Thomas 59
A ghost from 2014 returned this week to haunt himself and his friends
Abridged from Give Us Back the Bad Roads (Currach Press, 2018, https://currachbooks.com/product/give-us-back-the-bad-roads/)
I’m publishing this extract from the chapter titled ‘Thomas59’ in conjunction with several entries in this week’s Diary, which refer to the controversy concerning Eoghan Harris and a ‘fake’ Twitter account in the name of Barbare J. Pym. This episode has many resonances with the one described in this chapter, involving various Irish Times personages, one of whom has been loud this past week in his denunciations of Harris. He should’ve let it lie.
In February 2014, in the throes of a sustained attack from LGBT activists arising from an unprovoked assault by a drag queen on the Saturday Night Show, I found myself the subject of an odd pseudonymous character on Twitter. Now read on:
Perhaps the most sinister development over the course of the entire saga was the unearthing of Thomas59. This individual was first brought to my attention by two friends of mine, who are a lot more internet-savvy than I am, and one of whom has a detailed understanding of social networks and their secrets. Somewhat into the controversy, they came across this particular Twitter account, which seemed to belong to someone with a high degree of knowledge of events inside the Irish Times. His Twitter moniker was Thomas59, obviously a pseudonym. At that stage he had just five followers.
Thomas59 had a lot of pretty coruscating things to say about me, Breda O’Brien and the Iona Institute, and was a follower — and also seemingly a strong supporter — of PantiBliss, which was Rory O’Neill’s Twitter handle. On January 18th, as the story of our dispute with RTÉ emerged, he texted @PantiBliss: ‘don’t worry Panti… the same crew do it all the time. It’s about intimidation… can’t win the argument? Send a solicitor’s letter.’
On January 26th, he tweeted: ‘Let’s face it folks. Neither blacks, Catholics or gays should be allowed marry. And I’m not a racist, a bigot or a homophobe. Just reasonable.’
On February 1st, he became involved in a brief exchange with another tweeter called liam driver, who was commenting on that evening’s Saturday Night Show debate on the homophobia controversy, which I had been invited to participate in but had declined. Driver referred to one of the panelists, Susan Phillips, who on the show had put forward a traditionalist viewpoint on gay marriage, tweeting: ‘#satnightshow Suzan — model middle class white catholic irish snob. Fucking whore burn in hell, you and your church.’
Thomas59, always a stickler for accuracy, tweeted back: @DriverLiam ‘liam she’s Church of Ireland and all the above’
On February 3rd, Thomas59 responded to a tweet from Paul Duane, tweeting under the name MrPaulDuane, who had announced: ‘Well, I just got an email from John Waters — the gay one, who makes movies. He knows ALL about our John Waters. “I get his Google alerts.”’
Some hours later, Thomas59 rejoined: ‘@MrPaulDuane Is he planning to change his name?’
That same day, Thomas59 tweeted Colm O’Gorman, the gay activist and head of Amnesty Ireland, who had been on radio debating the issue with Breda O’Brien and others: ‘@Colmogorman Colm, why do you engage with these assholes?’
On February 4th also, he tweeted Mary Kenny, the Irish Independent columnist, who had had the temerity to call for a little restraint: ‘O for God’s sake Mary. Your lot have decades of experience in doing that, Now you employ lawyers to do so same as against abused’
He appeared to be a close follower also of certain current affairs programmes on television and had on February 4th tweeted the Tonight with Vincent Browne programme on TV3 to tell them that I had sent a solicitor’s letter to the Irish Times about Una Mullally’s article of January 20th.
On February 4th also: ‘Well done Vinb team on showing Panti noble call. Won’t be on RTE or Irish Times web. Being sued by Waters too. #Vinb’
On February 5th, he tweeted: ‘Breda O’Brien. Prey for us. J Waters. D Quinn; J Murray, P Casey, R Mullen, M Steen (sic). Prey for us… on homophobic gays. (Sponsored by RTE).’
On February 5th, he also tweeted: ‘Panti in Wednes Indo. Won’t happen in Times. Complaints from Breda O’B and legal action by J Waters over Una Mullally Panti article January 27’
On February 5th also: ‘Beginning to wonder whether a part of me, just a part… might be Ionaphobic. Can this be cured too?’
That same evening, he also tweeted: ‘Iona Institute and J Waters denounce UN for anti Catholic ‘bigotry’. ‘Disappointed’ at its condemnation of child abuse and Magdalen laundries’
On February 6th, after a debate on the issue on Prime Time, Thomas59 tweeted the programme attacking one of the participants, a gay man who defended the Iona Institute’s position on gay marriage: ‘Paddy Manning? Well every minority has its Uncle Toms… #rtept’
On Friday February 7th , obviously watching Senator David Norris on the Late Late Show, he tweeted: ‘Let’s face it – David Norris is a national treasure. Let’s celebrate him while we have him. That ‘satire’ quote he read was by John Waters.’
That same evening, he tweeted: ‘Panti for President in 2018?’
On February 9th, in what appeared to be a reference to the recently published recording and transcript of my conversations with James Grannell in College Tribune, he tweeted: ‘By the Waters of Babble-on-and-on..... I lay down and wept...and wept...and wept...floodwaters....’
The following evening he tweeted in response to an emerging controversy involving the Garda Siochána Ombudsman Commission (GSOC) which had become embroiled in allegations concerning espionage at its offices in Dublin: ‘Oh no. More buggers. Where’s John Waters when you need him? And them about to subvert the State. Could be satire. But feels like farce #Vinb’
Shortly afterward, he came again: ‘It must have been Sean Doherty/Haughey again…but? Or maybe one of John Waters bug-gers? Trying to subvert society. `Of course. That’s it…’
He seemed to be particularly interested in myself and Breda O’Brien, though with apparently a poor grasp of the ironic shadows cast by his own pseudonymous status.
On February 12th, he tweeted: ‘So it's the O'Brien children who are now fronting for the Iona Institute. See letter by B Conroy — Breda O'Bs son — in Times today. Cowardly’
Shortly afterward, he corrected this tweet (he felt moved to do this rather frequently, since his initial efforts often contained errors of fact or serious misspellings): ‘Apologies. That's Breda O'Brien' s husband. Her son batted on Saturday Night Show. Dishonest. Public should be told.’
Once my internet sleuths began to take an interest in Thomas59, his identity was not long in emerging. They followed his tweets back to the point when he initiated his Twitter account on May 28th 2013 (my birthday!!). There they found that, in the immediate aftermath of setting up his account, he had either carelessly or naively given away his true identity in several different ways: signing off one tweet with his real first name and referring in another to his nieces and nephews by the family name; mentioning his occupation as a correspondent in a particular area, and supplying his work email address for someone he requested to contact him. He had also neglected to disable the GPS facility on his mobile device, which meant that, every time he tweeted, he revealed his precise location, which was sometimes his flat in southside Dublin, sometimes his local public house, Goggins’s of Monkstown, and sometimes the offices of the Irish Times on Tara Street, Dublin. Thomas59 was revealed in all his ingloriousness as Patsy McGarry, Religious Affairs Correspondent of the Irish Times.
On February 14th I sent a comprehensive portfolio on Thomas59 in an email to the Editor of the Irish Times, Kevin O’Sullivan and his Deputy Editor, Denis Staunton. I drew attention to the implications of Thomas59’s behaviour for the reputation of the Irish Times as a voice of diversity and balance in Irish society, revealing the identity of the individual in question as a highly placed correspondent in the newspaper,and showing beyond doubt that he was tweeting aggressively on virtually a nightly basis against colleagues and people he was expected to write objectively about in his job. I supplied texts of numerous tweets by Thomas59 and indicated the identities of several of his ‘followers’, including the Irish Times Assistant Editor, Literary Editor and columnist, Fintan O’Toole. Had I been Editor of the Irish Times, I would have been most impatient to put these questions to Fintain: what interest did he have in the twitterings of Thomas59?; was he aware of the true identity of this individual?; if so, what did he have to say on the matter?; if not, why was he one of Thomas59’s followers? After I had sent him several reminders, Staunton sent me a bad-tempered acknowledgement. I never received any kind of response from the Irish Times Editor, Kevin O’Sullivan.
When I published his identity in Village magazine two months later, some of McGarry’s media allies tried to confuse the issue by asserting that, because he had left such a trail of incriminating evidence, it was obvious he was not seeking to conceal his identity. One radio presenter and self-confessed friend of McGarry tried to suggest that one element of his Twitter ‘handle’ included what turned out to be the landline number of his flat, it was quite obvious who thomas59 was.
This was nonsense. The full Twitter handle was given at the top of the feed as ‘Thomas59 @Thomas2805607’. The number 2805607 was, or had been, McGarry’s landline number at his flat in Monkstown, but could have been the number of the Man in the Moon for all you would know unless you happened to recognise the telephone number from having used it yourself. For McGarry or anyone speaking on his behalf to claim that his identity was transparent would be like me setting up a Twitter account with the handle MickeyJoe99 @MickeyJoe2350909 and claiming that this made clear who was tweeting.
It is obvious that McGarry had no idea he was leaving a trail behind him as he tweeted, perhaps imagining that tweets were like emails, that historical tweets were visible only to the user. Only by tracing the thread back to its beginning were my sleuths able to track down the culprit, and they had a very particular interest in so doing. It is difficult to imagine the circumstances in which anyone else would have been prompted or disposed to do that.
More effectively than any case I had been able to make to date, Thomas59’s tweets established the existence of a highly toxic climate of illiberal antagonism towards particular viewpoints at the heart of the Irish Times’s editorial operation, and possibly towards me in particular. The Thomas59 tweets also left beyond doubt that this supposedly objective correspondent was encumbered by an outright ideological bias which ought to disqualify him from writing as a reporter on certain of the matters he was required to cover for the newspaper. Moreover, Thomas59 had been tweeting in full view of at least one senior Editor at the newspaper – one of Thomas59’s Twitter followers – who must be assumed to have been aware of the true identity of the account-holder he had elected to follow. There could scarcely be the slightest doubt that the culture of the newspaper was utterly repugnant to the supposed historical ethos of the Irish Times as a liberal newspaper with a commitment to diversity of opinion on controversial issues.
If I imagined that my email to Staunton and O’Sullivan would be the end of Thomas59’s Twitter career, I had another shock coming. Thomas58 continued to tweet. On February 20th: ‘So Breda O' B says says marriage is about bonding parents and biological children. What about adoptive parents? Like David Quinn of Iona.’
And…
‘O dear. New poll says 76% Irish people favour same sex marriage. Breda O'Brien, John Waters, Iona Institute heading for Uganda’
On February 21st, having received no replies to two earlier communications, I again emailed the Editor and Deputy Editor asking that they take proper steps to have the material removed and convey to its author that this was not appropriate behaviour for a senior Irish Times journalist. Denis Staunton emailed me curtly to say that he had spoken with the Editor about the matter.
The following day, February 22nd, Thomas59 tweeted: ‘One has been rumbled by H2O. …but does one care? Non. Who wants such cruel friends?’
Rumbled? A quick search of an online dictionary throws up the following definition: ‘discover (an illicit activity or its perpetrator)’. So much for those who claimed Thomas59’s identity was intended to be an open book. McGarry clearly imagined that his sneaky character-assassination would remain undetected.
Shortly afterwards, Thomas59 ‘corrected’ this tweet: ‘Should have been H2Os in previous tweet’.
What was somewhat perplexing from my point of view was that the individual I now knew to be the author of these tweets had been a longtime friend of mine, as his father, Tom, was a friend of [my father's]. We had met not long after I went to work in journalism in Dublin, he being a friend of a then girlfriend of mine. At the time he was working in radio, and also in some capacity with the Irish Press, doing, among other things, theatre reviews.
In fact, it was I who, after the Irish Press closed down in 1995, tipped him off that the Irish Times was looking for a Religious Affairs Correspondent and that it might suit him.
He was not a casual acquaintance or a mere work colleague, but someone whom I knew well and had associated with both professionally and personally for many years. When I was editing Magill in the late 1980s, he wrote regularly for it. He even put me up in his flat for a couple of weeks one time when my house was flooded by a burst pipe. To add to the piquancy of the Thomas59 saga, I had for some time been in communication with a male relative of McGarry’s, who was having some difficulty in the matter of gaining access to his child. McGarry had given him my number and suggested I might be able to assist him. This unfortunate individual, obviously blithely unaware of what was happening, actually called me at in April 2014, just after I had exposed Thoams59’s identity in Village magazine. Somewhat taken aback, I nonetheless tried to advise him as best I could with the difficulty he was now experiencing. We spoke for a few minutes, he thanked me and hung up. I have not heard from him since.
In recent years McGarry and I had seen less of one another than in the past, but I had no clear-cut cause to feel that our relationship had deteriorated – save for one incident in the middle of 2012 when he attacked me verbally at Croke Park on the final day of the Eucharistic Congress. That was actually quite a shock, coming without warning just after we had appeared together on a BBC radio show, during which he gave no indication that he was personally displeased with me. He stormed at me across the press room, acusing me of disloyalty to my colleagues – I presumed on foot of an article I had written in that day’s Irish Mail on Sunday criticising the inaccurate and hostile media coverage of the congress.
In the meantime, he had attended my mother’s funeral in September 2012, following which we exchanged friendly emails and even met for a coffee just before Christmas. After that, we had no engagement for about nine months, when we had a brief and, I thought, reasonably cordial telephone conversation, during which I asked him if he would be available as a guest lecturer at a forthcoming course in journalism I would be conducting in the new year. He said he would be happy to accept and that was to be the last contact between us. Weirdly, I had been about to call him up to fix an exact date for the lecture when the Thomas59 stuff erupted.
At Mammy’s funeral in 2012, Patsy embraced my daughter, my girlfriend – now my wife, Rita – my sisters and me, and briefly, with considerable apparent piety, touched my mother’s dead hand as she lay in her coffin. Afterwards we engaged in an exchange of emails in which he spoke very movingly about her and about you:
‘I have always regretted missing your father's funeral. I knew him since I was a child when he would pass our house […] every day at 6pm on the button. He marked out my childhood day. He used also give lifts to my mother's uncle and aunt {…] and he and my father had that frequent experience — where my father was concerned — of starting out as enemies over land and politics before ending up fond of one another.’
‘May your mother rest in peace, as I am sure she will. Seeing her in the coffin was to be reminded of my own (maternal) grandmother, another woman of great faith who died in her 80s after a difficult couple of decades with arthiritis [sic]. My paternal grandmother was dead before I was born. There was a tremendous stoicism about such women.’
We discussed, too, the comfort there was to be gleaned from the extended country ritual of publicly sympathising with bereaved families at the funeral. We agreed that we hadn’t really understood the power of this until it became directly relevant in our lives. He said that his sense of this had motivated him to come to the funeral, regardless of our recent differences. ‘Some things are more important than those’, he wrote.
In the interim between those emails and the Pantigate controversy, no fresh difference of opinion had arisen between McGarry and me. We just hadn’t seen each other or spoken, apart from the two exchanges I’ve mentioned.
I had been aware of a certain coolness from him intermittently over the years, mainly, I thought, because, as Religious Correspondent of the Irish Times, he had a bee in his bonnet about the evils of Catholicism, whereas I was more interested in exploring the indispensable elements of religion. There would, from time to time, be certain barbed references in our writings to things the other had written, but this was no more than the normal attrition of public commentary. Had I reflected on it afterwards, it might have struck me as ominous that, in our pre-Christmas coffee encounter in 2012, he spent the entire time trying to persuade me of the duplicity of various clerics, a subject in which I had not the remotest interest.
Certainly, he had no reason to be precipitately surprised by anything concerning my views on gay marriage or the parenting of children. Although I had not written much about gay marriage, I had written many times about my views concerning parenthood. His splenetic attacks on me could not, therefore, have been provoked by any sudden dismay on his part that I failed to support an issue which, to be honest, I had not realised was so dear to his heart. Indeed, I had never gathered, over the course of our relationship, that he had any interest in these matters at all, apart from an odd intervention in the wake of the 2012 referendum on ‘Children’s Rights’, when he was heard on radio complaining that the No vote was boosted by ‘scare tactics’. This was a guy who had never before had anything much to say about children’s right, family rights, family or marriage.
The only observable provocation for this extraordinarily toxic development in our relationship had been Rory O’Neill’s statements on the Saturday Night Show on January 11th and the fallout that ensued. Since it was clear that Thomas59’s attacks on me did not arise from any recent personal or professional difference between me and their author, the only alternative explanation is that they were provoked out of the deeply noxious atmosphere of antagonism which had been allowed to fester towards me for many years inside the Irish Times, growing exponentially worse in the years after Kevin O’Sullivan became Editor. The tweets, it appeared, were their author’s contribution to the cascade of hatred directed at me — a campaign contrived by a powerful lobby group with the clear aim of disabling me as a commentator by inflicting on me grievous reputational damage and inciting extreme public odium towards me, perhaps with the added objective of demonstrating to all concerned what these lobbyists were capable of doing. Certainly, it was now clear from a range of circumstantial evidence that this cascade was being stoked assiduously by a small corps of operators within the Irish Times, and that the possibility that a cadre of anonymous and malevolent ideological actors were operating from within that newspaper was now one to be taken very seriously
In the wake of the extraordinary discovery of the true identity of Thomas59, I reflected deeply in the conundrum of whether or not to reveal what I knew. I had some reservations about doing so, not least because I believed, perhaps naively, that McGarry was acting out of character, having come under the sway of stronger personalities within the Irish Times. For two reasons I decided that naming him was the more honest course. One was that, in order to spell out the full implications for the Irish Times I needed to give such a degree of detail about him that his identity would become obvious to virtually anyone who was familiar with the newspaper. In this context, my failure to name him would then have seemed somewhat coy. Even worse than that would be that people might jump to the wrong conclusion about the identity of Thomas59.
The second reason is that I had come to believe that such pseudonymous activity, on Twitter and elsewhere on the internet, was by then fairly widespread behaviour among Irish Times journalists, and that this needed to be exposed, where possible, for the protection of those who carry out their journalistic work in an open and straightforward fashion, but are constantly being undermined by such surreptitious and dishonest commentary designed to vilify and intimidate from underneath the coward’s cloak of anonymity.
Once it became clear that the editors were not going to do anything about Thomas59, I resigned from the Irish Times, after 24 years of service as, variously, a columnist, reporter and feature writer. I did so with many regrets, but nevertheless certain of the importance of protesting at the ominous drift of the newspaper under the influence of a poisonous ideological orthodoxy that threatened its role as an esteemed journal of record and a bulwark of Irish democracy.