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By Liam Clarke
Belfast Telegraph
4 January 2012
**Poster’s note: I have a simple question: Why should the truth of the Troubles be covered up? Who gives anyone the right to keep silent when they know such things? The whole premise of this project is faulty as far as I am concerned. First we have the originators going on about how sacrosanct these oral histories are. Now they want them destroyed so the information contained in them will not get out. What and who does this remind you of?
A controversial US project which contains the testimonies of Troubles era terrorists should now be wound up, according to the men who founded it.
The three men involved in the oral history project have said Boston College’s decision to hand over material to the US authorities after requests from the PSNI has betrayed the trust of those involved.
Investigative journalist Ed Moloney is the former director of the project that aimed to document the conflict through the eyes of those involved.
Dr Anthony McIntyre interviewed former IRA members, while Wilson McArthur spoke to former loyalist paramilitaries for the archive under promise of confidentiality until death.
They said: “We are, all three of us, now strongly of the view that the archive must now be closed down and the interviews be either returned or shredded since Boston College is no longer a safe nor fit and proper place for them to be kept.
“We made a pledge to our interviewees to protect them to the utmost of our ability and we will stand by that pledge firmly and unalterably.”
All three are bitterly resentful of Boston College for releasing incriminating tapes, transcripts and DVDs without exhausting all possible legal channels.
The material was requested by the British Government on behalf of the PSNI after a Historical Enquiries Team review of the murder and secret burial of Jean McConville by the IRA in 1972.
Mr Moloney and Mr McIntyre have now won a stay of execution while the American courts consider whether to hand the tapes over to US attorneys, who will give it to the British.
They are arguing that doing so would endanger the researchers’ lives and impact on the peace process.
They also believe it could breach laws which prohibit the extradition of people accused of Troubles era offences from the US.
William ‘Plum’ Smith and Winston Rea, two former loyalist prisoners, have already said that they want their testimonies back.
However, the Belfast Telegraph has learned that Boston College has already handed the entire archive over to the US courts to decide what is relevant to the McConville investigation.
“I was appalled,” Mr Moloney said.
“The college was asked for relevant material and said that the librarian had not read it. So the court got everything.”
He hit out at Boston College for not going far enough to protect the material in his view.
“Implicit in the pledge of confidentiality was that it was non-negotiable,” he said.
“Boston College therefore had a duty to fight to preserve it to the utmost, in effect to challenge any adverse legal decisions all the way up the legal chain, as far as the Supreme Court if necessary.
“BC’s failure to appeal in my mind robs the college of any moral right to hold on to the archive.”
Boston College Belfast Project controversy …
Your questions answered.
Q What is Boston College’s ‘Belfast Project’?
A The archive contains the testimonies of around 30 former Northern Ireland terrorists in which they recounted their careers in the belief that it would not be made public until after their deaths.
The project was an initiative of journalist Ed Moloney and Lord Bew, a Queen’s University professor of history.
It was funded by Boston College and is housed in the college’s Thomas Burns Library.
The republican interviews were carried out by Dr Anthony McIntyre, a former IRA prisoner, while Wilson McArthur carried out the loyalist interviews.
Mr Moloney also carried out some video interviews, for instance with the former IRA bomber Dolours Price, which were not formally part of the archive.
Q Why is it in the news at all?
A Boston College has handed over parts of the archive relating to the murder of Jean Mc Conville to US attorneys acting, ultimately, on a warrant issued by the PSNI.
Mrs McConville was a west Belfast mother-of-10 abducted, murdered and secretly buried by the IRA in 1972 on suspicion of being an informer.
The material handed over included the testimony of Brendan ‘the Dark’ Hughes, a local IRA commander now dead, and Dolours Price, an IRA activist at the time.
Both accuse Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president, of involvement in the planning of the murder and the decision to secretly bury her, though Mr Adams has consistently denied this, just as he denies ever being in the IRA. He says Mr Hughes was a friend and fellow republican, nothing more.
Q Wasn’t it meant to be confidential?
A Dr Mc Intyre said: “People spoke frankly to me on the strict understanding that nothing they said would be revealed in their lifetimes without their written authorisation. I wouldn’t have been involved without legal assurances.”
Interviewers and interviewees signed an undertaking not to “disclose to third parties the existence of the project without the permission of the sponsor”.
Q How did the news leak out?
A There were rumours about the project when the interviews were being carried out.
After Brendan Hughes, the IRA leader, and David Ervine, a loyalist politician and former UVF bomber, died Mr Moloney wrote a book entitled Voices From The Grave based on their testimonies.
Later, Dolours Price gave an interview in which she revealed that she had made a tape which was in the archive.
Q Who could be affected by this?
A If reports of the contents of the archive are correct, then Gerry Adams and others could face police questioning.
:::u.tv:::
3 Jan 2012
**Video onsite
Author and researcher Ed Moloney has said Dolours Price has been “badly let down” after Boston College handed over transcripts of interviews carried out with the former IRA member to the police.
Along with 25 other IRA members, Dolours Price spoke at the US school as part of an oral history project.
Now prosecutors in America have demanded access to any information contained in the interviews which relates to the murder of mother-of-ten Jean McConville, who was disappeared by the IRA in 1972.
At a recent court hearing the judge recommended Boston College appeal the decision to allow police to gain access to the transcripts, however the college did not continue with an appeal.
“From our point of view that was astonishing and deeply disturbing because it was not what we expected or wanted and we feel very badly let down as a result.”
–Ed Moloney
He added that the interviewers and their subjects are “deeply alarmed” by the consequences of revealing the texts to authorities.
Mr Moloney, whose discussions with Brendan Hughes and David Ervine formed his book Voices from the Grave, said the interviews were only carried out on the basis that it was legally safe, and the subjects had a “pledge of confidentiality [that] is utterly non-negotiable”.
“We’re reassuring them that if there is any attempt to groom any of us into any sort of criminal process by the PSNI, or whoever is behind this, then they can go and knock on other doors because they’re going to get no satisfaction and no joy from us.
“Our cooperation with the authorities on this will be non-existent and zero,” he added.
Speaking to UTV, Mr Moloney said the action taken by the PSNI has “destroyed all possibility now of any truth-telling process”.
“There is no way that anyone with sane mind is going to take part in any sort of process of truth recovery about the past while the PSNI are behaving like this.
“Whoever did this within the PSNI should now reflect on the foolishness of their actions.”
–Ed Moloney
Mr Moloney denied claims that the publication of his book, in which Brendan Hughes claimed Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams was implicated in Jean McConville’s murder, led to police demanding access to the other interviews.
“It was the culmination of a promise that was made by ourselves to Brendan Hughes that we would, as soon as possible after his death, make his interviews publicly available.
“In my view it wasn’t this that led to the subpoenas, it was something entirely different, another event involving other newspapers which led to this and we’ll talk about this at some other stage,” he said.
“At this point, we’re intent on putting all our energies into the process, we’ve got a stay and some very good lawyers working on this.”
North Antrim MP Ian Paisley said Ed Moloney’s decision not to pass evidence to authorities is “unacceptable [and] intolerable”.
“Those who practice journalism are like professionals in any other field whether it is doctors, nurses, lawyers or anyone else. Any assurances given to people that their interviews would not be shared with the lawful authorities have no legal force whatever.
“If Ed Moloney has information that could assist in securing justice for innocent victims he has a moral as well as legal obligation to hand the same over.”
–Ian Paisley
“We must remember that this involves the withholding of information relating to terrorism. These are crimes of the most serious nature,” the DUP MP said.
UUP Lagan Valley MLA Basil McCrea says US authorities should hand material contained in the archives of Boston College over to the PSNI.
“If we must confront the past in order to clear the pathway to the future, then the material contained in the Boston College archive is extremely relevant and not part of some abstract or historical academic exercise and several implications flow from this,” he said.
“There are serious implications for certain individuals, as to who was really a member of which terrorist organisation, what role they played, who gave who orders and what those orders were.
“I have no doubt that the PSNI will be extremely interested in the information contained in the Boston College archive.”
News Letter
4 January 2012
POLICE are confident of putting at least some of those responsible for the murder of Jean McConville before a court, her family said last night.
The potential breakthrough — which comes after police won a US court battle to access secret recordings by senior IRA figures — comes almost four decades since republicans abducted, murdered and secretly buried Mrs McConville.
The recordings of interviews with scores of senior loyalist and republican terrorists are believed to be explosive and were only to be released from a vault in Boston College when each terrorist died.
However, a PSNI court case to access all material in the archive which may help put Mrs McConville’s killers behind bars could see those candid private testimonies released.
The journalist Ed Moloney and former IRA man and writer Anthony McIntyre, who conducted the interviews, have now accused Boston College of not doing enough to stop the tapes’ release and lodged their own appeal after the college declined to appeal a court judgment which ordered the tapes be released. They have warned of reprisals and a threat to the “peace process” if the recordings are made public.
But last night Mrs McConville’s son-in-law, Seamus McKendry, disagreed. The McKendrys, who formed the group Families of the Disappeared back in 1995, have been helping police with their investigation.
In 2010, former IRA bomber Dolours Price told The Irish News that she drove Mrs McConville to her death, under orders from Gerry Adams. The Sinn Fein president has always denied any part in the murder.
Mr McKendry told the News Letter: “The police are confident that they can bring a prosecution and we would dearly love to see the prosecution being bigger than Dolours Price, of course.”
Asked if the police had given indication about examining the actions of those beyond Dolours Price, Mr McKendry said: “Obviously they aren’t going to say too much. Privately they have told me stuff but I wouldn’t be at liberty to divulge it.”
In 2006 the then Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde said that a successful prosecution “in any case of that age” would be “highly unlikely”.
Mr McKendry, who has worked as a freelance journalist, said that the case to release the tapes went against his instincts to protect sources but added: “From that point of view I was a bit concerned but having said that we’re not talking here about someone stealing a handbag; we’re talking about murder and they still should face the full wrath of the law.”
Mr McKendry said that his wife, who was just 15 when her mother was abducted, has been “really upset” in recent days as debate over the tapes raged.
Two years ago the man in charge of the vault which holds the recordings, Professor Thomas Hachey, told the News Letter that it contained scores of interviews with loyalist and republican paramilitaries which had been conducted over a nine-year period.
Professor Hachey, who is director of the Jesuit-founded college’s Irish Institute, said that no one other than those involved in the interviews knew the identities of paramilitaries who spoke to the college.
“The people that we went out and interviewed were not gophers – people who were simply sent out on missions and had no idea who was sending them or why – nor was it the upper echelon, which is to say whomever the leadership may have been on the loyalist side or nationalist side.
“That sort of thing has been done by the BBC, NBC…this was really about the operational level.”
No one other than those involved in the interviews knows who spoke to the academics, with the exception of three people — Ms Price and both senior IRA member Brendan ‘The Dark’ Hughes and UVF commander David Ervine, whose accounts were published in 2010 in Mr Moloney’s book Voices From The Grave.
By Jennifer O’Leary
BBC
3 Jan 2012
US officials have received transcripts of interviews that former IRA member Dolours Price gave to an oral history project at Boston College.
The BBC has learned that 13 transcripts have been received by US officials and the material is being held by the Office of the Assistant US Attorney.
It follows ongoing legal action in the United States on behalf of British authorities who want the material.
The court asked that US government officials file a response by 9 January.
US prosecutors have demanded anything in the Boston College archive related to the 1972 IRA abduction and murder of Belfast mother-of-10, Jean McConville.
In a statement, the PSNI said: “This is a ruling by the US Court of Appeal. The police investigation remains ongoing.
“We look forward to an early conclusion with respect to this judicial decision.”
Dolours Price was one of 26 former IRA members to give a series of interviews – between 2001 and 2006 – as part of a research study, called the Belfast Project.
The project was funded by Boston College, which hired three researchers, including journalist Ed Moloney and Anthony McIntyre, a former republican prisoner.
In return for honest accounts, former republican and loyalist paramilitaries were promised that their identities would be kept confidential and that the interviews would be released only after their deaths.
Mr Moloney told the BBC said he is hopeful the interviews will be returned to Boston College but insisted he won’t co-operate with any future criminal prosecution.
“We are determined to fight this all the way,” he said.
“If whoever has intitiated this action inside the policing structures persists in any sort of attempt to bring criminal charges, then they can expect absolutely no co-operation from me or the interviewers.”
He claimed he has information that the British government “does not want to own this… quite the reverse, there’s a wish this thing would go away”.
However, the DUP’s Ian Paisley said: “There is an important distinction between this case and others that must be borne in mind.
“What we are dealing with here is not the protection of an anonymous source. We know who the interviewees were – this has been put into the public domain.
“There is no issue of source protection at stake, rather the withholding of evidential material.”
In December, Boston College was ordered by a federal judge to turn over recordings, transcripts and other items related to Dolours Price to federal prosecutors acting on behalf of British authorities.
An appeals court decision last Thursday temporarily prevented US officials from handing the documents over to British authorities.
Three DVDs of interviews conducted by Ed Moloney in 2010 which were not part of the Belfast Project have also been received by US officials.
US prosecutors have demanded anything in the Boston College archive related to the 1972 IRA abduction and murder of Belfast mother-of-10, Jean McConville.
Roy Greenslade
Guardian
2 Jan 2012
Today’s Belfast Telegraph splash headline, “Fury as IRA tapes turned over” (not online) follows a piece in yesterday’s Irish edition of the Sunday Times, “Tale of the tapes” (behind a paywall).
Yet the story deserves wide readership by journalists and journalism academics because of its ethical ramifications.
As so often with matters related to the Northern Ireland conflict it is complicated to unravel, not least because of the underlying politics.
Let’s begin at the end, so to speak. A federal judge in the United States has ordered Boston College to surrender taped interviews with an ex-IRA member, Dolours Price.
She was one of 26 former IRA volunteers to give a series of interviews – between 2001 and 2006 – as part of a research study, called the Belfast Project.
The interviewees, who signed confidentiality agreements, were given an assurance that the tapes would not be released until after their deaths.
What they were not told is that there was no guarantee that the interviews could be protected from court orders. Boston College would have to comply with the law.
It is thought that many of the interviewees who, naturally, have many secrets to tell, were unusually candid about their activities on behalf of the republican movement.
Even so, as one would expect, there was no assurance that they were telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. They did not speak under oath.
It means that some may have made allegations about named, living people being guilty of criminal offences. None of these accusations were able to be independently verified by the researchers.
The interviewees could, in effect, say what they liked about anyone. That is not to devalue oral histories as such, but given the nature of a conflict in which so many people were killed in secret operations in what everyone regards as having been a “dirty war”, the project was bound to be of questionable merit.
The 26 probably had different reasons for giving interviews. Some may simply have wanted to get things off their chests. Some may have regarded it as a valuable historical academic exercise. Some, motivated by malice, may have wished to settle accounts with the former IRA leadership they now despise.
Price, for example, was a noted critic of the peace process and, particularly, of one of its main architects, the Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams.
Similarly, so were two of the project’s key participants and interviewers – the journalist Ed Moloney and a former republican prisoner, Anthony McIntyre.
That very salient fact has not gone unnoticed. See, for instance, Danny Morrison’s pieces – ‘Baloney College Archive’ and ‘Why the Boston College Irish oral history project should be discontinued’ – in which he points to the political bias of Moloney and McIntyre.
He finds it blackly ironic that the two men, having created the project, are now screaming about the US court’s decision.
They have been critical of Boston College for its willingness to comply with the court order. However, some US academics have been just as critical of the researchers, arguing that it was, at best, naive and, at worst, manipulative, to give interviewees a guarantee of confidentiality.
One quoted by the Sunday Times – John Neuenschwander, professor of history at Carthage College in Wisconsin – said: “You need to alert the people who you seal the interview for that you may not be able to prevent it from being picked up by a subpoena and going to court.”
The drama began when Price told a Belfast newspaper that she had been involved in the “disappearance” of several IRA victims, including Jean McConville, and – in so doing – incriminated Adams.
The Northern Ireland police (PSNI) decided to act, and the British government agreed. It began a legal action in the States to order Boston College to surrender the Price interview tapes and any others relevant to the murder of McConville.
Leaving aside the obvious dispute about the motives of Moloney and McIntyre in obtaining the interviews and whether they acted properly, the case raises a hugely important question about the validity of academics giving people guarantees of confidentiality in order to persuade them to speak.
It touches directly on the problem all journalists face in protecting confidential sources and, in my opinion, we journalists ought to condemn both the British government for pursuing the action and the US judge for acceding to its request.
By Jim Dee
Belfast Telegraph
Saturday, 31 December 2011
Initiated in 2001 as a collaborative process between Belfast-based researchers and Boston College Irish studies experts, Boston College’s Belfast Project oral history endeavour raised hackles from the outset.
Belfast-based author Danny Morrison was among the most vocal early critics.
The former Sinn Fein publicity officer accused the project’s overseer, Boston College historian Thomas Hachey, of running a politically-biased project because its two main co-ordinators – journalist Ed Moloney and former IRA member Anthony McIntyre – were critics of Gerry Adams and Sinn Fein’s peace process strategy.
Both reject claims that they pursued an anti-Adams agenda.
The only interviews yet to see the light of day were published in the Moloney-edited book Voices From The Grave (2010), in which former UVF prisoner David Ervine and former IRA man Brendan Hughes, both deceased, were interviewed extensively.
Those taped interviews included a claim by Hughes that Adams ordered the 1972 killing of mother-of-10 Jean McConville – a claim Adams has repeatedly denied.
The current effort to obtain the Belfast Project’s interviews with Dolours Price began when a Belfast newspaper published an interview with her last February in which she claimed that Adams had been her IRA commanding officer, and that he’d ordered Mrs McConville killed and secretly buried. In May the US Justice Department served Boston College a subpoena on behalf of the British Government demanding the surrender of all interview material relating to McConville. However, the former republican and loyalist paramilitaries who took part in the Belfast project were assured their interviews wouldn’t be published until after they died.
Two weeks ago a US judge rejected an effort by Moloney and McIntyre to have the case dismissed.
On Tuesday, the college was ordered to surrender its interviews with Dolours Price by yesterday. It indicated that it would.
Irish Times
31 Dec 2011
An appeals court in Boston yesterday blocked the release to US prosecutors of interviews former IRA member Dolours Price gave an oral history project at Boston College after a researcher said that he and his family in Ireland would be in danger if the interviews were made public.
Acting on a last-minute legal intervention by author and journalist Ed Moloney, who directed the project, and Anthony McIntyre, the writer and former IRA prisoner who interviewed former IRA members for it, the First Circuit Court of Appeals issued a temporary stay and scheduled a hearing for Friday. It put on hold the order that the college give records to prosecutors seeking them for British authorities.
By Anne Madden
Belfast Telegraph
Friday, 30 December 2011
Jean McConville (left) with three of her children before she was abducted and killed by the IRA in 1972. Her body was found in 2003. (Photograph: PA)
An American university has until today to hand over recorded interviews with a former IRA member to assist the investigation into the murder of Belfast mother-of-10 Jean McConville.
Boston College was ordered by a federal judge to turn over recordings, transcripts and other items related to Dolours Price to federal prosecutors in Boston.
The material which was collected for the Belfast Project, an oral history project about the Troubles, was subpoenaed on behalf of the British Government.
Judge William Young of the federal court in Boston noted in his ruling earlier this week that a treaty between the USA and the UK requires the two nations to share information relevant to ongoing criminal investigations.
Boston College said it is disappointed by Judge Young’s ruling, arguing it “could have a chilling effect because people could be reluctant to participate in oral history projects moving forward”.
The Belfast Project’s organisers, which included author Ed Moloney and former IRA prisoner Anthony McIntyre, had promised their subjects they would keep identities and material confidential until the person had died.
The college is not appealing the decision. Prosecutors had asserted in court filings that the material sought is relevant to a probe into Mrs McConville’s death. She disappeared in 1972. Her body was found in 2003.
The IRA said it killed McConville because she was suspected of being an informer.
Price and another former IRA member, Brendan Hughes, have said that her abduction, execution and burial was ordered by Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams.
According to court documents, Price admitted in news reports in Northern Ireland that she had driven the abducted McConville to the place of her murder.
Mr Adams, who was elected TD for Louth earlier this year, has repeatedly denied the allegations that he ordered the killing.
A Sinn Fein spokesman said it had no comment to make.
“It doesn’t concern Sinn Fein at all,” he said. “It is a matter between Anthony McIntyre, Ed Moloney, the PSNI and Boston College.”
However, DUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson said he welcomed the finding of the court, adding it is up to police alone to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to bring a public prosecution.
Story so far
Police believe the material held by Boston College will assist an ongoing investigation into the 1972 abduction and murder of Belfast woman Jean McConville. The US federal judge who made the decision, William G Young, ruled he will make further orders for the release of information from the oral history project of the Troubles.
Travis Andersen
Boston Globe
17 Dec 2011
A federal judge rejected yesterday a motion by the trustees of Boston College to quash subpoenas that order them to turn over recordings of former members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army and other items to British officials investigating crimes including murder and kidnapping.
But Judge William G. Young did not order BC to immediately turn over the materials to federal prosecutors in Boston, who issued the subpoenas on behalf of British authorities.
Instead, Young said in his 48-page ruling that he would review the materials and decide on the next step, writing that the subpoenas were made “in good faith, and relevant to a nonfrivolous criminal inquiry. Nor are the materials readily available from a less sensitive source’’ than the recordings at BC.
The materials were collected between 2001 and 2006 for a BC oral history project about the period known as the Troubles, when more than 3,000 people were killed in the struggle between the IRA and British authorities over control of Northern Ireland.
The project developers promised their interview subjects anonymity until they died, an offer they could not legally make, prosecutors have argued.
BC has said that turning over the materials – which include interview transcripts and other items related to former IRA member Dolours Price – would have a chilling effect on academic freedom and, in some cases, endanger the safety of people involved in the project.
The university has turned over materials pertaining to a deceased former IRA member, Brendan Hughes, Young wrote. He also wrote that Price’s participation in the project has been widely reported by news media in Northern Ireland.
He acknowledged some of BC’s concerns, but added that the recordings are relevant to investigations of crimes including murder and kidnapping. He also said the United States has an obligation under a treaty with Britain to turn over the materials.
“These are serious allegations, and they weigh strongly in favor of disclosing the confidential information,’’ Young wrote.
Jack Dunn, a spokesman for BC, said by phone that the university was pleased with the ruling: “While the motion to quash the subpoenas was denied, the court, in agreeing to review the research materials . . . granted [the college] what it was seeking by promising to determine what materials, if any, are relevant’’ to the criminal investigations.
Assistant US Attorney John McNeil, also hailed the ruling. He said that Young affirmed that the recordings are relevant to a criminal inquiry. Also, he said, the ruling indicates that “the US government’s obligation [under the treaty with Britain and] the public interest in this criminal inquiry are compelling.’’
BC must turn over the materials to Young by Wednesday.
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