David Burke’s explosive book lifts lid on decade-long smear campaign led by the Crown’s most DEVIOUS spymaster to CANCEL CHARLIE
In the early 1970s, Sir Maurice Oldfield of the British Secret Service, MI6, embarked upon a decade-long campaign to derail the political career of Charles Haughey. The spymaster, notoriously conspiritorial by nature and lacking a moral compass, was convinced Haughey was a Provisional IRA godfather and a threat to Britain. Oldfield was assisted by unscrupulous British agents – among them renowned poet and broadcaster John Betjeman – and by a shadowy group of conspirators inside the Irish State’s security apparatus. Escaping scrutiny for their actions until now, these extracts from David Burke’s new book, An Enemy of the Crown, shed light on some of the anti-Haughey conspiracies from that time.
One of the most important strategies in Maurice Oldfield’s playbook was the use, manipulation and abuse of the media. He was a disseminator of ‘fake news’ long before that phrase was invented. He called it ‘disinformation’...
For officers of an organisation such as the IRD [Information Research Department – the British Foreign Office’s now defunct propaganda machine], the best smears to exploit are those that have already taken root in the soil of their target audience.
The most effective smear the IRD directed against Haughey was one that had been in circulation for a number of years, namely that Fianna Fáil was linked to the IRA. The first version of the Fianna FáilIRA conspiracy theory was concocted by William McGrath, one of Ian Paisley’s more menacing lieutenants. Paisley and McGrath were incorrigible conspirators and exponents of sinister dirty tricks.
They were key players in a series of loyalist ‘false flag’ bombings in Belfast in April 1969, i.e., they carried them out but blamed others.
The pro-Paisley newspaper, The Protestant Telegraph, declared that a source ‘close to [Stormont] Government circles’ had informed the paper that a purported ‘secret dossier’ on the Castlereagh electricity subland station explosion allegedly contained ‘startling documentation and facts. Original reports suggested that the
IRA could have been responsible, but in Parliament no such definite statement would be made … We are told that the Ministry of Home
Affairs is examining reports which implicate the Eire Government in the £2 million act of sabotage – By actively precipitating a crisis in Ulster [sic], the Eire Government can make capital, win or lose.’
There was not one word of truth anywhere in this report.
Private Eye went into overdrive after the formal election of Haughey as taoiseach in the Dáil on 11 December 1979. On the 21st, the magazine produced an article entitled ‘Haughey’s Bricks’. It made a blunder about where Haughey had gone to school; erroneously claimed he had been elected to the Dáil on his first attempt, not fourth; mistakenly maintained he had become junior Minister for Justice on his first day; inaccurately asserted he had advocated an invasion of Northern Irein 1969; speciously avowed he had been elected leader because he was ‘popular with the IRA’; wrongly maintained he had made a ‘huge personal fortune from property dealing’.
There was also a dollop of salacious and absurd nonsense about his relationship with Terry Keane.
Ted Kennedy, who had been attacked by Brian Crozier in The Ulster Debate paperback and monitored by the IRD as someone who was anti-British, featured in the article too: ‘All in all, Haughey’s lifestyle closely resembles that of US politician Teddy Kennedy. Both are ambitious, ruthless and ready to bend the law to cover up their misdoings.’
The next edition of the magazine banged much the same drum. This one alleged: ‘Prime Minister Charles Haughey fears that the continued exposure of his extraordinary private life may hamper him in much the same way that a licentious background harms his hero, Senator Edward Kennedy. For this reason, Charlie’s fancy, Terry Keane, may soon get the Big Dump.’
A few months later, Private Eye produced another staggeringly improbable article:
‘Christopher ‘Robin’ Hitchens has been in Dublin recently and tells a number of amusing stories about Charles Haughey, the new Irish Premier. Not long ago, according to Christopher Robin, the new Taoiseach – say – ‘tea-sock’ as if you are drunk – went to one of Dublin’s most expensive restaurants for lunch with a cabinet colleague.
‘Who should be sitting there lunching with another gentleman but ‘Cocky’ Haughey’s inamorata Terry Keane. The Republican hero approached her and said, “Hello Terry. That dress I bought you looks well on you”.
‘At this the plucky colleen stood up, grasped the dress at the neck and ripped it apart. She hurled the garment at him with the words, “You can take that back and everything else you have ever given me, Charles Haughey”, and stormed out of the restaurant in her undergarments.’
Just who in Dublin fed this yarn to Hitchens? It has all the appearance of a ‘sib’ [M16 code for rumour] conjured up by black propagandists at the Riverbank House HQ of the IRD in London or the British embassy in Dublin.
Daphne Park, one of Oldfield’s most trusted officers, once provided a rather indiscreet insight into how MI6 dirty tricks worked: You set people discreetly against one another … They destroy each other, we [in MI6] don’t destroy them...
Hugh Mooney used this tactic to bait the Official and Provisional IRA whom he wanted to feud with each other. His approach, as relayed to his superior, Hans Wesler, was to suggest that the Officials were ‘seriously considering assassinating the dozen or so leading Provisionals in Belfast’.
He also spread rumours that the Provisionals had betrayed the Officials in the aftermath of internment. A soldier attached to the Special Military Intelligence Unit (SMIU) who was performing field work for MI6, recalls, ‘I remember one night I sneaked into an arms dump in Belfast, I think it was a Provo one, and stole a few rifles and brought them to an Officials’ dump. Then we told the Provos [through cut-outs] that the Officials had stolen them and where they could be found, and sat back and waited for the fireworks.’