Letter from Joseph P. Walshe to Seán Nunan (Dublin)
(Secret and Highly Combustible) (Copy)

I was very interested in your letter received on Saturday evening 13th March.¹

Unfortunately, the immense change brought about in my life by my transfer to Rome, involving an endless series of completely new experiences and new contacts of every kind, has practically wiped out the detailed memory of departmental matters which I once had. I can only give impressions, all vague, highly libellous, and uncharitable. And, moreover, I really cannot give chapter and verse for anything concerning him. For instance, I had completely forgotten the document you mention.

Kerney comes into my picture of the war years as the one person we were never sure of. We did, of course, instruct him to do everything possible to prevent the execution of F.[rank] R.[yan] by the Spanish Government, but I always felt that the direct appeal made by the Taoiseach to the Duke of Alba² was the real cause of his release.

Kerney never felt that he belonged to the Department. He acted on his own and told us very little. I don’t remember his ever talking to me about secret matters. Once he wrote a letter complaining, in rather high handed fashion, that his letters were being opened by the Irish Censor (as were all letters from abroad). The Taoiseach was naturally very annoyed, and he gave Kerney (it must have been during the ’43 visit you mention) a very serious talk. When he came to my office, before he went to see the Taoiseach, he complained that nobody had come from the High Commissioner’s Office to the Station at Euston to see him off. The complaint riled me, and I answered that our Ministers abroad functioned for all purposes exclusively abroad, and were just ordinary Civil Servants when they left their post. Moreover, I told him it was unreasonable to want to give trouble at a time when we all had so many more important things to do. I also said that our representatives were servants of the State and not bloody potentates. Of course, I was wrong to lose patience with him, but that very fact is an indication to you of the reaction he provoked in his colleagues.

If the report of the conversation of ’42 was sent home at once (was it?) I cannot understand why we never sent it to D.[an] B.[ryan] until after my departure for Rome. But I am quite certain there was some reason.³

My summing up of Kerney’s attitude is, probably, based on pure surmise, but, as you ask me for my impression, I must let you have it.

Kerney was always a megalomaniac. He had the superiority attitude towards the mere Irish which so many of our more shallow minded countrymen acquire after too long a residence abroad. In my own relatively narrow experience I can name amongst people you know: Desmond FitzGerald, Kerney, John Dulanty (infinitely less offensively developed in him, but definitely present), and Seán MacBride.

Kerney really despised us ordinary fish in the Department. After his first accidental contacts with the Germans he began to be convinced that they were invincible and were bound to win. Many people were of that opinion e.g. Cudahy⁴ sent such a report to his Government from Brussels. Kerney then decided that he had a major role to play in the world, and most probably made and maintained, for a brief period at any rate, contacts with the IRA in Ireland. In other words, if my conjecture is correct, he ceased to be a servant of the State for that phase of his activities.

Who would be best acquainted with the events in question? No doubt, Mrs. Clissmann and her husband, and Seán MacBride. You remember the outrageous instruction given by MacBride to me to keep Clissmann in the Embassy, when he succeeded in getting out of Germany into Italy in early ’47, I think.⁵ Of course, I did not keep him here, but I managed to persuade the heads of the police not to take any notice of his departure for Ireland. It was a difficult operation in those days, with the Americans and British all over the place, and the German frontier supposedly closed. MacBride has always been very friendly with Mrs. Clissmann’s family. I should say nobody knows the whole story from beginning to end better than these three. However, you are powerless to get any help from that quarter.

Amongst our own people, I should say that Dan Bryan, Fred Boland and Sheila Murphy, could piece a lot of the story together.

You could recall to Dan’s mind a certain evening in my house, in 12 Cowper Drive, when the two incredibly clever brothers X⁶ of the English S.[ecret] S.[ervice] showed us a list of suspected contactmen, of whom Kerney was one. I remember feeling thoroughly humiliated, especially because I was in complete ignorance of his machinations. Ask Dan, also, about the flying visit of a certain Miss Mains⁷ to Ireland, aboard a boat which called at Galway, coming from Spain and returning there to pick up Japanese (?) who were being repatriated with the permission of the Allies. We suspected she had a mission to the German Minister, and we did not exclude Kerney from being privy to the expedition.

Of course, as the foregoing are just impressions, they may be all wrong; only it is strange that we did not feel that way about any other official of the Department. Our Minister, who had very close relations with the Department during the war and was kept closely in touch with all we knew, will have fresher recollections than I have.

I wonder will Kerney ever go on with the case. Unless the British are entirely wrong, he must have been doing some independent line with the Germans, and if it comes out in public he is bound to suffer many inconveniences. Is he being deceived by his colossal opinion of his abilities?

Of course, as a Department, we have to keep out of the whole affair. Too many people have an unhealthy interest in cases of this kind, and our troubles would never end.

Please consign this letter to the flames or I’ll be consigned to them before my time.

Dan Bryan will probably tell you that this letter has no more value than the summing up chapter of a detective story.