An Enemy of the Crown

The British Secret Service Campaign against Charles Haughey

David Burke

• Publisher: Mercier Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781781178218
• eBook ISBN: 9781781178225
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In the early 1970s, Sir Maurice Oldfield of the British Secret Service, MI6, embarked upon a decade-long campaign to derail the political career of Charles Haughey. The English spymaster believed Haughey was a Provisional IRA godfather, therefore, a threat to Britain. Oldfield was assisted by unscrupulous British agents and by a shadowy group of conspirators inside the Irish state's security apparatus, all sharing his distrust of Haughey. Escaping scrutiny for their actions until now, Enemy of the Crown examines more than a dozen instances of their activities.

Oldfield was conspiratorial by nature and lacked a moral compass. Involved in regime change plots and torture in the Middle East, in the Republic of Ireland he engaged with convicted criminals as agent provocateurs as well as the exploitation of pedophile rings in Northern Ireland. He and his spies engaged in dirty tricks as they ran vicious smear campaigns in Ireland, Britain and the US. MI6 and IRD intrigues were deployed to impede Haughey's bid to secure a position on Fianna Fáil's front bench and any return to respectability.

London's hateful drive against Haughey saw no let-up after Fianna Fáil's triumphal return to power in 1977 which saw them win a large majority of seats in the Dáil. When Haughey sought a place at Cabinet, Oldfield and his spies devised more dirty tricks to impede him. While Haughey was suspicious of MI6 interference, he had no inkling of the full extent of London's clandestine efforts to destroy him. By circulating lurid stories about him, they played a major part in trying to prevent him succeed Jack Lynch as Taoiseach in 1979. This book attempts to shed light on some of the anti-Haughey conspiracies which took place during the period of the late 1960s right through to the early 1980s.

Table of contents

• Dramatis Personae
• Key to terms used
• Author’s Note
• Introduction
• Haughey’s Republican Pedigree
• Haughey, the RUC and MI5
• A Hate Figure among Republicans
• Taking the Gun Out of Republican Politics
• The Man from ‘Gloom Hall’
• An Ambassador ‘Complicit in Mass Murder’
• A Defenceless Community
• Haughey and the Diplomat-Spy
• The ‘Concerned’ Ex-MI5 Officer at The Irish Times
• The TD who Divulged Military Secrets
• Diplomatic Arm Wrestling
• The Plot to Assassinate a British Spy in Dublin
• The Cat Jumps Out of the Bag
• The Hamburg Con Artist and MI6
• The Dirty Tricks Brigade Descends upon Dublin
• The Ambassador who knew Nothing
• The Politics of the Bear Pit
• A Mouth-watering Stockpile of Intelligence
• The Smear Campaign against Jock Haughey
• ‘Winning Acceptance and Confidence’
• The Fireball of the North
• Sexpionage
• ‘The Dublin Press … is the Priority Target’
• Spooky Associations
• The Smearmeister from Down Under
• The FitzGerald-Crozier Collaboration
• Smearing John Hume
• ‘It Has to be Deniable in the Dáil’
• The Dublin Molehill
• The Spooks in the Castle
• A Licence to Deceive
• Haughey and the UVF Make a Killing
• The Mole who Conned the US Ambassador
• Haughey’s ‘Shady’ Land Dealings
• ‘Sir Spy’
• Private Spy Magazine
• The Bid to Keep Haughey Out of Cabinet
• ‘You set People Discreetly Against one Another’
• The Full Time Whistle
• Overdrive
• Moles Inside ‘Government Departments’
• Endgame: Winner and Loser
• Endnotes
• About the Author
• About the Publisher