VB: How did you come by this original statement of Col Hefferon, which was changed before being included in the book of evidence?
JK: I went to the National Archives at the beginning of January to view the documents released under the 30-year rule. I asked for the Department of Justice file and, lo and behold, the original statement of Col Hefferon was there. This made it clear that I had been authorised by him, the then director of intelligence, to do everything I did in relation to the arms importation and that he had conveyed what I was doing to Mr Gibbons [then minister for defence]. I knew what I was looking for because Col Hefferon had told me long after the Arms Trial that his statement had been changed.
VB: What did you do when you discovered this?
JK: I studied it, copied it with the statement in the book of evidence, noted the deletions that had been made, copied it and contacted a journalist I know in Monaghan, Patsy McArdle, who sent the story around a few newspapers but the only one interested was the News of the World.
VB: Why didn't you go to the newspapers yourself with the story?
JK: Because the papers didn't publish anything from me over the last long time. I had terrible trouble getting anything into The Irish Times. They adopted the attitude more or less that I was guilty [in the Arms Trial]. I don't think the Irish In- dependent carried anything from me in the last six or seven years. RTE was the same.
VB: How did the Prime Time programme come about?
JK: Sheila [his wife] saw an article in The Irish Times by Michael Heney [of Prime Time] about the miscarriage of justice in the Tallaght Two case and she contacted him and said if he was interested in miscarriages of justice there was a far bigger story. She did it of her own initiative.
VB: What is the significance of the alterations to Col Hefferon's statement in the book of evidence [for the Arms Trial]? It could have made and did make no difference to the evidence that was actually given to the court in the case, so what significance do the alterations have?
JK: Well I think Dessie O'Malley and the Department of Justice should be asked that.
VB: But what significance do you think it had? What was the point of changing the statement?
JK: I don't know, they changed it. [At this stage he said he was ending the interview because I was questioning the significance of the "doctoring" - his word - of Col Hefferon's statement].
VB: OK, so what do you say was the point of changing the original statement of Col Hefferon?
JK: Paddy MacEntee [the barrister] said on Prime Time the other night that if the attorney general had seen Col Hefferon's original statement, charges against me would have been dropped or at least that the District Judge at the preliminary hearing of the case would have refused to send the case forward for trial.
So the point of changing the statement could well have been to ensure that the charges against me would stand [he had already been charged with conspiracy to import arms at the time of Col Hefferon making his original statement]. They were desperate to keep me involved for if the case against me fell apart, then the case against the others [Charles Haughey, John Kelly and Albert Luykx] would have fallen down as well.
VB: But how can you contend that the case against you would have fallen apart had Col Hefferon's original statement been included in the book of evidence? The case against you did not fall apart after he gave his evidence in the first Arms Trial and that evidence was, essentially, what he had said in his original statement. [This led to further difficulty and another threat to end the interview. After some further exchanges, the interview resumed].
JK: OK. It just shows how desperate they were to keep me involved. They knew then that everything I had done was done with the authorisation of my superior, the director of intelligence, and that he had kept the minister for defence fully informed of what I was doing and had given his approval.
It was obvious there was no case against me but they had to keep me in the frame because if I dropped out that was the end of the Arms Trial and that was politically not acceptable.
VB: When the book of evidence was produced in June 1970 did you read the statement of Col Hefferon and wonder why it was he hadn't tied in Jim Gibbons to the whole business?
JK: No, I never read it.
VB: They were taking quite a chance in changing the statement because they would have known that you and Col Hefferon were close personally and you might well have asked him about it, which would have exposed at the time that the statement had been altered.
JK: I wasn't that close to him; he had been my superior officer.
VB: Oh, come on, you met him regularly in those times and he was fully supportive of you.
JK: I did not meet him that often, not more than once a week. Anyway, we did not notice any change to his statement. But remember what they did to him in the second trial.
They [the prosecution] said they would not be calling him as a witness in the second trial. The main reason that was given was that in the first trial Col Hefferon had given evidence at variance with his statement, at variance with the doctored statement. Imagine that. They changed his statement and then when he gave evidence in line with his original statement they accused him, effectively, of being a liar.
VB: Of course, there had been a suggestion that Col Hefferon was himself involved in the conspiracy to import arms, along with yourself, John Kelly, Albert Luykx, Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney.
JK: Yes, in the Garda note sent to Liam Cosgrave in April or May 1970 [the note he brought to Jack Lynch on the night of May 5th which caused Mr Lynch to fire Mr Haughey and Mr Blaney the following morning and which also named Jim Gibbons], Col Hefferon was named but Jack Lynch told Cosgrave that Gibbons and Hefferon were not involved and Cosgrave accepted that assurance. The suggestion that Col Hefferon was involved in illegality is proof of the extent to which there was a conspiracy to blacken people and, of course, the conspiracy did not stop at blackening people or at doctoring statements in the book of evidence, they went much further than that.
VB: What do you mean?
JK: What could have been a crucial piece of evidence in the second Arms Trial was altered. This was the written interpretation of the directive given to the Army in February 1970 by Jim Gibbons about possible Army incursions into Northern Ireland and the provision of surplus arms for distribution to people in Northern Ireland. Col Hefferon had made mention of this directive in his evidence in the first trial and the prosecution said that there was no copy of this note in the Army files. Col Hefferon made an inquiry himself at Army headquarters and confirmed that there was a copy of this in the records and he was briefed precisely on what it stated.
But in the interval between the first trial and the second trial this note was altered in crucial respects. References to incursions into Northern Ireland were changed, as was the reference to surplus arms and ammunition being made available in such circumstances. It seems that there was a plan on the part of the State to produce this forged document in evidence should the defence demand the production of the note and to use the forged document to undermine defence witnesses.
VB: How do you know about this?
JK: I know about it because the original version of the directive and its interpretation became available through the papers to Michael Hefferon and the changed version was published in Magill in 1980. But apart from that, I was told about it, as it happens, at the funeral of Michael Hefferon when a former very senior civil servant in the Department of Defence told me about it and said he was present when the change was made. He told me who was present and who directed the change [in the interview Capt Kelly named all those allegedly involved].
The decision to change the directive was taken at a meeting of ministers in Kelly's Hotel, Rosslare, and, apparently, it was decided there that Hefferon should be treated as a hostile witness in the second Arms Trial. Kevin Boland [former minister for defence and minister for local government who resigned from the government when Mr Haughey and Mr Blaney were fired on May 6th, 1970] was informed during the course of the second Arms Trial of what had happened regarding the directive and the defence teams were tipped off about it.
VB: It has been alleged by a coterie of politicians and journalists for 30 years now that you were part of a plot by certain Fianna Fail ministers to split the IRA in 1969/70, so as to siphon off the socialist wing from it and get control of the rabid republican wing and use it to engage in a military campaign in Northern Ireland to secure the unity of the country. What do you have to say to that?
JK: Yes, this has been the agenda of the likes of [naming a prominent journalist] and others formerly associated with the Official IRA. VB: The allegation is that at a meeting with members of the IRA in Bailieboro, Co Cavan, in October 1969 you sought to establish a Northern command of a new IRA and that you promised money for arms.
JK: I did not seek to establish any Northern command or anything else. The purpose of the meeting was to find out what the various defence committees wanted. I did not promise money. Money had been promised much earlier by Charles Haughey and I knew nothing about it until I heard reference made to it at a public meeting in Belfast on the Falls Road. VB: The Bailieboro meeting was chock-full of IRA people. What were you doing, as an officer of the Irish State, consorting with people from an organisation whose avowed aim was the overthrow of the State to which you had sworn allegiance?
JK: Their avowed aim was to get protection for the nationalist population of the North and they had no designs on the Southern State other than to curry favour with it to get assistance. Anyway, there were many others at the meeting who had no connection with either the Official or Provisional IRA. In fact, Haughey had asked me to get a committee of responsible people together to oversee the provision of any aid and this was done.
Several political and business people were involved, also lawyers and other professional people.
VB: You weren't planning to give arms to these people. The arms, had they been imported, would have gone to the IRA. Kevin Boland thought that was utterly reckless when he first heard of it in March 1970 from Charlie Haughey. Wasn't he right, that it was reckless giving arms into the control of people outside the control of the institutions of the State here?
JK: Well, he did. Boland said to me: `Who's going to control these?' I said that has to be worked out. He was passing by the parliamentary secretary's dining room in Dail Eireann. I was in to meet Jim Gibbons, the minister for defence, by appointment. Boland was passing by and obviously his secretary or someone with him said `that's Capt Kelly in there'. Boland came in to me. That's the first time I ever met Boland and had a word with him. He said `what's all this about these arms, who's going to control them?'
VB: Did he say where he'd heard it from?
JK: No, he didn't. I don't think so. No, he didn't. I said, `I don't know, it's up to the government', words to that effect, I was quite dismissive of it.
VB: Why were you quite dismissive; it was a crucial point?
JK: It was a government policy. I assumed he knew all about it.
VB: Did you at any stage yourself think that there was a recklessness involved in giving arms into the hands of people that there was no control over?
JK: But they were issued by the government of the day, by Jack Lynch and by Jim Gibbons, as we now know. What the hell, I was a serving Army officer, what was I going to say: `no, I won't do this'?
VB: I'm asking you what you thought, did you think it was reckless?
JK: Certainly, one had worries and doubts. I certainly had doubts when I was detailed to stand by to go up and distribute the arms.
VB: When were you detailed to do that?
JK: April 2nd, 1970.
VB: Who detailed you to do that?
JK: Col Hefferon. I'm sure he was acting on behalf of Gibbons. Gibbons ordered 500 rifles up to the Border, for distribution in Northern Ireland. OK, Gibbons quibbled about it, but why the hell were they moved up to the Border only for distribution in Northern Ireland?
