The voice at the other end of the telephone line was frail and emotional but also coherent and focused. It was the late Dolours Price, and our conversation, back in early 2010, turned out to be consequential.
Price’s active IRA involvement, including a hunger strike when she was serving a 20-year sentence for the 1973 Old Bailey bombing in London, was well documented but in the distant past, and her call to The Irish News was completely unexpected.
While she raised matters of considerable gravity, neither of us could have imagined that they would ultimately help to shape the internationally successful Disney+ drama series Say Nothing 14 years later.
My involvement in the case as editor of The Irish News began in 2009 when a trusted source told me that what was supposed to be a definitive list of the murder victims known as The Disappeared, just issued by the IRA, had omitted at least one name – Joe Lynskey.
No details about him could initially be established, but prolonged research by our senior staff eventually enabled our security correspondent Allison Morris to break an astonishing story.
It transpired that Lynskey, a former monk who became a key IRA figure in west Belfast, was deemed to have organised a shooting over a purely personal grudge in 1972, before being executed by his colleagues and secretly buried.
In February, 2010, our political correspondent, Diana Rusk – now Diana Cacciottolo, news editor of The Times of Malta - sat down at Stormont for a comprehensive interview with the Sinn Féin president, Gerry Adams, and pressed him for his recollections about Lynskey.
Adams said he knew Lynskey before he vanished, and referred to hearing numerous rumours of him being subsequently seen in England or Australia, but insisted that he had no personal knowledge about the fate of any of The Disappeared.
He said anyone with information about the cases should come forward, while repeating his constant denials of either involvement in the IRA in general or the murder of Jean McConville in particular.
His quotes featured prominently in Rusk’s penetrating coverage, and, as depicted during a striking scene in Say Nothing, Price, reading The Irish News at her home in Malahide, Co Dublin, was immediately incensed.
She went on to make a series of calls to the paper’s newsdesk, Rusk, Morris and myself, and was determined to challenge Adams, who was once a close friend, as directly as possible.
I had a number of discussions with Price over several days, and felt that, although she had vulnerable moments, and had previously spoken of her issues over drink and prescribed drugs, she was still a credible witness with the potential to deliver a testimony which was very much in the public interest.
She was plainly an articulate and committed individual, who offered vivid insights into her IRA days, but there was a prospect that providing her with a full platform could have long term legal implications for her, the paper and others.
After looking closely into the background, we eventually decided to invite Price to cooperate with the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains, which would effectively protect her from prosecution over any statements, and she decided to proceed on that basis.
Price also agreed to an on the record engagement with Morris in Malahide, with the latter filing a powerful piece which was accompanied by a series of striking pictures.
Many twists and turns were later to unfold, including a visit to the office of The Irish News by two senior police officers which did not result in any action against the paper, before Price’s turbulent history came to the attention of Patrick Radden Keefe of The New Yorker magazine, and both a best selling book and the high profile Disney+ series were to follow.
Price died in 2013 at the age of 62, continuing to denounce Adams to the end and insisting that he had issued the IRA orders over the Disappeared. Adams rejected all her claims, saying that she was both unwell and politically opposed to Sinn Féin’s role at Stormont.
Others can judge where the truth lies, but, as far as Say Nothing is concerned, I believe that, despite containing occasional examples of dramatic licence, it is a compelling portrayal of some of the darkest periods of the Troubles. I will also not easily forget my telephone calls with Dolours Price.
n.doran@irishnews.com
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