Murdered garda’s family deserves the full truth. What’s the problem?

Michael McDowell refused to release the Justice Department file in line with the 30-year rule ... If McDowell had been in opposition, he would probably have said we were behaving a like banana republic!

THE new Minister for Justice, Brian Lenihan, is coming under pressure to hold an inquiry into murder of Garda Richard Fallon who was shot while trying to arrest bank robbers in April 1970.

The Garda Representative Association has formally called on the minister to hold an independent inquiry into the murder.

The Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors had earlier called for such an inquiry. If there was ever a case for an independent inquiry, this is surely it because politicians have behaved reprehensibly in betraying not only the murdered garda, but also his family and his colleagues.

The issue was highlighted earlier this year, after news that Garda Martin Fallon, the murdered garda’s brother, accused Bertie Ahern of going to England with a briefcase stuffed with thousands of pounds in 1994.

The Taoiseach has denied the Fallon story but he is due to testify before the Mahon Tribunal on September 11. People should not be surprised if we have a political earthquake on that day.

Martin Fallon was brought into An Garda Síochána after his brother’s murder. When he was appointed a ministerial driver he would have learned it was an open secret among colleagues that the man suspected of murdering his brother was helped to escape in the state car of Agriculture Minister Neil Blaney.

“One of the men who murdered Garda Fallon was brought down to Greenore ferryboat in a State car,” Gerry L’Estrange told the Dáil as early as November 4, 1971.

Members of the Government had used the Fallon case in a callous and sordid way without any regard for the feelings of the murdered garda’s family.

Jack Lynch demanded the resignation of Justice Minister Micheál Ó Moráin after he made a drunken spectacle of himself before a visiting delegation of the Canadian Bar. The Taoiseach told the Dáil on May 7, 1970 that “Deputy Ó Moráin’s condition is not unassociated with the shock he suffered as a result of the killing of Garda Fallon”.

By then the Arms Crisis had erupted and Neil Blaney tried to deflect some of the heat from himself by suggesting that “those working in the ‘super-special branch’ would be much better employed tracking down Garda Fallon’s killers than spying on those elected to serve the people of the country. I would query how active these forces have been in apprehending the murderers of Dick Fallon?,” Blaney asked the Dáil on July 29, 1970. “The murderer was witnessed by some members of these forces and yet the people involved in the murder have escaped the net”.

He did not mention that his own garda driver helped the main suspect to flee the country by driving him to Donegal.

“There is some reason to believe Garda Fallon may have been murdered in April 1970 with a weapon which had been part of earlier illegal arms shipments into this State,” former Justice Minister Des O’Malley told the Dáil on July 6, 2001. “There is also reason to suppose that some senior gardaí suspected that a prominent politician was fully aware of this earlier importation and had turned a blind eye to it”.

The unnamed prominent politician was Charlie Haughey and the person suspected of bringing in the gun was his brother, Jock. What did Des O’Malley actually learn from the files? Surely the Fallon family are entitled to know, but then in a democracy everybody should be entitled to know, especially when there was so much questionable political involvement.

Michael McDowell refused to release the Justice Department file in line with the 30-year rule. A curious thing about the garda investigation was that Bertie Ahern’s father was arrested for questioning during the murder inquiry, but the Taoiseach has been open about this.

If McDowell had been in opposition, instead of office, he would probably have said we were behaving like a banana republic. But as Tánaiste, he backed Bertie, even against his better judgment in the run-up to the election. In the process he destroyed his political career.

After State papers were first released in the 1970s, the army chief of staff endorsed a request I made to see army files on German and Allied servicemen interned here during World War II. He no longer considered those files sensitive, but Defence Minister Brian Lenihan Snr rejected the request. Some years later I learned he was protecting a family secret about an uncle who was dropped into this country by the Luftwaffe as a German spy in 1941. Even after the files were officially released, that file was kept hidden.

Enno Stephan’s ‘Spies in Ireland’ — for long the most authoritative account of German espionage here — dealt in detail with 10 German spies sent to this country, but there was no mention of Joe Lenihan. Joe was a brother of Patrick Lenihan, the father of the late Brian Lenihan and Mary O’Rourke. Thus he was also a great uncle of the current Justice Minister and his brother, Minister of State Conor Lenihan.

In the 1930s Joe Lenihan was dismissed from the Customs Service and jailed for fraud. After getting out he left the country and was working in the Channel Islands when the Nazis invaded in 1940.

He offered his services to the Germans as a spy in order to get home. He was trained on the use of a transmitter, given codes, and dropped by parachute over Co Meath on July 18, 1941.

JOE LENIHAN was not listed among the captured spies because he evaded capture in this State by slipping overthe border into Northern Ireland.

After I learned of Joe Lenihan’s identity, the late Comdt Peter Young, the army archivist, allowed me to read the file. He explained that he had given an undertaking to the late Brian Lenihan that he would not let anybody see it unless that person already knew Joe Lenihan’s identity.

The Lenihan file contained information indicating that he was barely a step ahead of being arrested. The Special Branch and Military Intelligence were just hours behind him. They tracked him from Meath to Longford and on to Offaly as he visited members of his family.

They then tracked him to Dundalk only to learn that he had crossed the border hours earlier. The British authorities were duly notified, but Lenihan had already given himself up and offered his services as a double agent.

Why was Brian Lenihan so sensitive about the wartime files —was it due to his Uncle Joe’s criminal record, or because he was ashamed that Joe pretended to spy for the Germans, or because he did spy for the British? The cover-up in relation to Garda Fallon’s murder is an affront to democracy. This is not about money, or the questionable behaviour of anybody’s uncle, it is about the murder of a Garda and the cynical and sordid behaviour of senior politicians.

“Something untoward went on and the Irish Government is hiding the truth to this day,” Finian Fallon, the murdered garda’s son contends. “I accuse the Irish Government of cowardice in addressing the issue”. The Fallon family should be entitled to know what is known.