Public Prosecution Service to Liam Adams’ lawyers in February 15th, 2015, claimed that the minute:

“….only came to light last month when he was tidying up data stored on different computers held by him. This minute was contained in a folder relating to Gerard Adams. Mr McGrory was completely unaware of the minute when he made his police statement in connection with the trial of Liam Adams.”

The first trial of Liam Adams in April 2013 collapsed when it emerged that the trial judge, Corinne Philpott had neglected to hand over a prosecution file to the defence team. A second trial was held in September 2013 and in October, Liam Adams was found guilty on ten counts of sexual abuse.

His lawyers then launched an appeal which began on 25th March 2015. A month or so before the appeal began the Public Prosecution Service handed over to them the ‘Gerry Adams’ file discovered on Barra McGrory’s computer.

By this stage the file was of little use to Liam Adams’ lawyers. Not only had the first trial collapsed but Gerry Adams had been withdrawn from the witness list for the second trial after the defence had threatened to make a ‘bad character evidence’ application.

This meant that the defence was not able to summon Mr McGrory as a witness during the second trial and ask him about significant discrepancies between the undisclosed ‘Gerry Adams’ file and the statement he gave PSNI detectives. Nor were they able to call Paddy Adams, Richard McAuley or Peter Sheridan of the PSNI.

Because Gerry Adams did not figure in the trial, his dealings with Barra McGrory, his lawyer, also could not figure in the appeal.

According to sources familiar with both documents there is no reference at all in Mr McGrory’s 2012 PSNI statement to the consultation he had with Gerry Adams. In fact the two accounts are impossible to reconcile.

Said one source who has seen the recently rediscovered ‘Gerry Adams’ document:

In the ‘Gerry Adams’ document, Barra McGrory states that he had a consultation with Gerry Adams MP, who was accompanied by Patrick Adams and Richard McAuley in his office in February 2007. They discussed the case and the leaking of information to the press by the PSNI. Barra McGrory then contacted ACC Peter Sheridon who agreed that there had been a leak to the press by the PSNI and he said he would meet Gerry Adams voluntarily, before he made any statement to the PSNI.

In contrast, Mr McGrory’s statement to the PSNI, made on August 28th, 2012, reads in part:

Sometime in May or June 2007, I was contacted by the police and was informed they were seeking Gerry Adams’ co-operation in an investigation….I duly contacted Gerry Adams and arranged to consult. A consultation took place. I do not have a minute or record of that consultation….Following this consultation I contacted police and facilitated a meeting between them and Gerry Adams during which time he gave them a statement. I was present on June 20th, 2007 when that statement was made. The only notes I have to my involvement in this matter are those already disclosed consisting of 2 separate pages. The first note headed ‘meeting 1987’ was a consultation note I made during the interview with Constable Corrigan and Cartmill. The second note beginning ‘calls to Insp Black and Ivan Anderson…’ was made in 2009 after I was requested by Gerry Adams to ascertain who was now in charge of the investigation.

Gareth Mulvenna, whose engrossing book on the Tartan Gangs of Belfast in the early 1970’s I was pleased to review in these pages, has been engaged in a fascinating if somewhat fruitless dialogue with Sinn Fein over their claimed commitment to engage positively and sympathetically with their separated brethren in the Loyalist community.

I reproduce here without comment, his recent post on the matter on his blog, with thanks to Huw Bennett for bringing it to my attention. Free life-time subscription to TBE for those who correctly put names to the Shinners involved. Enjoy:

Very few journalists knew Denis Donaldson as well as Tunis-born, French writer, Sorj Chalandon, a 27-year veteran of the left-wing daily Liberation and a prize-winning author of seven books.

One book which won him a prize – the Grand Prix du roman de l’Académie française – and which was short-listed for the prestigious Prix Goncourt, was ‘Return to Killybegs’, an account of an IRA man turned British spy – called Tyrone Meehan in the book – whose life is loosely based on Denis Donaldson’s own tragic voyage to that lonely cottage in Co Donegal.

Sorj Chalandon

I was greatly honored to be asked to write an afterword to ‘Killybegs’ and to share in the praise for Chalandon’s work. Like anyone reading this book I was of course curious to discover how the author explained his hero’s entry to the ranks of British intelligence agents but, as I did in my afterword, I won’t reveal it here. Those eager to know will have to buy the book.

Denis Donaldson with two friends

In the meantime I reproduce here the book cover and my afterword. Enjoy:

The story below first appeared in the US edition of Politico nine days ago, and its implications are potentially serious for Hillary Clinton since some of the weaponry covertly – and illegally – supplied to anti-Gaddafi rebels made their way into ISIS hands in Libya.

Obama DOJ drops charges against alleged broker of Libyan weapons

Arms dealer had threatened to expose Hillary Clinton’s talks about arming anti-Qadhafi rebels.

The Obama administration is moving to dismiss charges against an arms dealer it had accused of selling weapons that were destined for Libyan rebels.

Lawyers for the Justice Department on Monday filed a motion in federal court in Phoenix to drop the case against the arms dealer, an American named Marc Turi, whose lawyers also signed the motion.

The deal averts a trial that threatened to cast additional scrutiny on Hillary Clinton’s private emails as Secretary of State, and to expose reported Central Intelligence Agency attempts to arm rebels fighting Libyan leader Moammar Qadhafi.

Government lawyers were facing a Wednesday deadline to produce documents to Turi’s legal team, and the trial was officially set to begin on Election Day, although it likely would have been delayed by protracted disputes about classified information in the case.

A Turi associate asserted that the government dropped the case because the proceedings could have embarrassed Clinton and President Barack Obama by calling attention to the reported role of their administration in supplying weapons that fell into the hands of Islamic extremist militants.

“They don’t want this stuff to come out because it will look really bad for Obama and Clinton just before the election,” said the associate.

In the dismissal motion, prosecutors say “discovery rulings” from U.S. District Court Judge David Campbell contributed to the decision to drop the case. The joint motion asks the judge to accept a confidential agreement to resolve the case through a civil settlement between the State Department and the arms broker.

“Our position from the outset has been that this case never should have been brought and we’re glad it’s over,” said Jean-Jacques Cabou, a Perkins Coie partner serving as court-appointed defense counsel in the case. “Mr Turi didn’t break the law….We’re very glad the charges are being dismissed.”

Under the deal, Turi admits no guilt in the transactions he participated in, but he agreed to refrain from U.S.-regulated arms dealing for four years. A $200,000 civil penalty will be waived if Turi abides by the agreement.

A State Department official confirmed the outlines of the agreement.

“Mr. Turi cooperated with the Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls in its review and proposed administrative settlement of the alleged violations,” said the official, who asked not be named. “Based on a compliance review, DDTC alleged that Mr. Turi…engaged in brokering activities for the proposed transfer of defense articles to Libya, a proscribed destination under [arms trade regulations,] despite the Department’s denial of…requests for the required prior approval of such activities.”

Turi adviser Robert Stryk of the government relations and consulting firm SPG accused the government of trying to scapegoat Turi to cover up Clinton’s mishandling of Libya.

“The U.S. government spent millions of dollars, went all over the world to bankrupt him, and destroyed his life — all to protect Hillary Clinton’s crimes,” he said, alluding to the deadly Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

Republicans hold Clinton responsible for mishandling the circumstances around that attack. And Stryk said that Turi was now weighing book and movie deals to tell his story, and to weigh in on the Benghazi attack.

Representatives of the Justice Department, the White House and Clinton’s presidential campaign either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment on the case or the settlement.

Turi was indicted in 2014 on four felony counts: two of arms dealing in violation of the Arms Export Control Act and two of lying to the State Department in official applications. The charges accused Turi of claiming that the weapons involved were destined for Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, when the arms were actually intended to reach Libya.

Turi’s lawyers argued that the shipments were part of a U.S. government-authorized effort to arm Libyan rebels.

It’s unclear if any of the weapons made it to Libya, and there’s no evidence linking weapons provided by the U.S. government to the Benghazi attacks.

“The proposal did not result in an actual transfer of defense articles to Libya,” the State Department official told POLITICO on Tuesday.

But questions about U.S. efforts to arm Libyan rebels have been mounting, since weapons have reportedly made their way from Libya to Syria, where a civil war is raging between the Syrian Government and ISIL-aligned fighters.

In an interview last year, Turi said the U.S. was aware that weapons being shipped into Libya during the unrest there were being immediately diverted to Syria.

“When this equipment landed in Libya, half went one way, and the half went the other way,” Turi said in an interview broadcast on Fox Business Channel. “The half that went the other way is the half that ended up in Syria.”

Turi also said he came up with an idea he termed “zero footprint,” where the U.S. would send weapons to Libyan rebels through Arab countries, like Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

During 2013 Senate hearings on the 2012 Benghazi attack, Clinton, under questioning from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), said she had no knowledge of weapons moving from Libya into Turkey, for ultimate transfer to Syria.

Wikileaks head Julian Assange in July suggested that he had emails proving that Clinton “pushed” the “flows” of weapons “going over to Syria.”

Additionally, Turi’s case had delved into emails sent to and from the controversial private account that Clinton used as Secretary of State, which the defense planned to harness at any trial.

At a court hearing in 2015, Cabou said emails between Clinton and her top aides indicated that efforts to arm the rebels were — at a minimum — under discussion at the highest levels of the government.

“We’re entitled to tell the jury, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the Secretary of State and her highest staff members were actively contemplating providing exactly the type of military assistance that Mr. Turi is here to answer for,” the defense attorney said, according to a transcript.

Turi’s defense was pressing for more documents about the alleged rebel-arming effort and for testimony from officials who worked on the issue for the State Department and the CIA. The defense said it planned to argue that Turi believed he had official permission to work on arms transfers to Libya

“If we armed the rebels, as publicly reported in many, many sources and as we strongly believe happened and as we believe at least one witness told the grand jury, then documents about that process relate to that effort,” Cabou told Campbell at the same hearing last year.