The period 1969-1973 was marked by fears in the US embassy in Dublin that communist influence was increasing in Ireland at the same time that the Northern Ireland troubles threatened to destabilise the Fianna Fail government.
The arrival of the Fine Gael-Labour coalition in power in early 1973 was greeted with relief by the American diplomats as "one of the most talented in Irish history". The embassy had been unhappy with what it saw as an ambivalent attitude of the Jack Lynch government towards the US. When reporting on a meeting of Irish ambassadors which the new minister for foreign affairs, Garret FitzGerald, had called, the embassy commented that "we still have few clues as to any overall policy towards the United States".
The report referred to the imagery of "three concentric circles" used by the previous foreign affairs minister, Brian Lenihan, to describe Ireland's relations with 1. Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom; 2. the EEC and 3. others such as Australia and Latin America. The US diplomat commented: "It was never clear to us, except when the Irish wanted something from us, whether we fit into the third concentric circle or in outer darkness."
The embassy, where at that time the ambassador was John D. Moore, had found the then minister for foreign affairs, Dr Patrick Hillery, somewhat unhelpful. The embassy reported on a meeting with his successor Mr Lenihan, who "has a reputation for saying what people want to hear".
"Nevertheless . . . on balance, we think he will be better disposed to the US than his predecessor."
The US demand for landing rights at Dublin was a constant irritant in relations between the two countries. The US threatened to end Aer Lingus's landing rights in New York if it did not get access to Dublin. The embassy's concern about growing anti-American sentiment in Ireland because of the Vietnam War emerges from a report on the £2 fine on Mairin de Burca and others for throwing an egg at president Nixon's car during his Irish visit. Under the heading "Dublin egg-throwers lightly treated", the embassy commented to Washington: "These extraordinarily lenient sentences typify not only the permissiveness with which dangerous left-wing agitators in Ireland are being encouraged, but the toleration of hostile acts against the United States in this country which the embassy badly needs the means to combat."
In February 1970, Mr Moore replied to a letter from the under-secretary of state, Elliott Richardson (who later became attorney general and who died last week), "stressing the need to follow the activities of extremist political groups".
Mr Moore, in his reply, wrote that "Communist activity as a whole is definitely on the upswing in Ireland and feeds on the irritants which have crept into Irish feelings for the US as the old family ties between the two countries weaken with the passage of time."
The ambassador complained that the embassy was "severely weakened" by not having an information service programme in Dublin "to enable us to explain fully the policies of the Nixon administration and to reach the increasingly restive student population whose shocking ignorance of the contemporary US - not to mention their ignorance of American history and culture - is being exploited by the communists".
The ambassador then gave Washington a "Rundown of Communist and Communist Front Organisations in Ireland". Some of them contain names of well-known journalists and commentators.
The ambassador's report concludes: "The communists, long a negligible force in Ireland and still without substantial influence, are increasingly active. Recently, a highly placed official in the Irish police told the reporting officer that `communism has made more progress in Ireland in the last two or three years than it made in the previous 30 or 40 years'. "