took the anti-treaty side in the Irish Civil War. He was involved in an attack on Royal Navy personnel at the Treaty Port at Spike Island, County Cork, this time using IRA men dressed in Irish Army uniforms in an attempt to start a war between the Irish Free State and the British Empire. Both Governments, however, realized almost immediately who had really carried out the attack. As a result, a reward of £10,000 was offered for information leading to the capture of O'Donovan and five other named republicans. On 22 August 1922, O'Donovan chaired a meeting of surviving IRA officers in Long's Bar (The Diamond), Béal na Bláth, County Cork. Present were senior national figures including Liam Deasy, Tom Barry and Éamon de Valera. Later the same day General Michael Collins, Commander-in-Chief of the Irish Army and Chairman of the Provisional Government of the Irish Free State was killed by a sniper in an ambush a half mile away. Post-war years During the aftermath of the Civil War, in return for badly needed funding, the IRA's main spymaster in America "Mr. Jones", whom historians Tom Mahon and James J. Gillogly have identified as "Sandow" O'Donovan, covertly acquired and passed "reports of the army’s chemical weapons service, state-of-the-art gas masks, machine-gun and aeroplane engine specifications, and reports from the navy, air service and army" to agents of the Soviet Union's military intelligence service: the GRU. Also according to Mahon and Gillogly, while living in America, "Mr. Jones" was also involved in efforts to acquire the ability to build chemical weapons for both the GRU and for the IRA, which hoped to use mustard gas against the military and police forces of the Irish Free State. In later years O'Donovan worked with the Irish Sugar Company in North Cork where he managed Ballybeg Quarry, near Buttevant, which the company owned. Dan "Sandow" O'Donovan died in 1975 and was interred in a family plot at St. Finbarr's Cemetery, Cork City. O'Donovan is often erroneously referred in history books of the period as "Donovan". References 1890 births 1975 deaths Interwar-period spies Irish Republican Army (1919–1922) members Irish Republican Army (1922–1969) members Irish spies for the Soviet Union O'Donovan family People from Cork (city) People from County Cork People from Mallow, County Cork People of the Irish Civil War (Anti-Treaty side) Soviet spies against the United States Spymasters