O'Higgins was especially hated by IRA members for having ordered the executions of seventy-seven of their fellows during the Civil War, an act for which he outspokenly took responsibility and refused to express any remorse.
On 8 December 1922 O'Higgins signed off on the retaliatory executions of four senior republicans (Liam Mellows, Richard Barrett, Joe McKelvey and Rory O'Connor) for the killing of a member of Dáil Éireann.
However, Timothy Coughlin was shot to death by police informer Sean Harling on the night of 28 January 1928, on Dublin's Dartry Road, under circumstances which remain controversial up to the present.
Doyle (as well as Gannon who died in 1965) was among the beneficiaries of the amnesty issued by Éamon de Valera when he came to power in 1932, under which numerous IRA men were released from prison and the charges against others dropped.
[4] During the IRA's Northern Campaign, Doyle is said to have participated in the abortive raid on the British barracks at Crossmaglen, County Armagh, on 2 September 1942, in retaliation for the execution of Tom Williams earlier that morning.
A week later, on 9 September, White mentions Archie Doyle as having commanded the assassination of Sergeant Denis O'Brien, Irish Special Branch detective and himself a former IRA man, near Dublin.
[8] In April 1987, the Irish Nationalist "New Hibernia" magazine noted: "(...)Joe McGrath and Jack O'Sheehan are dead; Archie Doyle went – though not before telling us how they had shot Kevin O' Higgins".