Madam, - Conor O'Clery, in his review (March 18th) of my memoir The Beginning of the End, laments my "sloppiness" in retailing details of his life and career.
For the record, if I got his age wrong (I understood him to have been 34 in 1973), I am sorry. What was he? Thirty three? Thirty five?
Second, I checked last year with his former wife and was told he had been brought up in Newcastle but born in Castlewellan - which is just down the road. But if I got his postcode wrong, it is hardly a hanging offence.
More to the point, it was Conor himself who told me, in a New York diner in 2002, that he had seen the planes go in on 9/11 from his unique vantage point in a nearby apartment block.
He added that he spent much of the subsequent week reporting to the world on what he could see from his balcony.
He is very specific in his complaints. He says I noted in my book that he saw the first plane go into the World Trade Center, then adds: "I didn't. Nor did I ever report that the back-draught nearly put out my windows, because it didn't. Nor did I have a 'grandstand view of history' for the week after 9/11, as I was an evacuee for that week."
So who is right? In a powerful news feature for The Irish Times, published on September 15th, 2001, O'Clery wrote:
"As Wall Street correspondent I was working in my 41st-storey home office, writing an article about failing New York restaurants, when the first fireball exploded at 8.48 a.m. from the north tower four blocks away, leaving a jagged hole several stories high and showering debris onto Church Street far below.
"I thought at first it was a massive bomb, then realised it had been a plane. As the flames took hold a man appeared at a window hanging out over a drop of 80 stories, waving a white cloth.
"I was watching him when our house guest, Dublin psychology student Aoife Keane (20), on her very first day ever in New York, said in disbelief, 'There's another plane.' United Flight 175, also en route from Boston to Los Angeles, tilted as it skimmed in over the Hudson River and smashed into the south tower, propelling a massive orange ball of flame and smoke through the other side.
"During the next hour, we could only watch helplessly as dozens of heart-wrenching individual tragedies were enacted within our helpless gaze. More people appeared at upper storey windows crying soundlessly for assistance We saw five fall to their death, spreadeagled like rag dolls. The south tower collapsed first, smashing down on fire engines and ambulances and crushing the tiny figures of New York firemen attempting in vain to run for their lives on West Side highway."
This account is not dissimilar from what I wrote, in brief, based on what he told me in the diner. His denial that he had enjoyed what I described as "a grandstand view of history" is massively contradicted by his own reporting. All that is at issue is the amount of time he subsequently spent on his balcony. My recollection is that he told me "days." He said he was never off the phone. Perhaps he was mistaken. Perhaps, as he says elsewhere in the article quoted above, his vigil only lasted until night fell on September 11th, when he was ordered out by the police.
What is going on here? What is wrong with O'Clery? It is almost as if he would prefer to be remembered for stitching me up than for his (award-winning) reporting of 9/11. The only thing we seem to agree on is the size of his ego.
He also takes me to task for my "acid" recollection of old colleagues - a clear case of the pot calling the kettle black.
I have always liked and admired Henry Kelly, who knew in advance what I was going to say about him in my book. We remain friends to this day.
As for the late Fergus Pyle, who appointed me to be the Irish Times correspondent in Brussels, I didn't say he was stupid.
What I did say was that he had "brains and insight but no sense". Perhaps, I said, he could best be described as a "Holy Fool." A different thing altogether.
God preserve us!
- Yours, etc,
WALTER ELLIS, Henry Street, Brooklyn, New York.