Seán Cronin

Seán Cronin (29 August 1922 – 9 March 2011) was a journalist and former Irish Army officer and twice Irish Republican Army chief of staff.

Cronin was born in Dublin but spent his childhood years in Ballinskelligs, in the County Kerry Gaeltacht.

During the Second World War, Cronin was an officer in the Southern Command in the Irish Defence Forces. He later emigrated to New York City, where he found work as a journalist. In America, he became involved with Clan na Gael and later joined the Irish Republican Army.

In 1955 he returned from the United States and began work as a subeditor in the Evening Press.

He was soon put in charge of training in the IRA. He outlined his ideas in a booklet, Notes on Guerrilla Warfare. He became the chief strategist for the Border Campaign code named Operation Harvest (1956–62), which saw the carrying out a range of military operations from direct attacks on security installations to disruptive actions against infrastructure. Cronin believed that a strong campaign of attacks on police barracks, military installations and government buildings would force the withdrawal of security forces from villages and small towns thereby making large areas of the north ungovernable. He was arrested and imprisoned several times over the course of this campaign.

On two occasions, from 1957 to 1958 and then 1959 to 1960, Cronin was IRA chief of staff. He also served as editor of the Sinn Féin United Irishman newspaper.

Jailed for his activities, he left the IRA in 1962 after his release from prison.

He later became a journalist for The Irish Times, becoming that paper's first Washington, D.C. correspondent, a position he held until 1992.

He was the author of a dozen books and pamphlets, including a biography of republican Frank Ryan, Washington's Irish Policy 1916-1986: Independence, Partition, Neutrality, an authoritative account of Irish-US relations; Our Own Red Blood about the 1916 Easter Rising; and a number of works on guerrilla strategy, including an early Sinn Féin pamphlet Resistance under the pseudonym of J. McGarrity.

After several years of illness, Cronin died in Washington on 9 March 2011. He is survived by his second wife, Reva Rubenstein Cronin.