1. Watched the RTÉ documentary Gunplot on the 1970 Arms Trial. A shame that some of the subsequent debate is being reduced to binaries - Lynch treachery / Captain James Kelly a betrayed patriot. The history of the arms trial /Irish state in the Troubles is far more interesting.

2. Lynch likely knew that money sent to defence committees in the North, partly controlled by republicans, would be used to buy arms. The Irish state would be directly financing or supplying these, albeit in limited amounts. To argue otherwise does not seem reasonable.

3. What is also clear is that Kelly largely designed, planned and executed an operation to import large amounts of arms. No other officer appears to have played a prominent role in the daily operational execution of this operation. That is very strange, and unwise.

4. It is unwise because Kelly was hardly being covert - as his own memoirs made clear. He was responsible for all the Belfast/Northern side of the operation - meeting large groups of people - and travelling to a number of European cities to buy arms.

5. In his memoirs ‘Orders for the Captain’ Kelly makes clear that his mission was compromised quite quickly and doomed to failure. Too many people knew. It was never really covert.

6. So, yes Kelly clearly had conversations, discussed his plans with his superiors. But the ad hoc nature of Kelly’s bungled efforts to locate arms suggest a chronic failure of national security architecture, coordination and command.

7. Nobody seemed to know who was in charge. Was it the military, the minister for defence, cabinet, or only the Taoiseach? Who wanted what? And who took precedence?

8. There was a collective national security failure. The state clearly lacked the sufficient professional ability to conduct foreign clandestine intelligence operations of the risk and sensitivity that Kelly tried to pull off.

9. Kelly may not have hid what he was doing from the director of military intelligence - it appears he did the opposite - but where was the concept of operation, the planning executive meetings and day to day support for what he envisaged. He was, in a practical sense, on his own

10. That should have rung very loud alarm bells for Kelly. Instead of asking for the minimum support to even have a chance of pulling off such a sensitive operation he went full throttle at it. I spoke to him about this in 2002. ‘Soldiers crack on’ is the summary of his response

11. Meeting and working with an arms dealer in Hamburg, who was infamous, frequently surveilled, rather than discreet, was unwise.

12. In sum this whole saga offers a salient warning about why even small states need efficient intelligence services and national security infrastructure. There are easy, no clear cut bad guys and good guys in the arms trial. But there are many errors of judgment.

13. For the context of the period @PaddyMulroe Eunan O’Halpin and Brian Hanley’s work remains essential. Ends.