2 Templemore

9

FOOT AND MOUTH

In late August of 1979 a letter landed on the desk of the private secretary of the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries. The anonymous writer demanded a ransom of £5 million from the State – roughly €27.25 million at today’s rates. If the money was not forthcoming, he and his co-conspirators would unleash the Foot and Mouth virus on the State. It was an attempt at blackmail, at the extortion of a huge sum of money using the threat of biological warfare. We would discover during our investigation that among the plotters were a barrister, no less, and his associate, a former member of the Saor Éire terrorist splinter group – the same individual who had orchestrated the cheque fraud at the Taghmon branch of Bank of Ireland.

It was a one-page letter, typed. The Minister for Agriculture at the time was Jim Gibbons. I reproduce it here exactly as it was written at the time, mistakes and all:

Dear Minister,* to get straight to the point this is a demand for £5,000,000. (five million pounds).

During the last four years, the writer and four of his colleagues have considered sending this communique to the Irish Government. We have spent large sums of money researching this idea. Several times we were almost ready to to send this letter but the circumstances were not right.

The reason for you paying us £5,000,000 is very simple. If you do this we shall not introduce to this country one of the most deadly and costliest diseases that could aflict any country, in particular an agricultural country, namely Foot and mouth disease.

Let us assure you Minister that we have both the facilities and determination to introduce this disease if you do not pay our demands. However at this stage we need not go into elaborate details as to our ability to what we say.

We would like you to reply to us in the Personal Column of the Irish Times on Saturday September 1st. If you are prepared to consider our requests, simply state in the reply; “Tom Smith has read your message and will consider your proposals”, also state a reference number

* All the letters in this chapter are reproduced exactly as they were written, with punctuation and spelling mistakes included.

which we can use on uor next letter which you will not recieve until December 1st.

If you do not insert the reply in the newspapers we shall take it that you are not prepared to no matter what the consequences. In this case we shall communicate further with you. But we will immediately take steps to introduce the disease. If you do reply please be prepared to. pay uor demands because in our next letter we shall prove without doubt our determination and ability to carry out our threats.

Further if you do not reply, we shall, as soon as cattle begin to go down, send copies of this letter to all national newspapers.

Trusting you will reply.

Unsigned.

The General Secretary of the Department of Agriculture made immediate contact with his opposite number in the Department of Justice who notified the Garda Commissioner, whose office immediately called in the Garda Fraud Squad. At this stage I had been a Detective Garda for just over four years in the fraud division, based in Dublin Castle. At about lunchtime on 29 August, I was detailed to head over to the Department of Agriculture on Kildare Street, to pick up some documents. There I would meet a deputy secretary in the department. It turned out that the documents were this ransom letter, a covering note that ‘Unsigned’ had also written, plus their envelopes. I went from there to the Garda Depot in the Phoenix Park

where I handed them over to the Chief Superintendent of the Crime and Security branch. He read the contents, handed them back and instructed me and Detective Sergeant Matt Madigan to interview the deputy secretary later that day. So, we met with him and an assistant head of the department’s veterinary section. He told us that foot and mouth could most likely be deliberately spread here by introducing it into the animal food chain via the organs of an infected animal imported from abroad. For example, the tongues of infected beasts could be frozen and transported and thrown to pigs.

The first I ever heard of the Foot and Mouth disease was in December 1967 when reports from the UK informed us of the destruction of millions of cattle there as a result of the disease. The Republic of Ireland authorities were fearful that the disease would spread south through Northern Ireland, jeopardising one of the strongest industries here. The government decided to take action to prevent any spread and deployed a member of the Gardaí on every unapproved road leading across the border. They duly transferred members of the force from all over Ireland, myself included, to garda stations straddling the border. Having completed a month’s tour of duty I was totally familiar with the prospective damage which could be caused in this country if we were hit by the dreadful Foot and Mouth disease.

As we discovered around the world in 2001, the foot and mouth virus can wreak havoc with countries and economies. It is highly contagious among cattle, sheep, pigs and goats. It can spread through one animal inhaling

viral spores from its infected neighbour. We were also told that the conspirators might have been able to source foot and mouth bacteria from a vaccine plant in the UK or elsewhere.

This was an unprecedented criminal scam in Ireland. We had to take it seriously and for now we would have to play along with the mysterious criminals. The first step would be to place the ad in the newspaper Personal Column as instructed by ‘Unsigned’. Even this wasn’t a straightforward procedure.

On 31 August I went down to the Irish Times offices on D’Olier Street to place the ad. I spoke to the advertising manager and she said it would be fine, pending editorial approval. I paid in cash, collected the receipt and walked away. By the time I got back to the office, I discovered that the Irish Times editor had phoned and spoken to one of our senior officers. He wanted to verify that the Gardaí had indeed authorised this ad. In return, we asked that an exception be made to the newspaper’s normal administrative procedures when taking ads: we did not want any record kept by The Irish Times of the person who was inserting the ad (me) or the organisation that was paying for it. Both sides were worried that the criminals in question might have a mole, a contact, somewhere among the newspaper staff. We were also worried that there might be a mole in Garda HQ in the Phoenix Park who would get their hands on this correspondence and leak it to the press. It would have been acutely embarrassing if this happened, not to mention potentially dangerous, because if the extortionists did have the capacity to inflict

foot and mouth on the country, how would they react if they saw headlines about it in the national press? There were a lot of angles to consider in this unfolding scenario.

For the sake of continuity, and the consistent custody of all documents, I would be the middleman, between the Fraud Squad, the Department of Agriculture and The Irish Times. If and when the department got another letter from the conspirators, I would collect it and deliver it to the Garda inspector in charge of fingerprints at headquarters who in turn would pass it onto the handwriting experts. The letters would usually be contained in an envelope within an outer envelope. Once the outer envelope was opened to reveal the second envelope inside, addressed to the Minister of the Department of Agriculture or the Private Secretary of the Department, we were to be contacted immediately by a senior civil servant there. We established a working protocol around this documentation: the inside letter would not be opened in Kildare Street and indeed should be handled as minimally as possible. I would be sent round to collect the documentation and bring it back to our HQ. I would also be the officer designated to place each ad in the newspaper as demanded.

And as demanded, the first ad duly appeared in The Irish Times the next day, 1 September. ‘Tom Smith has read your message and will consider your proposals.’ We also included a reference number as requested: T.S. 300/79. Then we had to wait for them to make their next move.

On 29 November the next letter arrived. It was addressed to the Private Secretary of the Department of Agriculture. Interestingly, the envelope was date stamped

‘Ceatharlach – 28.XI.1979’. It had been posted from Carlow. Why Carlow?

Your ref. T.S. 300/79

Dear Minister,

Thank you for your reply in the Irish Times, Saturday 1st. September 1979. We trust you will continue to co operate with us.

Let us state from the start that we are totally determined to go through with our threats to spread this disease. During the last three months we have formulated the final details of our method introducing this disease. Your Veterinary advisors will have or can tell you, if you have not already been advised of the ease with which this disease can be spread. You and your entire department are totally helpless to stop us. We

have selected a number of locations to which we have access and will use these outlets if we have to, but sincerely hope we do not have to do so, as we have no wish to see the Livestock industry totally ruined.

Now, Minister, let us talk about ourselves. We are five individuals with total different backgrounds and are each reasonably financially secure. We have expended quite large sums of money, both on travel and ‘inducements’ abroad to put us in the position we are now. We realise that if you are convinced of our determination to do what we say and you decide to pay the money to prevent this happening, one of your concerns would be that we would come back for more at some future date. We have no way to prove to you that this will not happen, but each of us will have recieved the sum of £1 million and this we assure you is totally adequate for each of us.

The ball is now in your court and you must decde what you must do, but bear a few facts in mind in making your decision.

No.1. There is no way you can stop us carrying out our threats.

No.2. Should you agree to pay the money, please be prepared to carry out the agreement as only one of the five will collect the money and this person will have no knowledge of the locations from which the disease will be spread.