Podcast Episode  

Podcast Episode #111 - The Priest Who Funneled Weapons to the IRA from Gaddafi with Jennifer O'Leary
A bomb planted by the Irish Republican Army at the Grand Hotel in Brighton, England nearly killed Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on October 12th, 1984.
The Prime Minister and other members of the Conservative Party were in the hotel for a conference scheduled for the following morning. Unbeknownst to anyone, IRA member Patrick Magee had planted a bomb in the hotel above Thatcher’s room nearly a month earlier. It was set to detonate exactly 24 days, six hours, and 36 minutes later.
The IRA’s bomb makers were greatly assisted in their ongoing campaign by Father Patrick Ryan. In 1975, he purchased nearly 400 Memo Park Timers at a watch shop in Geneva. He’d seen them the day before and recognized their potential as reliable and foolproof devices to enhance the effectiveness of the IRA’s bombing campaign against Loyalists and the British.
Ryan joined the priesthood as a young man, serving in Africa where he took a hands-on approach to improving the lives of locals by digging wells and flying supplies around the continent. But at the first opportunity he began funneling money back to the IRA, as generations of his family had long supported Irish independence.
Although he never joined the IRA, within a few years he gained their trust and became the primary liaison with Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who provided them with weapons and cash. Ryan traveled all over Europe and North Africa, visiting Libyan embassies to pick up stacks of cash for transport back to Northern Ireland. Despite becoming a high-priority target of the British government, Ryan slipped through their fingers and lived out his days a free man. His only stated regret is that the bombs he helped build weren’t more effective.
For episode 111 of the Spycraft 101 podcast, I spoke with @jenniferolearyj about her book The Padre, and how she became the first journalist to get Father Ryan to tell his story publicly.
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