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MediaGuardian.co.uk, 18 October 2006 More foreign moves at Telegraph The Daily Telegraph is closing its Johannesburg bureau and further reorganising its foreign operations. The paper's Africa correspondent, David Blair, has been promoted to the London-based post of diplomatic editor. When he leaves the Johannesburg bureau will close. The Brussels correspondent, David Rennie, will move to Paris and become Europe editor. Rennie is also a contributing editor for the Spectator. There are plans to supplement Rennie with other journalists in Europe. He will be replaced in Brussels at a later date. The Iraq correspondent, Oliver Poole, who files from Baghdad but is not based permanently in Iraq, requested a return to London and will work in the foreign department from there. The Daily Telegraph is yet to announce who will fill its vacant posts in the US, created after it axed the Washington bureau chief, Alec Russell, the Washington correspondent, Francis Harris, and the New York bureau chief, Harry Mount. The cuts, in September, were part of a radical restructuring of the department by the executive foreign editor, Con Coughlin. The situation with the Telegraph's US posts is becoming urgent, with the important US mid-term elections now just three weeks away. Toby Harnden, currently a Washington-based correspondent for the Sunday Telegraph, appeared at the Telegraph offices in London last week to meet with the editor, Will Lewis, the executive foreign editor, Con Coughlin, and the editor-in-chief, John Bryant. It is believed that he discussed joining the Daily Telegraph to head up its Washington operation, but no final decision has been made. Harnden currently works in Washington for the Sunday Telegraph as a super stringer, and it is understood that the Sunday Telegraph editor, Patience Wheatcroft, will not stand in his way if he decides to move to the daily paper. Damien McElroy, currently reporting in the US as an interim measure, will in the future report from Baghdad, replacing Oliver Poole. Like Poole, he will not be based permanently in Iraq. Ms Wheatcroft had earlier defeated a plan by Telegraph management to share US correspondents between the two titles. After terminating the contracts of the three US correspondents, the daily planned to fill some positions with the two Sunday Telegraph journalists based in America, but Ms Wheatcroft objected vehemently.
Wheatcroft Thwarts Telegraph Merger Plan Sunday Telegraph editor Patience Wheatcroft has seen off a plan to merge the Sunday Telegraph and Daily Telegraph bureaux in Washington and New York. By Stephen Brook Sunday Telegraph editor Patience Wheatcroft has again defeated Telegraph management by seeing off a plan to merge the Sunday Telegraph and Daily Telegraph bureaux in Washington and New York. After terminating the contracts of three US correspondents last week, the publisher planned to fill some positions with the two Sunday Telegraph journalists based in America, but Ms Wheatcroft objected vehemently. The Daily Telegraph axed the Washington bureau chief, Alec Russell, Washington correspondent Francis Harris and the New York bureau chief, Harry Mount, by telephone as part of a radical restructuring of the department by the executive foreign editor, Con Coughlin. Toby Harnden, based in Washington, and the New York-based Philip Sherwell, were earmarked to replace the departing journalists in writing roles across both papers. Ms Wheatcroft made her objections known at a meeting last week attended by Coughlin, the managing editor, Lawrence Sear, and the Daily Telegraph acting editor, John Bryant. Ms Wheatcroft, supported by the Sunday Telegraph foreign editor, David Wastell, argued against the plan, pointing out that the US correspondents are the paper's principal foreign reporters, in contrast to the better-resourced foreign sections of the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Times. Ms Wheatcroft previously defeated a management plan designed to give the managing director editorial, Will Lewis, control over staff hiring and firing at the new multimedia complex in Victoria. The Daily Telegraph had to fill posts in Washington and New York quickly by flying Damien McElroy from London to Washington, while Catherine Elsworth, the Los Angeles correspondent, moved to New York. Sunday Telegraph staff fear the paper will lose its identity and independence when both titles move to Victoria and some departments are streamlined into a seven-day a week operation. Ms Wheatcroft feared the amalgamation in the US would be the thin end of the wedge. Some production operations between the two papers are due to be merged after the move to Victoria, while the photographic department has been merged into a seven-day-a-week operation and the company is advertising jobs for an amalgamated TV desk. A Telegraph spokesman said: "This story is fundamentally wrong. Con Coughlin is not proposing merging the Daily and Sunday operations."
The Evening Standard, 22 February 2006 The Sunday Telegraph is on the hunt for a new chief foreign correspondent as Toby Harnden is leaving the staff, although he will continue to report for the paper after he moves to Washington. He will replace Philip Sherwell, who is relocating to New York. The paper is apparently keen to find a “big name” to replace Harnden, with rumours of an approach to Christiane Amanpour. CNN's star reporter wouldn't come cheap, given her rumoured seven-figure salary for the day job. Letter – The Irish News, The fixed notion that Catholics in general and republicans in particular are not guilty of sectarianism - or, if they are, that loyalists are much worse in their prejudice - is difficult to remove. There is a wealth of evidence, both major and minor, to prove that the Provisionals and the INLA are not only full of ethnic hatred of northern Protestants but have carried out massacres, especially in Belfast and south Armagh, which they either claimed under a false name or like Brer fox "lay low and said nuffin". In Toby Harnden's revealing and objective book Bandit Country, the IRA and South Armagh he deals with the Tullyvallen and Kingsmill massacres of 1975 in which five Protestant civilians in the former and 10 in the latter were shot dead. Harnden writes: "Both the Tullyvallen and Kingsmills massacres were claimed by the 'South Armagh Republican Action Force'. The intelligence assessment was that this was a cover name for a group of Provisionals based in south Armagh and north Louth who were operating outside the normal IRA command structure.” There was a wealth of ballistic evidence to show that the guns used in these sickening, hellish acts were used in many other known Provo murders. Protestants here know that the Provos and INLA are not and never were in the smallest degree their friends. They have no intention of being manouevred into a united Ireland in which they will be vulnerable to sectarian violence and treachery. They will not leave the north of Ireland - even less will they be forced out without violence on a titanic scale against their attackers. To any complacent republican chauvinist this appears to be Paisleyite rhetoric, but it is simple realism. The Provos talk a lot about August 1969 - and the scenario referred to would give them 100 times as much to commemorate. Let them not pretend that they would accept the Irish army as a peacekeeping force in such a conflict. The 'South Armagh Republican Action Force' is their only legitimate Irish army.
Irish Times 7 October 2005 Authorities pursue criminal assets in latest bid to get their man. By Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor The authorities are attempting to emasculate the alleged IRA chief of staff, Thomas "Slab" Murphy, not for running the republican killing machine but for criminal greed. It is reminiscent of the way Al Capone was finally nailed in Chicago, not for murdering people but for tax evasion. The Assets Recovery Agency under former RUC officer Alan McQuillan ran yesterday's operation in Manchester. It has had Murphy in its sights for years. So has the Criminal Assets Bureau (Cab). Both agencies are co-operating in their objective. Murphy lives on a farm near Hackballscross, smack on the Border straddling counties Armagh and Louth. Security sources say he is the IRA chief of staff who made the south Armagh IRA its most feared force, and who ran the organisation with clinical and murderous precision. Former members of the IRA said the same. Twice Dublin juries branded Murphy a liar when he denied his IRA connections. Republican sources were dismissive of yesterday's searches in Manchester. They likened it to the controversy surrounding the Northern Bank robbery and the alleged IRA Stormontgate spying operation, for which nobody has been convicted. And at Downing Street, where he met Tony Blair yesterday, neither did Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams admit any concern or embarrassment around this investigation. "I am not going to respond to what are obviously briefings headed up by a man, Alan McQuillan, a former special branch officer . . . This is obviously a political agenda." The BBC's Underworld Rich List estimated Murphy has amassed between £35 and £40 million over the past 35 years, smuggling pigs, grain, oil and cigarettes. The then RUC chief constable, Sir John Hermon, first identified him in a veiled way when in 1985 he said a "wealthy pig smuggler" living in the Republic was behind an IRA bombing that killed four RUC officers close to the Border in May that year. Toby Harnden in his book, Bandit Country, quoted Garda, RUC, British army, MI5 and republican sources who identified Slab Murphy as an IRA leader who was behind some of the worst multiple killings of the Troubles. He was named as planning the Narrow Water massacre of 1979, in which 18 British soldiers were killed, and was also allegedly implicated in the Mullaghmore bombing the same day, which killed Lord Louis Mountbatten, two children and the elderly Lady Brabourne. Murphy was allegedly involved in smuggling in huge stockpiles of weapons from Libya in the 1980s and was part of the IRA army council that decided to end its first ceasefire with the London docklands bomb in 1996. He has been IRA chief of staff for the past seven or eight years, the security services believe. A balding figure, he is a non-smoker and moderate drinker. Aged 56 and single, his main interests outside republicanism and smuggling are said to be Gaelic football, darts and road bowls.Throughout his IRA career he built up a formidable machine, planning carefully and acting cautiously. That was until 1987 when he decided to sue the Sunday Times for reporting two years earlier that he was a senior IRA member responsible for an IRA seaside bombing campaign in England in 1985. In 1990 a Dublin jury dismissed the libel case. Six years later he successfully appealed to the Supreme Court to have the case reheard. The retrial, which took place over three weeks in 1998, exposed Murphy to media ridicule. He portrayed himself as an innocent small farmer, which cut little ice with the second jury. "Never been a member of the IRA, no way," he said when asked was he a senior IRA figure. "No way," he replied when asked did he support violence. He claimed he never heard of the Maze prison. Garda IRA informant Sean O'Callaghan said he met Murphy at a senior IRA meeting in 1983 in the company of Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness, Pat Doherty and other named IRA members. He also said he met Murphy at IRA meetings in 1984 and 1985. Another former IRA member Eamon Collins, author of Killing Rage, also confirmed Murphy as an IRA army-council member. The following year, Collins was bludgeoned and stabbed to death. The jury took less than an hour to reject Murphy's libel case. That caused some damage to him within the republican movement but not enough to force him off the IRA army council. As a supporter of the Adams-McGuinness peace-process strategy, he proved useful. Now that he is under the spotlight of the Cab and the Assets Recovery Agency, Murphy might be more seriously undermined. The pressure will now be on these agencies to deliver.
Associated Press 6 October 2005 DUBLIN , Ireland (AP) _ British detectives raided businesses and homes in England and Ireland on Thursday in hopes of discovering a paper trail that could lead to the reputed chief of the Irish Republican Army. For three decades, anti-terrorist police have monitored and arrested Thomas (Slab) Murphy but never charged him with a crime. Police identify him as a multimillionaire fuel smuggler and chief of staff of the outlawed IRA. Anti-racketeering agencies in the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland said they suspect Murphy has built a massive portfolio of stocks and property. On Thursday, the United Kingdom Assets Recovery Agency _ a two-year-old unit armed with powers to seize the cash, homes, cars and investments of members of Northern Ireland's myriad paramilitary groups _ announced it was investigating a property portfolio in Manchester, in northwestern England, that involves about 250 residences and businesses worth the equivalent of about “65 million Cdn. Police, led by Belfast detectives and anti-racketeering inspectors, carted out records from a company called the Craven Group in the southwestern Manchester suburb Sale. They also searched the high-security mansion of businessman Dermot Craven, whose company includes Craven Properties Ltd., a property rental agency, and Craven Scaffolding. Hours later, detectives from Ireland's Criminal Assets Bureau raided seven offices of accountants, lawyers, businessmen and other professionals suspected of working with Murphy and seized files and computer records. The Garda Siochana, Ireland's national police force, said in a statement the raids in County Louth, which borders Northern Ireland, were launched in co-ordination with the raids in Manchester. No arrests were made. A British detective, speaking on condition of anonymity, said several months of digging into Murphy's dealings had led them to Craven. He said Murphy was suspected of buying dozens of properties through intermediaries since 2002. The detective said tracing Murphy's holdings was difficult because of the fuel dealer's insistence on all-cash transactions involving friendly business intermediaries and no bank accounts. He said Murphy's name was not on any of the properties investigated. Murphy has never given an interview and has rarely been photographed. A reporter who tried to visit his farm _ which lies half in County Louth in the Republic of Ireland, half in Northern Ireland _ was prevented by an unidentified young man from doing so. Murphy came into the public domain in 1985 when a British newspaper, the Sunday Times, published a major expose. Murphy sued for libel but lost twice, most recently in 1998, when a Dublin jury ruled Murphy was an IRA commander and border smuggler. Fuel tankers still regularly trundle in and out of Murphy's farm, which the 1999 best-seller Bandit Country, by Toby Harnden, said includes an underground pipeline for transferring fuel across the border. Today, fuel purchased in the south is sold in Northern Ireland, often in gas stations owned by IRA members. In the 1980s and 1990s, customs officials investigated the fuel business but their efforts to pursue Murphy for tax evasion failed, partly because he dissolved businesses once authorities targeted them. Thursday's raids began hours before Sinn Fein, the IRA-linked party, met British Prime Minister Tony Blair in London for the first time since disarmament officials announced Sept. 26 they had scrapped all of the IRA's stockpiled weapons. With IRA disarmament finally fading from the political agenda, the IRA's decades-long involvement in crime _ including bank robberies, smuggling and counterfeiting _ immediately rose as the next political stumbling block. Britain and Ireland have commissioned expert reports, to be published this month and in January, into IRA crime. In Dublin, Irish Foreign Minister Michael McDowell said he could not comment on Murphy or the specifics of the operation. But he said Britain and Ireland, using the same powers of assets seizure pioneered against organized crime in the United States, were determined to impound ``the massive portfolio of assets'' from the IRA's criminal empire. ``There is a joint determination to ensure that the (Irish) border is not something behind which criminals can hide, or which they can use to their advantage by concealing assets abroad,'' McDowell said. Belfast News Letter 28 September 2005 “Watchtowers were, and still are, essential” SECRETARY of State Peter Hain has been blasted as being a mere puppet for London” after his claim that Army watchtowers had become an unnecessary financial burden”. A senior security source said he would not give much credence” to claims by Mr Hain that the watchtowers in south Armagh were a drain on resources” or that the commander of the British forces in Northern Ireland was pressing for them to be demolished. It had been reported that Mr Hain said: People assume the taking-down of the watchtowers was some premature concession. The truth is that [they] have not been of any practical use to us in surveillance and security terms for some time.” The security source alleged Mr Hain may be taking part in some elaborate charade to minimise the degree to which the other side can wail and moan about the loss of the towers”. He said: “Suffice to say, the watchtowers certainly were not an encumbrance we were glad to get rid of. If the situation has changed with new technology then well and good, but I am not aware of it. It was hoped this new technology to replace the watchtowers would come in well before the Government caved in and got rid of them.” A former soldier, who manned the watchtowers, said they were very essential” in that they commanded a view of the whole area with their equipment. He said anyone who said anything different was wrong. Nobody could convince me that the whole show is being run from London.” The former soldier said extensive planning was put into erecting the watchtowers in the first place and said the surveillance equipment in the facilities was second-to-none”. Between the various watchtowers people of interest could be watched almost 24/7. For example, if an incident happened somewhere, with the information collated from the watchtowers, we could reveal who had gone missing and could have been involved.” UUP deputy leader Danny Kennedy said Mr Hain had displayed his inability to understand the security concerns of unionists in the area”. Newry and Armagh MLA Paul Berry said Mr Hain’s comments were utter nonsense”. He added: I have had discussions with senior police from the area, for the past five years until now, and they always maintain they are useful.” Willie Frazer, of South Armagh victim’s group FAIR, said: “The reason the watchtowers were of no use more recently was because they were not allowed to pass on intelligence on IRA smuggling to customs or police. I challenge anyone to say otherwise. Why else was Sinn Fein/IRA so keen to get rid of them? Because they were a blot on the landscape? It has been estimated that £490 million a year was being made smuggling in this area, which was obviously propping up the IRA war machine.” Author Toby Harnden, who wrote the book Bandit Country on south Armagh, said: “To say that the watchtowers have had no practical use in ‘surveillance and security terms for some time’, and that they would not be needed even if the IRA campaign resumed, is patently ridiculous. “It is an insult to the intelligence of IRA members who spent so much time mortaring and bombing them as well as the British security forces who took such great risks to operate from them. Mr Hain would frankly be more convincing if he tried to argue that the moon were made of cheese.” New Statesman 5 September 2005
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