Covert History Ireland & UK Magazine. [Home]

© Deirdre Younge 2025.

‘Fergus directs me around the streets of Omeath until we pull up outside a bungalow, “hang on there”, he says and strides inside purposefully. Seconds later, he emerges with someone called Johnny, a bomb making graduate.

‘Follow us’, says Johnny, and we do, along the winding back roads around Carlingford Bay, through black trees, water glistening silver under bright moonlight. The beauty seems inappropriate, an ill judged accessory to whatever horrific end awaits this sorry figure crumpled in the back seat, wheezing and groaning.

Johnny and Fergus turn left into a well known beauty spot for dumping bodies. Christ, I think to myself, they’re going to shoot him”. [From “Double Agent” by Kevin Fulton aka Peter Keeley.]

Part 1.

1. Human bombs (October 1990)

Colm McEvoy a sixty five year old seriously ill man was pulled from his bed by a unit of the South Down IRA. Chosen as one of three men targeted to drive cars as ‘human bombs’. McEvoys ‘transgression’ was that he occasionally serviced cars for RUC men.

Patsy Gillespie in Derry was blown up at a checkpoint Coshquin while shouting a warning.

A third attempt in Omagh failed as the bomb didn’t go off.

A former IRA volunteer in Derry described how the brother of a senior IRA man celebrated the ‘success’  at a beauty spot overlooking Derry as they viewed the explosion that killed Patsy Gillespie.

‘They knew how disgusted the support, not just the volunteers, would be. [Was it part of a] plan to make the doves the stronger voice from within? Look at the timeline, things moved very quickly after those operation.’ (Conversation with a former member of the Derry IRA].

McEvoy was bundled into a hijacked car driven around the streets of Omeath then to an IRA safe house near Flagstaff Mountain which was over the border. The kidnapping was carried out by a gang which included Peter Keeley aka Kevin Fulton.

Some of the most sophisticated devices used by the IRA – detonators, timers, mortar bombs and IEDs, were developed in bomb factories in Cooley, Co Louth and South Armagh. The unit benefited from the cutting edge research carried out in America by sympathisers and supporters.

A bomb containing 1,500 llb of explosives was loaded onto a van to become a ‘human bomb’. McEvoy was intended to be one of three men the IRA, under Martin McGuinness, planned to murder at British Army checkpoints that night. Patsy Gillespie died at a checkpoint at Coshquin Derry, the third intended victim in Omagh was saved when the car bomb failed to explode.

At four in the morning Mr McEvoy was ordered to drive the van through a back  road towards the British Army checkpoint at Cloghogue. The IRA unit were then to trigger the car bomb. One hardened IRA man was sickened by the job and warned McEvoy to jump out and save himself at the last minute. But despite McEvoy’s shouted warnings as he approached the manned checkpoint and scrambled out, a soldier ran forward desperately trying to stop the car. The car bomb exploded, triggered by an IRA man ‘firing’ a radar gun from across the road, which sent a ‘high frequency signal to a modified radar detector connected to the bomb’s detonator’ (Oppenheimer).

Ranger Cyril Smith (pictured below) was killed as the bomb exploded. He was 20 years old.

Colm McEvoy sustained a broken leg but survived the attack.

Radar technology had allowed the IRA to penetrate the protective shield around the army checkpoint. The Army jamming systems were only armed against radio controlled devices.

The radar tech was developed by the South Armagh IRA’s Engineering Department following the blueprint drawn up by an American with top security clearance, working at the cutting edge of military technology, including radar design and electronic counter measures. These were exactly the skills needed by the IRA in their secret technology war with the British Army. Richard Clarke Johnson had been working for the IRA since the late ’70s.

By the time a radar device was used at the army checkpoint in 1990, Johnson was serving a prison sentence in a series of high security US jails. He had been under surveillance by the FBI, who bugged his phones and recorded his conversations, since the early 1980’s after he came to the attention of the Gardai. He was finally arrested as a result of an intensive surveillance operation by the FBI after they recorded a conversation between Johnson and a former member of the South Armagh technology development team Paul Quigley.

Quigley was from Dundalk but, in 1988, was a PhD student in the US when he rang Johnston looking  for help on new methods of counteracting the British Army’s electronic ‘shield’ protecting army units, helicopters and installations. The South Armagh Brigade were determined to target the British Army’s helicopters which kept surveillance on them up to 24 hours a day.

Part 2.

2. Bandit Country.

Toby Harnden was given full cooperation by the RUC, British Army and the FBI, when writing his book ‘Bandit Country’. The book contains considerable  detail about Johnson and his career as an IRA asset.  Published in 1998 it contains allegations of alleged collusion by Garda in Dundalk Garda station with the IRA in the murders of Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan in March 1989.

An investigation was carried out internally by the RUC when the book was published. Chief Superintendent McBurney wrote that it was obvious that Harnden was given cooperation at the highest level in the RUC. This may not have been news to the recipient of the letter who was Alan Mains superior officer and boss ACC Raymond White.

The British Government and the IRA had engaged in a proxy war of technology since the 1970’s. There was a covert battle of minds – as one ingenious method of detonating bombs and IEDs was devised by the IRA, the British army strove to find ways of intercepting them either by interfering with timers or using electronic countermeasures as blocking shields.

The army’s ECM’s [electronic countermeasures] monitored signals and inhibited devices by blocking radio channels but that only worked when the army knew the codes that were being used.

Countermeasures were vital to protect army installations or foot patrol. Radio signals protected solid structures while infantry carried backpacks with jamming devices.  Without this battle of wits, the whole of Northern Ireland could have been a no go area for British troops fighting a ground war.

The South Armagh Brigade’s engineering and technology department became one of the most sophisticated bomb making groups in the world. Increasingly one of their most important assets was to be an electronic engineering genius Richard Johnston based in the United States. He came to Ireland on a first, and apparently last, visit in the late 1970s. Johnson was inculcated with an interest in Ireland by a family member while growing upon the East coast. He graduated from Washington DC Catholic University with a degree in electronic engineering and obtained a masters from Berkeley University California.

Johnson  was to go on to work for  and receive top security clearance from NASA and some of the major defence companies on the West and East Coast. After working for the Northrop Corporation in California he moved back to the East Coast to work for the Mitre Corporation specialising in radar, electronic counter-measures (ECCM) [ Harnden 1999].  He was an extraordinary asset for the IRA South Armagh bomb development team. In Ukraine there is a similar race to develop countermeasures against Russian drone technology.

3. The Watchers.

Johnson’s visit to Ireland was recorded in Garda intelligence documents immediately after he arrived in Ireland. One intelligence report records him as being in the company of a member of the Dublin IRA who was to transport him around the country. This man now lives abroad but confirmed that he met and travelled with Johnson in 1978. Despite the fact he spent so little time in Ireland, Johnson devoted much of the next decade to developing the kind of sophisticated technology that helped to give the South Armagh brigade the cutting edge.

According to Johnson’s former IRA driver:

‘I was living in Dublin but knew my way around the country and was asked to “look after him” while he was here. Normally I went with him to most places but occasionally, I took him places where other people would meet him and he’d go with them while I waited on him to take him back to Dublin.

‘I believe that was his only trip to Ireland. .. There was no need for him to go backwards and forwards it would only have drawn attention. .. Electronics linked to computers were in the early stage of development at that time so things that seemed mind blowing at that time would have been very clumsy by today’s standards. .. Nonetheless his contribution was a game changer in many ways’.

The visiting American was given the name Thomas Clarke as he moved around Ireland; stopped at least once at a Garda checkpoint.

Distance from Ireland was also a feature of the life of IRA’s master aero engineer and technologist Éamon McGuire. Originally from South Armagh, he was part of their technical development team at a distance. Ironically he often tested devices at British facilities. McGuire trained in aero engineering as a recruit to the Irish Aer Corps. He had graduated in aeronautical engineering at Baldonnel in the late 1950s.

Johnson and McGuire were to collaborate for over ten years – Johnson working in America and McGuire following a career working for airlines in the Bahamas, Kenya, Malaysia and later in the Middle East.

McGuire was much later to go on the run in Africa working in Nigeria and Mozambique.

Part 3.

5. Think Tank.

Johnson and McGuire were a two man think-tank who exchanged ideas by letter; a practice that would later give Gardai, the FBI and MI5 vital insights into the American connection.

The upgrade in PIRA’s technical capabilities was felt immediately as Oppenheimer noted:

The British Army’s jamming devices focused on IEDs triggered using command wires or transmitters using the 27 megahertz radio bands, were now lagging behind the South Armagh Brigade’s newly acquired capabilities. This resulted in two ‘spectaculars’ by South Armagh in late 1979.

‘The only thing those two operations had in common was the detonators.’

6. Carnage at Warrenpoint.

26 members of the parachute regiment 2nd battalion left Ballykinlar on their way to Newry. Turning off the Warrenpoint roundabout onto the dual carriageway they were in the line of sight of two IRA men Brendan Burns and Joe Brennan, across the water, lying  hidden in the undergrowth along the disused railway track in Omeath. By the time the soldiers reached a hay trailer parked up at the side of the road which lined up with a Victorian navigation tower. The tower was a marker of a line of sight with the transmitter which sent a radio signal to a huge 700 lb fertiliser bomb hidden in bales on the trailer. As the final  truck passed the line of sight Brendan Burns pressed the button on the transmitter. 

In the carnage six of the nine soldiers in the truck were killed.

Worse was to follow. A convoy of Royal Marines and Royal engineers rushed to the scene, a Wessex helicopter landed a medical officer and quick reaction force. The Commanding officer of the Queens Own Highlanders, Lt Colonel Blair, based at Bessbrook Mill, arrived at the scene as did Major Peter Fursman C.O. A Company. They walked to the Gatehouse opposite Narrow Water Castle.

The IRA had anticipated that the gatelodge would be used as a control point as the army had done during an attack three years earlier. As the newly arrived officers approached the lodge an explosion destroyed the building and made a crater 10 meters by 8 meters in size and 11/2 metres deep. The bomb was made up of between 500/600 kg of ammonium nitrate  contained in aluminium kegs.

‘The recovery of the fragment of blue coated aluminium..suggests the charge to have been initiated by radio control. The use of McGregor model radio control units for this purpose was common in the mid to late 1970s and were often contained in a plastic lunch box along with a battery power supply and other components.

‘The use of a radio signal to initiate an explosive device was a common feature in terrorist in the late 1970s. A radio signal, suitably coded to prevent premature or accidental initiation, was broadcast at a selected time using a handheld transceiver. The range at which this operation was typically carried out was typically 1 kilometer though the equipment was capable of greater distances than is.’ (RUC Forensics Report)

The bomb was armed with a memo park timer initiated by a second coded radio signal sent by Burns, just as the trailer bomb had exploded. Colonel Blair and Major Forsman and ten other soldiers were killed.

According to Garda reports, two gardai driving across the Cooley mountains from Dromad in response to a radio call about an explosion stopped two men on a numberless motorcycle in the townland of Agameen, about seven miles from Narrow Water. Brendan Burns from Dundalk and Joe Brennan of Crossmaglen were later brought to Dundalk Garda station and questioned and forensically examined. 

The circumstantial evidence included ferns of a similar type to the railway line found on clothing,  and a cigarette butt found at the detonation point matching saliva and traces of firearms residue on Burns hands. The radio transmitter believed to have been used to trigger the explosions was missing.

There was no direct evidence linking them to the explosion at Warrenpoint.

After examination of the scene the Northern Ireland Forensic Laboratory reported:

‘In the circumstances however it seems most likely that a command from a third person set off the explosion. Since no electrical wires were present it also seems most likely that this was completed remotely by the use of a radio or other such electromagnetic signal. Radio controlled initiating systems were frequently encountered in terrorist explosive devices during the late 1970’s.’ [NIFL No 4083/79 and 4084/79]

Part 4.

7. Tech War.

The IRA had leap frogged over the British Army’s jamming technology in the lethal battle of wits.

The new found expertise added to an already lethal capacity of South Armagh ‘technology’ group had found a way to bypass the British Army’s jamming devices that worked on 7 megahertz bands designed to scramble detonation activation from remote radio transmitters. According to Phoenix Magazine, they did it ‘via a coding system that could talk to both transmitter and receiver and then trigger the detonators’. [Phoenix magazine September 2022.]

According to Republican sources, the coding system developed in the US was used at Narrow Water and Mullaghmore for the  first time.

The fact that the Army’s ECM – electronic countermeasures – hadn’t worked was potentially catastrophic. Something had to change.

The events of August 1979 was to have a profound effect on the new British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher who had been elected four months earlier. She was determined to look for ways to extricate the British army from the killing fields of Northern Ireland. There would be a new intelligence led approach to fight the IRA and a parallel political process to get greater security cooperation with the Irish Republic.

8. Mountbatten.

The same morning on the other side of the Island Lord Mountbatten and members of his family, including young children and an 80 year old woman, were to die in the waters off Mullaghmore in Sligo.  Mountbatten’s boat Shadow V, setting off for a morning’s fishing, was blown up by a bomb on the boat. It was another radio controlled bomb made in South Armagh with a coding system that could bypass blocking systems.

The Silver Shadow had slipped away from its moorings for a morning’s fishing – just as it reached a set of lobster pots, a bomb in the floor of the boat exploded throwing Mountbatten, Lady Brabourne, Timothy Knatchbull, and a 10 year old neighbour, Paul Maxwell into the water. All were fatally injured and died in the water or later in hospital.

‘I had nothing to do with it.. I remember saying to the passenger, a Belgian lawyer who had travelled to see me about a particular matter. ‘We are close to that spot’. I knew that a net would be thrown about the place and fast, so we folded our tent, metaphorically speaking, and made our way further South.’ [J.  O’Leary, The Padre, 2023]

The Garda Special Branch were surprised at this new twist in IRA capabilities. The conventional wisdom in relation to Mountbatten’s security was based on the IRA practice of using bombs attached to a common wire or timer bombs. The use of radio transmitters was regarded as improbable as they needed a very stable line of transmission between the transmitter and receiver at the location of the explosion.

The two events of August 1979 were Tom Murphy’s spectaculars. They would enforce his status as IRA Capo de Capo in South Armagh.

IRA connections with the Syrians, Libyans and Palestinians had been forged by Murphy and others in the training camps of Libya from 1970 onwards.

Part 5

9. Intelligence – the tip of the spear.

Narrow Water saw the biggest loss of life of the British army since the Second World War. Along with the death of Mountbatten and members of his family, it profoundly shook the political and security establishment. But the new PM Margaret Thatcher, did not respond with the massive backlash that the IRA might have expected. She also resisted calls from the army that they would take responsibility for intelligence away from the RUC. Her ultimate aim was to extricate the British army from the Ulster morass.

Instead the PM appointed Sir Maurice Oldfield, former head of MI6, as the new Security Coordinator in Northern Ireland. His task was to design an intelligence led covert operation with the aim of  defeating  the IRA by using intelligence. The Force Research Unit was a misleading title for the new cadre which emerged from Army Intelligence operatives in Berlin. A new cadre to be focused on infiltration and agent running made up of members from the Intelligence Corps and other regiments.

After the funeral of Mountbatten the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the Taoiseach Jack Lynch had private ‘robust’ conversations. Mrs Thatcher asked for greater security cooperation, sharing of intelligence, and overflights in hot pursuit. In turn Jack Lynch told Thatcher that a political settlement was essential and that, a security approach would never be enough.

The effect on the IRA of the ‘spectaculars’ of 1979 was also to enhance Gerry Adams’ status in the IRA. According to An Phoblacht-Republican News the ‘successes’ of Narrow Water and Mountbatten showed that ‘the IRA’s cellular reorganisation was operationally vindicated particularly through the devastating use of remote control bombs’.

In fact the South Armagh Brigade – who had planned and carried out the attack at Narrow Water, and made the bomb on Shadow V – had maintained their own structures.  Maloney described their ‘operational spontaneity and the local control that came with them’. It was South Armagh’s brigade structure that made the operation impervious to informers. [‘A Secret History of The IRA’, E. Moloney, 2002]

 That was a paradox as Phoenix magazine pointed out:

‘Almost all the focus on the Mountbatten bomb by South Armagh obsessed security experts has been on South Armagh man Thomas Mc Mahon, who was convicted for the Mountbatten killing and was indeed a highly trained bomb engineer.

‘But much of the research for the remote control IEDs …at that time was carried out far away from the border or anywhere else in the North and the IRA’s “Free State” technology geeks were never fully penetrated by the Gardai.’ [Oppenheimer, 2009]

Part 6.

10. A New Decade.

‘Communications and other electronic devices were under continuous assault from countermeasures.. Some of the systems I produced on the desert in the Middle East were in use since 1972 – although I gave them a life expectancy of six to twelve months they had lasted for eight years. This seems incredible when one considers that Britain has access to the latest NATO technology.’ [E. McGuire, Enemy of Empire, 2006]

The 1980’s saw an acceleration of the battle of wits between the South Armagh led IRA technology group and British intelligence in America where Margaret Thatcher’s influence had a profound effect on anti IRA operations by the FBI and the INS . The FBI already concentrated intelligence specialists on the large Republican support base which had supplied millions of dollars in funds and been the main source of  weapons since the early ‘70s. In the ‘80s the US was the source of the latest electronic expertise transferred to the IRA.

McGuire described his life in the Middle East in his book:

‘While this ordinary, everyday life was taking place, I was living another life in parallel with it. In order to produce some equipment for the war effort at home I purchased components from around the world and built devices. Out on an isolated part of the desert I tested them out for operating distance, reliability, effectiveness and resistance to electronic countermeasures until I had what I was looking for. With seven weeks leave per year I was able to return to Ireland at intervals to check the devices in the battlefield and, if satisfactory, put them into service.’

He was jailed in 1987 when forensic material from arms dumps, including fingerprints, was matched with evidence from the Hyde Park bombing. Donegal man John Downey was scheduled to stand trial for the Hyde Park bombing in 2014 but the trial collapsed when it was revealed Downey had been given an OTR letter which guaranteed freedom from prosecution by the British Government. Downey has been battling attempts to  extradite him.

In 1982 the FBI seized tone frequency switches in Newark NJ, that the IRA had been trying to buy. Mated to a transmitter, they could be used to detonate explosives without interference from an outside signal. In Ireland the Gardai recovered a number of switches in unexploded remote control devices. The link with the US was clear. The FBI began to trace the switches to particular stores through serial numbers. They led to Johnson.

Part 7.

11. Evidential trail.

In September 1983 an explosion in South Armagh was to leave a trail that would also lead to Johnson. The late Eamon Collins planned a bomb attack on Bessbrook, Co Armagh. The plan involved placing a 30 Lb bomb in a metal cylinder, in the boot of a stolen Ford escort.

The radio controlled bomb was assembled days earlier by Brendan Burns. It was aimed at soldiers returning to base in Bessbrook Barracks, but the ‘button man’ in a nearby house failed to obtain a clear line of sight to the car which was necessary for the radio signal to detonate the bomb. The intended mission was a failure but it was agreed with Collins that the bomb would be detonated later that night to avoid having to retrieve the car. Fragments from the explosion were to provide an evidential lead to Johnson. He was working on ‘some of the most technically advanced projects of the troubles’. [Harnden, 1999]

Collins triggered the bomb later that night and inadvertently provided enough forensic traces to establish a trail to Johnson.

Collins described what happened:

‘Later that night, we detonated the bomb from a safe distance.. After the operation I had a chance to examine the radio transmitter which had sent the signal to the bomb. It was a small oblong box, about eight inches by four inches. On the top there were three switches.. and three lights.. The oblong box was connected by a wire to another device which had an aerial from which the radio signal was sent.’

Forensic scientists examining the blast found parts of an FX ‘tone frequency switch’ operating on new frequencies. It was from a batch, one of 430 that bore a data code 8308, indicating it had been made in the UK in a factory in Essex. 66 of them had been sold to a third party in California who was acting for Johnson. The use of a weather alert radio frequency was again Johnson’s idea – the 162.55 MHz frequency providing a clear channel.

In 1984 the FBI’s tracing efforts led to Johnson  now working as a Northrop Corp engineer. During questioning by the FBI he claimed that besides his regular job he was also operating a part-time industrial security business from his home. The switches he said  were bought for experiments he was conducting with telephone-controlled burglar alarms, according to an FBI affidavit.

Explaining how some of his purchases ended up in Ireland, he admitted he may have sent some of the electronic components to relatives in Ireland but not the particular suspect switches..[Los Angeles Times, July 14, 1989]. Another  bomb in Newry using the weather alert switches was ultimately to give the lie to that excuse. During the following year 1985, more FX104 weather switches with the code 8308 were found in devices in Meath, Cullyhanna and Warrenpoint.

Johnson had now drawn down the full attention of the FBI. By 1986 he had moved to the East Coast and was working on projects with military applications, including radar, ECM and ECCM [electronic counter-countermeasures]. Nothing could have been more relevant to the IRA’s campaign.

He assumed he was always ‘a person of interest’ to the Gardai and, in 1987, they carried out a search of a garage he rented in Clondalkin and found a cache of letters dated between 1981 and 1984. The sender was identified as Richard Johnson, the contents concerned the construction of devices, the availability of bomb parts and radio controlled detonation.

McGuire had assumed a more prominent role in the Engineering department after the arrest and imprisonment of Danny McNamee in 1987 after he had  returned to Ireland.

A firm connection with Johnson was established after intensive FBI surveillance and Garda seizures. A court judgement from 1992, as well as FBI affidavits revealed details about Johnson’s connections to Eamon McGuire:

‘Between 1981 and 1986, Johnson wrote and sent a series of letters regarding the procurement and development of remote control bombs to Peter Eamon Maguire (sic) an electronic systems expert in the Republic of Ireland who is named as a defendant in this case..The letter (“the Clondalkin letters”) describe Johnson’s efforts to perfect the technology of the remote control bombs that have been used by the PIRA in its attacks upon persons and property in Northern Ireland and elsewhere since 1972.’

In the letters Johnson referred to the acquisition of 27 and 72 megahertz radio transmitters, the type of transmitter typically used by the PIRA in its remote control bombs. They also described Johnson’s efforts to improve the detonation mechanism of the bombs through the use of laser technology, which would shield the system from jamming attempts. The FBI seized most of the components of the laser-based system from Johnson’s workshop in Harwich.

Johnson described his attempts to enhance a detonation system still using the Weather Alert radio frequency. From August 1983 on, the Northern Ireland authorities began to recover the remains of ‘weather alert’ bombs in the wake of PIRA sponsored bombings.

By the mid ‘80s Johnson’s had top security clearance to work on radar technology and imaging transmission for the Mitre Corporation. But his double life was catching up on him. In August 1988 he was under intensive surveillance by the FBI. His home, car and even public phone boxes near his home were bugged. Johnson was taking precautions but in December 1989 a crack appeared.

Part 8.

12. Shooting helicopters.

In 1989 on a visit to the US, Eamon McGuire arranged to meet Johnson in person in Nashua New Hampshire – in the middle of an FBI operation. The two discussed the IRA’s central preoccupation that Quigley had also raised, the neutralisation of British Army protective technology –  fixed army installations which were covered by a protective shield against radio controlled bombs and IEDs. The IRA needed an advance on technology to counteract the jamming techniques by either overpowering the jamming signal, or disguising transmission signals as ‘noise’. Jamming systems also protected helicopters when flying.

In April 1989 Quigley, Johnson and two associates  got down to the business end of their meetings.

Count One charged all three with conspiracy to violate the Arms Export Control Act, by conspiring to export devices and materials for the discharge of bombs from the US without an export licence.

Count two charged Johnson with the actual manufacture and export of these materials.

Count Three charged all three applicants with conspiracy to destroy British military helicopters based at the Royal Air Force Station in Aldergrove, Northern Ireland.

These would be used in evidence in court. Other materials which they had sent to Ireland were seized in transit. Brought to court. In August 1990 charged with a number of offences:

Count four charged appellants Johnson and Quigley with the possession and control of property, ‘namely Johnson’s Harwich, Massachusetts Laboratory, used and intended for use in the destruction of British military helicopters in aid of PIRA’.

Their run was over but Johnson, McGuire and Quigley had achieved an astonishing level of sophistication in their makeshift weapons lab.

Part 9.

After some weeks in prison he was brought to court in Nelspruit.

‘The background to all of this was my involvement with the “Boston Three”…This cell was a technical one and was in the process of producing a guided missile system.’ Three charges were brought against me after the American security services uncovered our cell. They were:

Conspiracy to violate Arms Import Controls Act.

Conspiracy to injure or destroy property.

Conspiracy to destroy helicopters located in Northern Ireland and belonging to the United Kingdom, a country with which the United States is at peace.”

Two first two charges were dropped by the time McGuire appeared in court. The Judges accepted the submissions made the day before by McGuire’s defence team  and he was released.

He returned to Ireland again.

McGuire was to spend years in American prisons. In his book he described meeting Johnson once while they were briefly in the same prison:

‘As I waited to get into the dining hall, I let my eyes drift over the faces of the other people in the line and I was delighted to see one of the ‘Boston Three’, Richard Johnson, in the group. Martin Quigley who had been sentenced with Richard was also here. It was good to see Richard and Martin again after five years, but I would have preferred to meet under different circumstances.’

McGuire had spent his working life as a dedicated soldier in a war of wits against the British Army. He survived, many didn’t. He had no regrets as he reflected in his book:

‘I tell myself that I took part in the event of a generation and I am glad I survived, yet the faces of lost comrades keep dragging me into the past.  Most of my comrades were ten years younger than I was. Some possessed the wild hope of youth and were not the kind of people to grow old. Like a storm they swept across the land and were gone…..But in combat survival is the primary motivator and unit solidarity is the best way to achieve this. It forges the strongest bonds I know. I have no regrets about the action I took and the price I paid.‘

Other stories by Deirdre Younge can be found on this website at the following address:

https://coverthistory.ie/tag/deirdre-younge