Dearg code telegram from the Department of External Affairs to Robert
Brennan (Washington)
(No. 77)

Your telegram 94¹ and 95.² The salient facts from our point of view are:

1. Not a single whisper of story was submitted to or passed by censorship here between February 22nd and March 10th. Any cables to America in that period must have gone out through British censor.

2. On March 4th the London Sunday Observer submitted for censorship through High Commissioner, pretty accurate story citing sources in Washington as authority. We stopped it for Irish edition and informed British who issued a stop notice to British press. This was first sign of leakage we saw.

3. First real break appears to have been Associated Press from Belfast cited in your telegram 74.³

As press in London and elsewhere has reported Dublin was full of most various and fantastic rumours in the last week of February. It was quite possible to pick out something approximately to the facts from floods of baseless speculations which was current but suggestion of anything in nature of official leakage is impressively disproved to best advantage above.

Inform State Department in the sense of foregoing. There may be further recrimination about leak but it was always a safe bet that if London and Washington began to wrangle about it they would compose their governments' differences by blaming Dublin.