Decoding the IRA

by Tom Mahon

  Twomey was appointed chairman of the Army Council in January 1927 and the following month ‘the chairman’ (Twomey) sent a despatch to ‘Mr Jones’ in New York in which he acknowledged receiving two prior letters, which in turn had been addressed to ‘Mr Brown’. This is some of the evidence that supports the contention that ‘Mr Brown’ was Moss Twomey.5

  Later in this book we present evidence that ‘Mr Ambrose’ was Seán MacBride; that ‘HS’ the IRA’s commander in Britain was likely George Power, an IRA intelligence officer from north Cork and that ‘Mr Jones’ (or ‘JB’) an espionage agent in America was most probably Dan ‘Sandow’ Donovan from Cork. There are also a number of despatches to and from ‘Jack Jones’ a senior IRA leader based in the Portlaoise area. I suspect ‘Jones’ was really Jim Killeen from Westmeath (who was appointed IRA adjutant general in 1927), but in this case the evidence is insufficient to be certain.6

  Two other interesting characters were ‘James’ and ‘Stephen’. ‘James’ was a frequent visitor or resident of London, while ‘Stephen’ was in contact with the IRA in America. In a later chapter, we show that these were the cover names for two Soviet Red Army intelligence officers working with the IRA. Despite some research, I am (as of yet) unable to find their real names. Indeed Soviet agents frequently had so many pseudonyms that their true identity often remains unknown to this day.

  Figure 2. Despatch from George (alias ‘HS’), the IRA’s commander in Britain, to Moss Twomey. This letter includes the only direct reference to Moscow in the documents. George reported that ‘James’, the Soviet intelligence officer, had written to inform him that the Soviets would improve their funding of the IRA: I had a letter from ‘James’. He is in Moscow. He told me to inform you, that everything would be fixed up and he is anxious that you cable this decision to our representative in America. He also acknowledges the receipt of your letter, which was sent to him by hand. He will be back in less than two weeks.

  It was also challenging trying to identify IRA operatives when they were referred to by rank rather than name. I frequently found it difficult to find out who held a specific appointment at a particular time – this was due not only to the organisation’s secrecy but also to the high turnover in staff due to arrests and resignations. As soon as one officer became unavailable, a substitute was quickly appointed in his place. Andy Cooney was appointed chief of staff in November 1925 and Moss Twomey took over the position in the spring of the following year. However, the exact date for the change in command is uncertain and in the case of letters signed ‘chief of staff’ in May 1926 it is unclear whether the sender was Twomey or Cooney. Similarly during the period of Moss Twomey’s imprisonment in November 1926, it is uncertain who was the author of letters signed ‘chief of staff’ – though Andy Cooney most likely stepped back temporarily into the role. Hopefully this gives an idea of some of the challenges James and I faced.

  James was scrupulous in his attention to detail and accuracy. The copies we worked on were sometimes of poor quality, due to the age and state of the originals, and individual letters could be unclear or a portion of the text missing. An ‘I’ could be mistaken for a ‘T’ or an ‘O’ for a ‘D’. Additionally words were sometimes misspelled or abbreviated. James’ decryption produced a long string of text and he manually entered word breaks and punctuation based on the context. This could be challenging in the case of misspellings or where colloquial Irish expressions were used. One decryption, without the word breaks, was as follows: ‘avolunteerwasapproachedbycidwhooffered-himtwopoundperweekforanyinformation-hecouldgivethemconcerningduuhsalsoonepound-foreachrifego’.

  After James entered the appropriate word breaks, symbols and numerals this became: ‘a volunteer was approached by cid who offered him £2 per week for any information he could give them concerning duuhs also £1 for each rifle go’. James and I then worked together on this and realised that ‘duuhs’ was a misspelling of ‘dumps’ and that a ‘t’ had been dropped from ‘go’. Thus the corrected text became the much more understandable: ‘a volunteer was approached by [the] CID [detectives] who offered him £2 per week for any information he could give them concerning [IRA arms] dumps, also £1 for each rifle got’.7 Many times James went back and forth over the interpretation of a single word or sentence. In this book simple spelling mistakes have been corrected, but where there remained any ambiguity in the text or the cipher was uninterpretable we left it uncorrected without making any assumptions.

  On rare occasions, words in Irish (which the IRA virtually never spelled correctly) or colloquial Irish expressions posed a temporary challenge to James – who was raised in America. The most memorable incident was when Moss Twomey recommended that an IRA volunteer visit a ‘call house’ to meet a young lady. Now the American Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a call house as ‘a house or apartment where call girls may be procured’ and James feared the worst.8 However, shortly afterwards I received an e-mail back from him after he realised that the IRA’s meaning of a call house was a place where contact could be secretly made with an IRA representative.

  It was only after almost three years that the papers’ full significance became apparent as they revealed activities and facets of the IRA that have never been openly known before. They expose the full extent and nature of the organisation’s relationship with the Soviet Union; military espionage in America; the IRA’s interest in acquiring chemical weapons; methods and routes for importing arms and explosives; infiltration of the Gaelic Athletic Association in America; IRA security and intelligence techniques; new insight into the reaction of the IRA’s leadership to the founding of Fianna Fáil; personality clashes, indiscipline and the state of readiness of the IRA.

  Some of this information was truly bizarre, and when I came across the following message from Moss Twomey to the IRA’s commander in Glasgow ‘could a ship or ships for China be burned or destroyed by scuttling or other means?’ I thought that ‘China’ was a code word. But no, the IRA actually wanted to attack British ships sailing to China.9 References to republican support for Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese nationalists can be found in Brian Hanley’s The IRA: 1926–1936 and in contemporary issues of the IRA’s newspaper, An Phoblacht. However, the ciphered documents add significantly to our knowledge of this unusual episode.

  I have attempted to tell the story of the IRA in the context of the times. The IRA, like any other revolutionary group, can’t be fully understood without reference to the interplay of contemporary factors such as ideology, the role of personalities, local and international political developments, financial and military resources, strategy and morale and discipline. The personalities of the leadership played an important part in the IRA, particularly as the organisation lacked a single unifying ideology. Additionally, knowledge of the many failed or aborted military attacks tells us as much about the organisation as the odd successful attack does. A history that emphasised one particular aspect of the IRA, such as the socialist ideology of some of its leaders, or concentrated on military activity would give a very incomplete and misleading picture of the organisation. I wanted to avoid this compartmentalisation and to give ‘a feel’ as to what the IRA was really like and how its members saw themselves.

  Researching this book has been an extremely enjoyable adventure and I frequently allowed myself be distracted when reading old newspapers and documents. Trying to piece together the section on chemical weapons was quite a challenge given the (understandable) reticence of experts to talk in this post-September 11 world. At one time I contacted an employee of the US army’s chemical corps and asked him about getting a copy of a book containing poison gas formulae which the IRA had given to the Soviets in 1927. When he refused, I told him I could get it on the internet or through an inter-library loan. He politely replied that if I did so I could be monitored and even visited by an unnamed government agency. So far, I haven’t seen anyone searching my bin at night! Ironically, all the experts in chemical warfare I talked to gave me at least one piece of help
ful information, though communication was frequently abruptly terminated on their part. I suppose most people who inquire about chemical warfare are either crazy or potentially dangerous – or both!

  The only topic more difficult to get information on than chemical warfare was the covert activities of the IRA and republicans in America. Not surprisingly for a clandestine organisation, there is a lack of documentation and material. However, much of the discussion in the Irish-American community is still rooted in stereotypes of English perfidy and IRA freedom fighters, which has stifled healthy debate and balanced research. When I contacted the Gaelic Athletic Association in New York with questions about the IRA the door was quickly shut – though I was able to get the information I needed at the New York Public Library. However, the process of creating ‘history’ to satisfy the needs of the present, results in us forgetting the complexity of the struggles of the past and the sacrifices of ordinary men and women. History is about remembering in context, rather than inventing an imaginary past.

  The value of these documents is that they are the nearest we can come to having an open and collegial conversation with IRA leaders such as Moss Twomey and Andy Cooney. Especially in the letters sent to America, Twomey and Cooney give their opinion on a whole range of topics – from the state of the IRA to distrust of Éamon de Valera. There are also detailed descriptions of IRA techniques and security procedures. However, at times the IRA deliberately communicated in an indirect manner or attempted to mislead the recipient. For instance, Twomey presented an overly upbeat assessment of the readiness of the IRA in a letter to America in early 1927 – to encourage fundraising in the US. Overall, the documents give a unique insight into what the IRA was actually like at the time.

  This is a world of moral ambiguity: even a generally sympathetic figure such as Moss Twomey had a ruthless streak. And though the greatly respected George Gilmore endured considerable hardship in prison for the cause, the documents raise some suspicion that IRA money under his control went missing.

  There were a number of pieces of information that James and I found to be particularly repugnant. One was a document written by the IRA in Offaly attempting to justify the execution of a group of local citizens, whom the writer claimed were ‘notorious spies’.10 Other documents reveal IRA efforts to intimidate witnesses and jurors by threatening them or their families, while another sordid episode was the IRA’s torture and killing of one of their own, Dan Turley, who was suspected of informing.

  These papers can be compared to other sources of information on the IRA, such as the interviews IRA leaders gave in their old age to writers and journalists. Many of the interviews took place in the 1960s and 1970s and the IRA men were carefully preparing their legacy with a sanitised version of events. Their recollections were also subconsciously influenced by events that occurred in subsequent years. Though important books such as Uinseann MacEoin’s Survivors and The IRA in the Twilight Years make fascinating reading, much is missing from them. In MacEoin’s books, the Russian connection is largely missing and Connie Neenan in his interview does not mention his involvement in the IRA’s espionage activities in America. There is no discussion of operational techniques that, even in the 1970s, might have compromised the IRA. As for the memoirs written by IRA veterans, Twomey himself dismissed many of them as ‘myths and legends’.11 Ernie O’Malley’s On Another Man’s Wound is a classic of the genre and well worth the read. When Bowyer Bell’s The Secret Army was first published in 1970, it was ground-breaking; however, it tells the story from the IRA’s perspective and lacks sufficient critical assessment. Brian Hanley’s recently published The IRA: 1926 to 1936 is an excellent and invaluable history and particularly strong on the political background of the organisation.

  Police and intelligence sources are a valuable adjunct to any study; however, their information is often fragmentary, alarmist and even inaccurate. Police informants were frequently of dubious nature, while the police themselves had their own biases, coupled with a desire to satisfy their superiors. The primary obligation for the police and intelligence agencies was to curtail or destroy the IRA, not to understand it.

  The source that comes nearest to these documents are the interviews Ernie O’Malley held with IRA veterans in the 1930s and recorded in the O’Malley Papers. These are refreshingly direct and honest, though again they avoid certain incidents and details.

  I have tried to treat all those mentioned in this book (whether IRA members or not) with a mixture of sympathy and scepticism, which I believe produces the most balanced picture.

  Throughout the papers, the names and addresses of many individuals and businesses are mentioned and are reproduced in this book. James and I are of the opinion that it is historically important to publish the un-censored contents of the papers. It conveys a full picture of the extent of the IRA’s network throughout the Irish community at home and abroad, illustrates the IRA’s modus operandi and is a way to remember the many people who contributed to a cause they believed in. However, in some cases the IRA may have been mistaken in their opinion of these people and businesses and any activities that occurred in businesses may have been unknown to the owners. Furthermore, the businesses described in this book relate to the period 1926–7 and not to any establishment currently operating with the same or similar name.

  Aside from information that was incomplete, repetitious or inconsequential, James and I have omitted nothing we deemed to be of significance.

  CHAPTER 1

  Breaking the Ciphers

  James J. Gillogly

  Did courier at Xmas give you copy of Woolworth edition of novel The Scarlet Letter, which was to be used for keys for cipher?

  Moss Twomey to Connie Neenan, 24 February 1927, using the old key

  Re: Yours of 16th inst. I cannot decipher your code. Has the keyword been changed? If so I have not received the new keyword.

  Staff Captain Wilson to chief of staff, 29 April 1926

  Many challenge ciphers float into my office over the transom, but this was my favourite sort: an unsolved cipher in an unknown system, whose content was a mystery to everyone now living.1 One of the greatest intellectual thrills is experienced at the moment you break an old cipher and realise that you are the only person in the world who knows this particular bit of history. The first six ciphers arrived on the mailing list of the American Cryptogram Association, forwarded by a cryptanalyst who had tried unsuccessfully to break them using many of the standard methods.2 This seemed promising: the ciphers were clearly going to be challenging but ultimately quite likely solvable, since effective attacks have been developed for many of the ciphers used in the first few decades of the twentieth century.

  One key to solving an unknown cipher is a positive attitude: if you believe you have a good chance of breaking it, you may well be correct. If you believe you will not be able to crack it, you are almost certainly correct. Another key is persistence: cryptanalysis often involves many false leads, and if you allow those to discourage you, the game is lost. As an example, I first encountered in 1968 a mysterious vellum document called the Voynich Manuscript3 in David Kahn’s classic, The Codebreakers.4 This small book is written in an unknown script with fancifully obscure illustrations, dates back to the early seventeenth century or earlier, and has successfully resisted all attempts to extract clear meaning from it.5 Over this forty-year period I have tried dozens of approaches, started an international mailing list discussing the manuscript’s history and potential attacks on it, and coordinated efforts to transcribe it into a form suitable for computer analysis. None of these efforts has produced a solution, but we now know a good deal more about it than when we started, and there’s a good chance that if meaning is found in the manuscript, our spade-work will have helped unearth it.

  Like many cryptanalysts I am much less interested in the actual content of cipher messages than in the process of decrypting them. For me the challenge comes from discovering the method used and inventing attacks to decrypt them. Al
though I am originally of Irish descent, my ancestors emigrated from Ireland in 1803, so any necessary historical and geographical context had to come from my co-author. Little of this context was needed for the actual solution of these messages, though, since for the most part the decryption process was unambiguous.

  Diagnosing the first cipher

  The first cipher in the set of six messages sent to the mailing list was the upper cipher shown in Figure 3, with 151 letters.6

  Figure 3. The first cipher, 16 June 1927.

  I needed to determine which of the two basic cipher types was used to encrypt this message: transposition or substitution.7 Cryptograms found in newspaper puzzles use substitution: one letter substitutes for another but the letters remain in their original order. For example, LETTER might become OHWWHU by advancing each letter three places in the alphabet – the system used by Julius Caesar.8 Transposition ciphers leave each letter’s identity intact, but shuffle the letters around so that the message becomes unreadable. One common method used for this shuffling process is columnar transposition. The sender and receiver agree on a key – for example, a single word like MONARCHY.

  The sender writes the message under the key in rows:

  Key:

  The sender then alphabetises the key, keeping the columns intact.

  Key:

  The sender completes the shuffling by reading the message out by columns, using the alphabetical order of the key. If the key contains two or more of the same letter, the leftmost one is used first. The encrypted message starts here with the A of MONARCHY, then the C and so on, so the final encryption is OTENT REEZO ABNI DYSEB MSREU EITBH CHVAT CEGR. Usually the message will be presented in five-letter groups to conceal any hints to a would-be codebreaker concerning column length or order. The receiver counts the letters in the message, sets up a frame with the correct number of letters in the last row and enters the encrypted message under the key, again in alphabetical order, finally reading the original plain text message in rows.