The American connection

National Review, June 19, 1987 by John P. McCarthy

The American Connection

by Jack Holland(Viking, 272 pp., $19.95)

JACK HOLLAND, a journalist/novelist,has put together a series of lengthy articles about various aspects of the Irish-American dimension to the Northern Ireland situation. A Belfast native, he knows the problem too well to repeat the romantic simplicities about British "occupation' held by many Irish-American activists, whom he labels "arcadian dreamers' of an Ireland of the past. On the other hand, he is shrewd enough to satisfy that portion of his audience with a near epic description of the gun-runners and titillating accounts of courtroom theatrics and protests at royal visits.

He races the formation and developmentof Noraid--the Irish Northern Aid Committee--which the federal courts have required to register (under protest) as an agent of the IRA. Holland argues that the IRA does not control Noraid and that Noraid has nothing to do with the purchase of arms for the IRA. Naturally Noraid has always insisted that the funds it raises are for the relief of the families of men imprisoned for being Irish patriots. The group to which it claims to give the money, the Green Cross, is not registered as a charitable organization in either Northern Ireland or the Irish Republic and never subjects itself to independent auditing. Holland admits that the Noraid money that goes to the Green Cross "is vital to the IRA simply because it frees other funds which are in turn used in the purchase of arms.'

The most dramatic part of the bookis the account of the actual gun-running for the IRA in the United States, an operation Holland insists was confined to a handful of men. The foremost of them was George Harrison, now in his seventies, who hasn't been in the Ireland of his birth for nearly half a century and who, unlike many Irish militants, is a committed leftist revolutionary, actively supporting the Sandinista revolution, Puerto Rican independence, and other Third World causes. Harrison admits to having obtained weapons for the IRA since the late 1930s. But his operations, he says, were carried out with the assistance of just a couple of other men, rather than an organization like Noraid.

No doubt he is truthful, for howcould a fundraising organization that attracts so many zealous and argumentative members seriously direct a gun-running operation? But it is significant that when push came to shove, when he needed money to complete a substantial purchase (which was in fact a Justice Department setup), he was able to get the funds, almost $17,000, at the home of the octogenarian Noraid president, Michael Flannery. Flannery's permanent position in the organization that he helped found is attributable to his impeccable trustworthiness and lifetime commitment to a cause in whose name a great deal of skulduggery and private pocketing of funds was unavoidable.

Flannery, Harrison, and three othersstood trial in late 1982 for that particular episode. They were acquitted, thanks to their counsel's extraordinary defense that they assumed the purchase of the guns was desired and being facilitated by the CIA, since the supplier allegedly had done work in the past for that agency. Flannery's "exoneration' was celebrated by his election, the following March, as grand marshal of New York's St. Patrick's Day parade. However, the last laugh was had by the Justice Department, as the trial at least meant an effective end to the Harrison gun-running network and the inhibition of significant arms shipments to the IRA from the United States.

Certain Irish-American conservatives,who perceive the IRA as being somehow different from other revolutionary forces, would do well to ponder Holland's account of how The Irish People, the Noraid paper, edits the material it regularly reprints from An Phoblacht, the newspaper put out in Ireland by Sinn Fein, the political arm of the IRA. Generally, items of a nationalist, rather than leftist, character appear here, and, significantly, even the address to the annual Sinn Fein convention by its president, Gerry Adams, was edited to remove his statements about "Reagan's backing of repressive regimes in Central America' and "Israel's policy of genocide against the Palestinian people.'

Another theme examined by Hollandis congressional interest in Northern Ireland--specifically, the championing of the hard-line nationalist position by Congressman Mario Biaggi and his Ad Hoc Committee for Irish Affairs. What an observer would find most noteworthy is the absence from Biaggi's group of leading national-level Irish-American political figures, such as Senators Moynihan and Kennedy, as well as Tip O'Neill and Thomas Foley, whose interest in, and reading of, the Irish situation ought to have a greater authenticity than that of a Congressman Biaggi, Fish, or Gilman. Naturally the highest-ranking Irish-American politician, Ronald Reagan, has been the special object of venom from Sinn Fein sympathizers because of the recently ratified extradition treaty with the United Kingdom, whereby the political-offense exception will no longer be available to wanted IRA men trying to take refuge here. However, the treaty is completely consistent with any serious ambition to combat international terrorism.