Tony Geraghty

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Tony Geraghty (born 13 January 1932) is a British-Irish writer and journalist. He served in the Parachute Regiment, and was awarded the Joint Service Commendation Medal for his work as a military liaison officer with U.S. forces during the Gulf War. He has been a journalist for The Boston Globe and was the Sunday Times Defence Correspondent in the 1970s. [1]

Contents

Life and career

Geraghty was born in Liverpool on 13 January 1932, [2] to an Irish Catholic family. He was educated at the London Oratory. [3]

During the Falls Curfew in July 1970, while on assignment for the Sunday Times, Geraghty was arrested by a soldier and charged with impeding the Army by being on the street against military orders, which carried an automatic prison sentence on conviction. In September 1970, a magistrate ruled he had no case to answer, and acquitted him. [4]

His 1998 book The Irish War: The Hidden Conflict Between the IRA and British Intelligence was written following research which included interviews with members of MI5, British security forces and the Provisional Irish Republican Army. It describes the various tactics, both military and political, used by both sides in the Troubles in Northern Ireland. [5]

Publishers Weekly called the book "highly opinionated" but praised "its attention to detail and its direct, potent writing." Library Journal said "[t]he role of British Intelligence in Ulster has never been so deeply explored". [6]

On 3 December 1998 Geraghty's house was searched and he was interviewed by the Ministry of Defence Police and in May 1999, he was charged with breaching section 5 [7] of the Official Secrets Act 1989 on the basis that he quoted from classified Army documents in the book. The Army was concerned that in mentioning their Caister/Crucible computer intelligence databases for tracking the Northern Irish populeation, and the Vengeful-Glutton number plate recognition and vehicle tracking system, he might have been in possession of copies of the documents. [8]

The case was dropped in November 2000. [7] [9] [10] [11]

He has written several books on the Special Air Service. The Bullet Catchers is a history of close protection bodyguards.

He is the godfather of magician’s assistant Debbie McGee.

Books

See also

Related Research Articles

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The Mullacreevie ambush took place on 1 March 1991, when a mobile patrol of the Ulster Defence Regiment composed of two Land Rover vehicles was attacked with an improvised horizontal mortar by a Provisional IRA active service unit from the North Armagh Brigade while passing near Mullacreevie housing estate, on the west side of Armagh City. One member of the UDR was killed instantly when the leading Land Rover was hit, while another died of wounds two days later. Two other soldiers were maimed for life.

References

  1. ↑ "Who Dares Wins – Little, Brown Book Group". Littlebrown.co.uk. Retrieved 28 September 2011.
  2. ↑ "Tony Geraghty homepage". tony-geraghty.com.
  3. ↑ Geraghty, Tony (2000). The Irish War: The Hidden Conflict Between the IRA and British Intelligence. HarperCollins. pp. xx–xxi. ISBN   978-0-00-638674-2.
  4. ↑ The Irish War: The Hidden Conflict Between the IRA and British Intelligence, pp. 33–39
  5. ↑ Geraghty, Tony (11 November 2000). The Irish War: The Hidden Conflict Between the IRA and British Intelligence. ISBN   9780801871177 . Retrieved 28 September 2011.
  6. ↑ "Tony Geraghty". Intellit.muskingum.edu. Retrieved 28 September 2011.
  7. 1 2 Maguire, Kevin (16 October 2000). "Writers: guilty until found innocent". New Statesman. Retrieved 3 September 2022.
  8. ↑ Duncan Campbell (2 November 2000). "Duncan Campbell, The Guardian, 2 November 2000". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 28 September 2011.
  9. ↑ "The Queen v. Wylde: The camera in the grocery shop". The Guardian. Retrieved 5 October 2015.
  10. ↑ "British Journalism Review Vol. 10, No. 2, 1999 – The sub-secret underworld of the D-Notice business". Bjr.org.uk. Retrieved 28 September 2011.
  11. ↑ Norton-Taylor, Richard (23 June 1999). "Secrets breach denied". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 25 May 2010.

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