Peoples Workers' friend

Newsworthiness: Producer/director of controversial four-part series on Des O'Malley for RTE

In 1992, the Irish Times' Moscow correspondent, Seamus Martin, was rooting around the official archives of the Soviet Communist Party when he made an interesting find.

Martin discovered two letters on Workers Party (WP) headed notepaper, addressed to the international department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).

The letters were dated July and September 1986, and were apparently signed by the general secretary of the Workers Party, Sean Garland.

The September letter sought a grant of GBP1 million from the CPSU and referred to WP fundraising through "special activities". The party later claimed that this letter was a fabrication, but never denied the authenticity of the earlier letter.

That letter, sent on July 1 1986, was a request by Garland to the CPSU to meet Gerry Gregg - then on leave from his job as an RTE television producer - who had recently formed his own TV production company, Iskra Productions. (Iskra was the name of the Bolshevik newsletter in 1917.) Iskra, wrote Garland, was interested in producing films on Soviet life.

Garland explained that the Workers Party in Ireland had devoted a lot of time and money to combating the "capitalist media" and to educating "the working class".

"As part of this struggle," he continued, "some members of the Workers Party recently formed Iskra Productions. Iskra productions functions in an environment hostile to a Marxist analysis of many of the problems confronting western society.

"However, Iskra Productions also recognises that, within the western media there is a commercial appetite for 'stories' which, paradoxically, may embody a critique of the dominant ideology or power structure of western society."

Garland described the company as "a Marxist film-making enterprise which commands this party's full support. Iskra is potentially a useful propaganda device for the socialist cause, for a small party like ours it promises much by way of building up the intellectual, ideological and financial resources of our party."

Garland said Iskra's "very talented team" included Gregg, his fellow TV producer Eoghan Harris, and radio producer John Caden. All three were longtime and vocal Workers Party supporters in RTE.

Gregg was a paid-up member of the party who would later later go on to make its political broadcasts at election time.

Gregg confirmed to the Irish Times that he had sought Garland's assistance while looking for contacts in the Soviet Union. He said that Iskra had set out to make films which were distinctive, challenging and radical, "which wouldn't have been a million miles away from the Workers Party in terms of world affairs or, indeed, in terms of Northern Ireland".

It is not known whether Des O'Malley recalled the Iskra letter last year when he agreed to grant Gregg exclusive access for a four-part documentary on his life. What is known - now that the first part has been broadcast - is that Gregg has managed to pull off the sort of ideological media coup that Garland had promised the CPSU back in 1986.

In what was marketed by RTE as a straightforward biography of O'Malley, Gregg has produced, in my opinion, a piece of old-style Workers Party propaganda, unmoderated by any dissenting view. The production is now causing great embarrassment to RTE, following its week-long drubbing by commentators and politicians.

Gregg himself can hardly be accused of deviousness. He has never hidden his politics, nor the fact that his work and his politics are entirely interlinked. Virtually every documentary he has made since the 1980s has challenged the mainstream nationalist and religious consensus.

With that as a backdrop, just how likely was it that Gregg was going to produce a balanced view of O'Malley - and particularly his line on the North? Two days before the first part was broadcast, RTE executives were satisfied that the programme was "balanced", although this itself may be a reflection of the effort that went into talking Gregg down from what was seen as complete sycophancy.

What is so remarkable about the O'Malley documentary is that Gregg succeeded in peddling his views through one of the most important and costly political profiles that RTE has broadcast in decades. What is even more remarkable is that RTE let him. No one at senior level in RTE was unaware of Gregg's politics. Apparently, some also knew that Harris was a co-director of Gregg's latest production company, Praxis Pictures.

Harris and Gregg are not just ideological soulmates. Harris has also provided a chorus of approval through his Sunday Times column for virtually all Gregg's productions over the last few years. One was described as "spellbinding", another as "brilliant", another as worthy of an award.

The documentaries - in a nutshell - have dumped on Sinn Fein or the Catholic Church, or both.

Gregg and Harris share broadly similar backgrounds. Both were working-class, both had relatives who fought in 1916, both came from families with strong republican leanings and both had formative experiences that turned them against nationalism. They developed a view of Northern politics which was closely aligned with that of Conor Cruise O'Brien and later the Workers Party, which emerged in the early 1980s from Official Sinn Fein and the Official IRA.

Dublin-born Gregg, like his father and uncles before him, joined the Labour Party at the age of 18. He left the party while at UCD. By the time he joined RTE in the late 1970s as a trainee producer, it was Official Sinn Fein to which he gave his allegiance.

In an interview last year Gregg laid out his ideological stall. Ireland, he said, was a corrupt, hypocritical, inegalitarian society, and the legislative framework of the Catholic state was still very much in place.

There was a debate within RTE to democratise it and open it up and there was a split between those who embraced the critique - roughly the Workers Party camp - and those who didn't - roughly the Provo camp. The debate was at its most virulent on the national question, and there was no hiding place between the two factions.

In the 1980s the WP ideologues chose RTE's flagship current affairs programme as their battleground.

Presided over by Joe Mulholland - not a member of the Workers Party, but a supporter of its line on the North - Today Tonight was an unpleasant place for those with even the mildest nationalist leanings.

President Mary McAleese was a reporter on the programme when Mulholland took over. McAleese - described at one meeting by an unnamed producer as a "West Belfast Provo" - was frequently in tears after abusive jousts with her co-workers over their coverage of the North.

In an interview with the Irish Times three years after she quit RTE, McAleese said: "I was a Northern voice and I spent a lot of time there. Every weekend I was with friends and relations trying to find out what was happening in the North, but I was not listened to. Whenever I tried to explain that more and more people were being drawn into the H-Block cause because of the failure of the British government to act, they wouldn't listen to me because they felt that anyone who was bringing that message into the programme had to be a Provo supporter."

To many RTE current affairs personnel it was Gregg - because of his key producer status on Today Tonight - rather than Harris, who epitomised Workers Party thinking and influence.

One former producer said: "When people talk about the Workers Party in RTE, they're really talking about Gregg, because he was 90 per cent of it. He was - and is - unambiguously political in everything he does. He is a completely political person.

Gregg took leave of absence from RTE in 1986 and formally resigned three years later.

Iskra was founded in 1986 and from then on Gregg - as he tells it - battled to have his productions accepted by the station. In 1993 the Independent Production Unit was set up with Claire Duignan, a former TV producer, at its head.

Last year Gregg claimed that many of his proposals were rejected by the IPU because of his political agenda. However, the same proposals still managed to get airtime thanks to the support of Mulholland, who was, until March last year RTE's managing director of television.

A revisionist documentary about the republican Sean South, rejected by the IPU, was later funded by RTE's Leargas programme. Gregg's film A Love Divided, which told the true story of a 1950s Catholic/Protestant family clash over schooling, was also rejected by the IPU and then supported by Mulholland.

The history of the O'Malley documentary is somewhat complex. It appears that it was accepted by the IPU, but later withdrawn by Gregg.

It later went back on the IPU's books, after it had been endorsed by Mulholland. Commissioning editor Kevin Dawson oversaw the project, which was effectively inherited by Mulholland's successor, Cathal Goan.

A former radio producer, Goan had clashed with Gregg in the past when he dared to invite a panel on to the Day By Day programme to discuss a fawning documentary on Conor Cruise O'Brien produced by Gregg.

The IPU decision to accept the O'Malley proposal after rejecting a number of other Gregg productions was almost certainly influenced by the popular success of A Love Divided, plus the award to Gregg of an Emmy for his Channel 4 documentary on a massacre at Kosovo. RTE's publicity material on the O'Malley documentary mentioned only those two Gregg productions.

Last week one commentator after another lined up to tear the documentary apart, not just for its failure adequately to address the recent arms trial revelations, but also for its overall hagiographic tone, its crude and cruel demonising of O'Malley's enemies and its sheer dullness.

What he may not be able to laugh off is the likely fallout for him from RTE's embarrassment over its decision to broadcast propagnda masquerading as objective current affairs. The station's rationale for going with the documentary was to fill the gap in the station's political archives.

One suspects that, wherever Des O'Malley - A Public Life is placed once it ends, it won't be in that gap.

Panel faults spy agencies

Committee urges overhaul, inquiry into Sept. 11 attacks

10/03/2001 .... http://www.dallasnews.com/attack_on_america/investigation/stories/486622_intel_03nat.AR.html ...... NYTimes via DallasNews.com

New York Times News Service

WASHINGTON – The House committee that oversees the nation's intelligence agencies has called for far-reaching changes in intelligence operations. It also wants an independent investigation into why the government did not foresee or prevent the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, in a report accompanying a classified intelligence bill expected to be taken up by the House this week, says it is urgent to address the "many critical problems" facing the intelligence agencies.

The bill, approved by the committee late last week, would create an independent 10-member commission to study the preparedness and performance of many federal agencies during and after the Sept. 11 strikes. It would also increase the roughly $30 billion intelligence budget, although the exact amounts are classified.

The committee calls for a "cultural revolution" inside such agencies as the CIA and FBI and a thorough review of the nation's national security structures.

The committee's bill would rescind CIA Director George Tenet's 1995 restrictions on the CIA's use of unsavory covert agents and instructs him to write new guidelines. It speaks of a "culture of risk aversion" and says the 1995 guidelines "have had a negative impact on the recruitment of sources against terrorist organizations."

Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., who is chairman of the intelligence committee and is a former CIA case officer, said he is a strong supporter of Mr. Tenet and that he leaned against establishing an independent commission at this time.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the ranking Democrat on the committee, said: "The point is not to point blame or point fingers. The point is to see where the weaknesses are in our system."

The criticism of the CIA has been muted since Sept. 11, with only Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, calling for Mr. Tenet's resignation. The Bush administration has rallied behind Mr. Tenet, and many lawmakers say it isn't the time to remove him or to run an investigation that could distract agencies that should be focused on preventing further attacks.

The commission would be appointed by the president and congressional leaders and would examine the performance of many federal agencies responsible for public safety, law enforcement, national security and intelligence gathering. It would have subpoena powers and would report back six months after its formation.

President Bush has already ordered internal reviews of intelligence gathering. But the committee said that "if history serves, however, no substantive changes will occur after these reviews are complete."

The Senate passed its own intelligence measure before Sept. 11, and it was not clear where it would stand on creating a commission. Senior lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee have also called for a new look at the nation's intelligence apparatus.

Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga.. said he was considering whether to offer an amendment to lift the 25-year ban on using covert agents to assassinate foreign leaders. The ban was enacted by executive order.

The committee recommended that intelligence agencies offer bonuses for language proficiency and that they consider creating their own language school. The committee also said that the nation needed to increase its front-line field officers, clandestine case officers and defense attaches.

It said a "fresh look" should be taken at restructuring the CIA and other intelligence agencies to create a separate clandestine service, splitting the directorate of covert operations out of the CIA.

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