EAMON DUNPHY denied that he was threatening Irish Times journalist Fintan O'Toole when he said, "Fintan, I'm going to fucking have you, baby. Watch the back page, next Sunday."
Mr Dunphy said it was a statement of intent, quoted in a Hot Press interview, in relation to setting the record straight about an article Mr O'Toole had written about Sunday Independent staff.
Asked by Mr Adrian Hardiman SC, for Mr Proinsias De Rossa, if it was a threat, Mr Dunphy said it was a promise.
Mr Hardiman suggested that Mr Dunphy had set out to "have Mr De Rossa", to advance the policy of the Independent newspaper group by associating Mr De Rossa's name with crimes of various sorts.
Mr Dunphy said: "I didn't."
Mr Hardiman said that in the interview Mr Dunphy had made Mr O'Toole "a bit of a joke". Mr Hardiman asked: "Who made Mr O'Toole a joke?"
Mr Dunphy replied: "I am claiming to have done so."
Mr Hardiman asked Mr Dunphy to read his reply in the Hot Press interview in February 1996.
In the interview he said Fintan O'Toole had written a piece about Anne Harris and Aengus Fanning, the editor of the Sunday Independent. According to Mr Dunphy Mr O'Toole's theory was that Eoghan Harris ran the newspaper and had the staff, including the editor brainwashed.
Mr Dunphy told Hot Press: "If only he knew, Aengus thinks Eoghan is a dipstick. And the fact that he is Anne's former husband and living in the same house as Anne, and that she and Aengus have a relationship, seems to make some people add two and two together and come up with the wrong sum.
Mr Dunphy said he had rung Mr O'Toole, who began to justify himself. Mr Dunphy said in the interview that he told Mr O'Toole:
"I've given you a fucking chance to fucking explain to me, if you got it wrong. Because I'm telling you that Eoghan Harris has nothing to do with my copy, nothing to do with Aengus. And you're exploiting the fact that he was married to Anne to smear the paper.
"And then what I said, once he started dissembling, was: `Fintan, I'm going to fucking have you, baby. Watch the back page next Sunday.' That's what I said. And he said: `Don't threaten me.' I said: `I'm not, I'm promising you.'"
Farther down in the interview Mr Dunphy had said:
"I was able to write the line: `Fintan O'Toole told a lie' . . . And a couple of months after that I said it again: `We haven't had a writ yet. He told a lie. Where's the writ?' Because if I was wrong I could take you for a million quid. We still don't have the writ. And the point about it is, that he is a bit of a guru. But I've made him a bit of a joke. And I can't understand why he did it.
"I can understand Waters because he's a gobshite. But Fintan is a smart fucker. And tough. And ambitious. But he's blown it in The Irish Times and he's blown it outside. Everyone can see he's got no cred."
Mr Hardiman asked Mr Dunphy if he thought it was funny to say to somebody: "I'm going to have you, watch the back page.
Mr Dunphy said that in the circumstances this was an anecdote he was telling to a journalist.
Mr Hardiman put it to him that it was his view that Mr O'Toole's failure to sue after he called him a liar showed he had no case.
Mr Dunphy replied yes, he believed strongly in Mr O'Toole's right to sue.
He did not think Mr O'Toole was a joke. "I think he's a very, very eminent journalist indeed."
Mr Hardiman put it to him that in relation to Mr De Rossa he knew what the policy of Independent Newspapers was.
Mr Dunphy said that he did not know that policy. He could not recall ever reading a leading article in the Independent. He usually talked about cricket to the Sunday Independent editor.
Asked to read a leading article in the Irish Independent days before his article appeared, Mr Dunphy agreed that it shared his view that a government comprisding Fine Gael, Labour and the PDs was needed. It was purely coincidence. Leading articles these days were a bit of a joke.
Mr Hardiman suggested that the Independent group was putting its view in a civilised way and he was put to do the dirty fighting.
Mr Dunphy said it was not true. The policy of Independent Newspapers vis a vis political parties was never articulated to the journalists.
He did not know what the view was. He did not know and he did not care. He was not a political commentator and he did not discuss politics with his editor.
He denied that he made serious allegations against Mr De Rossa. The reference to Mr De Rossa was merely a passing reference.
The big deal in that article was the Labour Party. The passing reference was to a controversy which had been running vehemently all that week.
The references to drugs, prostitution and protection rackets were not references to Mr De Rossa but were references to crime.
Mr Hardiman asked him how many names were mentioned in the part of the article referring to these crimes. Mr Dunphy said one.
Counsel put it to him that there was only one illustration and that was of Mr De Rossa. Did that not suggest to him that in the view of the person responsible, the theme of the article was Mr De Rossa?
Mr Dunphy said that was a fair point.