Based on recently-released interviews, this book throws a considerable amount of new light on the intelligence operations of Michael Collins with first-hand, never before published accounts and candid descriptions in which men speak of their involvement in close range assassinations.

In the early 1950s, Ireland’s Bureau of Military History interviewed those involved with Michael Collins’s assassination attempt to knock out the eyes and ears of the British Administration at Dublin Castle by undermining and terrorizing the police. Those interviewed were assured that the material would not be published in their lifetimes, and the bulk of them have now been released. This fascinating and unique book uses the interviews to show how Collins tried to make the British react blindly and drive the Irish people into the arms of the Irish Republican Army, providing candid, first-hand descriptions of the assassinations.