Category: Irish Times
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Armageddon.
There is a memorable scene in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove where the leaders of America and Russia find themselves locked into a catastrophic war because of the existence of a doomsday machine originally designed to enforce world peace. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer now faces a potential doomsday scenario of his own. He is trying…
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Sir Garret
Introduction. Charles Haughey of Fianna Fáil and Garret FitzGerald of Fine Gael took very different approaches when dealing with Britain’s covert intelligence services and the more questionable diplomats assigned to the Dublin embassy. While FitzGerald was happy to dance with Her Majesty’s emissaries and spooks, Haughey recoiled. This contrast was never more apparent than when…
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The Smearmeister from the Irish Times
Hugh Mooney, a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, worked at The Irish Times before becoming the UK’s foremost black propagandist in the early 1970s. Among his many successes, he distorted the truth about what happened on Bloody Sunday, the bombing of McGurk’s bar and circulated smears about John Hume. The Bloody Sunday and John Hume…
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Ed Moloney murder plot.
Ed Moloney, who passed away last October, served as Northern editor of The Irish Times, 1981-85. He wrote a weekly column titled ‘Northern notebook’ for the paper. On 21 October 2025, The Irish Times lauded Moloney and quoted a family statement revealing that he ‘was briefly a member of the Official IRA – in its political phase –…
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The Mac Bride Principles: Genesis and History
An Army of Principles Will Penetrate Where an Army of Soldiers Cannot—Thomas Paine 1. I want to set out here for the historical record how the Irish National Caucus initiated, proposed, and launched the Mac Bride Principles. This is all the more important since there have been some attempts at revisionism. I will have to give…
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Psyop.
In November 2025, a British ‘security expert’ inadvertently disclosed the broad outline of a British-led psychological operation (PsyOp) to undermine Irish neutrality to London’s Financial Times. The paper revealed that an anti-neutrality campaign was underway, although ‘still far from fruition and would have to be extremely carefully managed‘. The purpose of the operation was to…
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Our Man in Dublin. [WebBook]
1. Introduction. There was a deeply clandestine aspect to the Troubles. It involved the manipulation of public opinion via propaganda. All of the parties involved in the conflict participated in the process to one extent or another. Britain’s Foreign Office was by far the most successful. The British Secret Service (MI6) and the Information Research…
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Read and destroy
1. “A certain degree of guidance”. In October 1969, Maj. Thomas McDowell, an ex-British army officer from Belfast, asked the British Ambassador to Dublin, Sir Andrew Gilchrist, for “guidance, in respect of which lines were helpful and which unhelpful” for publication in The Irish Times. McDowell and a number of his colleagues owned the paper.…
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Hidden agendas.
1. The Irish Times gave a platform to the Official IRA during the Troubles. Dick Walsh, the political correspondent of The Irish Times during the Troubles, was an adviser to Cathal Goulding. Cathal Goulding was chief-of-staff of the IRA and, after it split in 1969, he held the same position with the Official IRA. The…
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Dining for Her Majesty.
Introduction: The Irish Times apologetically sought guidance on what to report from London. In an earlier article in this series – which looks at British intelligence propaganda operations and The Irish Times – I outlined how Maj. Thomas McDowell, the Belfast-born Unionist, ex-British Army, ex-MI5, owner of the paper, had approached 10 Downing Street in…
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Whitehall sought dirt on John Hume.
By David Burke. A memo released from Britain’s National Archives in 2020 revealed discussions at the apex of the British government about salacious rumours relating to John Hume’s private life. It was sent to Sir Robin Butler, Cabinet Secretary to John Major’s government, and also to Major’s private secretary, Sir Alex Allan. Allan is not…
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