THE former IRA member turned Garda agent, Mr Sean O'Callaghan, told an American audience yesterday he still faced possible arrest in the Republic of Ireland for the murder of another IRA informer and that he had not been granted immunity for the crime.
He said he had "made a full confession" to the police in Northern Ireland to the murder of Mr Sean Corcoran in the Republic in 1985. "But I have never heard another word about it in any shape or form." He also said that he could have been tried in Northern Ireland for the murder under the Criminal Law Jurisdiction Act.
Mr O'Callaghan strongly hinted that it was remorse for the murder of Mr Corcoran that led him to give himself up to British police and confess to several other murders which he had committed in Northern Ireland.
Mr O'Callaghan, who appeared nervous at the press conference in the National Press Club in Washington, said he had just learned that his father had died in Ireland last Friday, but it was too late for him to attend the funeral. "Inevitably, this is very much on my mind. I find it a bit disturbing," he said.
Mr O'Callaghan, who was accompanied by the historian and writer Ruth Dudley Edwards, said his trip to the US was being 85 per cent financed by advances on a book about his life being written by a woman journalist, Kathy Clark. The Sunday Times of London, for which he has been writing over the past four years, was paying his transatlantic airfare and helping with arrangements in Washington.
He would not give specific details about his meetings during his US trip but said he would be meeting "some administration officials privately". A White House spokesman said later there were no arrangements for Mr O'Callaghan to visit there to meet officials. A State Department official also said he was unaware of any visit there by Mr O'Callaghan.
Asked about his views on the Clinton administration policy towards Ireland, Mr O'Callaghan said that he believed it was a genuine involvement and well meaning.
But, while many people around the world and in Ireland, believed there had been an end to, IRA violence, after 16 years in that organisation "I reserved the right to remain cynical".
The Clinton administration had come to the Irish situation with "an essentially nationalist position but inevitably they moved to a more balanced position which Sinn Fein and the IRA never reckoned on". If you listened to the message coming out of Ireland from John Hume and John Bruton in recent days, he believed it was a message that the Clinton administration had taken on "You do not meet or engage with Sinn Fein until the IRA abandons terrorism."
Mr O'Callaghan cited criticism of Sinn Fein in a recent article by the SDLP leader, Mr John Hume, to support his claim that Sinn Fein is still closely linked with the IRA. But he said he never wanted Sinn Fein to be excluded from the all party talks once IRA violence had definitively ended.
Asked about IRA fund raising in the US, Mr O'Callaghan said it had peaked in the 1970s but that money raised for Sinn Fein allowed the IRA more scope to buy weapons. He also pointed out that the Sinn Fein Washington office has been permitted to remain open even after the ending of the IRA ceasefire.
Today, Mr O'Callaghan will have an informal debate in a committee room on Capitol Hill with a Republican Congressman, Mr Peter King, on "The Irish Troubles".