By Ray O’Hanlon
With demand for the book “The Committee” showing no sign of lagging, especially in Ireland, where it is not openly available, two of the individuals named in the Sean McPhilemy tome alleging organized murder conspiracies in Northern Ireland are reported to be traveling to the U.S. this week with a lawsuit on their minds.
Albert and David Prentice are wealthy car dealers in the North and their names pop up more than once in an index that also lists more prominent individuals, including Ulster Unionist Party leader David Trimble. The book’s central thesis is that an organized group made up of Unionist business types, Protestant clergy, the RUC, British security forces and loyalist assassins – “The Committee” – has been behind numerous murders of republicans and nationalists. The accusations, if proven to be true, would confirm what many people already believe – that Northern Ireland during the Troubles was not too far removed from dictator-era countries like Argentina and Chile in some of its dirtier doings. One of the Prentice brothers, Albert, has reportedly preached in several U.S. states, so while not being a public figure here, he does believe he has a reputation. His reputation, and that of McPhilemy’s, might soon be clashing in a U.S. court.
Ray’s friends stand by their man
Back in November 1990, the Echo featured a front page photo of Ray Flynn, then mayor of Boston, and Beantown’s police commissioner at the time, Francis “Mickey” Roache. The two were jogging through midtown Manhattan in preparation for the New York Marathon. Flynn has run a number of marathons over the years but nothing quite like the political version he is currently slogging through in Massachusetts.
Flynn’s recent collision with the wall, the political version, came when he fell rather ignominiously out of the race for governor. This against the backdrop of all the uproar over the Boston Globe’s front page assault on his supposed drinking habits and his record as U.S. ambassador to the Vatican. Flynn, suddenly running backward in the gathering statehouse sprint, took a right turn and began a longer haul bid for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. congressional race in the famed 8th District, a slice of political pie about to be vacated by Rep. Joe Kennedy.
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Last week, Flynn hit another bump in the road. The Boston Herald came out with a report that Flynn’s last-minute entry into the congressional race might have been a false start. Flynn needed 2,000 signatures to get on the ballot. In less than a week he collected 2,503. But a Herald report detailed numerous cases of “potentially questionable signatures” on Flynn’s nomination papers. There were different names, to be sure, but a lot of the signatures looked like they were written by the same hand. But Ray Flynn has at least nine lives and they’re not all used up yet. Turns out the apparently identical handwriting behind a load of the questioned signatures came from different hands – those of nuns trained to write in exactly the same way.
Clearly, the sisters have not lost faith in Ray. And neither has his erstwhile running partner. Mickey Roache, now a city councilor at-large, described his old marathon partner as a fighter for working families and children who never forgot his Irish-Catholic roots. Roache was speaking recently at a Communion breakfast sponsored by the Watertown Ancient Order of Hibernians. Some things you never forget in life: Boston politics and pouring out sweat, side by side over 26 miles, 385 yards of Big Apple asphalt.
Do the Wall Street Shugffle
“IF” is forever intrigued by Wall Street. It seems to be permanently inhabited by all manner of shadowy figures who earn millions, move billions, sell zillions and, in some cases, even steal a mill or two on the side. What is produced by all this furious activity is anyone’s guess, but it’s the ultimate in paper pushing and that’s a fact. Ultimate in that the paper all bears the images of dead presidents and is something we simply can’t do without. But “IF” reckons that the mysteries of Wall Street will be vanquished now that both Gerry Adams and the diehards – Dowhards? – at “Radio Free Eireann” have taken such a shine to downtown.
By all accounts, the new WBAI studios in the financial district are sumptuous by comparison to the just-vacated digs in midtown. The last-stand republicans who present the show will be denouncing all and sundry from a studio with a view of the Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn Bridge and maybe even that slice of heaven in mostly New Jersey, Ellis Island.
Adams, meanwhile, will likely be a return visitor to the area given all the masters of the universe he now has on his Christmas card list. At this rate he’ll have to give up the folksy hill walking for golf.
Meanwhile, “IF” was mulling over that mean piece that the London Sunday Times wrote about the recent Adams visit to the moneypit. All that rubbish about the “green panther” turning out to be a skunk etc. Looks to “IF” like the ST took the NYT’s Maureen Dowd a little too much at her literal word. Or is “IF” taking the ST a little too literally at its word? Time was you could trust a paper with “Times” in the title but these days all is confusion. “IF” will join Gerry and the Dowhards from now on in reading the Wall Street Journal. Maybe be they should all get together for a fourball.
So who’s not coming to dinner?
The World of Hibernia, the glossy mag that socially dwarfs some of the coffee tables it lands on, is hosting a big bash in New York this week. The event is entitled “Super Irish, Shining Stars of the Irish Diaspora.” The evening features a gala dinner and presentation at the Roosevelt Hotel, a formidable pile in midtown. But is it formidable enough? We’re talking the fabled diaspora here, a global phenomenon celebrated in song and scripted speech and remembered by a candle in a window in Chez Mary. How are they going to pack 70 million people into one ballroom? What if all the shining Irish stars turn up and they run out of shrimp?