Twice he ended the interview. My line of questions did not fit his mindset of what had happened in the Arms Trial. On Tuesday night on Prime Time, Mr Paddy MacEntee SC had said that had Col Michael Hefferon's original statement been available to the attorney general, it is likely Capt James Kelly would never have been charged. Perhaps. Perhaps not.
But for 30 years Capt Kelly has had to suffer the slings of scepticism about his version of what happened in 1970. He has been regarded by most of the media as an obsessive crank, desperate to cling to his only claim to fame: his central role in the arms crisis.
He has also made a bit of money out of it. He has had libel actions against several newspapers over the trial. Recently he sued this newspaper because of an article by Dr Garret FitzGerald.
Even some of his family have found his obsessiveness at times too much. However, there is an innocence and charm about him, even about the obsessiveness. He spills out information without thought of its general significance or of how it affects claims he has made minutes, even seconds, previously. He engages not so much in streams of consciousness as in torrents of consciousness and ends up nautical miles from his original point.
It is not that he isn't clever; his books are well argued, coherent and very well written. It's his conversation which becomes scatty. We did the interview on Thursday at his home off the South Circular Road, Dublin, a one-storey over-basement house. It is unimposing on the outside but magnificently decorated inside by his daughter, Ms Suzanne Kelly, a barrister and tax expert, now living in Athlone. His wife, Shelia, whom he married in 1955, is in and out but uninvolved in our squabbles.
Capt Kelly was born in Bailieboro, Co Cavan, in October 1929. He was the eldest of a family of 10. His father was a farmer, a mill-owner and a publican and was the first Sinn Fein councillor in East Cavan (elected in 1920).
He went to national school in Bailieboro and then to St Patrick's College, Cavan. However, due to illness he lost two years before going to Presentation College, Bray, where he did his Leaving Cert in June 1948.
He joined the Defence Forces on February 12th, 1949. He spent five years in Kells as training officer to the FCA and was promoted captain in 1960. He was appointed immediately to Army intelligence as personal assistant to the director of intelligence, Col Brendan Barry. He served in the Middle East for two years in the 1960s.
His involvement in Northern Ireland happened by chance. He was visiting his brother in Belfast in August 1969 when trouble erupted in Derry. He and his brother went there, observed what was happening, came back to Belfast and witnessed the attacks on Catholic areas.
He reported on what he had seen and heard to Col Michael Hefferon, who was by then director of intelligence, and was asked to return to Northern Ireland and keep abreast of things.
Although acquitted in the Arms Trial, Capt Kelly says it destroyed his life. He has been unable to get employment since 1970 since most people thought he had been up to no good in 1969-70. He had no training in business and, unsurprisingly, his ventures into newspaper-publishing in Cavan and a pub business were not successful, although he did sell the pub at a profit.
He wrote an account of his part in the arms crisis, Orders for the Captain, in 1971 but he had to publish and distribute it himself and it had few sales. Other books fared similarly: The Genesis of Revolution and The Courage of the Brave, which prefigured the Belfast Agreement. He also wrote a novel, The Marrow From The Bone.
This is a very heavily edited version of the interview, which ran to nearly 9,000 words.
