 You can now follow me and all my social media platforms to find out who my latest guest will be and don't forget to click the subscribe button and the notifications button so you're notified for when my next podcast goes live. And then they talk to me about, you know, if you learn Chinese, when you leave them range, if you do leave, you can get into the CIA and the FBI. Like, little do they know that I wanted to join the IRA. You know, if they didn't own that, they'd have strung me up, you know? We're going to need driver's licenses to buy guns, fake driver's licenses and other resources. So that's when I first met James Weddie Bolger, the notorious, you know, gangster. And on our way in to Kenmare Bay to lend the guns, we were stopped with Irish Navy and arrested. And we were brought to Cork, interrogated, charged, and then sentenced to 10 years in prison. Of 196 countries in the world, the British have invaded or had a military presence at some stage in 171 of them. So they're absolute experts. We were on an escape attempt in 1985. 12 of us made a break for freedom. There was 14 gates. We got through 13 of them. And the explosives we put on the last gate actually buckled the gate. And the second charge we put on to blow it out didn't go, unfortunately. That is how the British, that's how a small country like Britain conquered half the world. They get one side, they kill the other side, you know, they're master manipulators. And it's very hard because it only works the benefit of the enemy. It only works the benefit of the British when Irish are killing Irish. It doesn't work to any, you know, it doesn't work to any Irish benefit, you know? We came up with a plan to disrupt electricity in the south of England for a period of time. We weren't sure how long it would take, because we weren't sure how long it would take the British to respond to it. But we were caught then in London. Again, I believe we were informed on, again. And we ended up getting 35 years. Boomer on. Today's guest is John Crawley. How are you, John? Great, James. Thanks a million for having me on. Pleasure to be here. Great to have you on. You've just released a book, The Yank. A former Marine who then went on and worked for the IRA. That's right. Sam Miller put Richard Book as well. And he says you're the Jason Bond of the IRA. That you are a recon of the Marines as well. Born in New York and involved in some of the biggest... That's a madness, probably, in life that people will be shocked to hear. You get a 10 stretch. You also get 35 years after that. No mean feat, but you're still here to tell the tale. Here to tell the tale. First and foremost, how are you? I'm great, James. Thank you very much. Thanks for coming to Glasgow, brother. We'll get in about your story. But first of all, I'll go back to the start of my guests. Where you grew up and how it all began? Well, I was born in Long Island, New York in May 1957 to Irish immigrant parents. My father was an immigrant in Coney Ross Common. My mother was from Coney Kerry. My father was in the US Air Force at the time. He had a four-year stretch to get some technical training and to accelerate his American citizenship. At about two years of age, we left New York, so I don't remember New York at all, moved to Chicago. I grew up basically in Chicago. When I was 13, came back to Ireland for a full summer, loved it. And then the following year, when I was 14, I came back to live in Ireland for good and go to school here. I mean, to go to school in Ireland, yeah. How was it at School in Ireland at the time? Well, it was strange, you know, leaving an American high school, going to a country school at Donor Ross Common that my father went to. In fact, one or two of the same teachers were there, you know. But I enjoyed it. I loved it. I took to it, you know. I had a sister who went to boarding school and didn't like it at all. Went back to America, but I just took to Ireland and I loved it and I loved everything about it. The troubles weren't started when you were at school then? The troubles had started, but I was at Donor Ross Common, so it had no effect on us whatsoever. So you didn't really know anything about it? I didn't know anything about it, no. When did you go back to America? Went back to America in 1975 at 18 years of age during the U.S. Marines. What gave you that idea to do that because of your father? No, no, not at all. I had developed very strong Republican sympathies. I had been reading a lot, studying about the struggle. I had some family involved. My grand-uncle was a senior IRA man in the Black and Tan War. But his brother had been in the British Army and was killed with the Irish Guards in the First World War. So, you know, you had this typical Irish, different directories that Irish people went through. Some, you know, fought for Britain. Some fought against it. But I developed strong Republican sympathies and it was my own education and my own study. I didn't really have any, well, I definitely didn't have any Republican propaganda. They got at home. I had no mentor. I had nobody telling me stories about the struggle. It was just, you know, reading history. And I developed, you know, a strong sympathy with the Republican struggle in the North. Having grown up in the States, I had a strong Republican ethos anyway because United States is a republic. We grew up every day, you know, we say the pledge allegiance to the flag and we talk about things like the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all. And those words resonated with me. And I thought Ireland should, you know, have the same chance to be a United Republic. And so I made up my mind when I was around 17 or 18 to join the IRA. Trouble was I didn't know anybody in the IRA. It's not called the Sacred Army for nothing. So I basically decided what I would do was I would go and join the US Marines as I was an American citizen. I would try to get into a special forces unit, get the best training I could and come home. And for two purposes, basically to test my commitment that if I was, I knew that if I went away for four years and came back and still joined the IRA then I was committed to doing that. If I wasn't deflected or diverted by, you know, career opportunities or other things that could come up. And the other reason was to get, was to enhance my own professional development. I didn't think the IRA needed my help or anything like that. I believe the IRA was this highly professional force, highly trained force that I kept hearing about, mostly hearing about from the British, the most professional dilliest guerrilla army in Europe of not the world. And so I didn't think they needed my help. That's not why I joined the Marines. Just like I said, enhanced my own professional development and to test my commitment. And that's basically what I did. So I spent four years in the US Marines. I got into the Marine recon unit. I became an instructor. I made sergeant in three years. And I got out of the US Marines on the 29th of May, 1979 at eight in the morning. I was discharged and at two o'clock that afternoon I was on a connecting flight for Ireland. So that was just your plan straight away. Learn the craft, get some intelligence. Basically become a great soldier where you could help out if need be. Yes. So you weren't forced. Usually a lot of people, I've had a few guys on from IRA. They've kind of, maybe it's their brother who's led them there, their father, their best friend or someone they know, close to them has been killed. Well, they've fucked this, like I want to help fight for a cause. But you never had any of that. No, no. I mean, they raise a volunteer organization and they call themselves volunteers, but I was a volunteer in every sense of the word. I absolutely and totally volunteered. I didn't have, I didn't volunteer from a sense of revenge from any other reason than my belief that the British government had no right to be in Ireland. And that men and women were fighting for the full freedom and independence of Ireland. But at this stage, I looked in Ireland as my country, not the United States. Although I mean, I don't have anything against the United States. I just looked on Ireland as my country. And I wanted to fight for it. And I thought, I would have thought that, you know, that's what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to fight for your country. So that's what I did. And it took me a while to get to join up because I didn't know anybody in the IRA. Eventually, like I had, it's all laid out in the book. I eventually met a fellow who had been in prison. He worked on a building project. I got a job there. I latched myself onto him. He rapidly guessed my intentions from the questions and everything I was asking. And he tried to talk me out of it, actually. He really did try to talk me out of it. He had left the IRA and he remember him saying to me one time, he didn't think the leadership in Belfast or Derry could be trusted. I had no idea what he meant by that. And I just shrugged it off as somebody who was trying to justify his own retirement from the struggle. And he must have said it to somebody because eventually a fellow from County Toronto approached me. And one thing led to another and eventually I was given some lectures and I was sworn into the IRA eventually. Yeah. What was the training like for the Marines? Yeah. Well, you know, most war movies or most military movies that you see are basically extremely unrealistic. But if you want to know what Marine Corps bootcamp is like, watch Full Metal Jacket. Full Metal Jacket, the bootcamp part of it is exactly how it was. I mean, the journalist instructor was actually a Marine journalist instructor and the things he says in it, I didn't know they stacked shit that high steers and queers come from Texas. Almost all that stuff. It must be like a script. Heard it all in bootcamp, right? Bootcamp was a tough initiation into the Marines. So bootcamp is only 13 weeks and you don't train that much. It's really harassment and more or less testing your metal. It's only after bootcamp that your real training begins and after 13 weeks in bootcamp, excuse me, I went to advanced empathy training and I kept trying to volunteer for recon. And the thing about it is, it looked like whereas the Army Special Forces would sign guarantees that they'd send you to the training. Now, there's no guarantee you'll make the training. The vast majority of people don't get through the training, but at least they guarantee they'll send you. Marines wouldn't do that. So I took a bit of a chance joining them. But eventually, eventually, I got into recon, although along the way I had a lot of... I mean, people were literally laughing at me. I mean, at the time I was 18, I looked about 12, I think. I was about 10 stone, hard to believe now. I was like a little weed. And people picture Special Forces as these Rambo types and all. And I probably did, too. But I remember when I actually got to the recon indoctrination program, which is the six weeks initiation torture session for six weeks, there was about a dozen other guys there. And I was looking around me at these muscle-bounded Donuses and these high school wrestlers and these weight lifters. And I remember thinking, oh, my God, I don't have a chance here. And within about three days, half of them were crying and going home. So it was my first real initiation into the concept that it's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog that runs through in the end. And so I got through the indoctrination program, got into the recon teams, and then it was very intense training. I enjoyed being in recon actually once I got into an actual unit because we worked basically in four-man teams. The training was behind enemy lines. And I did scuba training, and I did parachute training, and I did submarine training going in out of a submarine submerged at night and swimming ashore, coming back into it. Pretty exciting stuff. But it was interesting. But what I really liked about recon, I think, was that it wasn't like in the infantry. In the infantry, they tell you in the Marines, you're not paid to think you're paid to react. And recon, because you're behind the lines, because you have no officers, because there's nobody you can ask for permission to do anything, you have to think for yourself. So it was a unit with a lot more initiative and a lot more... Yeah, very interesting time. Really good guys. And yeah, it was excellent training. And I learned a lot about leadership and I learned a lot about what motivates people. And learned a lot about... It's not what you say, it's what you do that counts. What is recon for people who don't know? Sorry, it's reconnaissance. Yeah, so that's the elite of the elite. That's the elite of the Marine Corps. Special forces. At the time, yeah. Now it's called MARSOC, Marine Special Operations Command. But at my time, it was the Marine Special Forces Unit. And you're basically trained to go behind enemy lines and gather information, carry out raids, ambushes, that type of thing. Call an artillery, airstrikes, naval gunfire. Very comprehensive training, far more than you would get in an infantry unit. I remember being told one time, I was calling an airstrikes one time, F4 Phantoms calling an airstrikes on a training mission. And I remember the officer there telling me he had worked with some South American Army. And he says down there, he says, you have to be a colonel before they let you use a radio. But there was I, a Lance Corporal calling an airstrikes. So it was just a great difference in initiative and that type of thing. What's the training like to be and recon? Well, it's tough physical training. I mean, the toughest thing, there's two disadvantages that I found that made me kind of concerned I might get through the training. One was I don't like heights and you have to parachute out of planes. But, you know, like somebody once said, you don't got to love it, you just got to do it. And then I wasn't a very strong swimmer. I actually lied when I got interviewed for recon. You have to be a first-class swimmer. And I lied and I said, I was a second-class swimmer and said I was first-class, you know. But fortunately, the captain interviewing me didn't look at my records, you know. I did have a first-class physical fitness test and all that. But I found the swimming some of the toughest training. You know, the underwater stuff, you have to go in the water. Your arms and, you know, your feet are tied together. Your arms behind your back have to bounce off the bottom and you have to do what they call drownproofing, things like that. And it can really psych you out. Diving underwater at night, pitch dark blackness, you know. I was literally after seeing the movie Jaws, then 1975. Jaws just come out. Nice scene just before I went to do scuba training in the Philippines. So I remember diving underwater at night in the South, in the Pacific wasn't a very relaxing experience, you know. But no, it was all good. It was all good. But it's like, you know, it is 90% mental. It's psychological, you know. It's like they say, it's mind over matter. If you don't mind it, don't matter, basically, you know. What's the main ingredient you think for people to pass these courses? Like you say, it's not the size of the dog, it's like... Yeah, the dog. Yeah, what do you think the main ingredient is for people to pass that? Like you're a young kid, 10 stone, people will probably laugh at you. They were laughing at me literally. 14, 15 stone men crying little babies. We actually spoke about that in the car before that. We talked about so-called gangsters. People expect them big and bubbly with slash marks. But it's all about not breaking. Is that tough, man? People who don't fucking quit. People who never say that. What would you say the main ingredient is for people to pass these sort of courses? It's just an absolute determination not to fail. A determination not to fail. And like we were talking about earlier, like, you know, you'll often hear the console about a hard man. See some guy with his shaved head tattoos and he might beat the shit out of somebody, you know. But to me, a hard man, a real hard man, is hardening himself first. You know, if you can be hard on yourself, if you can be tough on yourself, you know. And I find that people like that tend to be, you know, actually more empathetic towards others. You know, I like a man who's hard, can be hard on himself, but keep a sense of humor and not show any cruelty. He might have to do in wartime violent things, but not cruel, you know what I mean. In other words, a soldier, a real soldier, you know. Not just a murdering thug, you know. How was that installed? You're then to have a quiet at such a young age. Who did you get that from? I didn't get that. That's one of the inner things you find out about yourself when you join. You don't know what's there until you find out. There's no way. You just don't, you don't know. And I talked to, I remember a Marine recon instructor and I literally became one myself. And I remember him saying to me, you know, this training isn't designed to get people to quit. It's designed to get quitters to quit. And they would tell you themselves, they'd watch guys coming in. They had no way. They could just never figure out who'd pass and who wouldn't. It's just, it's just, it's an inner strength. You either got it, you don't, and you really don't know if you got it until it comes time to step up to the plate. So you became a sergeant at 20 years old? I was a sergeant at 21. Yeah, I made sergeant in three years. Yeah. That's young though. That's very young. I had several meritorious promotions. I did a lot of opportunities. First, they came to me, it's in the book. Like they wanted me to learn Chinese. They told me from my entrance exams, I had a high language aptitude. And then they talked to me about, you know, if you learn Chinese when you leave the Marines, if you do leave, you can get into the CIA and the FBI. Like, little do they know that I wanted to join the IRA. You know, if they didn't own that, they'd have strung me up, you know. But I didn't want to make it a career. And then I got a chance when I was in advanced empathy training school, I was called out to an administration block and I had no idea why it was a very unusual thing to happen. Excuse me. And there was a young naval officer there and he asked me when I go to the Naval Academy in Annapolis. Now the Naval Academy in Annapolis, it usually takes a congressional recommendation or a state senator for you to go there. So they were offering me the opportunity of a lifetime right there and then, but I had to sign away 10 years of my life. So they're going to take after empathy training, they were going to put me into a nine month prep school, four years in the academy. After two years in the academy, I could choose whether I wanted to be a commission officer in the Navy and the Marines, but then I had to give six years guarantee service. So like 10 years right there and then, but I was determined, you know, to go home and join the IRA. Of course they didn't tell them that, you know. But if it wasn't for my Irish Republican ambitions, I probably would have jumped at that opportunity. That was like, that was an opportunity not too many people got, you know. Yeah, like a James Bond type came out. Well, I wouldn't say James Bond, but I mean, it was, you know, they become a commission officer from one of the most prestigious economies in the world. You know, it's, you know, it's top notch stuff like, you know. Was the money good? I'd imagine it would have been. I never did it. So I imagine it would have been very good. Yeah. So when you come back to Ireland, then how long did it take for you to join the IRA? I'd say about 10 months. About 10 months. So pretty fast as well. Yeah, yeah. Well, you try to make waves when you come back to get attention or how does it work? No, I was trying not to get attention because I mean, it's supposed to be a secret army. I had no idea how to join. Like I said, I even considered at one point maybe joining Sinn Féin, the political wing and then maybe trying to get to know people that way. But then I thought, well, that's kind of stupid because if I do that, I'm known right away to the special branch and everything. So it took a bit of figuring out, but like I said, I eventually found out this guy worked in the building site and building project and I got in there and I approached him. Had that not worked, I'm not too sure what I would have done because unlike the Marines, the IRA doesn't have recruiting offices. But look, it was a test. I thought it was a test of initiative and resolve. I think I'd shown those qualities in recon and it's like anything else. If you really want to do something, you'll do it. So you come back, you join the IRA. What does the troubles mean to you? Well, the troubles to me meant I look on the British claim to jurisdiction in Ireland as an act of war. I mean, the fact that they claim jurisdiction in Ireland to me is, you know, they have no right to be in Ireland. So I looked at it as an act of war as if anybody invaded Britain and claimed jurisdiction in part of Britain, I'm sure they would look at it as an act of war. But there was an ongoing fight to resist that. I didn't... But it's very important, you know, to put things in perspective. I wanted to fight the Union, not Unionists. My war was with Britain, not against Unionists. I was never in a situation where I was involved in conflict with loyalists or Unionists. There would have been maybe in Belfast and places like that. I was never in a situation like that. And also I didn't join the provost to fight for the provost. I joined the provost to fight for the Irish Republic to build a 32-county national democracy within an all-Ireland republic. And that was my goal and the goal of most Republicans. And I thought the goal of our leadership. So why not the Unionists? Why were they not a target for you? Well, first of all, I wouldn't have attacked Unionists for being Unionists. But I mean, you mean like Unionist paramilitaries? Well, because I was in an area where that was a factor. I was mostly around the border and in rural areas, things like that. That was really kind of a Belfast, you know, situation. Mid-Elster, things like that, yeah. So what sort of training do you get then when you join the IARI? Little to none, to be honest. Most people were... The training was very poor. Why so? I kept hearing from the British that the IARI was this highly trained, highly professional force, right? But when I joined, even... I found the basics. For example, you know, men might be brought down and shown how to take a rifle apart, put it together, where to put the magazine, and when then the bullet comes out. But they weren't, you know, they weren't shown things like how to adjust the sights for accuracy, proper cleaning lubrication of the weapon, immediate action drills for malfunctions. Basic infantry stuff. And no training that I ever saw in tactics, how to move shooting communicators of cohesive team. None of that. The IARI was good at explosives, and they had a very good engineering department, and they were able to manufacture a wide array of improvised devices like mortars, rocket launchers, things like that. And they probably inflicted most of the casualties on what we would consider the enemy, then gun attacks and things like that. Also, I found that sometimes the training was counterproductive because sometimes people were told the wrong thing. For example, I heard men being told at camps that the British Army helmet was bulletproof to high-velocity rifle fire, which it wasn't. And, you know, a lot of misconception sessions like that. And I found it hard to really understand why that was the case, because the IARI was full of people who had professional military training. There was a lot of people in the IARI who had been in the British Army. And I know people in the IARI who had been in the Paris had been in the Royal Marines. A lot of them had been in the Irish Army. So there was a pool of professional knowledge there, but for some reason there was never a skills audit done to bring that together and to train people to a high level. We had school teachers who could develop lesson plans and devise a course structure. We had artists who could, you know, develop lessons in form of training aids. And, you know, a lot of stuff I saw was very easily resolved, I thought, but for some reason it never seemed to be. Do you think that's because you were a recon in the Marines? You've seen a lot of the kind of... not as strong and as tough as the young kid going in or somebody who thinks they're getting normal training, but you're just saying it's basic stuff. But do you think that's because you were in the Marines at a high level of understanding how a true balance works? Yeah, well, not really, because you see the laws of physics don't change between a professional army and a guerrilla army. I mean, ballistics are ballistics. A trajectory is a trajectory, whether you're in Marine recon or an untrained guerrilla fighter. You know, to be an accurate shot, to be, you know, to learn the marks of fundamentals, you have to have the basics. And they're very easily given to people. I mean, it's not rocket science, they're learning this stuff, but I found it... I found the level of training quite poor not to criticize training officers because many of them had very little training themselves. A lot of them were doing a very thankless job under very difficult circumstances with very limited resources. I understood all that. Like, I certainly didn't join the IRA like to be critical of them. Like, I admired them. I looked up to them, you know. It's only when I was there for a while and I saw, you know, certain weaknesses that could have been very easily fixed, you know. And, you know, I started to, you know, make my views known. And then the next thing I know, I was told to go to America and buy guns because I had an American accent. So, and I remember thinking at the time, this is very strange because, well, you know, I'd been an instructor in a special operations unit and I thought I had a lot more to offer the IRA than my accent, which at the time would have been, I'm sure my American accent, there was much stronger back then, you know. And, you know, I was called to Meaton and told to go to Boston and set up a new arms network. But, you know, and I wasn't, you know, and I wasn't even told what to get, what to buy. Like, there was no strategy that I could see. You know, I was even, I was, let me see, what's the best way to put this? I was, I was crestfallen for two reasons. One was that they seem to think that for all the knowledge resources I had, the only real asset that I could provide the IRA was my accent. And the other one was that I presumed there was a strategy and they would tell me, you know, get this, get that, you know, so that we can carry out the strategy. But no, I was just told go over there and get weapons. It was that vague. You know, I was given 9000 Irish pounds, which is a derisory sum, and then sent off to Boston. Do you then question your decision-making then? Well, it wasn't my decision-making. Well, to join the IRA, were you thinking you were maybe a bit more, not intelligent, but you wanted a wee bit more than just being used for your accent, basically? No, well, I certainly didn't think I was more intelligent. I mean, they were very intelligent guys. No, with the training you'd already done, you've obviously, you've gave up a life of a great job opportunities to then join the IRA. Were you expecting more? Well, I was expecting to contribute more than my accent. How old were you then? I had been about 23, 23, 24. Well, by the time I went to the States, sorry, about closer to 25. And you were just happy to go there? Well, I wasn't happy to go there, but I was told to go, so I went. I was more or less given the option, you know, if I wanted to stay in the IRA to go. You know, and you see, the IRA was very, very carpimental. I usually can pronounce that word, but you know what I'm saying? Yeah. And the thing about it is you didn't, you tended not to second-guess people. You know, you just kind of hope there was a reason, there was a good reason that you couldn't see, you know? And so I just, I followed orders and I went. And when I got to Boston then, I met, I was given half a $5 note that was caught in a very erratic way. And I was told that my contact over there had the other half of this $5 note. So when I got there, I met the person and I told him that, you know, we're going to need driver's licenses to buy guns, fake driver's licenses and other resources. So that's when I first met James Weddie Bolger, the notorious, you know, gangster, but he wasn't notorious then. He wasn't notorious to me. I'd never met him. I didn't know who he was. Excuse me. And so I met him and he, he gave us a few guns and he gave us a little money, $5,000, something like that. It wasn't much. And, but one of his men there, Pat Ney, who was originally from Ireland, grew up in an Irish speaking house. His parents spoke fluent Irish at home. He'd been an ex-Marine and we kind of clicked. We hit it off. And Pat was very enthusiastic about helping us. And so Weddie sort of gave the nod, but he wasn't really hands-on. Weddie, like Pat Ney was, you know, Pat Ney did the normal stuff, you know, the real work in, you know, in expanding the operation to where we ended up with seven and a half tons of weapons and tens of thousands rounds of ammunition, you know. But then after some time, but I have to emphasize about Weddie, the Weddie thing was with all the books about him and all the movies about him and things like that now, and some of the nefarious activities he was at. Like we didn't know that. We knew he was a criminal, obviously, because he was able to, you know, break the law, get fake licenses, get guns. But we didn't know, like, the things he was doing that we later learned, you know, murdering people, pulling their teeth out, burying them in the basement, things like that. You know, obviously he wasn't going to tell us that stuff, you know. But so... But are you scared of him? He was intimidating in a way. He tried to build a rapport with me and other IRA guys. But at the same time, he had a sort of barrier put up. You couldn't get too close. You couldn't get too friendly to him. I remember a couple of times maybe engaging in a bit of banter, a bit of friendly banter, and he sort of pushed back a bit, you know, as if maybe you weren't respecting him, you know. I think he wanted you always a little bit of gnaw of him. I wasn't a gnaw of this guy, you know, but you sort of had to play the game a little bit, you know. You know, a lot of these people that have enormous egos, enormous egos, like off the charts. And he certainly had, you know. And, you know, if you want to get stuff done, if you want to get work done, if you want him to cooperate and provide resources, sometimes you just got to toe the line a little bit and, you know, say, oh, that's great Jim and Jim, that's a great idea. And, you know, this type of stuff. Kiss his ass if it had to, you know. It was for Ireland. How long were you in America for doing that? Well, off and on. I'd be going back and forth off and on. I was there one stage for three months, and then I'd be back in Ireland for a while, and I was back a couple of other months. And the longest time I was there was for nine months, right? But you see, we had, we were actually planning a much bigger operation, much bigger arms operation. And there was a fellow down in New York, Liam Ryan, got arrested. He was later murdered by a loyalist working on behalf of our UC Special Branch. And he went to Ireland and he met several members of their leadership. And he came back with a note for me, a comm, a communication, we call it a comm. And I opened it and it said that I was to ring a phone booth in Dublin at a certain time on a certain day to receive instructions, which was quite unusual. We didn't use phones in that manner. Of course, there was no mobile phones or anything like that back then. But anyway, I did what I was told and I rang the number. I didn't recognize the voice on the other end. I had no idea who it was, but I knew he was somebody working on behalf of somebody in their leadership. And he told me to come home now with everything you got and you be on the boat. And I remember he was very emphatic, you be on the boat, which I thought was very strange because I was never supposed to be on the boat in the first place because I had all the contacts. I had set up the network and we were, you know, operating on other projects to get, you know, heavier weapons and things like that. I wasn't afraid to be on the boat, nothing like that, but it was, I thought it was a very unusual order. But anyway, I then went to Patney and a couple of other, the Boston guys over there and said, look, I just got an order. I got to go home now with thinking about a laughter. Why don't they just tell me to fly home and just tell me what was going on, but no, come now on the boat. But anyway, so what they did then is we had been repairing a much bigger boat called the storage, like the steel freighter. It's a big job, a lot of work, you know. So we had to go to a guy called Bob Anderson. Well, they went to him. I didn't know who this guy was. He was a fisherman. They offered him $10,000 to use his fishing boat to take whatever guns we had across Atlantic. And so he was offered $10,000. Other inducements like, you know, they were going to buy thousands of dollars worth of bait and things like that. He could swordfish on the way home and make tens of thousands of dollars from that and keep all the profit. And there's another guy called John McIntyre, who was later murdered by Wedy Bulger. He was given $10,000 to, you know, demand the boat. And he was a bit of a jack of all trades, a fisherman, and he knew his way around the boats. Even though I'd been in the Marines, I mean, I was no fisherman. I was no sailor. So I was kind of dead weight on the boat, you know. But anyway, we gathered everything up. We were given coordinates where to meet an Irish boat off the coast of Ireland. We left in September, in the middle of September in 1984, with about seven tons of weapons on board. On this fishing boat, there wasn't even supposed to cross the Atlantic, you know. It was a crazy stunt like, you know. And we took off and about halfway across the Atlantic, we hit a storm hurricane. It was actually a hurricane. And I remember Bob Anderson, the captain, telling me that he'd monitoring it and coming up the Gulf Stream. And I remember thinking, you know, that's all we need now, you know. But when it hit, it was absolutely horrendous. It did tremendous damage to the boat. Knocked out four of the seven tempered glass windows. We very, very nearly sank. I remember at one point asking Bob, should we put on the survival suits we brought along with us? And he said that our communications have been knocked out because when water came in, the broken windows, it knocked out our radios and our navigation. So he says, we're in the middle of the Atlantic. We have no communications. Nobody knows we're here. Put it on if you want, but it's just going to take you eight hours longer to die. So none of us put them on, you know. So that was a really hairy situation. I just thought we were just goners. But Anderson, you know, thanks to his 25 years fishing in North Atlantic and his skills as a boatman, he got us out of it, but it was real touch and go. I didn't think we were going to survive. We managed to limp our way on then to meet another boat called the Marina Anne about 200 miles off the coast of Ireland. We were given a longitude and longitude where to be. They were there certainly in time. We transferred the weapons. And on our way in to Kenmare Bay to land the guns, we were stopped by the Irish Navy and arrested. And we were brought to Cork, interrogated, charged, and then sentenced to 10 years in prison for that. You know, we were informed on. It later turned out that there was a senior IRA man called Sean O'Callaghan, who was a guard police, Irish police and MI5 agent. And he told them that we were coming. But the thing that I wonder about to this day is, he told on our location. But he wasn't the one who said, come now, bring everything and you be on the boat. And to this day, I don't know who gave that order. So you don't know who phoned you? I have no idea. No. Because Liam Ryan, who gave me the message, was murdered afterwards. Could it have been police? No. It was somebody, I believe it was somebody high up in the area leadership. An informant? Absolutely, yes. I believe that. Because it was made no sense. It screwed up everything. We were planning much bigger operation. We were supposed to bring weapons from Libya. We had a freighter lined up for that. Everything went down the tubes to bring over a bunch of basic basically junk that would have made no difference whatsoever to the IRA campaign. I swear to God. So it's one of the mysteries of my life who gave me that order and why. Do you still get sleepless nights with that? Not sleepless, but the heart of your day goes by when I don't think about it. So it's just... O'Callaghan told us coming into Kenmore Bay, but he wasn't the one that gave that order. After we were arrested, of course, the IRA set up an investigation and how we were arrested. And the initial suspicion would have come on a mistake I made because I was told before I left that only six or seven men in Ireland knew about this operation. So if it went pear-shaped, it had to be me for either trusting the wrong person or doing the wrong thing. It's basically told that, right? So I was getting messages in, asking me, what did you do? Who did you talk to? And all this implication being it was our end. And I remember thinking, now, hold on a second, right? We were given a longitude and latitude where to be in Atlantic. But I didn't know we were going to Kenmore Bay. I had no idea the boat coming out to meet us was the Merida Anne. I didn't know anybody on the Merida Anne. I didn't know where the boat in Ireland was based. We could have been going to Dundee Gall, Slago, Waterford, anywhere. No idea. Nobody in the American end knew either. But the Irish Navy knew and they were waiting for us. And I know I didn't tell them. Now, we learned later that Sean O'Callaghan told them that we were coming to Kenmore Bay. But he wasn't the one that told them. He wasn't the one that told me to come now, bring everything and you be on the boat. So it's one of the mysteries of my life. Where were you getting the weapons from? Well, mostly gun stores. We were going around buying weapons. There was some IRA weapons over there from previous purchases that were there. Liam Ryan, like I said, my friend who was later killed, had some stuff stored. He gave it to us. And then Woody Boulder had some stuff. But it was mostly, it wasn't dumb. See, my goal was to standardize the weaponry. Standard military weaponry that would, you know, smooth our logistical problems. Like for example, you know, you could have, you could have eight IRA volunteers in operation. Everybody with a different rifle. Everybody with a different caliber. You know, it was a logistical nightmare and a training nightmare, you know. So standardizing that was, I thought, an important step. But the stuff in the red an was, you know, some of, you know, there was some good stuff on it, but it was mostly just basic infantry stuff. A lot of stuff thrown together, stuff we'd got from Woody Boulder, things like that, you know, mishmash. But the bottom line, it would have made no difference whatsoever to the IRA campaign if that had gone in. None. Yeah, but seven and a half tons would stall a lot of weapons. It's a lot of weapons, but it would have made no difference to the IRA campaign. It wouldn't because the IRA already had weapons and stuff like that, you know. And I think the IRA needed more than weapons, was proper training on the weapons they had and, you know, better tactics and things like that, you know. What sort of stuff are you going to do bigger before that shipment? Well, we, in the States, we were, we were just making progress on getting 50 caliber sniper rifles, you know, that would penetrate the jackets and the armor here in the north. And we were working on the Libyan shipment, which no secret now. I mean, stuff came in from Libyan, died in the mid-80s. I'm not talking out of school here. It's public knowledge. Now, when I say we're working on it, I wasn't working on it. I was, we were only supposed to transport it. But I had written a list to a member of the IRA leadership and stuff to get. And one of them was like one of six to call us rifles, which had used the Marines, which is a cannon, you know. And it turned out three shiploads of weapons came in from Libya with thousands of weapons. I mean, huge, a huge arsenal. The, the likes of which the IRA had never seen before. And, but the real heavy stuff, the 106 is the 81 millimeter mortars. The real heavy infantry stuff was on another boat called the Exxon, which was caught in November 1987. So the real heavy stuff didn't come in, but still the IRA now had the capacity to fight an enhanced war of national liberation if it chose to do so. You need, you need three things to have any hope of success in fighting a war. You need the skill, the capacity and the motivation. You need the motivation. In the early 80s, the IRA certainly had that. You know, look at the hunger strikers and things like that. Highly motivated organization. We were lacking in skill, but we could provide the skill. But capacity was the, the most glaring shortfall, you know. The weaponry that we needed to pursue the struggle. By the mid 80s, we had all, we had the capacity, you know. And it's around that time that, that the IRA seemed to pull back from the brink, so to speak, and started putting out peace-failers. You know, when I, when I, when I felt that we had the capacity, well, I was in jail anyway. I was hearing a lot of the stuff in jail. But, you know, when we finally had the capacity maybe to push things to where we could get to the negotiating table with the Irish Republic on the negotiating table instead of when I say the Irish Republic, I mean the 32 County, all are in democracy. So what are you thinking then when you get a 10 stretch, that you're thinking, that obviously it's a setup, but did you know then you were set up straight away or did it take a bit of time? No, I knew we were set up straight away because they were waiting on us. So they were clearly set up. And, but I had no idea who at the time, you know. So, you know, many Irish Republican projects in history, you know, since 1798 back to the Finian times throughout our history, it almost always seems to be scorpered by informers. I mean, the British are extremely really good at infiltrating organizations and getting in there. I mean, you know, the British state, you know, they're the fifth, sixth largest economy in the world. They have unlimited resources, enough money to buy almost anybody. You know what I mean? They're good at it like, you know, they're really good at it, you know. One English academic, I can't remember his name, but he said not in recently that of 196 countries in the world, the British have invaded or had a military presence at some stage in 171 of them. So they're absolute experts at, you know, at counterinsurgency, at co-opting leaderships, you know, to dovetail with their own strategies and things like that. I certainly would never underestimate, you know, the British when it comes to being able to, you know, take on an insurgency. They're very good at it. You know, they've experienced, you know, from the empire around the world. So where did you do your 10 years? I did my 10 years in Port Leish prison in the South of Ireland. I got 10 years for the arms. We were on an escape attempt in 1985. 12 of us made a break for freedom. There was 14 gates. We got through 13 of them. And the explosives we put on the last gate actually buckled the gate. And the second charge we put on to blow it out didn't go, unfortunately. So, yeah. How did you get the explosives into prison? Well, I couldn't, you know, that's the secret has to remain, you know, to protect the guilty. So you get through 13 gates. We got 13 gates, you got through 14 of them. Yeah, we had keys and everything. We had a genius escape attempt. We had, see, the Irish Army were on the roof and they were told to shoot anybody, not in the screws uniform, running across. But we had lycra, sewn up lycra. And if you put on a sports jacket and you put it over the sports jacket, it looked like a screws. We had wooden buttons and a little paper tie. Now, for me to you, it was bullshit. But for the guy on the roof in the tower, he couldn't quite make out, you know what I mean? So we were running across the yard. Everything saved our lives from being riddled by them, you know. But no, it was a good attempt. I suppose that was 1985. And I think probably my, well, I have a lot of regrets. I mean, from losing friends and things. But I think my greatest personal regret as an IRA volunteer was that escaped and work because I was 28. And, you know, I'd only been a year in prison and we'd have got out, you know, at the height of things, you know what I mean? And, you know, you don't want to be sitting in prison when you're a motivated young fella. You know, you want to, and you're motivated to fight for your country. You don't want to be out there doing the business, you know? So, you know, so I got three extra years for that. So with the two remissions, I ended up doing a full 10. So I went into jail in September 84 and I came out in September 94. So the full 10 stretch? Full 10. Obviously, Sam allowed the blanket man long KSH blocks. That was a tough, tough, tough beatings every day, tortured every day. How was your treatment? It wasn't nearly as bad. It wasn't nearly as bad. We had strip searching and there were beatings and things from time to time. But it wasn't systematic like Sam Miller and then boys got, you know, Richard O'Rourke, people like that. I don't know how they got through it really. Because even like, you know, I talk about the special forces training, you know, six weeks of hell. Some of those guys had six years of it every day. You know, it took a special type of man to survive that. Because you see, they could leave the blanket anytime, just say, I'm leaving, I'm going. And, you know, they would have been taken right off, put into uniform and be given just normal treatment. At any time, you can click your fingers and leave the torture. Plus, they were getting losing remission every day. So some of them were actually adding years to their sentences they didn't need to do. So, I mean, the bravery of those men and the commitment and the sheer heroism because, you know, you know, sometimes people forget because, you know, I know, you know, you know, British and Unionists and that, you know, the area just a bunch of terrorists. You know, I could write the script. I know what people think. But there was, there was such heroism as well, such commitment. And I get, you know, annoyed, you know, at being informed on and things like that. But, you know, looking around me, the vast majority of people were terrific. And I could not have spent a lifetime in the movement. Spent all the years in prison, got out, went back into the service. I couldn't have done that unless I was inspired by what I was fighting for and inspired by the people around me. See, when I talk about lack of training and all, I don't want to come across as, you know, where, you know, stupid or something. They weren't, you know, I mean, if you put me in a space shuttle, I wouldn't know how to fly it. Does that mean I'm stupid? It just means I'm not trained. You know what I mean? With a better leadership, with a more focused leadership, I believe, with the caliber of people we had, I believe we could have got to a much stronger negotiating position than we did when it finally did come to negotiations, you know. What was it like being in prison when the hunger strike was taking place? Well, I wasn't in prison then, I was outside then, yeah. I was at Bobby Sanchez funeral. In fact, by pure coincidence, I mean, it's just pure coincidence. I can actually see my, when the firing party was shooting over his coffin, I can see myself in the crowd there, right behind the firing party. I mean, I didn't know they were coming out there. I had no idea. Pure coincidence. But I was actually there that day. It was the most unbelievable. There must have been about 150,000 people at it. I mean, that struck a chord in Irish people. It was unbelievable. But, you know, we talk about how bad the blocks were to have to die like that, to starve yourself to death. You know, it depends on you. I don't like missing breakfast, you know. I like my grove. Anybody who knows me knows that. I like my grove, you know. But to go on a hunger strike and to do that and the commitment he had, you know. And the thing about it is, it's an interesting thing, you know, we're told today that we were fighting for United Ireland. But, you know, Ireland was united for most of its history. It's only partitioned for 100 years. We were the Irish Republican Army, not the United Ireland Army. And I think Bobby Sands understood that very well because when he won a hunger strike, he wrote a message that was later made public and it said, what's lost here is lost for the Republic. And when he was in a prison mass later on, he passed a message to one of his friends in the mass and the message said, among other things, tell the boys the Republic is safe with me. He didn't say United Ireland. He said the Republic, you know. See when on the first hunger strike, like Bobby Sands and that, did she not sign the agreement to say that everything was fine. They were going to give them their normal clothes and but then she took it back straight away. That's my understanding. I don't know all the ins and outs because it wasn't involved in those negotiations. Somebody who would know a lot of Sam Miller. Richard O'Rourke too. Richard O'Rourke actually he was instrumental in getting my book to the publishers, Belfast Light. He wrote On the Blanket. It's all about that stuff. And he's written several books since and Richard O'Rourke had very comprehensive knowledge of that time. But it is my understanding that there was, the Brits reneged, you know, which is a surprise. When we say the Brits, now I gotta make something clear James. When we talk about the Brits really, we're talking about England. England is 85% of the population in the UK. It's 86% some of its gross domestic product. I mean, the Scottish and the Welsh aren't really an issue. It's England. We say Brits but it's really England. English politicians are the most blood thirsty in dealing with the IRA and the most strident in trying to maintain a constitutional link with Ireland in some way. You know what I mean? How was it at Bobby Sands's funeral? Did that fuel you to keep going? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And it was changed history. That was a game change. It changed history. It changed history in a lot of ways. But I think, you know, it was a powerful historical moment. But it was also a very frustrating time because again, we didn't have the capacity to head back in the way we would have like to head back against the British. So it was frustrating too. You know, people wanted to, you know, you don't fight a war for revenge. That's crazy. But you know, you fight a war to achieve certain political goals. But there's no question that young fellas at a time like that want to head back. They're motivated to strike back at the enemy. And you know, there really wasn't the capacity at the time to do that. You know, that, yeah. But so that was frustrating as an area of volunteer. You know, I was there. I was there as an IRA volunteer. I was in active service at the time. And it was heartbreaking. And then, you know, nine more men died after that. And so 10 hunger strikers died in the blocks. And we have to bear in mind that two hunger strikers died in England. You know, Michael Gauhan and Frank Stagg at a different time. So, you know, you know, I remember, you know, going around bases in America and you'd see a base named after some guy who won the Medal of Honor in Vietnam, Korea, World War II. And very often it was one for some active heroism that may have been an impulsive act, not taken away from it. Maybe jumping under grenade to save your friends or charging machine, whatever. Right? But an impulsive act in the heat of combat. But these guys refuse three meals a day, every day for two months, up to two months and more. I think Bobby Sand survived his 72 days. And they would lovely, tasty meals, better meals than ever you would normally get in the cell with them. And basically, those men refused life three times a day, week after week, for up to two months, you know. I don't know many acts of heroism anywhere like that, you know. So, we had very inspiring people. And of course, it wasn't just the hunger strikers. I mean, I've seen things that will never be made public that IRA guys done like the service that would have won the Medal of Honor, the Victoria Cross and any other army. But, you know, it's all lost to history. They'll never be known because we were a secret army and these things couldn't be made public. But, you know, I saw enormous acts of heroism. And on the other hand, too, you had people in the area who shouldn't have been there, you know, waste of space, complete, utter waste of space. But, you know, I'd served in, like I said, the Marine Special Forces. I work with SEAL Team. We were based with SEAL Team, too. I worked with the American Green Berets, you know. I got to understand the Special Forces caliber and the Special Forces mindset. And in a number of IRA volunteers, I saw the same caliber, the same quality, you know, with the right leadership and the right resources and direction. They would have been as good as any soldier in the world, you know. And that keeps you going. That inspired me, anyway. How hard was it to lose brothers? It was very tough, you know. How do you deal with that? Is that fuel you have engine, so you're trying to de-forget then what you're fighting for? No, I don't think so. I had a number of friends killed. I remember one SCS ambush. There were three volunteers killed. And I knew Pete Ryan was one of them very well from jail. And Lawrence McNally, he'd been helping me buy guns in the States. And we actually lived in a flat together for about four or five months. So we were real close, really good mates, you know. I knew a good few fellows killed over the years. Guys I was in jail with, guys I had, you know, guys you slept in the same bed with and things like that and houses and that, you know. By the way, don't... I mean, we slept, you know. And, yeah. No, I tell you what, a feeling of loss and a feeling of pride, but never really a feeling of revenge because, you know, even a lot of the fellows who were killed, you know, sometimes propaganda would say these guys were murdered by the Brits. They would prefer to say they were killed in action. They were fighting for their country and they were killed in action. They volunteered to do it and they went in, you know, knowing what they were at and know if they paid the price, you know, they paid it willingly. You know, nobody wants to die, but you know, I mean, the thing about the IRA is, you know, if you don't want to go to jail and you don't want to get killed, don't fucking join the IRA. You know, it's a good first step. How hard was it to see Irish calling Irish as well, though? Well, that is where, that is how the British, that's how a small country like Britain conquered half the world. They get one side, they kill the other side. You know, they're master manipulators and it's very hard because it only works the benefit of the enemy. It only works the benefit of the British when Irish are killing Irish. It doesn't work to any, you know, it doesn't work to any Irish benefit, you know, but I think it's important when you're involved in something like that to try to look at the big picture and to see who the real enemy is and the real enemy was as far as I was concerned, British strategy in Ireland. If you focus too much on your real enemy is the loyalist or the unionist or the guy because you know, everything's parochial and things could get too parochial and you get tied up in sort of maybe an almost tribal thing, you know what I mean? And it's easy to see why that would happen. I mean, you know, people often wonder, you know, why did Indians not get together and you know, fight the white man in the west? I mean, the Indians were working for the Calvary here, killing each other. You see that tribal thing, that tribal stuff that you have, you have that everywhere. You know, you have that everywhere and a power like Britain exploits that, you know, exploits it. But they sort of created the tribes in the first place because Ireland was just, was a separate country with a separate language and a separate culture and they planted Ulster as an act of ethnic cleansing, bringing Scottish and, you know, mostly Scottish and English planters in there to turn Ulster, which at that time was the toughest nut for England to crack into an area that would become like a dagger aimed at, almost aimed at the heart of a national cohesion. What Ulster Union is now, you know, saying that they don't want United Ireland, they don't want to live in an All Island Republic. This division, this thing is baked in, you know what I mean? But it was planted by the British. It was designed to be that way. If you read what they were saying at the time of the plantations, they were open about it. You know, we're going to make Ireland English or we're going to make Ireland British and even the Edmund Spencer, the famous English planter in Elizabethan times, you know, said that the Irishman well in time quite learned to forget his Irish nation and that was the plan to wipe out the Irish nation. So see after your 10 years in prison, was it just straight out and back to normal duties? With the IRA? Yeah. With the ceasefire. You see, what happened was the ceasefire came in on the 31st of August, 1994, the first ceasefire. So I got out on that, I think the 10th of September. So I actually got out 10 days after the ceasefire and a lot of people at the time thought I got out because the ceasefire and I was saying, I did all my did every day of my time, you know? And so, you know, things were in a state of flux. We didn't know really what was happening. I think the question was, were we running rings around the brits? Were the brits running rings around us? We didn't know. And because the IRA was so, you know, you never really saw the big picture. It was all carp, you know, carpeminalized. Oh my God, why can't I pronounce that word anymore? But I think the only people who really had the big picture, in fact, I know the only people who had the big picture was British intelligence. They had the big picture, you know, and they were able to... I was talking to a journalist one time. I won't say who he was, but he was telling me that he was talking to a member of the FRU, the Force Research Unit, the British Army's military intelligence. And he said the way that they used to work would be, it'd be like, say you're an IRA man and I'm a UFF man, we're at the table here playing chess, right? Turn out the lights, right? There's the chess pieces there. Turn out the lights. But the FRU man is there with his night vision goggles on. He comes in, he changes all the pieces around. Then he put the lights back on. You know what I mean? And it's a mess. You know what I mean? And that's what they do. They manipulate and they take out this person, they take out that person because they want to get this person up, you know. They kind of kill the right people, buy the right people, jail the right people, you know, to get where they're going. But... When you get out after your 10, you're straight back to business? Well, because there was a ceasefire on. Yeah, I volunteered immediately. Well, they told me take a break for a while and you know, you've just been in 10 years. Yeah. And, you know, they do that in any way. They don't like people to... You need to sell your head a bit and take a bit of a break. But I was more or less back at business fairly quickly. We were planning at that stage maybe operation... Not maybe. We were planning an operation in England at that stage to knock out the... Or to disrupt the power supply to the Southeast of England for a period of time. The thinking behind it was that there had been two bombs in the city of London at Bishop's Gate and at Baltic Exchange. And those two bombs caused more financial damage to the British economy than the 10,000 explosions in the whole course of the Troubles. And so they set up a ring of steel around the city of London and over 1,500 cameras, nearly impossible to penetrate. So, you know, we kind of came to the conclusion then that if you were in Bonn or Frankfurt or Tokyo or Wall Street and you were phoning somebody in the city of London, you don't care if he's in a police office or a tent. All you care about, can he answer the phone and can he use the computer? And you can't do that without electricity, you know. So we came up with a plan to disrupt electricity in the Southeast of England for a period of time. We weren't sure how long it would take because we weren't sure how long it would take the British to respond to it. But we were caught then in London. Again, I believe we were informed on again. And we ended up getting 35 years in prison for that. And about several weeks after we were convicted I was approached by a prison officer who said the two Americans wanted to see me for the American Embassy. And I said, well, I'm Irish and I have an Irish passport. I have nothing against the United States. No problem with the Americans. But, you know, if I have a counselor issue, I'll deal with the Irish Embassy. So the prison officer went away, came back about an hour later and said, they said, you will want to see them. You will want to see them. So I thought, oh, you know, what's this about? I started thinking, is this a legal issue, something to do with the Whitey Bolger case? Maybe that they're going to extradite me to the States over the Whitey Bolger or something to do with Whitey Bolger. And then I was thinking, well, that doesn't make sense because it just got 35 years a few weeks ago. So then I thought, are they going to tell me, well, after you're 35 years are up, you're coming back over. You know, I had no idea. So there were two other prisoners, two other IRA prisoners there. And I approached them and I said, you know, I want to find out what's going on here. You don't think it's appropriate. I won't go. And they said, no, no, find out, find out what they want. So I went out to this visiting box and it was kind of like this. There was a man and a woman seated across kind of where you are, James. I was here and the woman had a face on her like a slapdarse. She'd probably burned me at the stake. I could tell right away her hostility was just pouring out of every pore of her body, right? The other guy there was a very distinguished looking guy, but a amiable, you know, friendly demeanor. So the woman spoke first and she said, you know, how are you being treated here? I said, great. Everything's great. What's the food like? Best food I ever ate in prison. Best ever. And are you getting reading materials and stuff like that? I said, yeah, there's plenty to read. So I knew what she was getting at. She wanted me to be whinging and whining and begging, you know, to get me out of here in some way. So I knew that. Like, so I started letting on like I said in the book that I just got a 30 favorite tickets to the Playboy mansion. Now, I mean, I hated every minute of it. It was a nightmare. It was like, it was just, you're like, it's like you're buried alive in this place, the special secure unit hated it, but I wasn't going to start, you know, you know, crying and whining and looking deals. That wasn't, just wasn't going to happen. So then she says, oh, you certainly don't got a lot to complain about. And then she was quiet. Then the other guy, big smile, handshake. He says, John, I'm with a different agency. As soon as he said that, I knew it was CIA. And as soon as I realized that, I knew what was coming, a sales pitch. Right. So he says, John, I've been following your career with some interest. And I said, right. And he says, John, you know, we can leave the visiting box right now. He says, you don't even have to go back in sight. We can walk out right now. He says, we'll have you on a plane for America tomorrow morning. He says, and we'll give you a lot of money. And then he kind of leaned forward. And he says, John, a lot of money. He says, all you got to do is tell the security forces here where the explosives are hidden. And I says, are you aware of already done 10 years in prison? He says, yes. And I says, well, then you'll be aware. I says, I've been in prison before. I know what's facing me. I says, I'm not going to become the hard man now. But I can see you in a year's time. I says, I'm not going to betray my country. I'm not going to betray my comrades. You know, it's just not going to happen. So they actually got up to leave. And then he, as he was leaving, I said, you shook my hand coming in here. Well, you're not shaking now. So he turned around and magnanimously took my hand, you know, shook my hand. And I says, maybe we'll meet up in 35 years and we'll swap a few war stories. And he goes, maybe we will. He says, you know, and then I says, I'll tell you what I says, I'll do you a favor. I says, I'll tell you how to defeat the IRA. I says, you tell your British friends to leave Ireland and allow us to build a national democracy without any further interference from the British and our internal affairs. And I says, I guarantee you the IRA just disappear overnight. And I says, I'll tell you another thing too. I says, I'll not charge you a penny for that information. So he just smiled and he left, you know. So I went in back in and I reported to the boys. They approached. I phoned the prisoner's department in Dublin, told them of the attempt to recruit me. And I phoned my solicitor, Mike Fisher, who I only recently learned since died. And I'm sorry, lovely, lovely man and told him of the approach to, of the attempt to recruit me as an informer. And the next day, the area called the second ceasefire. And then I realized why they were in a panic to see me that day. Because when I went out to see them, I knew nothing about another ceasefire coming up. As far as I knew, I was there for 35 years. I had no reason or evidence whatsoever to believe otherwise. Right. And they knew they had to get me. They had to get me, you know, that day or they weren't getting me, you know. So you could basically, because you got out in a good Friday agreement, 1998. I eventually did. Yeah. But I didn't know that at the time. I didn't know we were getting out. So they try to set you up. Well, they tried to recruit me when they thought when they knew I knew I was doing 35 years. You know what I mean? But that shows you the caliber of man you are not to turn switch snitch like majority of people do that. Did you, did you, did you struggle with that as time went on? You realized there was a few informants working for the IRA? Oh, of course. The IRA had a lot of informants and at a very high level too, at a very high level. But the vast majority of people were sound people who, who, who, you know, made tremendous sacrifices and, you know, you have to sacrifice a lot in the area. You have to sacrifice so much on normality. It's a life of poverty. You know, I mean, you never have money. It's dangerous. You know, you never know. I mean, I mean, when I was out, I remember every Christmas, I, my Christmas dinner, I'd always think, will I be dead or in prison this time next year? You know, and well, eventually I wasn't in prison, you know, and then, but so while, you know, you know, there were people betraying us. The vast majority of people were sound, you know, but the trouble is in a small organization like ours, it takes very few people to do a lot of damage if they're the wrong type of people. You know what I mean? And, but the Brits, you know, they're, they're good, they're good at it, you know, and they have unlimited resources, unlimited time. You see, British intelligence guy, he's sitting back. He's on a wage. He's on a pension, you know, he's got all the time in the world. You're an IRA guy. You got no money. You got no prospects. You're trying to stay alive. You're trying to stay out of prison, but this guy can sit back and play the long game much harder for us to do it. You know what I mean? So, you know, the only advantage we had is that when we were able to maintain our secrecy and security, like for example, in South Arman, we were able very often to get on top of the Brits, you know, in South Arman. I'm sure you've heard it, the South Arman IRA. That was one area definitely where the Brits were on the back foot, where the IRA held the initiative and it was all down to a very small handful of people, very small, but they weren't penetrated. They were highly courageous, determined, motivated patriots. And the IRA had that caliber in every area, Belfast, Dairy and that, but they had a particular concentration in South Arman. And what they had in particular in South Arman was they had no informants. And I think they showed, like one in six, like Crosswood then is a very small town. I mean, it's unbelievable how small Crosswood then is if you go into it, but one in six British soldiers killed during the troubles was killed in three miles of that town square, right? And, you know, I'm talking now as a soldier as a resistance, you know, somebody was involved in resistance. I don't mean to come across as cold or, you know, talking about people being killed and like it's a good thing. It's not a good thing, but there was a war on and that area was highly effective. Again, no informants and I just sometimes wonder what the IRA could have done if it had replicated that in one or two more areas. I think it had been, you know, I think we'd have been on top of the situation. Whereas I believe towards the end by the time the IRA had signed up to the Good Friday Agreement that the British very much held the initiative and were very much in control of the strategic environment across the board, even though the IRA tried to portray it as a stalemate, there was no stalemate. I mean, the Brit, outside of a small enclave in South Irma, the Brits could basically go anywhere they wanted and they commanded the whole area. Excuse me. The IRA certainly couldn't do that. We were infiltrated. Like I don't think we had senior members of my five working for us giving us information, but they had our, I mean they had our head at a security, Scappatichi, you probably heard of him, steak knife, the head of IRA security, that the man in there was a British agent for years. And a lot of people believe that's just the tip of the iceberg. You know, it's scary when you think about it. How many British soldiers were there and how many people were in the IRA? Well, tens of thousands of British soldiers went through the north over 30 years. It was, I don't know the number, but I know around the time when the hunger strikes and around the time I joined the IRA, there were 30,000 Crown Forces in the north that you take. Regular British Army, UDR, RUC in a six county area approximately 30,000 and there would have been at the most maybe 300 act of IRA men, you know, but there would have been a you know, a large amount of helpers and things like that. But you know, but you find in areas it was a very small number of IRA men really did the operations. It was a very small number. And I think people like, again I talk about South Amal, but how shock people would be if they knew how small a number of people were actually doing the main operations there. It was just a handful of people, but they kept it tight. They kept it quiet. It was hard to do that in the cities. You had more men and I think the Brits had more opportunities to infiltrate, but I mean every area produced top caliber men. I mean Bobby Sands was from Belfast, you know, Francis Hughes himself, Terry. Every area produced top caliber people, you know. But I don't get them wrong. I mean, I mean, there were people in the IRA who shouldn't have been in it. You know, as I said, there were people who were complete waste of space, waste of space, you know, and that weakened a spot on the whole. Like I said, I couldn't have maintained, you know, lifetime of commitment to that unless I was inspired by the people around me and for the most part I was. The news is a very powerful tool to manipulate any human being. Was there any other bombings that were blamed on the IRA Well, there were definitely bombings and the IRA never deliberately killed civilians, right? I would never have joined an organization that would deliberately kill some guy's family walking down the street. I mean, but it happened. It happened. A lot of times it happened because of lack of attention to detail. Like I said, lack of attention to detail, like I said, lack of planning. But there were cases definitely where the dark-handed British intelligence was involved in some atrocities by tampering with devices and things like that. I mean, there were cases where the dark-handed British intelligence was involved in some atrocities by tampering with devices and things like that. And I believe in the next couple of years, I don't want to I don't want to go too far with this because I don't want to betray confidence. But I believe in the next couple of years there's a couple of things are going to come out that's going to make that clear on a number of operations that were actually acts of sabotage on behalf of the British state or in which IRA men working for the Brits. You know, that yes, that did happen. I mean, that absolutely didn't happen, but I don't want to absolve the IRA from blaming for things. They were involved in where innocent civilians were killed, where it was due to incompetence or whatever on their part because that did happen too. But I would never have joint normalization. I mean, if somebody told me I'm going to go out and I'm going to liberty kill in civilians, you know, I'd shoot at myself. I know, seriously, like, I mean, you know, oh my God, you know, it was not only, it was killing in civilians like it's morally wrong and it's politically wrong. It damages the struggle that sabotages what you're fighting for. I mean, you know, you want to look back at history someday if we achieve our full goals and look back with pride at what we've done. And you know, you can't look back at innocent civilians killed with pride. Nobody could do that. Now, having said that, I was never involved in an operation that killed innocent civilians. I was never the vast majority, the vast overwhelming majority of IRA men were never involved in operations where innocent civilians were killed. There was a small handful of cases where that did happen and it was either the result of incompetence, poor intelligence or in a number of cases. And like I said, I believe this may come out in the next two or three years. The dark end of British intelligence was involved in some of them, you know. It is hard to see other humans killing other humans. For me personally, it shouldn't be any worse, but I've said this before in the podcast, but if somebody was to invade Scotland, we've never been invaded. We've never had other people here try to take over a country and I can assure you if somebody's trying to invade Scotland, I'd be the first to grab a rifle and stand to try and protect my family. Do you know what I mean? You'd send them home, I think, again. When, yeah. Of course, man. Of course, what are you going to do? I have a lot of people who make assumptions and think, you never want to see any humans hurt. This has been going on for hundreds of years. Wars, power, greed. It is. And it's tough to, for someone who joins maybe a resistance organization with the highest ideals and makes the most sacrifices and then turns out other people at a higher level are maybe working to a different agenda to see can they get a career out of it or see what they can get out of it. You know, this corruption is what kind of kills a lot of this stuff, you know, and where a lot of people sometimes end up demoralizing and disillusioned. I, yeah, it's a terrible thing. I don't consider myself well, as a soldier, I will do what a soldier needs to do, but I don't I would never consider myself a cruel person. I have empathy. I have sympathy. I mean I trained with the British parachute regiment when I was in recon. They came over and they were doing some amphibious boat training with us. I went out and socialized with them. Had drinks with them, had a good time, had fun. You know, even though at the time I knew them in the north and even at the time I knew I was going to join the array and some might be shooting at these guys, but like, you know, it's not... Can you understand that they're doing their job also? Absolutely. Absolutely. As James Connolly said at his thing, at his execution when he was asked what he prayed for the firing party he said, he said, I respect all brave men who do their duty. I can understand that. Absolutely. But you know, I had a duty to do. They have a duty to do. And it's unfortunate that's the way the world is, you know, but you know the big picture for me is Ireland has, you know, Ireland never invaded anybody. Ireland never partitioned another country. Ireland never planted another country. You know, I mean, I think Ireland needs to be a fully independent country at some stage. 32 County and build a joint civic identity, a joint national identity, you know, and that can never happen while the Brits are in there in the mix underwriting the sectarian supremacy of one small faction in our country up like 18 percent of our country yet, you know, 2 percent of the UK and yet seem to be able to say no to everybody at all the time, you know. I understand that they have their beliefs. But you know, one of the ironies of it is is that Irish Republicanism was founded by Protestants. The United Irishmen were founded in 1791. You see through the long history of Irish resistance and Irish rebellions the vast majority of the the rebels and things like that wanted either to restore a Gaelic aristocracy to Ireland or have a Catholic king. It was the United Irishmen founded by a wolf tone and people like that in 1791 who were the first to come up with the concept of Ireland as a sovereign independent republic in its own right. They were the first and of the 28 founding members of the United Irishmen 26 Presbyterians and two were Anglicans. All were Protestants. So the Irish Republican movement was founded exclusively by Protestants, you know, one of the ironies of history. But you see, they were Protestants of the Enlightenment and they saw themselves as Irishmen and they didn't believe for one second that just because they were Protestant they couldn't be Irish, right? But then you then you have, you know the Protestantism that comes from the plantation tradition that sees itself as colonial settlers as a sort of garrison for England and believe that that gives them unique rights because they were here on a civilizing mission to tame the Irish, tame the Gael, you know, the type of thing and all the stuffs in the mix, you know. Do you think Ireland will ever be independent? Fully independent. Well, I don't know. I don't know because while it might be united territorially the thing about it is with the Good Friday agreement you see the unity they're talking about under the Good Friday agreement is it maintains the sectarian dynamic. In other words, under the Good Friday agreement that says if Ireland is united you can stay British or you can stay Irish, you know, the whole point and the hope, well you can stay British or you can stay Irish and it retains institutional links with the crown that the unions can be seen at what I would call as some sort of post-colonial rump, you know. The whole point of Irish Republicanism was to break the connection with England and develop a joint civic identity like in America when I grew up Italians, Irish, blacks every culture, every religion every imaginable diverse group you can have but you have one overriding loyalty to the American Republic India, 2.1 billion people, right? 2000 ethnic groups and 15 official languages and there are one United Republic Ireland, right? Half the population of London, right? Catholic tradition, national tradition unionist tradition and we can't be one United Republic, you know and the reason we can't is because there is a foreign government in the mix underwriting the supremacy of one section of our people and it's breaking that connection with England that wolf tone that the Protestant founders of Republicanism believed was the only way to eventually build a national identity and I believe that's still I mean the first Italian Prime Minister when Italy used to be just a bunch of different city states he says first we have to make Italy then we can make Italians you know what I mean? Same situation Ireland, we have a partitionist mindset in the south because of partition we have a unionist mindset in the north and I don't believe we'll ever really have an Irish Republican mindset until we have a full Irish Republic What are you thinking your first night after you get 35 years? I was thinking... Did you start questioning your whole life decision making or were you still just proud to be the soldier and willing to basically die or do leave in prison? I wasn't too proud of that I was thinking you know I was thinking these fuckers informing me at the top I'm sick of them Why you? I don't mean me personally It was a bunch of fellas That's 45 years from informants I'd still be in jail today only for the Good Friday Agreement and people say to me you don't support the Good Friday Agreement and I don't because I support the Irish Republic and it can come from the Good Friday Agreement but when we talk about the peace process I support the peace I would not advocate to return to war but my criticism is with the process because with the process leads it can't be Irish Republican goals but to answer your question James I remember more or less my first day in Belmarsh a prison within a prison like a concrete tomb this was I remember waking up my first morning and thinking I just done 10 years and I'm 10 years in Port Leish you know I'm out in 10 years there's me I'm out 20 months back in basically I know forever and I deeply suspect that I was back in because of informers or an informer at some stage now the British Security Services at the time said there was no informer it was all a result of surveillance that's possibly true but I have two things one is the security forces never met an informer for obvious reasons because they want to protect them and second of all I can't really go into it but I have my reasons to believe from what happened and things that came out in the trial that an informer was involved so at some stage you get sick of your own people you get a bit tired of it but look at I'm alive I know a lot of guys were killed and informers got them killed the SCS were waiting on them what did they gain from that save their own skins were they getting money or less sentences themselves well basically save their own skins but people became informers there's people who became informers at a low level just to keep the driver's license maybe a taxi driver and he stopped drunk driving one night and the cops say we can make this go away we can get a driver's license and maybe get some other man killed low level informers were just as dangerous because you see people think assume you don't have to be at the top of the IRA to be in use but if you're a driver and you're just driving an IRA in the meetings you don't have to be at the meeting you just tell the MI5 or the IEC special branch where that meeting is held they bug that house so they're sitting in on the meeting so even the lowest level informer is extremely dangerous and get people killed people inform for all kinds of reasons and one thing but mostly is to save their skin but one thing that really surprised me is I consider myself I can be tough enough I can put up with a lot but I'm still the same type of guy if your producer came in there and said somebody stole my wallet and nothing to do with me but so I kind of thought informers would be furtive nervous but what I found out from talking to people who had interrogated informants and stuff over the years some guys thrive on it there's a personality type that thrives on being an informer in believing they got one over on you that they're smart on you and the Brits tell them oh no you're not an informer you're not an agent you're James Bond and they can play these guys and play their personalities so one thing that really that surprised me that some people thrive on being informers another thing about being an informer for some people is in a perverse way being an informer but not being known to be an informer can really enhance your status in some communities because say you're a known IRA man in an area and you're an informer so you know you're not going to be shot with a sash you know loyalists aren't going to take you out of it and you know that if the IUC are going to get anybody shot they're going to send them to somebody else's door not yours so that gives people a bit of swagger then it gives it a bit of swagger because they know they're uncauchable but that swagger is seen by other people and they think that guy's got balls in a strange way it kind of enhances their prestige and for a lot of people you know there are people who will betray the IRA to actually keep the prestige of being known as an IRA man the prestige of being an IRA man means more to them than what the IRA stands for than the IRA goals they'll actually betray the IRA so they can stay being known as an IRA man to get the prestige that comes up it's a very bizarre I can't get my head around it but I know it's there like you know it exists what's the worst thing you've seen while involved in the IRA well I couldn't really go into that James I couldn't go into that but do you get PTSD do you struggle with the past or do you kind of just have to go on with it no I struggle with the future James I struggle that what we fought for our goals aren't there that we're not on the trajectory for this all out in republic we're on a trajectory we're in a region a so-called united Ireland where you can be British or Irish so this so-called shared island that they're talking about now instead of the united Ireland a shared island where we share in Britain's analysis of the nature of the conflict we share in the colonial legacy of sectarian apartheid and we share in the imperial project of divide and rule we didn't fight to share Ireland that way we fought to unite our country as citizens Protestant Catholic together as citizens there's a tradition Ireland I'm not blind to it I know unionists don't want to be part of it and I know that on the 12th of July every year many unionists celebrate the defeat of Ireland they celebrate the start of the protest and the sentencing and all that flowed from that the land wars they celebrate and rejoice and everything that went wrong in Ireland because they just celebrate that but on the other hand there is that DNA in the Protestant culture there were the founding fathers of Irish republicanism so you have that dichotomy in 1791 Protestants founded the united Irishmen to fight sectarianism in 1795 Protestants founded the orange order to fight the united Irishmen so Protestants motivated by the enlightenment founded the united Irishmen Protestants motivated by plantation sectarian supremacy founded the orange order What changed that? Well that hasn't really changed you still have Protestants, I should say unionists in the north who celebrate on the 12th How hard does that to see Irishmen celebrating the 12th of a defeated other Irishmen Is that weird for you? I understand it I can understand it and I understand their fears you see Catholic nationalism in Ireland you see I'm an Irish republican and people think automatically that means you're a Catholic nationalist that's sort of a different thing a lot of Catholic nationalists if they had their way would actually love to see get rid of Protestants things like that I think the Protestant tradition and culture the enlightenment Protestant one is a very important thing in our country that's why our flag is green white and orange it stands for not an agreed Ireland where people agree to disagree about the constitutional source of Irish sovereignty but a united Ireland and it's an important tradition but a lot of Catholic nationalists a lot of them be quite right wing and almost fascist tendency some of them would have been quite happily see Protestants ground into the dirt if they had got a chance in their day they would have been quite happily seen that or maybe even expelled from the country so I don't blame Protestants when their home rule first came up for being against home rule because they said home rule was Rome rule I wouldn't want Rome rule for Ireland either I wouldn't want a Catholic run Ireland but where I disagree with them is where it isn't their Protestant religion that they're fighting for it's their sense of supremacy as colonial settlers on behalf of England on behalf of Britain you know the type of thing that's where I kind of draw the line and the thing about it is I understand their point of view but I believe the Republic has to win I believe the Republic has to gain supremacy over that at some stage What did you do then after the Good Friday agreement when you think you're going to spend the rest of your life in prison to then get released what was the plan then are you going to either escape or die in jail or get out I would still be in prison some people criticize me because I blatantly say I'm against the Good Friday agreement but I'm against the process I'm not against the peace that's very important to understand and they say well you got out under the Good Friday agreement but you have to bear in mind when we got out under the Good Friday agreement we didn't really know what it was about anything and we were being told that this would lead to Irish Republican goals eventually and if we could lead to Irish Republican goals through peaceful means I'm very happy with that happy days that's better you know so I had no problem with the ceasefire and I had no problem with the Good Friday agreement initially but it took a long time for the penny for me to drop that as time went on Sinn Fein and the provost wrote more and more into the British system by 2007 when I resigned they were recognized in the PSNI as the law which is our British Constabulary in Ireland as the lawful authority in Ireland now no Republican recognizes the lawful authority of any thing in Ireland except the constitutional authority of the Irish people to make Irish laws when you recognize the police force or the police service of a foreign government it abrogates it totally denies everything Republicanism stands for so that's when I resigned at that point but I was willing up to then to give it a chance you know to see where it would go and I worked for Sinn Fein quite hard at times and but now I see them as I actually see Sinn Fein as an impediment to Irish Republicanism as as almost allied with the British government in a sense that they have completely been co-opted to a British strategy and completely co-opted to the British analysis of the role in Ireland and Sinn Fein you know when Martin McGinnis shook hands with the Queen in England the Queen of England you probably were that James when she came over right that was symbolizing you know she didn't wait in line to shake his hand he waited in line to shake her hand and nothing against the woman personally the crown and the symbol of the British state and British jurisdiction in Ireland and that handshake was saying to the world that the British crown still has a role to play in a so-called future united Ireland right and the entire purpose of our struggle was to break the connection with England you know and develop a joint civic identity not strengthened not to bake in the sectarian division bake in the British Irish cleavage and national loyalties or perpetuity does that handshake strengthen it strengthen Britain and Ireland I think it does it's strengthening it because what it says is you have a legitimacy here I am recognising that you have a legitimacy in this country you have a role to play in the future here and we were trying to get rid of that so I found that very disconcerting how hard does that for you a man who spent 10 years in prison nearly 35 years in prison until then then what were you fighting for well at that point I realised that there's a saying that if you want to achieve something you have to surround yourself with people who are in the same mission as you and I thought we were all on the same mission to achieve the Irish Republic but when Martin McGinnis shook hands with the Queen of England and the members of the leadership and others who were on a different page a totally different page and I got a very strong impression that the Brits were writing the page and turning the page you know what I mean so again I do support the peace and people then I am often asked if you don't think this is going to work then what is the solution what is you see and people need to remember there was never need for war in Ireland ever there was never need for war if Britain had respected the wishes of the vast majority of Irish people in this country there would never been war I remember the British Secretary of State Peter Brook in the early 1990s and he said that the British government was not against only against this violent expression but in 1918 there was a peaceful election in which the overwhelming majority of the Irish people voted for an Irish Republic in the 1918 32-county All-Ireland elections overwhelming 76% voted for an all Irish Republic and British responded with partition and they responded with the black and tans you know so we have to put things perspective and while the IRA has to take responsibility for what it done for the wrong things had done you know from an Irish Republican perspective the primary root cause of violence in Ireland is the British Presence and the British Presence is not the Unionist it is not the Unionist the British Presence is the presence of Britain's came to jurisdiction in Ireland and the civil and military apparatus that makes that possible how hard was it to resign from the IRA was it an easy decision or was it something you thought about by that time it was a very easy decision and when I resigned I told a relative of mine used to visit me in Portley's prison from time to time and they said to me I told him I resigned they said to me oh my god you must be devastated you've given your life to this and you've been to jail and it's everything you know you live for this oh you must be devastated and I says no I says I feel like an anchor husband lifted off my neck I said I'll never again have to go into a Sinn Féin meeting and listen to that delusional bullshit that if we go along with internal settlement on British terms that we're going to somehow reach an Irish Republic that in some way the British government was going to legislate for the Irish Republic it was insanity I mean it was just counterintuitive in every way a lot of people made money out of it a lot of people did well out of it got holiday homes out of it and nice little lives but you know I preferred to keep my integrity as an Irish Republican and you know to retain my Republican politics and I felt I couldn't do that anymore in Sinn Féin or in the Provost as I said earlier I didn't fight I didn't join the Provost to fight for the Provost I joined the Provost to fight for the Irish Republic and when they went off that path then I went off them and I had no problem with that so what have you done with your life then since you left wrote a book wrote a book nah James nothing really much see the trouble is I'd love I'd love I'd love to be in peaceful Republic well even peaceful political I'd love to be involved in politics I used to enjoy I enjoyed even when the ceasefire was on when I was still witch and fan I enjoyed elections I enjoyed to get our team on board when I thought our team was on board the Republic and then when I it wasn't going that direction I left but I enjoyed that I miss you know I joined the IRA when I was young and idealistic and now I'm old and idealistic but I'm still inspired by the concept of an Irish Republic and I would love to work politically towards that I would love it I would love to be involved in peaceful political agitation the trouble is is republicanism in Ireland which used to be a strong united cohesive force has now been broken into like a pane of glass into dozens of different pieces and each piece thinks it's the real republican movement so you have all these republican groups in Ireland now and a lot of them have you know preconditions you know if Ireland isn't socialist then it's not worth it or Ireland isn't Catholic it's not worth it or if Ireland isn't this or that it's not worth it right instead of the bottom line which I believe it should be does Irish constitutional authority reside when the Irish people or does it not that to me is the bottom line the Irish people should make up be the only people in Ireland who make its laws and who decide its course and you know and then you get into the argument with some people like well then why would it be in the European Union you don't have sovereignty there again that's another argument but the thing about it is I think the bottom line is to end British jurisdiction in this country and if there was if there was a peaceful political way to do that I'd be as involved as ever I hope that can happen I hope that will come to fruition Do you think the troubles will start back again? That's totally up to the British I think that's totally up to the British because like I said in 1918 we had a peaceful election and the British answered that with the black and pans of partition you see partition wasn't brought in to defend the rights of unions partition was brought in specifically tonight the right of Ireland as a whole to national self-determination and Britain a lot of Irish people say the Brits want to be here and they'd love to be out of here your average British citizen probably does but the British intelligence and security services are not going to leave that massive island at their back door on their western flank and not be totally on top of what's happening there because it's a major strategic interest for them I mean the British are in Yemen they're in Iraq, they're in places around the world you know halfway around the world trying to manipulate and shape the strategic environment to suit them does anybody seriously think they're just going to walk out of Ireland and close the door behind them they're going to leave Ireland if they can in a way that suits them and what a former government that suits their strategic interests and whether it starts up again or not I certainly hope not but you know people say the war is over but I don't believe that in one sense Britain declared war in the Irish Republic when it was declared 1919 they outlawed 32-county dollar and they outlawed the Irish Republic there's still that war with that Irish Republic and the British are they work against it every day and they're always trying to manipulate the political situation here to ensure that never comes to pass now there's no resistance to that there's no arm resistance to that so there's nobody fighting on the Irish side against that and hopefully then there never will because I don't think there'll ever need to be because the simple matter is the vast majority of the Irish people would vote for Irish independence tomorrow if they were given that choice but I think to paraphrase something Martin Luther King once said British rule in Ireland is probably in its death throes the only question is how expensive are they going to make the funeral and time will tell on that see the guy, the mob boss from Boston, James White, Abulja he then became a known informant for the FBI he could have no, he definitely didn't I'll tell you why he was an informant apparently but I don't think he was telling them every little thing that happened I think they were working on a strategy he was giving them information on the Italian mafia in the north and the Boston FBI guys were rolling up the mafia and they were getting promotions and they were getting great kudos from the FBI for doing this and they let Whitey run I think excuse me but there's two reasons why I don't think he informed on it one I don't believe for one moment that the FBI would have allowed us to leave American territory waters with those arms for two reasons, once we could have sank which we came with an air spread to do it, right, that close the second is they weren't going to hand the credit for the investigation and arrest of that to a foreign jurisdiction Did you think about him those being a suspect? At the start until I realized the Irish Navy was waiting for us behind the Sculloch rocks on our way into Canmar Bay where it's a smaller islands where our radar couldn't pick them up Whitey didn't know we were going there but they knew so I didn't know, Whitey didn't know so no, I actually don't believe Sean O'Callaghan definitely informed and somebody in the Irish leadership told me to come now, bring everything and you be on the boat which made absolutely no sense and actually fucked everything up So Whitey, I'll just let some story because I know you were coming on and I know there was a connection but this man was on the run for 16 years FBI second most wanted above Bin Laden over a million pound bonus you would have got if you'd found out any information for him for 16 years he captured the 82 years old and then beaten to death in prison just three, four years ago and a wheelchair But the thing is a few media interviewers have taken me to task for working with Whitey Bulger and they come up with all the stuff we know now because of movies and books, stuff I didn't know he murdered this one, he murdered that one he murdered this, he murdered that He was a mobster I knew he was a gangster, don't get me wrong tonight for a second, I mean I put it in a book I worked with him, but I didn't know some of the really bad stuff he was doing, like murdering he murdered a girlfriend of Steve Fleming and Polarty, I mean he didn't tell us that but the thing is the FBI knew, you see here people give out to me, oh you work with this guy you must have known, I didn't know but the FBI knew, they knew and they were letting him run and I firmly believe with no evidence that the FBI had him killed, because they put him in a prison, in an open area and let it be known he was there and let it be known he's an informer and he was killed almost immediately and I mean I was talking to some guys from Boston recently and they're absolutely convinced he was set up, he just knew too much he just knew too much about the FBI and to save I think it was an embarrassment, they just had him they just had him took out I have no doubt about it and he's wheelchair and he's in his cell even though the bad stuff it's done look I wouldn't wish that on anybody few people said to me, oh he deserted I wouldn't wish that on anybody the guy's nearly 90, he's in a wheelchair he's half blind, he's daughter and apparently and they beat him to death with a lock and a sock they gouged his eyes out and cut his tongue out, apparently nah I mean it's hard to believe now meeting this fit guy I knew then this confident gangster and he ruled the world he ruled Boston anyway if only he'd have known the end he was going to come up to but yeah he was some character I talk in the book too about Whitey and his henchmen Stevie Flemmy coming down was in a basement one time excuse me and I was drilling out the serial numbers of weapons before we sent them home so they couldn't be traced they were caught and I got very nervous I got well apprehensive I should say because they never came down there and I was on my own I was in the corner and see it crossed my mind on a number of occasions that this operation was growing legs it was getting too complicated, too big and that it could be interfering with Whitey's business and it crossed my mind a few times that he could maybe take me out you know wouldn't be hard to do, put me in a lobster pot then I know six months later no sign of me, every since somebody over where's John? oh we gave John $200,000 to bring over to you guys you ain't seen him, you know, John's in Vegas with the fucking money you know that crossed my mind you know even though I didn't know a lot of the stuff he was at, by then I'd heard enough from people he was working with to know that he was a capable killer I thought in gang wars and stuff and if you know if criminals were killing criminals there was no skin off my nose I mean I didn't, basically I didn't care it was nothing to do with me as long as you know I could get my work done you know and so I was in the corner of this basement, this real dark basement and Steve Flemmy and the other boy were talking to me and I couldn't understand what they were down there they'd never come down there before none of the guns were loaded and I remember thinking oh my god I should have a loaded gun here like I really thought there's something going on here but they did leave, they left and afterwards though I found out that John McIntyre was on the Valhalla with us was murdered in a basement and because I presumed they didn't have that many basements I'm 99% sure that was the same basement that a few weeks later they murdered him in and also I later found out that there were bodies buried in the basement too so when I was drilling out the serial numbers there was probably five or six bodies buried under me you know why is such a man at high caliber surrounding himself with guns in that that you know I've been far away from them or did he just enjoy the buzz well when you have the FBI protecting you you can do whatever you like you can do whatever you like, he wasn't worried and again when you think about it I never thought about the time but the confidence he betrayed, he said he didn't know he was working with the FBI right obviously the confidence he betrayed and the swagger that he had and the confidence that he had will kind of give you confidence you know and but he had that confidence because he knew he wasn't touchable you know so when you think back about it now it's like this circle you know you're you can project an air of of invincibility because you know you're invincible but not because you're invincible but because the enemy that way you know it's you know my god you know so what's the future hold for John Crowley well I know what it holds for a lot of people I know a lot of people like it to hold for me but I don't know I'm 65 now and I might try and write a novel and basically the way this started was I wrote a novel and I spent about three years in it so if I do say so myself and when I was trying to get it published in the states the American publisher was saying yeah your writing's good and all but you know your story you want to hear your story X-Marine, Boydie, Bolger, I array all this shit I said I can't I can't talk about that you know it's impossible but anyway one thing led to another and I think I was able to write a bit of a memoir without incriminating me or anybody else which was the main thing I mean the only person I mentioned in the book really is Martin McGinnis and he's dead so he cannot be charged or incriminated but I don't name anybody else who could be incriminated so I was very careful with that and anyway to answer your question James maybe I'll polish up that novel now I don't know or I might write something else like I'm 65 now so like what else am I going to do? I don't know I really don't know but you know I have a great family, a lovely wife a 17 year old son a 16 year old daughter and you know I'm very happy in my personal life I'm very happy and very content I'm I'm devastated politically that we didn't get to where we needed to go I was willing to give everything I had every ounce I had to get where we needed to go and so were a lot of people around me but you know we were stymied we were hamstrung by weaknesses where there shouldn't have been weak people you know that's what I believe but look at the main thing is will we get to the stage where we have to publish a book someday and I hope we will and I hope we do it peacefully Where can people buy your book John? Well, it's in a number of outlets various bookstores, Eastons and things like that but it's online, it's on Amazon and it can be bought directly from the publishers which I believe is Melville House in America and Marion Press in Ireland and it's published in both sides of the Atlantic but it's definitely on Amazon Good, we will leave the links in the description for coming on a day John telling your story I thoroughly enjoyed that Would you like to finish up on anything? No, in particular James, I really appreciate it Myself and my wife Debbie, we watch your podcast quite often So it's just amazing to be here it's hard to believe actually it's a strange world John, listen, all the best for the future I really appreciate it, thank you Thank you