Lynch did not approve arms importation

The Minister for Justice, John O'Donoghue, is said to be engaged in a review of the papers on the Arms Trial to determine whether a thoroughgoing investigation is necessary. He might like to ponder an element of the affair that, potentially, is far more serious than the doctoring of the statement of Col Michael Hefferon.

Before getting into that, a brief reflection on that doctoring. What was the point of it? Changing the statement of a witness who was to give evidence would make no difference to the evidence that witness was going to give, or certainly it could have made no difference in that instance. The only people being fooled were the lawyers for the prosecution, who would have been misled about the evidence the witness was likely to give (the defence lawyers would have had direct access to Col Hefferon). So why would somebody on the prosecution side have done that?

It has been argued that an effect of the doctoring of Col Hefferon's statement would have been to mislead the district judge in considering whether to send Capt Kelly for trial. But what is the likelihood of that? The district judge would also have had the statement of the former minister for defence, denying that he gave any authorisation for the import of arms, so, even with the contrary evidence of Col Hefferon, there remained a case for Capt Kelly to answer (this is not to suggest that Capt Kelly was guilty, simply that given the statement in the book of evidence of Jim Gibbons, he had a case to answer and therefore should be sent for trial.)

The other issue is possibly far more significant. It concerns the terms of a note which recorded a directive given by the then minister for defence, Jim Gibbons, to the chief of staff of the army, Gen Sean MacEoin, and Col Hefferon, on February 6th, 1970.

In his evidence to the first arms trial, Col Hefferon said he had checked the terms of that note with a Col O'Donovan of the Chief of Staff's branch at Army headquarters and that the terms of the note was as he had recollected them. He later wrote that the note recorded Gibbons as saying: "You will prepare the Army for incursions into Northern Ireland should the situation, in the opinion of the government, warrant it. You will arrange to make surplus arms available for these operations and also gas masks."

In preparing a series of articles in 1980 on the Arms Trial, I was given a copy of what purported to be the record of the directive given to the Army on February 6th, 1970. That copy differs significantly from the terms of the note recorded by Col Hefferon and was far more ambiguous about the orders being given to the Army both about incursions into Northern Ireland and making arms available.

The emergence of this second version of the note adds weight to claims first made by Kevin Boland and more recently by Capt Jim Kelly, that between the ending of the first Arms Trial and the commencement of the second, a second note was forged and that it was intended to produce this in the second Arms Trial if the directive became an issue again. If this is so, there was a conspiracy not just to doctor the book of evidence, which could have had no bearing on the evidence given at the trial, but to forge evidence for production at the trial. If that is so, the most serious issues arise.

I asked Mr Lynch about that directive in an interview with him in May 1980, that was the subject of a contemporaneous note, which was published yesterday in the Irish Times. I didn't get far with Mr Lynch on the issue, partly because I was unable to establish the veracity of reports I had received about what had happened in relation to the directive. I, too, took a contemporaneous note of that interview and it accords with Mr Lynch's version of the discussion. However, there is reason to suspect Mr Lynch's recollection of his meeting with the then Secretary of the Department of Justice, Peter Berry, at Mount Carmel Hospital on October 17th, 1969.

BERRY claimed that at that meeting he had informed Mr Lynch that at a meeting two weeks previously in Bailieborough, Co Cavan, Capt Kelly had promised subversives money and assistance in the importation of arms. Mr Lynch claimed in the interview with me that Mr Berry did not convey this to him, that when he visited Mount Carmel Mr Berry was in a confused state because of drugs he had received in connection with medical tests he was undergoing. Mr Lynch's version would have to be favoured were it not for one piece of evidence corroborating Mr Berry's account.

A day or two after that meeting in Mount Carmel, Jim Gibbons told Col Hefferon that Mr Lynch had told him (Gibbons) of the visit to Mount Carmel and that Mr Berry had told Mr Lynch of reports he had received from the Special Branch concerning Capt Kelly's meeting with subversives at Bailieboro. But the central issue concerning Mr Lynch is a different one. It is not whether he knew there was something afoot in the period between October 1969 and April 1970, it is whether he and the government had approved an importation of arms for distribution to people in Northern Ireland.

And on that score, in spite of the terms of the original directive, there is hardly any doubt: the government and Mr Lynch had not approved.

vbrowne@irish-times.ie