Followers of Danny Morrison’s Twitter feed received the message below on January 16th and those of them who are his fans were probably delighted to read it. Here it is:

Life being too short as it is I am not on Danny’s Twitter list so I am grateful to a friend for alerting me to this message and sending me a copy.

Danny Morrison

Danny was excited over a review in the Irish Times of a recently published academic tome examining the relations between the East German intelligence service, the Stasi and Ireland between the foundation of the GDR in 1949 and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990. The book, published by Manchester University Press, was written by Jerome aan de Wiel and retails for an eye-watering £63.

The book is based on an examination of some 6,000 documents – what Mr aan de Wiel terms ‘surviving’ documents – retrieved from the Stasi’s files in East Berlin.

The reviewer, one Derek Scally, had this to write inter alia, much to Danny’s glee:

But what of the shadowy contacts between Belfast and East Berlin that pop up in many standard works on the Troubles? According to aan de Wiel, many of these works, such as Ed Moloney’s history of the IRA, make claims that are not backed up with evidence.

Danny Morrison as a callow youth – looks like a mug shot to me but an interesting one

The comment angered me, needless to say, but it was also puzzling. As the friend who alerted me to the Morrison comment pointed out I never made any connections at all between the IRA and the Stasi in ‘A Secret History of the IRA’ (not ‘a history of the IRA’ as Scally called it).

I wrote to the publisher to complain and received back a very polite email containing a copy of a message the author had sent to the publisher in response to my complaint. It began, tellingly:

I have never said anything about Ed Moloney, and in fact was very careful about what I wrote.

And he quoted the relevant passage from his book:

In his impressive history of the IRA, Ed Moloney writes that PIRA (Provisional IRA) member Brian Keenan was said to have contacts with the East bloc, especially with the Stasi, but that concrete evidence to support this is not forthcoming. Keenan was often described as the tough Marxist within the IRA. As Moloney points out it was in fact the OIRA (Official IRA) that got support from the Soviet Union and the East bloc.

It is in fact the supposed links between the Stasi and the Officials which Mr aan de Wiel says is not supported by those ‘surviving’ Stasi papers; nothing to do with the Provisionals at all. But in his eagerness to take a swipe at myself the bold Danny either didn’t check or didn’t care. I suspect the latter.

Even so, Mr aan de Wiel adds an important qualification:

An important point must be emphasised though. This is not to say that it is absolutely certain that the Stasi did not do it, (i.e. supply the Officials with guns etc) but based on the evidence of the surviving written material it simply cannot be proved.

I would add my own qualification, based on my knowledge of said Officials, and that is to explore further the meaning of the word ‘surviving’ as in ‘surviving documents’.

Or, to put it another way, I would dearly like to get a glimpse at the airline manifests of incoming passengers at the airports in Berlin in the days immediately following the fall of the Wall, especially those whose airport of origin was either Dublin or Belfast and whose addresses were either in Gardner Place or the lower Falls Road, especially Cyprus Street.

Manchester University Press’ helpful commissioning editor, Tony Mason had this to say in his email to me:

From what Jerome has said below and from my reading of the relevant passages, this strikes me as incorrect quoting from the book by Derek Scally in his review in The Irish Times rather than anything wrong that Jerome has said. We may ask Jerome to ask The Irish Times to print a correction to this.

I don’t know if Mr aan de Wiel asked for a correction, but I did. Here it is:

Sorry about that Danny.

Remember Sinead O’Connor joining Sinn Fein and asking for a meeting with Gerry Adams? To discuss, ‘the creation of a new country’ and ‘a private matter’. That was back in mid-December. More than a month ago? Have any of Ireland’s journos bothered to follow up on that, or has the story just disappeared into the mystic, or down the drain like the dregs from the last pint of Guinness? Have they just plain forgotten and moved on to the next fleeting story? And what was ‘the private matter’? I’d like to know. Wouldn’t you?

In order to assist accurate reporting of the latest developments I have prepared this short summary of the genesis of the UVF’s involvement in the Boston College project.

The origins of the UVF oral history archive at Boston College are as follows:

A meeting was held at the Europa Hotel in Belfast in the early summer/late spring of 2003 between Dr Robert O’Neill, the Burns Librarian at Boston College and two people authorised to speak on behalf of the UVF to discuss the organisation’s possible participation in the project.

The project director, Ed Moloney was not present at the meeting and learned about it only afterwards, and needless to say Dr McIntyre was not involved in any way.

Of paramount concern to the Loyalists was the confidentiality and security of the interviews, should the group agree to participate. In particular they asked O’Neill would the interviews be safe from the police in Northern Ireland?

In return Dr O’Neill gave the Loyalists what one of the pair later described as “an ironclad” guarantee of confidentiality and safety. On the basis of that assurance given by a senior academic from a college they believed to be trustworthy, the UVF agreed to participate.

It is now evident that they were misled by Boston College, grievously so.

It was always intended to make the archive as wide-ranging as possible and to include, provided terms could be agreed, Loyalist activists and the police as well as Republicans. The UVF was approached by Mr Moloney and agreed to discuss the matter with Boston College. Subsequently the meeting with Dr O’Neill took place.

The RUC was also approached and agreed to participate on the same terms as everyone else, including those covering confidentiality. Again these negotiations took place directly between Boston College and the police, initially at a weekend conference at Gleneagles golf resort in Scotland.

And again neither Mr Moloney nor Dr McIntyre were involved in these discussions but the RUC representatives were satisfied enough to agree to participate.

RUC involvement in the Boston Project commenced in June 2003, around the same time as the UVF interviews began.

The secret efforts by the PSNI and the Public Prosecution Service to obtain the interviews allegedly given to Boston College by Winston Rea are in fact a pathetic attempt by the security authorities to demonstrate balance in their efforts to invade a confidential academic archive in the United States.

Having previously expended all their energies on attempting to obtain IRA interviews and in the process drawing the ire of Irish-America, the PSNI and the PPS are now trying to show the Americans that they are even-handed by pursuing a well-known Loyalist figure who is related to the late UVF leader Gusty Spence.

The truth is that this PSNI pursuit of Mr Rea is a fishing expedition carried out for narrow political purposes. They have no evidence that any alleged interview given by Mr Rea describes any offence committed by him and I am reliably informed that the last time the police, then in the form of the RUC, showed any interest in him was seventeen years ago, in 1998, when he was brought in for routine questioning and quickly released. The last time he was in court was 1986.

There is, as far as is known, no current investigation into Mr Rea and if there was one he would have been arrested long before now and questioned. In court today a lawyer for the PPS’s office was unable to answer when asked if there was a current investigation by police into Mr Rea.

In one self-serving act the PSNI and the Director of Public Prosecutions, Barra McGrory have blown a huge hole in the recently negotiated deal crafted by local parties and the three interested governments to deal with Northern Ireland’s bloody past. A proposal to create an oral history archive where activists could tell their stories is now dead in the water.

If the PSNI succeed in this fishing expedition against Mr Rea then everyone who lodges an interview with this archive is at risk of seeing their interviews seized by PSNI detectives and themselves hauled before the courts.

Thanks to Liam O’Rourke for passing this on to me:

By Ed Moloney & James Kinchin-White

That is the intriguing question that jumps out of the pages of a de-classified British military document recently released by the British National Archives at Kew.

The document carries an account of a meeting in May 1973 between two of the most senior British Army officers involved in the conflict in Northern Ireland during which the existence of a source, apparently named ‘Brocolli’, is mentioned, along with “the problem” of the source’s protection.

One was the GOC, or General Officer Commanding British troops, Sir Frank King who served in that post between February 1973 and August 1975; the other was the Vice Chief of the General Staff, the second most senior officer in the British Army, Sir David Fraser, who was a veteran of the British Army’s campaigns in Malaya, Cyprus and Suez. He went on to be the UK Military Representative at NATO.

Vice-Chief of the British General Staff, 1973, Sir David Fraser

Also present were two senior British military officials, the Director of Military Operations (DMO) and the Director of Army Staff Duties (DASD), neither of whom are named. Nor is the location of the meeting given in the two-page document but it is likely to have taken place in London since the paper notes that “GOC Northern Ireland visited VCGS….” who was normally based at the Ministry of Defence in the British capital.

General Sir Frank King, British GOC in Northern Ireland in 1973

The source “Brocolli” was brought up at the very end of their meeting, the last of eight topics discussed and is accorded a short, terse sentence that reads:

h. Brocolli. VCGS brought the GOC up to date and discussed the problem of protection of the source.

There is no clue about “Brocolli’s” identity, not even that it is a person rather than a thing, and nor is it at all clear whether “Brocolli” is associated with Republican paramilitaries rather than Loyalists. However the paper makes an earlier reference to the fact that the Army now has “good intelligence” on the UDA and the absence of a reference to “Brocolli” at this point in the discussion suggests it was not a Loyalist source. That points to a Republican connection and, since the Provisional IRA was the British Army’s principal foe in 1973, that “Brocolli” was somehow associated with that camp.

What is beyond dispute is that “Brocolli” was a very important source. Otherwise he, she or it would hardly rank as a subject for discussion between two such senior military figures. The fact that “Brocolli” is clearly in need of protection also points to a human source rather than an insentient entity, such as a bugging device. Had “Brocolli” been an Operation then it would have been written as “Operation Brocolli”, in accordance with British military practice.

The intelligence war merits one of the longest paragraphs in the document and the discussion is notable for King’s declaration: “We are now entering the intelligence phase of the war”. The recent creation of the Director and Co-ordinator of Intelligence (DCI), which was a joint MI5/MI6 body created in 1972, is credited for improving the flow of information as was a much improved RUC Special Branch. The DCI was traditionally headed by an MI5 officer who, in 1973, was a “Mr Rowley”.*

Mention is also made of the SRU, or Special Reconnaissance Unit, a successor to the MRF (Military Reaction Force) and forerunner of the FRU (Force Research Unit). In 1973, the SRU operated under the cover name of NITAT(NI) – a forerunner of the 14th Intelligence Company, known as “the Det” in military circles.

The paragraph reads (our comments in parenthesis):

We have now got good intelligence on Herron (Tommy Herron, then leader of the UDA) and the Protestant extremists. The IRA Officials were becoming convinced that the Army was about to break the ceasefire but there was no indication of what was causing this rumour. The GOC said ”We are now entering the intelligence phase of the war”. Mr Rowley, DCI, had undoubtedly improved the Intelligence organisation which was now working better than ever before, and much more information was coming from Special Branch. The SRU, on its first operation, had a very successful capture of two men, subsequently leading to five others. This was as a result of lying up in a house on the north banks of Lough Neagh for 2 1/2 days.

Sir David Fraser’s satisfaction at the progress made in the intelligence war with the IRA seems to have been justified. Less than two months after their meeting, the British Army’s top brass were celebrating the arrests of Gerry Adams, Brendan Hughes, Tom Cahill and other senior members of the IRA in Belfast as a result of intelligence allegedly provided by the IRA’s then Belfast Quarter-Master, Eamon Molloy, a double agent who was later killed and his body ‘disappeared’ by the IRA.

However Molloy was recruited by the RUC Special Branch, not the British Army, during interrogation at Castlereagh Holding Centre so he is unlikely to have been “Brocolli”.

Another candidate for “Brocolli” was Freddie Scappaticci, a senior member of the IRA’s Internal Security Unit – the IRA’s spycatchers. He was interned at Long Kesh at the time, as another military document released by Kew reveals, and therefore could not have been the source discussed by Fraser and King. Scappaticci was later recruited and subsequently managed by the FRU and, according to some former FRU members, given the codename ‘Steaknife’.

Scappaticci was listed among a number of IRA internees whose names had been submitted by the then SDLP leader Gerry Fitt to British Secretary of State William Whitelaw, in July 1973 for release.

The documents reveal that internees could apply for release if they agreed to sign an oath saying that they had ‘recanted’ their support for the IRA (a similar arrangement existed during the 1956-62 IRA campaign). Fitt’s list includes 33 men, sixteen of whom, including Scappaticci, “have recanted but will not sign an oath”. That list also included Kevin Hannaway, who went on to become the IRA’s Adjutant-General in the 1980’s. His presence on the list along with eight former ‘OC’s’, or Officers Commanding, seems to justify British Army scepticism at the tactic, as one senior officer commented:

Attached to this minute at Annex A is a list of the 30 men who Mr Fitt is attempting to get released from internment. All of them are known hard men, some harder than others. But Mr Whitelaw has been told that of the 86 men released from Long Kesh in the last six months 57 are known to have returned to terorism almost immediately. Therefore although everything possible should be done to keep the SDLP on the right side of the Executive bargaining, Mr Fitt’s request should not be given in to too easily.

Was ‘Brocolli’ a human agent buried inside a paramilitary group, the IRA for instance. Or was it something else?

Gerry Fitt’s list of requested releases from Long Kesh included Freddie Scappaticci, later the alleged agent ‘Steaknife’.

* Thanks to Tom Griffin who tweeted that Rowley was more likely to have been MI6 than MI5. See this link.

(I re-wrote the headline for this piece overnight as I thought the new version was more accurate and appropriate)

It was heartening to see the Irish Times leading the condemnation from Irish journalism of the brutal Jihadist attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo last week and defending the right to free expression by participating in an international protest organised by Index on Censorship.

The “right to offend”, the paper opined, “must be defended with courage and vigour”.

However it would have been even more uplifting had the Times injected a note of regret in its commentary that it had failed to take its own advice to defend the “right to offend” with “courage and vigour” when last April its editors censored and withdrew from the internet a cartoon drawn by in-house cartoonist, Martyn Turner because it had offended senior members of the Irish Catholic hierarchy.

It seems that sauce for the Catholic goose is not sauce for the Islamic gander.

Thebrokenelbow.com is today reproducing Martyn Turner’s censored cartoon below and beneath that reprints yesterday’s commentary by the Irish Times followed by a news story in TheJournal.ie from last April explaining the background to the censoring of Martyn Turner.

Readers of this blog can then make their own judgement on the affair. This blog stands squarely behind the principle that all censorship is wrong and must be opposed no matter who urges or imposes it.

And needless to say: “Nous sommes tout Charlie!”

The Martyn Turner cartoon that was censored by The Irish Times following complaints from the Archbishop of Dublin.

The Irish Times view: Charlie Hebdo attack is a brutal assault on our freedom of expression

News organisations around the world show solidarity with Charlie Hebdo magazine

A drawing by Irish Times Cartoonist Martyn Turner in response to Wednesday’s attack on Charlie Hebdo.

Thu, Jan 8, 2015, 14:33

Irish Times to explain why controversial cartoon was removed from website

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin had said last week that priests were “hurt” by the cartoon’s publication.

Apr 18 9:53 PM 41,496 Views 207 Comments

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Image: Priest via Shutterstock

Updated 9.54pm

THE IRISH TIMES is to publish an explanation in tomorrow’s edition of the newspaper as to why a Martyn Turner cartoon was removed from its website.

The cartoon, which was published on Wednesday, was accessible at this link, but is no longer available.

It is also gone from the archive of Martyn Turner cartoons on the Irish Times website.

The cartoon showed three priests standing next to each other; the priest in the centre was holding a paper with ‘Children’s First Bill’ and ‘mandatory reporting’ written on it.

Martin upset by Martyn. Won’t someone please think of the priests? http://t.co/ZO9urQi8xd pic.twitter.com/voKQ00tpyY

— Donal O’Keeffe (@Donal_OKeeffe) April 18, 2014

Source: Donal O’Keeffe/Twitter

The Children’s First Bill was launched earlier this week, and will make it mandatory for certain professions and post-holders to report incidents of harm and the risk of harm to the Child and Family Agency.

The cartoon “hurt” many priests and lay people, Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin said on Thursday at the Pro Cathedral.

I know that many priests and people feel hurt by a cartoon in yesterday’s Irish Times. I am a strong believer in freedom of speech and of the vital role of satire in social criticism, but I object to anything that would unjustly tarnish all good priests with the unpardonable actions of some. We have great priests in the Archdiocese of Dublin.

When contacted by TheJournal.ie today, a staff member at the Irish Times said that an explanation for the removal of the cartoon will be published in tomorrow’s paper.

It is not often that thebrokenelbow.com pays much heed to sex scandals, much less those involving under age victims. But when it is a case of the powerful abusing the weak, such as the Kincora scandal, then it becomes a different matter.

Such outrages are a matter of legitimate public interest and concern for they expose the reality of unequal power relationships in society. The ‘teenage sex slave’ scandal that has embroiled Prince Andrew falls into that category.

Prince Andrew and Virginia Roberts, ‘Jane Doe3’ in the court papers

The figure at the centre of the scandal, Jeffrey Epstein (61) is a Wall Street billionaire who procured under age girls for sex with himself and a coterie of friends from the upper reaches of society. His friends were allegedly entertained at sex parties at luxury pads in London, New York and on a private island in the US Virgin Islands.

Jeffrey Epstein, Wall Street billionaire. Abused dozens of teenage sex slaves but got a lesser jail term than Ched Evans

Epstein was eventually put on trial, was convicted but given a lenient sentence of just 13 months jail time (contrast this with the five years English soccer player, Ched Evans got for a disputed rape) while a non prosecution agreement (NPA) concerning other alleged assaults was negotiated with the US government on his behalf by Alan Dershovitz, the former Harvard law professor and staunch friend of Israel who, it now turns out, was also allegedly involved in the pedophile sex parties!

Pro-Israel advocate, Alan Dershowitz, negotiated a non-prosecution deal for Epstein but now accused of involvement in the abuse

It is difficult not to look at the sordid details of Epstein’s treatment by the US legal authorities and find echoes of the leniency showed to the big banks involved in the 2008 financial collapse. One law for the super-rich, another law for the rest of us!

Another person who allegedly assisted in the negotiation of that NPA, according to court papers, was none other than Prince Andrew, eldest brother of the heir to the British Crown, who has been forced to abandon a skiing holiday at the Swiss resort of Verbier to return to Buckingham Palace to deal with the growing scandal.

Other characters in this burgeoning drama include Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of disgraced newspaper mogul Robert Maxwell and the French model scout Jean Luc Brunel. The latter pair are alleged to have played the role of pimps to Epstein, Prince Andrew and Alan Dershowitz.

Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of media crook Robert Maxwell

Meanwhile one of the two women who have laid these new charges, Virginia Roberts – known as ‘Jane Doe 3’ in the court papers – is quoted in the media this morning as saying she will not “be bullied back into silence”.

Here, below, is the full text of the complaint lodged with court authorities in South Florida. We shall see how this sordid affair turns out but as for those hoping to see Prince Andrew end up in the dock, well good luck with that!

Enjoy: