MINISTER of State, Mr Pat Rabbitte, told the High Court yesterday that he was not "chasing across the Urals" to trace the origin of the "Moscow letter" after it was published in October 1992.
The Moscow letter was purportedly written by the Workers' Party to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in September 1986 requesting funds.
Mr Rabbitte said the letter was, published in The Irish Times in 1992 in the middle of a general election campaign.
Mr De Rossa, leader of Democratic Left and Minister for Social Welfare, is suing Independent Newspapers over the article, which was published in the Sunday Independent on December 13th, 1992. This is the eighth day of the hearing.
Evidence for Mr De Rossa concluded yesterday and Mr Dunphy is expected to take the witness stand today.
Asked under cross-examination by Mr Kevin Feeney SC, for Independent Newspapers, what steps he had taken to establish who wrote the Moscow letter, Mr Rabbitte said it would have to be put in context.
He was in Dublin Castle, in connection with the beef tribunal, the Government was disintegrating and there was a general election and the aftermath was the Eamon Dunphy article.
Mr Feeney said that two names appeared on the letter. Mr Rabbitte said there was no contact good, bad or indifferent with the other name on the letter.
Mr Feeney said that Mr Sean Garland was the other name. Mr Garland was the general secretary of the party and the person most closely involved in building a relationship with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Mr Garland in 1992 was living and available in Dublin. He was at the end of a telephone.
Mr Rabbitte said: "God bless your innocence, Mr Feeney, you obviously know very little about politics. I have never spoken to Mr Garland since the walk-out from Wynnes' Hotel and the notion I should ring him is preposterous. You obviously know nothing about politics if you think I should ring him and ask him to go out for a pint."
Asked if he knew Seamus Martin, Irish Times journalist, who revealed the existence of the letter, he replied that he knew him very well as they were neighbours. He said he did talk to Mr Martin about the letter.
Mr Feeney asked if Mr Martin informed him as to what the CPSU did with the letter. Mr Rabbitte said no, Mr Martin did not know what the response was. He got a story and he wrote the story.
Asked if he discussed with Mr Martin if there were any cross-references in the archive, Mr Rabbitte said he could not recall the exact discussions with Mr Martin. He had been anxious to know what Mr Martin could tell him but the journalist could not tell him anything other than what he had written.
He found it absolutely fantastic that Mr Feeney should suggest that he (Mr Rabbitte) should know how the CPSU dealt with this letter. To suggest that the journalist knew was fantastic.
Mr Martin was a competent senior journalist, Mr Rabbitte said. Whatever Mr Martin had discovered, he had put in his despatch which appeared in The Irish Times.
Turning to the Armstrong interview with Mr De Rossa in The Irish Times in December 1992, Mr Feeney asked if he would agree with Mr De Rossa's interpretation that "special activities" were associated, with illegal activities.
Mr Rabbitte said that it was a reasonable inference that it meant illegal activities of some kind.
Asked whether Mr De Rossa had discussed the interview with him, Mr Rabbitte said that he would have mentioned it but one of the exasperating things was that it was quite impossible to get Mr De Rossa to say anything other than to vehemently deny that he had anything to do with the letter.
Mr Rabbitte agreed that the origin of the Moscow letter was a crucial question. He also agreed that it was particularly to the DL TDs who were formerly in the WP.
Mr Feeney pressed him on the importance of identifying where the letter had come from.
Mr Rabbitte said he did not want them to take it out of the context of the general election.
"If you think we were chasing across the Urals to find out the origin of the letter during a general election, we are at cross purposes. That is not the way life works. That is not the way general elections work."
Mr Rabbitte told the court he joined the WP in 1977/'78 and was elected to the Dail in November 1989. He was on the ardchomhairle of the WP from about 1986 until the split in February 1992.
Asked if he was aware of the WP establishing relations with the CPSU, he said he was not really.
He said he was at the ardchomhairle meeting in January 1992 when Mr Garland disclosed that he had sought funds from the CPSU.
When asked, he said that it was a significant disclosure. He said that the disclosure came in answer to a specific question put to him by a member of the ardchomhairle arising from a newspaper article over the Christmas period.
The article referred to funds being sought from Moscow. Somebody demanded to know if that was the case.
Mr Garland got up and said that was the case and regretted he hadn't got any.