Haughey's Forty Years of Controversy (19 page)

‘I am not as naive to think that there have not always been people in politics who have believed that any price is worth paying to stay in office or to get into office,' Colley explained. ‘The big difference now is that while these people always existed in politics and always will, in the last three years there has been a tendency for this to be accepted at the top in politics rather than just among certain individuals who were not at the top.' By referring to the last three years and specifically mentioning Burke's appointment, it was obvious that Colley was indeed referring to Charlie, notwithstanding his own disingenuous denial.

In June 1982 Charlie was faced with another and much more crucial by-election following the death of Fianna Fáil's John Callanan. In the run up to the summer recess the government had survived only on the vote of the speaker of the Dáil on several occasions. Consequently victory in the Galway East by-election was now crucial to his survival.

Fine Gael pulled out all the stops. On 22 June the former Minister for Justice, Jim Mitchell, caused a sensation by disclosing that telephones which Charlie had installed in his own office shortly after his election as Taoiseach in December 1979 were capable of listening-in undetected on all telephones in Leinster House and the adjoining Government Buildings. The implication of his charge was that Haughey's previous government had tapped the telephones of all members of the government, the Dáil, the Senate and their aides.

Within a week of becoming Taoiseach, Charlie had requested that the Private Automatic Branch Exchange system, which he had used as Minister for Health and Social Welfare, be installed in his new office. This contained a telephone console with a loudspeaker and an executive over-ride button that could be used by a secretary to listen in to a call or by the minister to issue instructions to a secretary over the telephone without terminating a call. While the over-ride was being used there was supposed to be a bleep on the line every six seconds, but the consoles installed in Charlie's office and later in other offices were programmed so that a user could listen into a conversation undetected by using the over-ride with the console's loudspeaker. It was possible to listen undetected into any conversation on any telephone served by the Leinster House exchange by dialling the number, turning on the loudspeaker, replacing the telephone in its cradle, and then pressing the over-ride button.

The telephones had already been reprogrammed since the previous year to eliminate the extraordinary over-ride capabilities, so the media realised that Mitchell's timing was dictated by political considerations. Almost all of the national newspapers off-handedly dismissed the idea that Charlie knew about the over-ride capabilities. Even the
Irish Independent,
the one newspaper that tended to take the Fine Gael charges seriously, warned that those had ‘to be kept in perspective if we are not to get bogged down in a Watergate-style scenario'. Some facetious allusions were made to the Nixon White House. When Charlie invited the press into his office to explain the affair an extractor fan on the ceiling suddenly kicked on.

‘The tape recorder is running'! a reporter exclaimed.

‘No,' cried Charlie defensively, ‘they are for the smell.' There were two extractor fans in white casings on the ceiling to deal with odours from the kitchen beneath. The
Irish Times
published a cartoon of Charlie showing his console with a massive tape apparatus overhead and a depiction of Nixon in the background. There was actually a comparatively similar occurrence during the presidency of Richard Nixon. He had ‘hot-lines' installed in the offices of state governors so they could contact the White House directly in an emergency. One governor had his ‘hot line' checked to find that it remained live to the White House even when the telephone was in its cradle. As a result the ‘hot-line' amounted to an electronic bug capable of over-hearing all conversations in the governor's office. When the telephones of other governors were checked some thirty were found to have the same ‘fault', which was attributed to the telephone company.

Although Geraldine Kennedy stopped short of accusing Charlie of wittingly having the over-ride installed with its extraordinary capabilities, she nevertheless wrote that a majority of Dáil deputies thought he ‘would, at least, be capable of such an act'.

Charlie dismissed the idea as ‘absolutely ludicrous' and preposterous. ‘I never asked for an over-ride facility and I didn't even know the facility was there,' he explained.

‘I handed over those telephone consoles to the incoming Taoiseach, Dr FitzGerald, and I think that speaks for itself,' Charlie contended. In other words, if there had been anything sinister, he would not have been so foolish as to leave the evidence behind him.

Fine Gael was not really in a strong position to exploit Charlie's expressed ignorance about the capabilities of the over-ride button, because two consoles – ordered while Fianna Fáil were still in power – were actually installed with FitzGerald's approval after he took over as Taoiseach in July 1981. Like Charlie, the Fine Gael leader stated he was totally unaware of the significance of the equipment at the time. No one thought for a moment that FitzGerald might not be telling the truth, but some media people seemed to question Charlie's statement.

When the Minister for Justice, Seán Doherty, left the country on holidays in August 1982, Charlie took over his portfolio temporarily and soon found himself in the midst of one of the most bizarre scandals in the country's history.

A man being sought by the gardaí in connection with two recent murders was arrested in the apartment of the attorney-general, Patrick Connolly. The man, Malcolm MacArthur, had been staying with the attorney-general for the past nine days during which he travelled in Connolly's state car and accompanied the attorney-general to a hurling match at which he was actually introduced to the garda commissioner, Patrick McLoughlin. At one point he even asked the commissioner about the investigation of ‘that dreadful' murder that he had committed himself. It was like the script of some far-fetched murder movie.

The garda press office and government information service initially refused to confirm that MacArthur had been arrested in the attorney-general's apartment. As a result the press only reported that the arrest had taken place in the complex in which Connolly was living, rather than in his actual apartment. Nevertheless wild rumours began circulating almost immediately.

The following day the
Evening Herald
reported that MacArthur was being investigated for the murder of Charles Self, an RTÉ producer who had been bludgeoned to death earlier in the year. That murder had received extensive publicity over the months because of protests of police harassment from the gay community. It was widely believed that Self, who had been active in gay circles had been killed by another homosexual.

Having made a statement to the police, Connolly left the country on a pre-arranged holiday. Charlie did telephone him in London and suggested that it might be best if he returned, but the attorney-general decided to go on to New York. The full story had not broken yet, and they were both obviously hoping it could be contained until the trial, at any rate.

Rumours were fuelled when the
Sunday Tribune
broke the news that MacArthur had actually been arrested in Connolly's apartment. This gave rise to inevitable speculation about a possible homosexual relationship between Connolly and MacArthur. Suddenly Dublin was awash with ‘an endless stream of rumours, innuendoes, and lurid tales,' according to a report in
The Guardian.

The media had to be very careful, of course, about reporting such rumours because of the libel laws, but an official denial could easily have been used as the basis for a story about the rumours. In fact, there was no homosexual connection between Connolly and MacArthur; the rumours were without foundation. MacArthur was not involved in the murder of Self, and Connolly was not a homosexual, but one can easily imagine the public reaction to a headline such as ‘Government Spokesman Denies the Attorney-General is Queer'.

‘We were dealing with a situation where an innocent man was being made the victim of some scurrilous rumours, and we felt any denials should come from him,' Frank Ryan, the deputy director of the Government Information Service, explained. ‘We knew that any denials from us would be taken as giving greater weight to the rumours.'

But this did not excuse the evasiveness about MacArthur's arrest in Connolly's apartment. ‘Surely,' the
Irish Times
declared, ‘nearly two days did not lapse before the Taoiseach or some other cabinet member woke up to the fact that rumour thrives when news concerning prominent people can be construed by the public as seeming to be played down.'

Charlie came in for intense criticism as a result of some ham-fisted efforts by the authorities to conceal MacArthur's connection with the attorney-general. He excused his own initial dithering on the grounds that the whole affair was grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented. Those words prompted Cruise O'Brien to coin the acronym GUBU.

Charlie requested the attorney-general to return home from New York and accepted his resignation upon his return. Connolly issued a statement explaining that he had been a longtime friend of MacArthur's girlfriend and had invited him to stay in his apartment during a visit to Dublin without any idea that MacArthur was wanted for questioning in connection with any crime. There was little else he could say as the case was
sub judice.
The media spotlight was then turned on Charlie himself. He gave a press conference at which he had to face some particularly thorny questions. He was under intense pressure and the strain showed as he slipped up when he was asked why nobody had complimented the gardaí on their handling of the investigation.

It was known that the police had set up a surveillance outside Connolly's apartment some days before the arrest. They might therefore have saved the attorney-general and the government considerable embarrassment if they had arrested MacArthur outside the apartment. Thus, asking why nobody had complimented the police was really a loaded question.

'It was a very good piece of police work', Charlie replied, praising the gardaí for their painstaking efforts in ‘putting the whole thing together and eventually finding the right man'.

By alluding to MacArthur as the ‘right man', the Taoiseach was clearly prejudging his guilt, but the remark was unintentional. Faced with television lights, cameras and the army of reporters, he did not appreciate the implications of what he had said until told afterwards by an aide. Reporters were then asked to withhold the remark as it had been inadvertent.

Some segments of the British media – relishing in the Taoiseach's embarrassment following what was seen as his unhelpful attitude during the Falkland's war – seemed to take a keen delight in highlighting the gaffe. Irish reporters had to be more circumspect, however, because of the
sub judice
situation. They could not report what Charlie had said, but the fact that the Taoiseach had made a prejudicial comment was highlighted. The
Sunday Tribune
described the remark as ‘a gaffe for which the greenest junior reporter would be sacked out of hand'.

This was unfair on a couple of counts. First of all it made the unspecified comment seem much worse. And secondly, it should be noted that reporters have a chance of reading over their stories to correct them, while the politician answering questions at a press conference has no such opportunity. In delicate circumstances politicians usually confine themselves to written statements. On this occasion the Taoiseach facilitated the journalists by answering their questions personally, and he could feel understandably aggrieved at the way in which his gaffe was highlighted.

Much of the whole affair could be put down to bad luck in Charlie's case. There was no question of any misconduct by the attorney-general. He was ‘entirely innocent', Garret FitzGerald later wrote in his memoirs, yet Connolly and the Taoiseach found themselves in the eye of an unprecedented political storm.

‘If Charlie had ducks, they'd drown on him,' John Healy concluded in his
Irish Times
column.

On Friday, 1 October 1982, Charlie McCreevy dropped a political bombshell by placing a motion of no confidence in Charlie's leadership on the agenda of the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party meeting the following Wednesday. Having tried to dismiss the previous challenge to his leadership in February by pretending the whole thing had been dreamed up by the media, Haughey met the challenge head on this time.

Interviewed on RTÉ's
This Week
programme on Sunday afternoon, he indicated he was going to demand a roll call vote on the issue so the dissidents could be identified, as the party was fed up with ‘the small section of deputies' continually sniping at him.

‘The Fianna Fáil organisation wants to get back to a situation where we have the strength that derives from discipline,' Haughey said, ‘and I will ensure that discipline will be enforced.' He added he was going to begin by insisting that all members of his government should pledge their loyalty to him as the elected leader of Fianna Fáil. ‘I will insist,' he declared, ‘that the cabinet stand four square behind me with no shilly-shallying.' He had no doubt he would be victorious. ‘I am,' he said, ‘absolutely confident of the outcome. As Seán MacEntee said: “Go dance on somebody else's grave”.'

There was a certain amount of manoeuvring by both sides prior to the parliamentary party meeting. The Taoiseach secured the support of the party's national executive, while Colley announced that O'Malley and O'Donoghue would be resigning from the cabinet rather than support Haughey. The two men then waited until the morning of the meeting to submit their letters of resignation, thereby ensuring the dissidents received positive publicity right up to the start of the meeting.