To neighbors, they were suburban dads. In secret, they were running an international gun smuggling ring
Contractor Danny Cahalane’s dark green work van was nearly as well known in 1970s Philadelphia as the father-of-three was himself in Irish American circles.
Dark-haired, tall and quiet, Cahalane had emigrated to the US from Ireland in 1949 and enthusiastically embraced his newly adopted home – joining the Army and earning a Purple Heart in Korea, then coaching little league and hosting movie nights in the Philly suburb where he and his wife settled to raise their children.
Cahalane zipped through that suburb and all over the city in his signature van, hobnobbing with fellow immigrants and Irish Americans as he did so.
Most were aware that he was heavily involved with the Northern Irish Aid Committee (NORAID), ostensibly a fundraising humanitarian organization sending help to Catholics in the six counties of Ireland still under British rule – and embroiled in a sectarian conflict known as The Troubles.
Almost no one, however, knew that Cahalane had welded a false bottom onto his distinctive work vehicle – and was ferrying a veritable arsenal destined for the hands of the Provisional Irish Republican Army on the other side of the Atlantic.
Because Cahalane, along with others soon to be christened the Philadelphia Five, was a ringleader amidst a network of Stateside conspirators amassing American arms to smuggle to Northern Ireland.
The British territory was plunging deeper and deeper into bloodshed as the mostly Catholic Provos waged a guerrilla campaign against UK forces, which were retaliating with increasing ferocity – fomenting only further rage and rebellion.
Historically marginalized, kept from the best jobs and opportunities, Catholics and IRA rebels proclaimed that they were fighting for equal civil rights; the armed faction of that effort, however, was finding itself increasingly outgunned by British troops.
The IRA’s guerilla fighters needed more and better weapons. And the Irish in America answered the call.
‘This was a bunch of suburban dads,’ says journalist Ali Watkins, whose new book The Next One Is for You: A True Story of Guns, Country, and the IRA’s Secret American Army will be published this week.
‘When we talk about gunrunning operations or covert foreign support … we kind of assume it’s like spies and mobsters and all these crazy underground characters that none of us could relate to.
‘What is so powerful and interesting about this specific chapter in Irish America – we’re talking the beginning of the Troubles, from like 1970 to 1975 – we’re really just talking about a lot of regular people … we’re not dealing with covert shipments and spy gear.
‘If you asked any random person walking around America in 1973, “Hey, how would you smuggle this gun out of the country?” they’d probably come up with some of the same ideas.’
She’d stumbled upon the story of suburban gunrunners while researching her own family’s rebel connections; it had long been rumored among her relatives that her immigrant great-grandfather had been involved in Irish nationalism and possibly illicit activity.
Then she saw old headlines about Irishmen charged with IRA gunrunning in 1970s US – and became fascinated with the untold tale of America’s blue-collar, socially respected, suburban-dad arms smugglers.
Aside from Cahalane, others heavily involved included Neil Byrne, a ‘flamboyant, eccentric bachelor’ who’d also served in Korea with the US Army after emigrating from County Donegal; Daniel Duffy, a mechanic who’d emigrated from Derry with his ‘turbulent personality;’ Hughie Breen, an IRA veteran whose pub near Philly became a key clandestine meeting point; and Matt Regan, an Irish-American whose own tavern served a similar function.
Another IRA veteran, Vince Conlon, had been the driving force behind much of the American effort – but anointed Cahalane in his stead after returning to Ireland to continue his efforts on native soil.
He’d left Cahalane and the others behind with a key contact: Marjorie Palace, a Pennsylvania gun dealer who ran a ‘well-regarded’ business with her husband out of their modest corner residence.
Conlon and Byrne had been impressed after placing an initial order for ten British-issue military rifles and thousands of rounds of armor-piercing ammunition; Palace hadn’t batted an eye and sourced the items quickly.
‘It sounded like the arms were used for target practice at a gun club, which explained the large quantities,’ Watkins writes. ‘That was enough for Palace. Having worked in the shadowy world of collectors and rare guns for a long time, she was never one to get overly concerned about details.’
Cahalane, Byrne and the others kept the orders coming – often signing their own names for the weaponry. They also rarely bothered, inexplicably, to file off the serial numbers.
Much of the funding was coming from NORAID, though the organization claimed in paperwork to be affiliated with a similar Belfast-based humanitarian agency. Irish immigrants and those with further-back ancestry were keen to contribute to the cause, not only motivated by the romantic notion of a united Ireland but also infuriated by highly-publicized atrocities at the hands of British forces – such as 1972’s Blood Sunday, when troops fired on a protest march in Derry, killing 14 and wounding at least 15 others.
Whether Irish Americans knew it or not, the significant funds collected – and it was hard to tell how much, given NORAID’S scattered bookkeeping, cash donations and willingness to ‘take any amount of money, any time, from anyone’ – was going to weapons.
Particularly desirable were ArmaLites, American-made guns that were ‘sleek and versatile, light and easy to carry, so distinctive in shape that their ominous profile would one day be inextricably associated with the IRA and the Troubles,’ Watkins writes.
But ArmaLites and rifles weren’t the only guns the men collected, and Palace wasn’t the only source of firearms; the men weren’t picky.
‘A gun was a gun, and the group of them periodically got calls from friends and supporters who found antique guns In attics or wanted to off-load older stuff left over from wars,’ Watkins writes.
The arms were often left in houses or Cahalane’s van, eventually making their way to New York and its docks.
‘They were able to cart things over on the Queen Elizabeth II, the luxury ocean liner, their contraband secreted across the sea in the luggage of sympathizers,’ writes Watkins.’ And the Philly boys had a good connection with air freight for a while, sneaking guns over via amenable pilots.’
In New York, she writes, ‘Irish laborers were all over the city’s docks and container industries, which meant the inner circle could sneak illicit cargo into and out of shipping lanes with relative ease.
‘More than that, a handful of friends in border patrol made sure the crates left the country undisturbed. If they needed a container left alone, or an extra box scratched off the itinerary, that was easy enough … They were pushing significant numbers.
‘If the FBI or Scotland Yard had any idea how much firepower was moving up and down the New Jersey Turnpike on any given weekend, they would be dumbfounded, even more so if they knew who was behind it.
‘An entire guerrilla war was being propped up by a strange collection of suburban fathers with brogues – and some faith, still, in a united Ireland.’
But authorities on both sides of the Atlantic were starting to catch on, and the IRA’s helpers in the US were causing something of a diplomatic nightmare. American guns kept turning up in Northern Ireland, used in vicious attacks and seized during raids.
Until that point in the early Seventies, when Northern Irish and British authorities truly started pressuring the US to clamp down on the gunrunning, ‘American officials generally treated Northern Ireland as Great Britain’s problem, and there was little political incentive for Washington to intervene,’ Watkins writes.
‘After all, to have supported Irish reunification would alienate the British, a key ally, and to support the British would risk enraging America’s powerful Irish-American voting bloc.’
A mistake led to the charging of five New York-based Irish immigrants; six gun-laden suitcases had been discovered in County Cork after an Ireland-based operative forgot to schedule their pickup in 1971.
All five charged men, like the Philadelphia inner circle, had ties to NORAID. A grand jury was convened in Texas, where the guns had allegedly been purchased, but the suspects refused to say a word. After three months of detention, they were released without charge.
To many sympathetic Irish Americans, the ‘debacle would be easily packaged by NORAID as an extension of the legal injustices that were happening in Northern Ireland,’ Watkins writes.
To others, however, the attempts by US authorities to link NORAID money to IRA violence made them nervous – and the organization began suffering flight of membership and drops in donations.
By September 1973, the FBI was pursuing an investigation with the goal of forcing NORAID to register as a foreign agent for the IRA – and the ATF was investigating gun smuggling by NORAID members.
The failure to file off serial numbers would be a key facet of the ATF’s prosecutorial case, and documents sent by the British ‘showed nearly two hundred clear instances of violence connected to the Philly guns, names and dates and shootings, guns seized under various circumstances and tied to dozes of convictions, injuries, deaths and criminal indictments in West Belfast and Derry,’ Watkins writes.
For Cahalane and the rest of the Philadelphia Five, while damning, ‘those papers offered stunning evidence of their success.
‘The papers were proof that NORAID’s inner circle had been able to concretely help the IRA from three thousand miles away … the Provisional IRA had an impressively robust American army,’ Watkins writes.
‘And for years, it turned out, they had been fighting the British without ever firing a shot themselves.’
In the end, the Irish American judge ruled the British evidence was not permissible in court – though he allowed more than 100 seized guns to be ‘paraded into the courtroom … piled into carts, walked in front of the jury box.’
Still, though Cahalane and Byrne were found guilty after a three-week trial in 1976 of ‘obscure weapons-exportation violation,’ the US government never proved they’d acted on behalf of the IRA. They served a year in prison each.
Daniel Duffy walked free and would long be plagued by rumors that he’d cooperated with authorities; through her research, Watkins determined he’d once been listed as an informant, though it’s unclear whether he even knew he was providing information to US authorities, given his tendency to talk off anyone’s ear about the Irish fight for freedom.
Regan and Conlon had also been charged but had moved back to Ireland years earlier.
Still, however, ‘the Provos’ channel of American ArmaLites was successfully staunched,’ Watkins writes.
She’s surprised it’s taken this long to tell the gunrunners’ stories – though in Philadelphia, the lore surrounding the men still looms large.
‘It is a really complicated story,’ Watkins tells DailyMail.com, but ‘it’s really a story about characters … a lot of people who felt really strongly about something and kind of changed the course of history through that.
‘A lot of people wanted this documented – and that was kind of my biggest pitch to people that were skeptical: This is a chapter that most of the people who know about it are going to be gone, if they’re not already,’ she says.
‘This whole posture of secrecy, which certainly is pervasive in the North and the Republic about this period, I think I was able to chip through some of that in Irish American … and was just really able to bring the story to life.’
