In 1982 the telephones of two journalists, Geraldine Kennedy and Bruce Arnold, were tapped on grounds of 'national security' at the instigation of the then minister for Justice Sean Doherty. Follwoing his death this week, new questions arise about the transcripts of those calls, writes Geraldine Kennedy, Editor of The Irish Times.
With the passage of time, a number of inaccuracies are slipping into the record of Seán Doherty's term as minister for justice in 1982 when the telephone tapping took place.
The doubt has been expressed repeatedly in recent days as to how Doherty could have believed that the then taoiseach, Charles Haughey, would have wanted to know my Fianna Fáil sources when he, Haughey, had not instructed him to tap my telephone.
Doherty had grounds to believe that Haughey would be interested in finding out my Fianna Fáil sources for a very good reason.
In the week before the official tap was placed on my home telephone on July 28th, 1982, Haughey was directly and personally involved in attempts to find out who my sources of information were within Fianna Fáil.
For the record, I was political correspondent in the Sunday Tribune during the period of the telephone tapping - July 28th to November 16th, 1982 - and political correspondent in the Sunday Press when the telephone tapping was confirmed in late January, 1983.
In the third week of July, 1982, the editor of the Sunday Tribune, Conor Brady, was approached by the paper's proprietor, Hugh McLaughlin, who said that he had had a recent meeting with the taoiseach, Charles Haughey.
Brady was told by McLaughlin that he (McLaughlin) was worried about his relations with Haughey. He wanted to retain Haughey's goodwill to avoid possible problems with the Monopolies Commission in the proposed launch of the Daily News (a sister-publication of the Sunday Tribune).
McLaughlin told Brady that Haughey was "desperately worried by that Kennedy woman" and was wondering who she was talking to within Fianna Fáil. McLaughlin said that Haughey was concerned about "security within the Cabinet" and that what the Sunday Tribune was doing was dangerous. McLaughlin asked Brady if he knew my sources within Fianna Fáil. Brady replied that any such matters would be confidential to the editor and the political correspondent.
McLaughlin then told Brady that there was a "proprietor's interest clause" in his contract and it was now in the proprietor's interest to be seen to go easy on Haughey. McLaughlin wanted Brady to bring me "under control".
Then McLaughlin said that he had suggested to Haughey that he would give the editor a formal letter pointing out the consequences of ignoring the proprietor's interest clause in his contract.
At this stage, Brady pointed out to McLaughlin that he did not want the conversation to go any further; that he would not accept such a letter; and that if it were given to him he would have to take a certain course of action. No such letter was sent by McLaughlin to Brady.
Brady passed on this information to me as a matter of political interest at the time. He took notes subsequent to the meeting and confirmed this account of events in a report which I wrote in the Sunday Press on January 23rd, 1983, after the phone tapping was confirmed.
Brady went away on a week's holidays from August 4th to August 13th, 1982. When he returned, I reported to him as a matter of further political interest that, while he was away, a young woman (whom I did not identify in my report) was asked by the proprietor, McLaughlin, to log and provide information on the persons from whom I received telephone calls. She conveniently found it impossible to do so. She had to leave the Sunday Tribune shortly afterwards.
McLaughlin confirmed this sequence of events to political correspondent Dick Walsh, in a report which appeared in The Irish Times on January 26th, 1983.
He said that he had been invited to two meetings with Haughey in Government Buildings during which the sole subject of discussion was the sources of reports written by me.
It is no coincidence that these attempts to find out my political sources were happening at the same time as the first tap was placed on my home telephone on July 28th, 1982.
A more serious revision of events has come to light this week arising from Terry Prone's account of her meeting with SeáDoherty to prepare him for his press conference in 1992 at which he stated that Haughey was aware of the telephone tapping a decade earlier.
Prone said in the Irish Examiner and on RTÉ's News at One that during the course of their meeting: SeáDoherty went to his car and brought back "an armful of typescripts". He selected one page that showed a conversation between the late George Colley and Geraldine Kennedy. Colley had made clear in the conversation that he wished to bring down the government, he said, and this was "the quintessential definition of treason".
I was allowed to read my transcripts for the first time in March, 1984, after one of them was published in the Sunday Independent. I was not permitted to copy them. I did, however, take lengthy notes.
There were eight transcripts in total arising out of the tapping of my telephone. Five of them are conversations with other journalists. The other three transcripts record conversations with Peter Prendergast, then press spokesman for the Fine Gael/Labour Coalition; and a Fianna Fáil TD and a Fianna Fáil source, both of whom I did not identify in order to protect the confidentiality of my sources.
Neither I, nor others who had official cause to read the transcripts at the time, have ever seen a transcript of a telephone conversation between Colley and myself.
The transcript of the conversation with the Fianna Fáil TD - the only one marked TOP SECRET, is as follows:
"Geraldine Kennedy told . . . [ the Fianna Fáil TD whom I am still not identifying] that she was offered a job as political correspondent in the Sunday Press. This was a definite offer by Fintan Faulkner. She would have complete freedom to write on political matters and has got the full blessing of Michael Mills [ political correspondent], Irish Press."
The tapper then concludes with a line of summary: "They discussed the election and how people canvassing were being received on the door step."
The High Court was also informed by the State that there were eight transcripts.
Doherty's claim to Prone is wrong in many respects. First, there was no such conversation between Colley and myself. Second, Colley was not a member of the 1982 Cabinet. And, third, the most important point of all, the 1987 Irish Law Reports record that the late Mr Justice Liam Hamilton made an order about the transcripts after giving his judgment in the Kennedy and Arnold v Ireland and the Attorney General case in January, 1987. The final order directed the defendant to return to the plaintiffs all transcripts of the conversations recorded on their respective telephone lines.
The question now arises as to whether the State was in breach of that High Court order in allowing Doherty, in his capacity as a former minister for justice, to carry armfuls of transcripts around in his car and show them to others a full decade after the phones were tapped?