Anyone who has studied C.J. Haughey's form knows that he was not the type to let a bad experience get him down. Veteran Irish Times reporter Frank Kilfeather in his just published Changing Times: A Life In Journalism tells how he learnt that nearly 30 years ago. After Charlie was acquitted in the Arms Trial, writes Kilfeather, he held a press conference in a nearby hotel. "A colleague asked him the first question. How did it feel to be a free man? He beamed and said `great, great'. I naively put the second question. I asked him if he would now be retiring from politics. He gave me one of those withering looks that later became his trademark and growled `certainly not'.
"I was thinking," Kilfeather continues, "like an ordinary member of the public, not like a politician, when I put the question. I had watched him in the dock for days giving evidence and later sitting pale-faced in the body of the court. Earlier, I had been in the Dail when Jack Lynch announced he was sacking him. I saw the humiliation he went through. I didn't think any human being would want to know about politics after that."