David Samuels’ serious factual errors about Sean Garland
In August of 2009 the Independent published an article entitled ‘Counterfeiting: Notes on a scandal’ by US ‘non-fiction writer’ David Samuels. The piece contains a number of serious factual errors that damage the reputation of a 77-year-old Irish man currently facing extradition to the US under disputed charges.
The article was published a long time ago, I am aware, but many journalists will no doubt be working from clippings when his court case resumes this Wednesday. Thanks to the Web any article with good SEO can linger for years spreading mistruths. All the worse when hosted on the website of a highly respected newspaper.
I wrote to the Indy outlining the errors last week. Why they won’t just take the piece down baffles me. I know they’re not keen on admitting when they’re in the wrong but perhaps they might if enough people ask nicely on Twitter.
Using another article published in the Indy I’d like to show them how wrong Samuels has got this story. I won’t speculate on his motivations.
Samuels’ second par reads;
“Garland was a lifelong terrorist who had personally engaged in deadly attacks on British soldiers and police in Northern Ireland since the 1950s, and whose exploits were said to have inspired Tom Clancy’s novel Patriot Games (1). As the political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) entered into fitful negotiations with Protestant groups in the 1990s, Garland served as chief of staff for “the Official IRA” or OIRA, which rejected the idea of a peace deal in favour of the continuation of bombings, bank robberies and other politically-motivated crimes (2).”
Pretty serious charges;
(1) The reference to ‘Patriot Games’ is a mistaken reference to the popular Irish rebel song ‘The Patriot Game’ by Dominic Behan. That David Samuel can’t tell the difference between a fictional spy tale about the CIA and this song shows a worrying lack of research.
(2) Here Samuels mistakes the Official IRA, who began their ceasefire in May 1972, for the Real IRA, a splinter from the Provisional IRA – themselves a splinter of the Official IRA in the 70’s. The OIRA are now a historic footnote, the RIRA continue an unpopular terror campaign.
The Indy was already aware of both of these facts surely, having published a lengthy piece on Sean Garland in December 2005 by David McKittrick, who gets it right;
In the 1950s he (Garland) joined the IRA, who then instructed him to infiltrate the British Army to procure arms. He carried out his mission successfully, the IRA seizing guns from an Army barracks with his inside help.
In his own words, he was “actively involved in organising and participating in a number of major operations from 1955-56”. The most famous of these was when he led an IRA squad that attacked a police station in County Fermanagh where two IRA militiamen, Sean South and Fergal O’Hanlon, were shot dead. A republican song acclaims, “Another martyr for old Ireland, Sean South from Garryowen”. Garland was seriously wounded in the incident. In the years that followed, he was imprisoned on various occasions in both parts of Ireland for IRA activities.
When the organisation split into traditional and Marxist factions in the late 1960s he opposed the “narrow nationalism” of the Provisionals, and pursued a left-wing political path as one of the leaders of what was known as the Official IRA. That faction announced a ceasefire in 1972, but for years remained intermittently involved in violence.
The OIRA did continue to be involved in violence, just not a sectarian war or national liberation struggle against the British state. I wrote in Sunday Mirror, 2009;
OFFICIAL IRA gunmen were given military training and arms by communist North Korea…The Official IRA, which was linked to the Workers Party, admitted making trips to the totalitarian regime during the 80s - at the same time the party had seven elected TDs, including current Labour Party leader Eamon Gilmore and former leader Pat Rabbitte.
That would be the same Gilmore and Rabbitte who are now in power as part of a coalition government in Ireland. The former is Táiniste (deputy PM), the latter a minister.
Further on Samuels makes another serious error;
Garland was a self-proclaimed Marxist who dressed like a professor and served as head of a far-left faction called the Irish Workers Party that had never elected a single one of its members to any mainstream political body.
Contrast with McKittrick;
The Workers Party once held a number of seats in the Irish parliament, but its strength has been greatly reduced.
In fact, the Workers Party at their peak had seven members of parliament (TDs) in Ireland along with an MEP and dozens of councillors. Up north they held ten seats in the early 70’s and elected a number of councillors over the years. The party still has two elected councillors in the south.
Again, Samuels seems to be thinking of another group, most likely Republican Sinn Fein (political wing of the Continuity IRA) a group whose entire outlook opposes everything Garland argued for in the republican movement.
A decent history of the Workers Party was published in 2009, you can read my write up on it from my local newspaper days here.
Given his inability to get the basic Wikipedia facts right, allowing Samuels to go on to make claims like the following is editorial madness;
…needed foreign currency to fund an estimated $100 million a year in donations to Hezbollah and other terrorist organisations - who, as it happened, were being trained in bomb-making in Lebanon by Sean Garland.
Sean Garland’s campaign against extradition has the backing of politicians across the political spectrum both north and south of the border. I have no involvement. For more information on his extradion you can read this blog - http://seangarlandextradition.wordpress.com/
(Disclosure; in January 2010 I built a website, wrote copy and did some layout for the relaunch of Look Left magazine, funded by the Workers Party along with a million other publications I was writing for at the time.)
