By Neil McKay
16-October-2022
There's nothing in John Crawley’s childhood to explain the path his life took. After all, how does a well-loved, middle class American boy go from a distinguished career in the US Marines to becoming one of the IRA’s most infamous fighters?
Crawley was hand-picked by IRA commander Martin McGuinness – who’d eventually become Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister – to set up an international gun-running network. The mission would see him team up with some of the most notorious gangsters in American criminal history, including the feared mob leader James ‘Whitey’ Bulger. Crawley would be spectacularly captured on the high seas with £250,000 worth of weapons in his ship’s hold en route to Ireland. Later, he’d plot a devastating attack on England’s national grid and receive 35 years in maximum security prisons. Released under the Good Friday Agreement, he eventually gave up the gun.
Now aged 65, he’s emerged from the shadows to tell his life story in a new book, The Yank: My Life as a Former US Marine in the IRA. The Herald on Sunday spoke to Crawley from his home in Dublin.
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