Madam, - Roy Greenslade has rushed to judgment in his letter of April 23rd, compounding his earlier, acknowledged inaccuracy.There was no "cover up" (his term) in The Irish Times's reportage of the 1969 British government papers, released to the public in January 2000 under the 30-year rule.
The facts are that in late December 1999, Ms Rachel Donnelly, a reporter from the London office of The Irish Times, was assigned to examine the 1969 papers (embargoed to January 1st, 2000) at the Public Record Office in Kew.
She identified one letter, written on December 29th, 1969 by the head of the Irish section at the Foreign Office, Mr Kelvin White, to the British Ambassador in Dublin, Sir Andrew Gilchrist.
In this letter Mr White wrote of Major T.B. McDowell's willingness to act as a link between the British and Irish governments and to have The Irish Times play a role in organising a conference of "prominent people".
Major McDowell was then one of a number of directors of The Irish Times Ltd. Later he became chairman.
Over recent days I have confirmed with the London Editor of The Irish Times, Mr Frank Millar, that Ms Donnelly's examination yielded only this one letter. She did not come across another letter, dated October 2nd, 1969 from the ambassador to Mr White.
In this letter, the ambassador quoted Major McDowell as having described my predecessor as editor, Mr Douglas Gageby, as a "renegade or white nigger". Major McDowell has since denied ever using these terms.
At the weekend, Mr Millar furthermore confirmed with Ms Donnelly, a conscientious and experienced journalist, that she saw and reported on the contents of only one letter and that she had not encountered the terms "white nigger" or "renegade" in what she read on the file.
The letter which she saw formed the basis of the report published in The Irish Times in January 2000. This detailed Major McDowell's contact with the Foreign Office and his offers of assistance.
To allege a cover-up is gravely defamatory of me in my role as editor, as well as of the other journalists involved. I do not know why or how the letter of October 2nd, 1969 did not come to the attention of our reporter. The fact is that it did not.
Nor did it come to the notice of any of the other journalists who examined the files when they were made available on December 22nd and 23rd, 1999. Other journalists assigned to this task, as I understand it, included Mr Bernard Purcell of the Irish Independent and Mr Aidan Hennigan, representing the Irish Examiner.
Surely it is not without significance that not only did The Irish Times not report on this letter, neither did any other news medium.
Does Mr Greenslade or anyone else seriously believe, if such a letter had been uncovered by Irish journalists at this time and "covered up" by someone else, that this would not have become instantly known throughout the various newsrooms? There would have been uproar - most especially in The Irish Times. If he believes otherwise, Mr Greenslade does not understand the values that imbue the journalism of this newspaper.
The Irish Times - along with other newspapers - may have been guilty of an omission or oversight.
For that, as editor, I have to take responsibility. But neither I nor any of my colleagues was guilty of any suppression or distortion.
Mr Greenslade was himself a newspaper editor. He knows that errors, omissions and failures of judgment do occur. Ours is a very imperfect craft, executed under severe time constraints.
In conclusion, let me add that I had my differences with Major T.B. McDowell while I was editor (1986-2002), mainly about the organisations's pace of change and its capacity to face future challenges.
But in those 16 years I had an absolutely free hand in relation to editorial content and policy and never encountered the slightest pressure of any kind.
I have no doubt it was the same in Mr Gageby's editorship. - Yours, etc.,
CONOR BRADY, Editor Emeritus, Monkstown, Co Dublin