A double defector tells of gunrunning from the U.S.
Just from living in Boston, one acquires a natural interest in the Irish Republican Army," says Reporter Andrew Blake of the Boston Globe. Blake's interest sharpened during a year of reporting for the London Sunday Times in Northern Ireland. And after some machine guns stolen from an armory in Danvers, Mass., turned up in Ulster last year, Blake set out to find out how the I.R.A. runs guns from the U.S. Several sources steered him toward a man who might talk — Peter McMullen, 32, a Belfast-born Catholic who had first deserted from an elite British paratroop battalion to join the Provisional I.R.A., then quit the terrorists. Blake found McMullen hiding out in San Francisco and persuaded him to sit through 18 hours of interviews stretching over four days. The result: a six-part Globe series that, if McMullen is to be believed, last week gave the first inside report on all manner of I.R.A. activities, from alleged plans to assassinate Prince Philip to skulduggery in the U.S.
McMullen, a burly man who is wanted by the British for terrorist bombing, first came to the U.S. in 1972 on a false passport. He worked as a doorman-bouncer at Wednesday's, an uptown Manhattan bar with a heavily Irish-American clientele. He bought guns with money embezzled by a barman — as much as $3,000 a week, he claimed. Mostly, McMullen said, he just strolled into gun shops, cash in hand, and bought whatever weapons he wanted, but on occasion the approaches got a bit dicey. Said he: "One night I'm standing at the door of this busy nightclub, and up comes a guy with this great bloody carpet over his shoulder. He says he's got something to show me. So I tell him to get the hell out of the doorway and meet me in the basement. He unrolls the carpet and there's four Winchester rifles" plus submachine guns and handguns. McMullen angrily told the supplier to bring the guns next time to his apartment in Jackson Heights, Queens. But he nonetheless bought the guns — with $2,500 that he said was supplied by the Irish Northern Aid Committee, an organization that raises funds ostensibly to support the families of Irishmen held by the British.
The guns that McMullen purchased were smuggled to Dublin in household and office furniture, he said. Labor union contacts made the arrangements, McMullen explained, and other sympathizers ensured smooth passage through U.S. and Irish customs. From Dublin it was easy to spirit the weapons into Ulster in cars often driven by women with children on busy Sunday afternoons.
McMullen's tales of I.R.A. activities in the United Kingdom, to which he returned in 1973, are filled with incidents ranging from absurd to chilling. Five years ago, the I.R.A. was plagued by corruption and laxity, McMullen said. Once in 1974 he could not assemble a squad to bomb a British barracks in Northern Ireland because "Sean had to go to Mass and Seamus had to visit his mother and Kevin had to milk the cows. It sounded like one of those Irish jokes."