The Podium: The Belfast Tapes by Thomas P. O’Neill III

The Podium: The Belfast Tapes
By Thomas P. O’Neill III
Boston Globe
April 29, 2014

Last month, I listened as former President Bill Clinton delivered the inaugural lecture for the Hume-O’Neill Chair in Peace Studies at the University of Ulster Magee Campus in Derry, Northern Ireland. Clinton’s address conveyed a simple, yet powerful, message: Northern Ireland has made enormous strides in the peace and reconciliation process, but the job is still not finished.

These words not only resonated throughout Northern Ireland, they have taken on considerable meaning for the United States — and specifically for the City of Boston.

Boston College is immersed in a complex legal battle with the British government over the Belfast Tapes, an academic oral history project that has been tragically compromised as a result of Northern Irish political infighting and a misguided hunt for criminal justice.

Boston College commenced the Belfast Tapes project in 2001, appointing former IRA volunteer and prisoner Anthony McIntyre as the interviewer and Ed Moloney, a journalist with deep ties to both sides of the conflict, as the supervisor. With the Belfast Tapes, Boston College sought to intertwine modern academia and the college’s Irish roots to document the Troubles and the peace process of Northern Ireland.

In February of 2010, former IRA paramilitary Dolours Price gave interviews with Irish media in which she revealed that she had participated in the Belfast Project, and told them that she and current Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams were involved in the 1972 abduction and murder of Belfast mother of 10, Jean McConville. This admission quickly sparked a series of subpoenas issued to Boston College by the US Department of Justice on behalf of the United Kingdom in May and August of 2011, requesting the tapes and transcripts for use in criminal investigations.

Undoubtedly, the murder of Jean McConville was an especially gruesome war crime and her family deserves justice. However, the investigation smacks of political motivation. Of the scores of murders committed during the Troubles, the British government is seeking only to investigate that of Jean McConville in what can be construed as an attempt to implicate Gerry Adams and jeopardize his current position within the Irish parliament.

For decades, the Northern Ireland conflict has existed as a polarizing issue for many US politicians as well as officials at the White House and the Department of State. The United States Department of State has historically acted in favor of the British government, long considered our staunchest ally, and complies with their requests time and again.

On this issue, our relations with Britain have not always been smooth. My father, former Speaker of the House “Tip” O’Neill, worked tirelessly with fellow Irish-American politicians to denounce the violence in Northern Ireland and to craft a peace accord for warring factions. He convinced Presidents Carter and Reagan to press the British government on the conflict and questioned their peacekeeping efforts, an act that challenged the stance of the Department of State.

The Belfast Tapes have exposed truths about the Troubles that reawaken feelings of betrayal and bitterness among former members of the IRA. These truths should be used as a form of catharsis and as a vehicle toward peace and reconciliation for Northern Ireland. Instead, the United States and Great Britain are allowing these truths to be used in ways that appear, frankly, both selective and political.

In the Boston College case, our “special relationship’’ with Britain is raising serious and troubling questions: Are we abridging academic freedom in ways that will prevent participants in major international issues from stepping forward with their stories? Is the British demand for documents, and its search for alleged wrongdoing, driven as much by the politics of Ireland today as it is by the search for justice for past crimes? And why, when both sides in the Troubles were guilty of so much wrongdoing, is the British prosecution seemingly intent on only pursuing crimes allegedly committed by only one side?

In Clinton’s recent address, he reminded Northern Ireland and the international community that the process to securing peace is not solely comprised of various static agreements and moments, but instead is an ever-evolving conversation that each generation must continue to have and adapt throughout history. All this turmoil now is a very clear example that that evolving conversation is continuing, and how we conduct it matters.

We should not be helping to fan the flames of animosity rooted in the past of Northern Ireland. Instead, we must uphold the values and constitutional rights upon which our country stands.

Thomas P. O’Neill III served on the Boston College Board of Trustees from 1992 to 2010 and currently acts as a trustee associate.

Arrest Adams now for McConville murder says republican ex-prisoner

Arrest Adams now for McConville murder says ex-republican prisoner
Suzanne Breen
Sunday Life
20 April 2014

A former republican prisoner says the PSNI should immediately arrest Gerry Adams over Jean McConville’s murder.

The ex-internee from West Belfast is furious that in recent weeks police have arrested “a string of low level republicans” whom she believes played no part in the mother of ten’s brutal death.

Evelyn Gilroy from the Lower Falls was a member of the republican movement along with Gerry Adams in the early 1970s. She was active in Divis where Jean McConville was abducted.

Last month, veteran republican Ivor Bell was charged with aiding and abetting the murder. Detectives have this month questioned five women and a man about the killing.

In an exclusive interview with Sunday Life, Evelyn Gilroy said: “I’m speaking out for the first time because I’m very angry that grassroots republicans are being arrested.

“Police have lifted people who were 15 and 16 at the time of the killing, yet Gerry Adams remains untouched. I’m disgusted that ordinary republicans are being put through the mill for his actions.

“It defies belief that he hasn’t been arrested. The police should stop chasing those who were never in a position in the republican movement to order Jean McConville’s execution and instead arrest the only person who was in that position – Gerry Adams.

“He has got away with so much over the years. He now seems to be getting away with this as well. It will be a disgrace if ordinary people end up carrying the can for what he did.”

The Sinn Féin president has told his solicitor to contact police to see if he is wanted for questioning over the murder. He said if the PSNI wish to talk to him, he will meet them.

Last month, Jean McConville’s daughter Helen told Sunday Life she wants to see the Louth TD in the dock for her mother’s murder

Mr Adams was OC (officer commanding) of the IRA’s Belfast Brigade when Jean McConville was murdered in December 1972. He denies all involvement in her death and secret burial.

At one meeting, he told her family he was in jail when she disappeared – which wasn’t true – and he offered to help them in their search for the truth.

Ms Gilroy said: “I don’t know how Gerry Adams had the nerve to look the McConvilles in the eye. If he wants to know the truth about Jean’s execution, all he has to do is stand in front of the mirror and talk to himself.”

In an interview with Boston College, former Belfast Brigade commander, Brendan Hughes, said Mr Adams had ordered the widowed mother’s execution.

Mr Adams said: “Brendan is telling lies. I’d no act or part to play in the abduction, killing, or burial of Jean McConville.” He denied similar accusations from Dolours Price.

Ms Gilroy said: “His denials are on a par with his claims that he was never in the IRA. He has become a walking joke. I’m sure he will now call me a liar just like Brendan and Dolours were called liars.

“But anyone active in the republican movement in the 1970s in Belfast knows who the real liar is. Brendan Hughes was an honest man. Even those who hated his politics acknowledge that. When Brendan spoke about Jean McConville, he was telling the truth.”

Jean McConville was driven from West Belfast to Co Louth where she was shot in the back of the head in Shelling Beach. Her remains lay undiscovered until 2003.

Ms Gilroy, 61, comes from a strong republican family from the Lower Falls. The authorities viewed her as a significant republican activist in the 1970s and she was arrested dozens of times.

She and her sister, Mary Kennedy, were the only two mothers among the 2,000 people interned by the British government. She was held for 18 months in Armagh jail.

She is a close friend of ex-IRA chief of staff Billy McKee. A few years ago, she was presented with a commemorative plaque by the IRA’s old ‘D Company’.

At the time of the McConville killing, Ms Gilroy lived in Whitehall Row in Divis Flats, across the way from Jean McConville.

She claims that “many myths” surround her murder. The veteran republican said it was “totally untrue” that the widowed mother was killed for comforting a dying British soldier. She insisted the incident as described never took place.

A soldier had been hurt, but not fatally, in Divis. It was Ms Gilroy’s sister, Mary Kennedy, who helped him and not Jean McConville, she said.

“My sister lived five doors from Jean McConville in Farset Walk in the flats. Weeks before Jean was killed, a soldier was hit on the head by a brick thrown by a local lad. My sister heard him crying. She was a very soft, warm woman and she brought him into the hallway and gave him a glass of water.

“Her act of compassion didn’t go down well with some. ‘Touts Out’ and ‘Soldier Lover’ was painted on her door. The incident was reported to the media. My sister gave an interview to Downtown Radio about her act of mercy and the intimidation that followed.”

Ms Gilroy, who was eight-and-a-half months pregnant with her second child when Jean McConville was murdered, said she believed the mother-of-ten was killed because she was an informer, a claim the McConvilles and others deny.

When she was Police Ombudsman Nuala O’Loan dismissed the informer allegations saying her office had extensively examined intelligence available at the time and found no evidence Mrs McConville had ever passed information to the security forces.

But Ms Gilroy said: “It might not be popular to say she was an informer but I firmly believe she was. The IRA found a radio in her flat. That doesn’t in any way justify what happened to her. It was a terrible thing for that family.

“I can’t get my head around how the IRA would kill a mother with all those wee children. They could easily have ordered her out of the country and put her on a boat to England or Scotland with her kids. She should never have been executed.”

Last week two women – aged 57 and 60 – were arrested and taken to Antrim police station for questioning about Jean McConville’s murder. The PSNI said they were later released pending a report to the Public Prosecution Service.

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Unionist Reaction
By Suzanne Breen
Sunday Life
20 April 2014

Unionist politicians are calling for Gerry Adams to be arrested over Jean McConville’s murder following claims from a former republican prisoner that he alone was in a position within the Provisionals to order the mother-of-10’s brutal killing.

Evelyn Gilroy, an ex-internee from west Belfast, expressed her anger that six “low-level republicans” had been arrested this month about the 1972 murder while police hadn’t even questioned the Sinn Fein president.

“Police have lifted people who were 15 and 16 at the time of the killing, yet Gerry Adams remains untouched,” she said.

“The police should stop chasing those who were never in a position in the republican movement to order Jean McConville’s execution and instead arrest the only person who was in that position – Gerry Adams.”

Ms Gilroy was a member of the republican movement along with Mr Adams in the 1970s. She was active in Divis where Jean McConville was abducted. Mr Adams has always strongly denied any involvement in the horrific abduction and murder of Mrs McConville.

TUV leader Jim Allister said: “With even a former colleague in the republican movement, Evelyn Gilroy, now calling for Gerry Adams to be arrested over Jean McConville’s murder, the police’s inaction is becoming unsustainable. Continuing to treat Adams as an untouchable, in the face of such exposure, brings policing into disrepute.”

Ulster Unionist minister, Danny Kennedy, said: “The increasingly compelling evidence against Gerry Adams cannot be ignored. It is beyond the time that he should be arrested and questioned. The PSNI must act now and it is in the public interest that they do so.”

DUP MP Gregory Campbell said: “The comments about Gerry Adams from a republican active at the time of Jean McConville’s abduction and murder have credence.

“They are the latest in a series which can’t be easily dismissed by Sinn Fein.

“The police should question Gerry Adams as a matter of urgency. If charges are appropriate they should follow irrespective of the fact he is a TD.”

Last month, Mr Adams told his solicitor to contact police to see if he is wanted for questioning over the murder. He said he is willing to meet the PSNI.

Recasting History: Boston College case has profound questions for historians

Recasting History

Dr. Aaron Edwards with a piece on the Boston College archive conflict. Aaron Edwards is a historian and former journalist with The Other View magazine. Views expressed here are his own.

Academic historians have been conspicuous by their absence in the debate over the Boston College case. This is extremely disappointing but it is not surprising and seems to reflect a risk adverse culture that has facilitated the public upbraiding of individuals who have taken great personal risks to bring us much-needed alternative perspectives on the past. While I have never had any personal association with the Boston College case, I am not prepared to stand idly by while the debate is poisoned by ill-informed perspectives that reduce discussion of the case to a question of the integrity of the personalities involved and not the merits of the enterprise itself.

There are occasions when those who care about the craft of history have to stand up and be counted. This is clearly one of those occasions.

We live in inauspicious times for the study and practice of history when the people involved in the collection of the traces from the past – from the gifted amateur to the most accomplished professor – are under increasing pressure to justify both their motivations and the research methods employed to yield their research findings. This pressure is particularly acutely felt in those societies deeply divided along ethnic, national and religious lines and which are emerging out of armed conflict.

Of course, there are consummate bureaucrats out there who will point to the existence of ethical guidelines available to anyone involved in research of this nature. However, while this might well be the case, it has been privately acknowledged by many academics that these guidelines (produced by universities and learned associations) are principally about mitigating the risk of litigation that may be levelled against institutions. One has only to consult the small print of the contracts drawn up between academics and scholarly journals and book publishers – the main vehicles for academics to disseminate their research findings – to know that by signing a copyright form the academic author essentially indemnifies the publisher from any legal action that may arise out of the work in the future. In other words, researchers who generate, collate and disseminate findings from their research are taking a huge gamble with both their reputations and their financial wellbeing when they decide to go rummaging around in a troubled past.

Consequently, there has been a tendency for historians to err on the side of caution and avoid controversial subject areas for fear of risking litigation. Unfortunately, the by-product of avoiding these uncomfortable aspects of the past can have a very real chill factor and lead invariably to the reproduction of a sanitised version of the past. Perhaps even more worrying is that it can lead invariably to a recasting of history as ethnic folk wisdom that bears no resemblance to what actually happened. In his compelling novel The History of the World in 10½ Chapters (1989) Julian Barnes makes the telling observation: ‘We make up a story to cover the facts we don’t know or can’t accept; we keep a few true facts and spin a new story round them. Our panic and our pain are only eased by smoothing fabulation; we call it history’.

In conflicts where ethnic, national or religious identities remain the key fault-lines dividing peoples, the temptation to resort to ‘smoothing fabulation’ is obvious. But it is also incredibly dangerous. We know from experience of other places that by doctoring the historical record in a way that explains away human rights abuses, genocide and ethnic cleansing may trigger a reoccurrence of violence in the future.

We have recently seen the recasting of history in which the ‘alleged’ former Chief of Staff of the Provisional IRA explained away the death of a non-combatant in a proxy bomb attack on a security forces base as being ‘open to interpretation’. At the same time he minimised his own involvement in the operation by claiming that he was elsewhere at the time, ‘allegedly’ (that word again) knee-deep in discussions with Margaret Thatcher’s government in a bid to lay the foundations of the ‘peace process’.

While this interpretation of the past may gain traction within a narrow political constituency, it has been contested by unionists – and it must be said by some republicans too – as being disingenuous or plainly untrue. It is, therefore, the responsibility of historians to subject such claims to the white heat of scrutiny – and in light of the available evidence. In a world where non-state actors (like terrorist groupings) rarely recorded on paper the process by which orders were given and received it is obvious that oral testimonies are of vital importance to understanding what happened, why, and with what consequences. This is why academic initiatives like the Belfast Oral History Project are so invaluable for historians like me who may not have had an opportunity to interview key players – at whatever level – so that we can assemble all of the available evidence and draw accurate conclusions from it.

I should add here that my own research interviews with republicans, loyalists and members of the British state security forces over the past 15 years were based on my belief that you cannot understand the armed conflict in this part of Ireland without factoring in the roles played by all sides.

I would be the first to admit that historians do not come to the past with a clean slate. They bring their own experiences, prejudices (some subconscious, others not) and intuition to bear on the facts. For what it is worth I am from a working class Protestant background and a community in North Belfast that suffered much and, in turn, inflicted terrible hurt on its neighbours, both Protestant or Catholic, during the ‘troubles’. It is for this reason that I am conscious of the importance of recognising and declaring my own biases and not passing these off as ‘objective truth’. In this at least I defer to the words of renowned writer George Orwell, who made the point that, while it may not be possible to ‘get rid of these feelings simply by taking thought’, it was possible to ‘at least recognize that you have them, and prevent them from contaminating your mental thought processes’.

It is for these reasons that I believe that the Boston College case has thrown up profound questions for historians – and for anyone who lived through the ‘troubles’ and wishes to understand what happened – but these questions will go unanswered if we insist on reducing the debate to one that simply calls into question the integrity of the personalities involved. To truly audit the past we must consider the wider processes in play so as to avoid an ill-informed view of history that obscures more than it reveals.

Why have the Boston College tapes and the death of Mrs Jean McConville become entwined?

Why have the Boston College tapes and the death of Mrs Jean McConville become entwined?
Mick Hall
Organised Rage

“It’s the obligation of a researcher to destroy their material before allowing it to fall into the hands of anyone who would bring it to harm. Boston College had an obligation to engage in an act of civil disobedience.” —Anthony McIntyre

The furore over the Boston College Tapes has been slow burning and it is worth recapping how we reached where we are today. The tapes were part of a Belfast oral history project which was under the auspices of the Irish studies department of Boston College a prestigious US academic institution. They consisted of a series of interviews with former members of Irish republican and loyalist paramilitaries. Those who agreed to participate did so after receiving guarantees the tapes would not be released until they were dead.

The lead researcher in Ireland Anthony McIntyre believed his interviewees had a solid guarantee from the college that their recollections were secure. He certainly wasn’t aware of MLAT a US-UK treaty, although he might have been if the college had carried out its duty of care and checked with their lawyers before collecting an archive of interviews in which former members of the PIRA and UVF spoke in some detail about their paramilitary careers.

During the period when the Belfast Oral History Project (BOHP) was being set up, a firm belief was developing amongst a number of former members of the PIRA that the history of their struggle was being rewritten in an attempt to justify the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, and not just by the British government and their mainstream media friends but also by the current leadership of Sinn Féin.

As one former IRA man said to me: “Not one volunteer went to war so Martin McGuinness could become deputy first minister in a British owned statelet but that is how our struggle is being spun today.”

It’s true on the republican side the majority of those who were interviewed for the oral history project were no longer supporters of Sinn Féin, however if the Sinn Féin leadership had not placed a three line whip against its members participating it may have been more balanced, but just because this was not the case it does not invalidate it as Gerry Adams recently said.

It’s not true as some have claimed the republican interviewees belonged to, or supported dissident republican groups. Far from it in fact as most, including Brendan Hughes and McIntyre, welcomed the ceasefire, and the ending of the military campaign. The line they would not cross was Sinn Féin’s support for British institutions in Northern Ireland, especially the police. Which is not really surprising as opposition to British institutions in Ireland has been a bedrock policy of Irish republicanism since the 19th century. Even many of those who remain in SF will tell you accepting the writ of the PSNI has been a very bitter pill to swallow.

The Belfast oral history project is an academic study which collated first hand accounts about why, and how the men and women interviewed volunteered for Óglaigh na hÉireann and fought the bloodiest military insurrection against the British State since the English civil war. Surely a worthwhile project which would have had great value for future historians and political strategists.

Gerry Adams was being disingenuous when he claimed last week the project was “flawed and biased from the outset. It was an entirely bogus, shoddy and self-serving effort. It was not a genuine or serious or ethically based history project.” Not least because he has attempted to airbrush out of Republican history former comrades who went on to disagree with his strategy and tactics.

If he had his way some of the most prominent players within the IRA over the last four decades would have been permanently consigned to the cutting room floor. The whole purpose of oral history is to give people a voice in the future which is far too often denied them. As L P Hartley said: “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” The BOHP was an attempt to ensure when future generations study the PIRA’s insurgency it will not alone be through the prism of the British and Irish establishments and the mainstream media. The BOHP would have at the very least preserved a public record of those who fought on the losing side in that conflict, yet refused to make the compromises demanded of them.

Although we do not know what is on all of the tapes, only Moloney and McIntyre know that, we have caught a glimpse of their importance to future historians  The interviewees have undoubtedly revealed information about the inner workings of the IRA and shed new light on important historic events.

The trust and confidence the republican interviewees have in Anthony McIntyre is best demonstrated by the fact since this brouhaha blew up not one has publicly criticised him or doubted his integrity. As one of them said:  “I needed to know the guy I was telling this to could be trusted one billion percent.”

The Project begins to unravel

Sadly the thing started to unravel after the death of two of its participants, David Irvine, a former member of the loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and later a leading politician and member of the Progressive Unionist Party, and Brendan Hughes, a senior member of the IRA who along with Ivor Bell and Gerry Adams made up the trio of northerners who developed and oversaw military strategy and tactics for much of the 1970s.

In March 2010, Ed Moloney’s book Voices from the Grave was published, which featured interviews with Hughes and Ervine, compiled by researchers for Boston College. Moloney, who was the project director of the Belfast Oral History Project, based the book on the interviews given by Hughes and Ervine. Excerpts from the book have Hughes discussing his role and the role of Gerry Adams in the IRA, including their alleged role in regards to the contentious disappearance of Jean McConville, a mother of ten who was executed by the IRA for acting as an informer for the British Army. In October 2010, RTÉ also broadcast a documentary co-produced by Moloney based on Voices from the Grave in which similar accusations were made.

Once this book was published the British police in Ireland took a keen interest in the tapes and with the full support of the UK government they eventually asked and then demanded access to the Boston College tapes archive under the mutual legal assistance treaty, as they claimed they were relevant in an ongoing murder enquiry.

To cut a long story short the first subpoena arrived on May 5, 2011. Its contents were under seal. Boston College was told the U.S. Department of Justice, acting under a mutual-legal-assistance treaty with the UK, was seeking the interviews of Brendan Hughes and Dolours Price, for help in a criminal investigation in Northern Ireland involving kidnapping and murder.

Within weeks Boston College turned over the Hughes interviews to the US Justice Department and it became clear the college had no intention of fighting within the US legal system to uphold an imported academic principle. Thus Moloney and McIntyre decided to continue the struggle on their own, although they fought a rearguard action and did gain some support in the USA, but without the college in their corner it was always a long shot, and by issuing the following statement the college spokesman Jack Dunn had clearly moved into the camp of the Justice Department:

“Had our efforts gone to Congress in identifying supporters, to work with the State Department and the Department of Justice, we could have been more effective. But our efforts were involved in legal matters and distancing ourselves from the reckless rhetoric of Ed Moloney and Anthony McIntyre.”

Eight months after the first subpoena was served, Judge William G. Young of the U.S. District Court in Boston ordered Boston College to turn over Dolours Price’s interviews as well as 85 interviews of seven other former IRA members that he deemed relevant to the investigation. It should be noted by fighting their rearguard action in the US courts McIntyre and Moloney did restrict the British police gaining access to all of the tapes.

Given Mr Adams harsh criticism of the Belfast oral history project I feel it is only fair to remind him what Judge Young said about the project after reading the transcripts of the tapes.

“This was a bona fide academic exercise of considerable intellectual merit …  These materials are of interest, valid academic interest historian, sociologist, the student of religion, the student of youth movements, academics who are interested in insurgency and counter-insurgency and terrorism and counter-terrorism. They’re of interest to those who study the history of religions.”

That is a long way from what Gerry Adams claimed:

 “flawed and biased from the outset. It was an entirely bogus, shoddy and self-serving effort. It was not a genuine or serious or ethically based history project.”

What can one make of this brouhaha?

For the wider world what this case highlights is treaties between the USA and less powerful nations are not the harmless entities they’re often portrayed as. There is a reason why they are signed under the radar, they are designed to chip away our democratic rights and freedoms as is witnessed here by the use of the mutual legal assistance treaty. (MLAT)

Since the middle of the last century there has been a move away from the great man theory of history to how ordinary people shape big historical events. As most people do not write books or leave a written narrative of their lives, oral history has come to be seen as a way of filling a massive gap.

With the English ruling class once again firmly in the political saddle they are trying to turn this march of time back, and turn the historical spotlight back onto them and theirs. One only has to watch historical documentaries on TV today to understand this. If those who participate in historic times which challenge the force of the state lose confidence in the security of oral history projects, understandably they will refuse to participate and we and future generations will be the losers.

Sadly this is already happening, according to Richard English, director of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews, in Scotland, he has heard from a number of researchers seeking advice about whether to pursue research on political violence if it includes interviewing those involved in conflict. “I think the fallout is much wider than Northern Ireland,” he says. “There has been a shadow cast over this kind of research.”

Perfidious Albion

What made the PSNI with the full support of the British government go after the Boston College Tapes with such vigour? Only they know for sure, but as most lawyers seem to believe they could not be used as evidence in a criminal trial, it may have been a shot across Sinn Féin’s bows as Gerry Adams does seem to be the main target. Could their purpose have been to pressurise SF to agree not to pursue their demand that members of the British security forces who shot dead 13 civilians on Bloody Sunday and colluded with loyalist paramilitaries in the murder of Pat Finucane and others be brought before a court of law. Was it a case of you leave us alone and we will leave you alone and especially your leader Gerry Adams.

There is another hypothesis, it’s of the who will rid me of this troublesome priest variety. It’s possible the British security services are sick and tired of Anthony McIntyre continuingly snapping at the heels of their Irish agents of influence? People have had their lives ruined by the police and security services for far less.

As to the Belfast history project, I will let former IRA man Dixie Elliott have the last word, as he brings some dignity to this whole sorry charade. Read it and you get an idea why history demands ‘ordinary’ IRA volunteers are heard.

“Lets get this straight those who left testimonies on those tapes were Republicans who had risked their lives and freedom for decades, they were not, as some seem to claim, naive nor easily led.

They knew what they were doing and that was to ensure that recent history was recorded in way that future generations could decide what was and was not the truth.
While young men and women carried guns and bombs in the hope of achieving freedom, Adams and McGuinness only carried their coffins to early graves.

They urged that the fight would go ahead while talking about ending it behind the backs of those they encouraged to fight. If they weren’t in the IRA then they were nothing other than demagogues.

History demands that the truth is left behind and that is precisely what the Boston Project was about.”

NEWS OF INTEREST: Facing His Torturer as Spain Confronts Its Past

Facing His Torturer as Spain Confronts Its Past
By JIM YARDLEY
New York Times
April 6, 2014

José María Galante said he was tortured after being arrested for his anti-Franco protest activities. “I agree with the idea of reconciliation,” Mr. Galante said. “But you just can’t turn the page.”

MADRID — José María Galante was a leftist college student when he was handcuffed to the ceiling of a basement torture chamber, his body dangling in the air. A police inspector laughed and taunted him, striking martial arts poses before repeatedly kicking and beating his face and chest.

The man who Mr. Galante says tortured him was an infamous enforcer of the Franco dictatorship in the 1970s, widely known as Billy the Kid for his habit of spinning his pistol on his finger. So Mr. Galante was startled last year when he located the man — living in a spacious apartment less than a mile from his own neighborhood in central Madrid.

“How did I feel when I saw him for the first time? We got you now, you bastard,” Mr. Galante said, adding: “I agree with the idea of reconciliation. But you just can’t turn the page. You have to read that page before you turn it.”

This week, Mr. Galante is again planning to see Billy the Kid, whose real name is Antonio González Pacheco. This time, it will be at a hearing at Spain’s National Court, where Mr. Galante and other victims are, for the first time, seeking to prosecute Mr. Pacheco in a case that is reopening the country’s painful Francoist past and threatening the political pact that helped Spain transition from dictatorship to democracy.

Spain’s democratic transition has been a source of national pride, a period that saw political rivals make compromises credited with allowing a new country to emerge. The public wistfulness for that lost political spirit was evident last month with the death of Adolfo Suárez, the prime minister who guided the country in those early years.

But the grand bargain that allowed this transition was a complicated one. After Franco’s death in 1975, a sweeping amnesty law absolved everyone — leftists and right-wing Francoists — and encouraged a kind of collective forgetting in the name of reconciliation. The belief was that Spain could prosper only by looking to the future, not the past.

For victims like Mr. Galante, this meant the door to justice was slammed shut. For more than 40 years, Spanish courts have refused to hear these cases, citing the amnesty law. So Mr. Galante and others have taken their complaints to Argentina, invoking the legal principle of universal jurisdiction under which certain crimes, because of their magnitude, transcend borders. An Argentine judge is now seeking the extradition of Mr. Pacheco and another individual accused of torture. Mr. Pacheco’s hearing on April 10 in Madrid is to decide whether to grant the request.

Spanish courts are usually reluctant to extradite Spanish citizens. But whatever the outcome, the Argentine case is stirring up old demons in Spain. Critics say Spain must confront its past and even push aside the amnesty law. Others warn that doing so could lead to a slew of prosecutions, even reaching the country’s elite.

Today, Spanish politics, business and law are still sprinkled with people who have direct or indirect links to the Franco regime. Last week, a lawyer for the victims asked the Argentine judge to bring charges against five former ministers from the Franco era.

“I just don’t think it would be good for the country,” said Ramón Jáuregui, a lawmaker with the opposition Socialist Party, who opposed Franco during the 1970s but is reluctant to break the amnesty pact. “We don’t know where it starts and where it finishes. If we take someone who was a torturer in 1970, why aren’t we going to go after some ministers in Franco’s government who are still alive? Why not the courts? Where do we set the limit?”

Spain’s government is already facing growing pressure from the United Nations. Pablo de Greiff, a United Nations special rapporteur, said Spain “lagged behind” other European countries in addressing its recent past. He said Spain’s government had done too little to help victims of the Franco era, and recommended setting aside the amnesty law so that prosecutions could go forward, either in Argentina or in Spain.

“Some problems do not go away,” Mr. de Greiff, the special rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence, said in an interview. “They cannot be swept under the rug. People, not surprisingly, do not forget.”

Franco was a contemporary of Hitler and Mussolini, though his dictatorship lasted until the 1970s and his legacy is more complicated, and contested. Not far from Mr. Pacheco’s apartment, the National Francisco Franco Foundation serves as the watchdog of the Franco legacy. The small office is like a time capsule from the dictatorship: Portraits of Franco hang on the walls, while a small display offers souvenir Franco T-shirts and other memorabilia.

“Since the Catholic Kings, Franco was in power the longest, and with the most public support,” said Jaime Alonso, the foundation’s spokesman and second in command. “He had great popular support until his death — despite what the propagandists maintain.”

Mr. Alonso, a lawyer, argues that Franco was not a dictator and scoffs at evidence of forced labor and postwar atrocities. “What is happening now is the need the left has to delegitimize history,” Mr. Alonso said.

Most historians agree that Franco oversaw a regime that trampled civil liberties and often ruled by fear and with impunity.

For several years, private associations led by the descendants of Franco victims have pushed for the exhumation of mass graves from the Spanish Civil War and the dictatorship. In recent years, it was revealed that thousands of infants were abducted from Republican families and placed in institutions or adopted by families loyal to Franco.

Controversy also surrounds the Valley of the Fallen, the massive mountaintop shrine where Franco is buried along with 30,000 others. Franco called the shrine a symbol of reconciliation. But scholars now say that some of the interred are Republican soldiers who were put there without their families being notified.

In 2008, Judge Baltasar Garzón, a crusading magistrate known for stirring up controversy, opened an inquiry to investigate crimes against humanity during the Franco era. Within two years, Judge Garzón’s investigation was shut down after a right-wing group (represented by Mr. Alonso of the Franco Foundation) filed a lawsuit accusing him of overstepping his judicial authority.

Eventually, Spain’s Supreme Court removed him from the bench after finding that he had wrongly used illegal wiretapping in a different case — a finding that his supporters say was politically motivated. “In my case, it was an example of killing the messenger,” Judge Garzón said in an interview. “What they don’t understand is, yes, the transition was fine — at the time of the transition. But they don’t understand that now, the government is not allowing access to the truth, to justice.”

One of the lawyers in the Pacheco case, Carlos Slepoy, said that the Spanish authorities have sought to derail his prosecution, too, even as depositions have been taken at Argentine embassies around the world. Groups of Spanish victims have flown to Argentina to provide testimony.

“Initially, there were two families and a few human rights organizations that set this in motion,” Mr. Slepoy said. “Now, there are 350 lawsuits, innumerable depositions and a huge public support movement.”

Ángel Llorente, an official with Spain’s Ministry of Justice, said the government was cooperating with the Argentine judge and has allowed the extradition process to continue. Mr. Pacheco and his lawyers could not be reached for comment, despite repeated efforts. He has not spoken publicly about the torture allegations against him.

Mr. Galante, the man accusing Mr. Pacheco of torture, has already testified in Argentina about his experiences in the 1970s — a period when the abuses of the dictatorship had supposedly ended. He was arrested several times for protesting and joining an illegal anti-Franco student union. In custody, Mr. Galante said, he was beaten on his genitals and subjected to a form of water boarding.

“Billy the Kid had such a sense of impunity,” he said. “He never thought he would get caught. He didn’t ever think about getting information. He just wanted to beat people up.”

Last year, Mr. Galante and others began their search for him. They discovered he had founded a private security company. Later, a contact provided a copy of his national identity number, which helped them discover that he had competed in the New York City Marathon and a half marathon in Madrid.

Finally, they found his address, not far from Bernabéu Stadium of the Real Madrid soccer team. “We did what he used to do with us: A bunch of us would stand in the neighborhood, and if we spotted him, we would follow him,” he said. “The first time we saw him, he was running. We had to pretend we were running, too.”

Patricia Rafael and Brenda Yastremski contributed reporting.

Irish terrorist murders ‘should be left unsolved’; Historic banquet at Windsor, but in Belfast there’s still a bitter taste

Irish terrorist murders ‘should be left unsolved’
Sean O’Neill Crime and Security Editor
The Times
April 7 2014

A de facto amnesty should be offered to terrorists who killed, bombed and maimed during Northern Ireland’s 30 years of violence, a former Northern Ireland Secretary said yesterday.

Peter Hain’s radical proposal, which would end any prospect of prosecutions in 3,000 unsolved murders from the Troubles, comes on the eve of the first Irish state visit to Britain.

President Higgins arrives in London today and will be welcomed by the Queen tomorrow. The Sinn Féin politician and Deputy First Minister, Martin McGuinness — a former IRA commander — will attend the State Banquet at Windsor Castle.

The visit comes amid a spate of “cold-case” inquiries connected to the Troubles, and controversy over “comfort letters” given to on-the-run IRA members to protect them from prosecution.

Mr Hain, Labour’s Northern Ireland Secretary from 2005-07, said he understood that his proposal would make victims and survivors of the Troubles “desperately angry” but argued that it was vital if Northern Ireland were to stop being “stalked” by its past.

“I think there should be an end to all conflict-related prosecutions,” he said. “That should apply to cases pre-dating the Good Friday agreement in 1998. This is not desirable in a normal situation. You would never dream of doing this in England, Scotland and Wales — but the Troubles were never normal.

“You can keep going back all the time and you can keep looking over your shoulder or turning around all the time, but what that does is take you away from addressing the issues of now and the issues of the future.”

Mr Hain said that political leaders in Northern Ireland urgently needed to face the legacy of the conflict, amid signs that dissident republicans are taking inspiration from the Taleban to use homemade rockets against the police.

He added: “This is not going to go away. It’s going to continue stalking the First Minister, the Deputy First Minister and the entire body politic there. The past just stalks them and they’re either going to confront it and deal with it together or they’re going to continue to be stalked by it.”

After the furore over letters to rule out prosecution for IRA fugitives, Mr Hain called last month for a halt to the criminal investigation into the Bloody Sunday shootings. His latest intervention goes farther, advocating an across-the-board end to investigation and prosecution of unsolved crimes by loyalist and republican paramilitaries and members of the security forces.

The former minister said that there had to be an even-handed process — a judicial tribunal or a truth-and-reconciliation commission — by which cases could be resolved without prosecutions.

He said: “A soldier potentially liable for prosecution who’s being investigated for Bloody Sunday has got to be treated in the same way by whatever process emerges as a former loyalist or republican responsible for a terrorist atrocity.”

Cases thrust back on to the agenda include a judicial examination of the letters given to IRA “on-the-runs” and criminal inquiries into three incidents from the Seventies: the IRA murder of Jean McConville; the killing by the British Army of 14 marchers on Bloody Sunday and the loyalist bombing of McGurk’s Bar, in which 15 people died.

Ivor Bell, 77, a former colleague of Mr McGuinness in the IRA leadership, will appear in court in Belfast on Friday charged with aiding and abetting the murder of Mrs McConville in 1972. Gerry Adams, the Sinn Féin President and one of the architects of the peace process, has had to deny allegations that he ordered Mrs McConville’s murder and has offered to speak to police about the case.

Mr Hain’s call echoes a similar proposal last year by John Larkin, Northern Ireland’s Attorney-General. It met stiff political opposition, with Peter Robinson, the Province’s First Minister, saying that it would allow people to “get away with murder”.

Many victims’ families are expected to react angrily, but William Frazer, a victims’ campaigner whose father was murdered by the IRA in 1975, said that his mind was not closed to any proposal that was fair. “We all need justice but a lot of us do realise that we will never get it,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean we have to give up on the right to justice. We all know we have to move on, but you can’t ask people to forgive if they don’t want to forgive and you can’t ask them to forget.”

Seamus McKendry, the husband of Mrs McConville’s daughter Helen, said: “I don’t agree but I understand where he’s coming from. You have to let things go at some time, but people just can’t forget that easily. Jean McConville has become such an iconic figure, a tragic figure. And there are other such cases, like Bloody Sunday. I think if you can resolve some of those bigger cases, at least it lets the people know they haven’t been forgotten about.”

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Historic banquet at Windsor, but in Belfast there’s still a bitter taste
Sean O’Neill
The Times
April 7 2014

In the magnificent surroundings of St George’s Hall in Windsor Castle, the Queen will mark another milestone in Anglo-Irish relations tomorrow night when she hosts a state banquet for President Higgins.

Following the Queen’s successful trip to Ireland in 2011 and her handshake with Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness in 2012, the first Irish state visit to Britain is being cast as a further step towards consigning centuries of conflict to the history books. Mr McGuinness, a former IRA leader, will attend the banquet in tie and tails.

Enda Kenny, the Taoiseach, yesterday welcomed Mr McGuinness’s decision to go to Windsor, saying that people needed to “move on and not be blocked by the past”.

In Northern Ireland, however, the past is everywhere. The place seems harnessed to its history and that carries the potential to derail the future.

Bloody hatreds and painful memories are painted on gable walls and kerbstones, wrapped in flags and banners and cemented in the sectarian division of schools and neighbourhoods.

In Belfast you can take an open top bus tour around the murals of the loyalist Shankill Road and the nationalist Falls Road, depicting their own versions of struggle and sacrifice, and take pictures of the “peace walls” that divide Protestant from Catholic and scar the city physically and mentally.

The Good Friday agreement, the settlement that ended three decades of violence that claimed more than 3,600 lives, is 16 years old this week. Division, rancour and distrust persist, such that Ulster can seem to have settled for separation rather than reconciliation.

“The conflict may be over on the street but it’s still very much in people’s minds,” one veteran republican said.

That conflict is also being given a new lease of life in a spate of historical investigations which could lead to former paramilitaries standing trial, including some who put away their guns and re-emerged as politicians.

The case of John Downey, the former IRA man acquitted of the Hyde Park bombing when his trial at the Old Bailey collapsed this year, caused outrage.

In Ulster such cold cases are increasingly common. Police are investigating the deaths of 14 demonstrators shot by soldiers of The Parachute Regiment in Derry in 1972. Last month detectives arrested a 75-year-old man over the loyalist bombing in 1971 of McGurk’s Bar in north Belfast, in which 15 people died.

Later this week, Ivor Bell, 77, a former IRA member, will appear in court charged with aiding and abetting the murder of Jean McConville, who was abducted, tortured and shot in 1972 because the IRA suspected her of being an informant.

Sources say that taped interviews with former paramilitaries, recorded as part of an oral history project, name the Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams as the IRA commander who ordered Mrs McConville’s murder. Her family, who have faced vilification over the years, are hoping for justice.

“It’s good to get the can open at last, maybe a few worms will come out,” said Seamus McKendry, the husband of Mrs McConville’s eldest daughter, Helen. “Jean McConville is never coming back from the dead, but we could at least give her memory a bit of peace.”

Mr Adams denies any involvement in the killing.

Advances in forensic science will bring more old cases within reach of resolution. Republicans watch the arrests of former IRA men and, according to one, “are beginning to ask if things are being clawed back, if you can ever have an honourable agreement with the British”. Loyalists look at the “amnesty letters” for the IRA’s on-the-runs and wonder why people in their community were not treated likewise.

Richard Haass, the former US diplomat who led failed talks on the legacy of the conflict, warned that agreement on dealing with the province’s past was now urgent and time alone would not bring healing. He told a US Congress committee last month: “Absent political progress, the passage of time will only create an environment in which social division intensifies, violence increases, investment is scared off, alienation grows and the best and brightest leave to make their futures elsewhere.”

Amid the gloom, Peter Sheridan, chief executive of Co-operation Ireland, said that it was important to remember the achievements of 1998. “There are hundreds of people alive today, thousands who are uninjured because of the Good Friday agreement.”

With hindsight, he says, the issue of the Troubles legacy should not have been devolved to local politicians. “Dublin and Westminster can’t take those devolved powers back now, but they do need to engage. I don’t think we’re going to go back to violence, but we do need to find a way to deal with our horrible past.”

He believes that proposals to end conflict prosecutions are worth further debate. “We need to be honest with victims and honest with ourselves — too often we overestimate what can be achieved with investigations. We can never do justice to the scale of the injustice that happened in this place.”

As the prime mover in orchestrating the historic handshake, Mr Sheridan has another suggestion that holds out the prospect of hope. “Rather than spending £200 million on inquiries and investigations, we should use it to build a memorial hospital — perhaps that is the best we can offer.”

Arrest Made In McConville Murder Case Links To BC Belfast Project

Arrest Made In McConville Murder Case Links To BC Belfast Project
Connor Farley
News Editor
BC Heights
7 April, 2014

Last Wednesday, an unnamed 56-year-old man was arrested for questioning in connection to the abduction and murder of Jean McConville, a widowed mother of 10 who disappeared from her apartment in December 1972 and was later revealed to have been shot by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). The suspect was detained in west Belfast and transported to an Antrim police station for questioning, according to statements released by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and reported by the Irish Independent. He was released hours after being taken into custody at the Antrim police station, according to The Guardian, and upon his release, a spokesman said that inquiries were continuing.

Reportedly shunned by her neighbors for suspicion of being an informant for the British army, 37-year-old McConville was taken from her home in the Divis Flats of west Belfast by a group of about 12 IRA members, and subsequently shot in the back of the head, according to a report by The Chronicle of Higher Education. Having been secretly buried by the IRA following her execution, McConville’s remains would not be discovered until August 2003 in Shelling Hill Beach, approximately 50 miles from her home.

One week prior to the latest arrest related to McConville’s death, alleged former IRA commander Ivor Bell, 77, was also charged with aiding and abetting the murder, according to BBC Northern Ireland.

Bell’s arrest is being linked to the Belfast Project, an oral history initiative started by Boston College in 2001. According to the same BBC report, the case against Bell is based on an interview he allegedly gave as part of the Belfast Project.

The project was dissolved in 2011 after the U.S. Department of Justice issued subpoenas on behalf of the PSNI ordering the University to release the tapes of interviews conducted with Brendan Hughes and Dolours Price, two former Northern Irish Republican militants.

Organized by Executive Director of the Center for Irish Programs Thomas Hachey, then-Burns Librarian Robert O’Neill, Irish journalist Ed Moloney, and former IRA member and project interviewer Anthony McIntyre, the Belfast Project was begun as an oral history project that would document the severe political conflict in Northern Ireland known as “The Troubles” by interviewing former members of the IRA and other paramilitary groups.

By recounting the series of terrorist acts and sporadic outbreaks of riotous violence between the IRA, other paramilitaries, and the British army from the late 1960s until the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, the Belfast Project chronicled the activities of ex-IRA members through taped interviews conducted by McIntyre—a former IRA member who spent more than 16 years in prison himself for killing a loyalist paramilitary soldier.

The audiotapes of interviews were housed in BC’s John J. Burns Library. Contracts signed by the interviewees stipulated that the tapes would be sealed until each individual’s death due to their sensitive nature. The legal salience of those contracts was called into question in a Jan. 26 article from The Chronicle of Higher Education, which reported that “no lawyers vetted the [contracts’] wording, and no one at Boston College other than Mr. O’Neill and Mr. Hachey reviewed Mr. Moloney’s contract or the one drawn up for interviewees.”

The four project organizers received an initial subpoena for the tapes on May 5, 2011. While initially able to maintain possession of the Dolours Price recordings, the University was required to turn over the interviews involving Hughes given his death in 2008, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Three months later, U.S. federal judge William G. Young issued another subpoena, which ruled that BC had to turn over all tapes relevant to the death of Jean McConville to the Police Service of Northern Ireland on the basis of a mutual legal assistance treaty (MLAT) between the U.S. and the United Kingdom that maintains both countries act in full compliance with each other during criminal investigations.

Audiotapes of particular interest to the PSNI were those of Price, who reportedly divulged information about the death of McConville and attributed her planned execution to Gerry Adams—the current leader of the Sinn Fein political party, who denies having ever been a member of the IRA, according to The Guardian. The tapes were presumed to implicate Adams for coordinating McConville’s murder.

On Jan. 23, 2013, Price was found dead at her Dublin home at 61 due to unknown causes. Several months after her death, BC released Price’s tapes in full to the PSNI.

Due to inconclusive details on the case as disclosed by the PSNI, the University has declined to comment on the most recent arrest made in the McConville case.

“Boston College is not privy to any details of the ongoing investigation being conducted by the Police Services of Northern Ireland, and is not commenting on the matter,” said University Spokesman Jack Dunn in an email.