Haughey's Forty Years of Controversy (32 page)

On 15 January 1992 Donal Creedon, told the Beef Inquiry about his conversation with the Taoiseach four years earlier. He had gone to talk to Charlie about other matters and just mentioned the fraud ‘in passing' as he was being ushered out of the office, he said. The Taoiseach ‘didn't register any reply, good, bad, or indifferent,' according to Creedon. ‘My view is that he wanted to get rid of me as quickly as possible.'

The big news on television on that night was not Creedon's testimony, however, but a report that RTÉ's
Nighthawks
programme would be carrying an interview in which Seán Doherty, the speaker of the Seanad and former Minister for Justice, would be suggesting that other members of the cabinet had known about the tapping of journalists' telephones in 1982. Even before the programme was aired, his remarks were being hyped on news bulletins.

It was news orchestration in the most blatant form. People were being given news of forthcoming news, and then what they got was not really news at all, but a rehash of an old story in which Doherty was complaining about having been left to carry the can for the telephone-tappings of 1982. He had said much the same thing before in a 1984 interview with
Magill
magazine, though this time he went a little further with his insinuation that Charlie may have been in some way involved. ‘I felt let down by the fact that people knew what I was doing,' he said.

The media assumed he was insinuating that Charlie actually authorised the taps on the telephones of Geraldine Kennedy and Bruce Arnold in 1982. Reporters naturally pressed him to be more specific in the following days, but he refused to comment on the matter. It may have been more than a coincidence that Albert Reynolds and his supporters suddenly raised the tempo of his campaign for the Fianna Fáil leadership. On Friday afternoon, Marian Finucane's
Liveline
programme was devoted to him, and Pádraig Flynn was the main guest interviewed on RTÉ's
This Week
programme a couple of days later. He suggested that Charlie had no intention of stepping down when his limited agenda was completed, and he said Doherty should be more specific. The same day
The Sunday Tribune
was hyping the Doherty story with a picture of the controversial senator on the colour wrap-around with a large bold caption: ‘GUBU or GAGA?' Inside there was an extended profile of Pádraig Flynn.

Was it just a coincidence that these events were being orchestrated by some of the same people who had been active in the push to oust Jack Lynch in 1979? Reynolds and Doherty had been members of the gang of five who led the earlier campaign. Indeed, they were the only two of the five whom Charlie rewarded with cabinet posts. Flynn had been prominent in that campaign, and Vincent Browne was the first journalist to whom they entrusted the story. The whole thing was an ominous reminder of the push against Lynch.

Having fended off reporters for almost a week, Doherty gave a press conference on 21 January at which he announced that he had been lying when he said that Charlie did not know about wire taps before the story broke in December 1982.

‘I am confirming tonight that the Taoiseach, Mr Haughey, was fully aware, in 1982, that two journalists' phones were being tapped, and that he at no stage expressed a reservation about this action,' Doherty emphasised. ‘As soon as the transcripts from the taps became available, I took them personally to Mr Haughey in his office and left them in his possession.

‘When I indicated on RTÉ's
Nighthawks
programme, that I felt let down by lack of support from people who had known what I was doing I was referring exclusively to Mr Haughey,' Doherty added. He was speaking out after nine years, he said, because Charlie had succumbed to pressure from the Progressive Democrats to introduce phone-tapping legislation ‘at a time when it could only do maximum embarrassment to me as Cathaoirleach of the Seanad.'

His announcement undoubtedly had a lot more to do with the leadership struggle within Fianna Fáil. He had the power to deliver a fatal political blow by telling what he knew about the events of 1982. He declared that he had not only lied for Charlie but surrendered his Front Bench position and had even given up the party whip voluntarily.

‘Why should we believe Seán Doherty now?' Doherty asked rhetorically.

‘Because,' he explained, ‘I am resigning my post. You only do that for the truth.' His concern for the truth was rather touching, but he had just said that he gave up his position in 1983 to foster a lie. There were contradictions and serious flaws in his statement, but these were initially ignored by the media.

The whole thing had been carefully organised. Doherty's press conference was timed to secure maximum media impact. It began late in the evening so that journalists had barely enough time to file their stories before deadline. Printed copies of the text of Doherty's statement were handed to the journalists, so there was really no need for him to read it before the television cameras, especially when he was refusing to answer questions. The whole thing was being done for effect.

Faced with pressing deadlines, there was little opportunity for journalists to reflect. They had to write by virtual instinct, and the natural instinct of most of the media was critical of Charlie, with the result that their stories afforded Doherty's statement more credibility than if there had been time to examine it carefully. Of course, whether they would have examined it carefully, if they had the time, was in itself doubtful.

As well as being an attack on Charlie, Doherty's statement had been a defence of his own actions in connection with the tappings. He said that these originated after he had gone to Deputy Garda Commissioner Joe Ainsworth to complain about cabinet leaks and it was Ainsworth who had proposed the tap on Bruce Arnold's telephone.

Nine years earlier, however, Ainsworth stated that it was Doherty who requested the taps, and there was actually no reference to cabinet leaks then. Arnold had been writing primarily about the infighting within Fianna Fáil and foreign policy in relation to the Falkland's war, not about cabinet matters. Nobody ever identified any item in his articles that might conceivably have been considered a cabinet secret. At the time the justification for the tap was that Arnold was considered ‘anti-national', whatever that meant.

Yet in the rush following Doherty's latest press conference, his self-serving statement was taken at face value by the press, which then set off a political storm. RTÉ journalists had just gone on strike, with the result that radio and television news was drastically curtailed and there were no current affairs programmes that might have balanced the instant analysis of the printed media.

Charlie denounced Doherty's allegations as ‘absolutely false' at a press conference the following afternoon. ‘I wish to state categorically that I was not aware at the time of the tapping of these telephones and that I was not given and did not see any transcripts of the conversations. I also wish to say that I have always abhorred the principle of phone-tapping except where absolutely necessary to prevent serious crime or subversion by paramilitary organisations.'

It was not, he said, until January 1983 that ‘Mr Doherty came to see me in the company of another colleague and revealed to me his involvement in these events'. Reading from a carefully prepared text, Charlie referred to a number of discrepancies in Doherty's latest statement.

Doherty said, for instance, that he forwarded the transcripts to him over a period of several months, but this was impossible, according to Charlie, because Doherty had only been given transcripts on one occasion. Charlie proceeded to quote from several of Doherty's earlier contradictory statements. ‘Mr Haughey did not know that I was tapping these journalists' phones', Doherty had told Gerald Barry in an RTÉ interview on 24 January 1983.

Why did he not tell him? Barry asked.

‘Because he would have stopped it,' replied Doherty.

Unlike his accuser, Charlie fielded questions from assembled reporters. It was one of his more impressive and confident performances, but his opportunity to shine was greatly undermined by the RTÉ strike. The radio and television audiences missed much of what went on because the dreadful sound quality failed to pick up most of the questions.

In response to questions Charlie said that Ray MacSharry had been the colleague who accompanied Doherty to his office. He was sure he could confirm what went on.

But MacSharry was unable to do so. He said he had gone to the office on another matter that day and had not heard what Doherty actually said. Hence Charlie's best chance of totally discrediting Doherty was gone. People were going to have to decide for themselves between his and Doherty's version of events.

Charlie had tried to blame Doherty for the mess, but in the last analysis it was the Taoiseach's responsibility because he was the one who appointed Doherty as Minister for Justice in the first place. It was a blunder, but Charlie made no effort to remove him, even though he now said that he had already made some preparations to set up a judicial inquiry into Doherty's conduct before leaving office in 1982. Yet he made no effort to prevent Doherty being elected speaker of the Senate in 1989.

‘Why did you support his elevation to the position of Cathaoirleach of the Seanad?' one of the journalists asked.

‘I didn't support, I left that to the Senate group,' Charlie replied. ‘In fact, for the first time, I did not nominate anybody to the Senate group. I let them take their own decision.' If he had opposed him, it was most unlikely that Doherty would have been elected. At any rate Charlie would now have been able to maintain that he had acted consistently with his supposed disapproval of Doherty's earlier behaviour.

Over the years many of Charlie's problems stemmed not so much from his actions, or alleged actions, as from his denials. At the arms trial, for instance, he contradicted the sworn testimony of four different people – Peter Berry, Jim Gibbons, Capt. Kelly and Anthony Fagan.

Was Charlie right and were all the others wrong?

In the circumstances of the time, Charlie could have justified authorising the use of money both for arms and for propaganda as a means of relieving the distress for which the money was allocated by the Dáil. But he testified that using the money for such purposes was ‘absolutely' out of order.

‘Public funds were misappropriated,' he insisted. ‘That is a criminal offence.' But it was his office which had supplied the money for the arms and for
The Voice of the North.

Capt. Kelly testified that he ‘certainly' told Charlie's personal secretary, Anthony Fagan, what was happening to the money. Fagan, in turn, testified that he believed Charlie knew and he thought it ‘inconceivable' that he did not tell him, but he was not able to refer to any specific occasion on which he told him.

In the context of Charlie's whole career it seemed that he was conveniently ignorant about too many things – whether it was in relation to the arms crisis, the telephone-tapping or his own financial affairs. When Donal Creedon started to tell him in 1988 about the beef fraud, he obviously did not want to know. Possibly he felt more comfortable in a position where he could deny any knowledge.

When things went wrong, Charlie would disclaim responsibility and repudiate somebody else. He would maintain that he acted with total propriety himself, but even giving him the full benefits of any doubts, it was difficult to avoid the conclusion that he could be very economical with the truth.

His credibility, damaged by the earlier controversies, was further undermined after his return to power in 1987 when he made policy u-turns on the Anglo-Irish Agreement, the Single European Act, health spending, extradition, birth control legislation and coalition. He was further hurt by evidence that when he was publicly saying that he had no intention of asking Brian Lenihan to resign, he had already asked him and was actually pressurising him to do so. On top of these were his denials of involvement in the Carysfort deal, and the controversy over his meeting with Bernie Cahill.

If it had not been for all the other contradictions over the years, people might not have been as ready to believe Doherty. For the Progressive Democrats, however, it no longer mattered whether Charlie or Doherty was telling the truth. The persistent controversies were undermining the work of the government and it was obvious that these were not going to stop as long as Charlie was Taoiseach. They therefore issued a thinly veiled ultimatum warning that they would withdraw their support if he did not step down.

Charlie had sacrificed too many of his political supporters in the past. He had dropped McDaid and sacked Lenihan at the behest of the Progressive Democrats. Now it was his own turn and colleagues were no longer ready to risk their political careers to save him. His past had caught up with him.

In November he said he would go in his own time after he had completed his agenda, which included a meeting with the British prime minister, the EC summit at Maastricht and the introduction of the next budget on 29 January 1992. With the Progressive Democrats unwilling to back down, he announced on 30 January that he would be retiring as leader of Fianna Fáil on 7 February 1992.

Many people had thought he might try to hold out and pull off just one more escape, but John O'Connell advised him at a private meeting to resign because he could not guarantee that the £50,000 that he received from Mahmud Fustok would not come out. Haughey decided to go with grace and dignity. He informed O'Connell of his decision in writing. Suddenly opponents were saying things about him that had not been said for decades.

‘He could not have inspired so much loyalty in his own party for so long,' Garret FitzGerald wrote, ‘if he did not possess some remarkable qualities which are inherently difficult to pin down – a magnetism and capacity to relate with people which made it difficult even for his bitterest political enemies to dislike him personally and an instinct for generosity which made him something of a “soft touch”.'