Boston College researcher’s wife makes surveillance complaint

Boston College researcher’s wife makes surveillance complaint
Andy Martin
BBC Ireland correspondent
BBC News

The wife of former Boston College researcher, Anthony McIntyre, has made a formal complaint to authorities that her communications are being monitored.

Carrie McIntyre, the wife of Anthony McIntyre, made the complaint to Irish police and the US State Department.

Her husband was the lead researcher on Boston College’s Belfast Project.

The project features dozens of interviews with paramilitaries, who spoke candidly about their involvement in The Troubles.

The understanding of both the researchers and the interviewees was that their participation would remain secret until after their deaths.

Mrs McIntyre, also known as Carrie Twomey, has been heavily involved in the campaign to restrict access to the project.

Tapes handed over

On Thursday, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) confirmed they are seeking to obtain all material relating to the Belfast Project.

Last year, the PSNI used a treaty between the UK and the US to obtain some of the interviews.

Tapes from seven interviewees were handed over, all of which were deemed to have relevance to the murder of Jean McConville in 1972.

The widowed mother-of-10 was abducted, murdered and secretly buried by the IRA.

The released recordings have led to a number of arrests, including that of the Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams.

One man, the veteran republican Ivor Bell, has been charged in connection with Mrs McConville’s abduction. He denies the charges

Dr Anthony McIntyre conducted the interviews with former IRA members. Since his involvement was revealed, his family has been informed of a threat to their safety.

His wife and children are US citizens, but the family is adamant that contrary to some reports, they have not sought asylum in America.

Offer to return testimony

Anthony McIntyre cannot travel to the United States in any case, as he is a former republican prisoner.

He insists that even if he were allowed into America, he would refuse to leave the interviewees who spoke to him about their time in the IRA.

His wife believes that there has been illegal privacy violations and surveillance of conversations she has had with regard to the family’s safety.

Separately, Boston College has offered to return the remaining testimony it holds to the interviewees.

A spokesperson would not be drawn on whether any of those who took part in the project had availed of the offer, but the BBC understands that approaches have been made to have some tapes repatriated.

Northern Ireland seeks all Belfast Project interviews

Northern Ireland seeks all Belfast Project interviews
Peter Schworm
Boston Globe
May 23, 2014

Boston College will contest a new legal bid by British law enforcement to seize the entire trove of interviews from the university’s Belfast Project, university officials said Friday, joining a renewed battle over the controversial archive.

In a statement Thursday, the Police Service of Northern Ireland said it would seek to obtain the collection of interviews with former members of militia groups that clashed during the decades-long conflict known in Northern Ireland as the Troubles. But police did not specify a course of action or timetable.

“Detectives in Serious Crime Branch have initiated steps to obtain all the material from Boston College as part of the Belfast project,” the Police Service said. “This is in line with PSNI’s statutory duty to investigate fully all matters of serious crime, including murder.”

A spokesman for Boston College said Friday that the university had not received any information about the move to acquire the archives. But the spokesman said the blanket request for all materials, including interviews with more than a dozen members of a militia group loyal to Britain, seemed aimed at rebutting critics who have accused British authorities of using the archives for political purposes.

“The [Police Service of Northern Ireland] has been criticized for only pursuing the interviews of former IRA members,” said spokesman Jack Dunn. “This appears to be an attempt to deflect criticism that their actions were politically motivated.”

A spokesman for the Police Service declined to comment.

From 2001 to 2006, researchers interviewed former members of the Irish Republican Army, who sought a united Ireland, and former members of the Ulster Volunteer Force, a paramilitary group that wanted Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom.

Dunn said Boston College would fight to protect the interviews and hoped that US authorities would reject the legal request.

“Since the first subpoenas were issued in 2011, Boston College has pursued legal, political, and diplomatic efforts to oppose the effort of British law enforcement to obtain the interviews in an effort to protect the enterprise of oral history and the peace agreement in Northern Ireland,” Dunn said. “We will continue to do so and hope that the State Department and the Department of Justice will reject this latest request.”

A spokeswoman for the US attorney’s office in Massachusetts declined to comment.

Former militia members consented to interviews for the oral history project with the assurance that their statements would be kept confidential until their death. But Northern Ireland authorities, using a mutual legal assistance treaty with the United States, pursued the interviews as potential evidence of past crimes.

The treaty requires the nations to share information that could aid in criminal investigations.

After a lengthy court battle, Boston College was compelled to hand over 11 interviews with former members of the Irish Republican Army, leading to the recent arrest of Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, in connection with the notorious 1972 killing of Jean McConville.

After being released without charges earlier this month, Adams said interviews from the oral history project formed the basis for his arrest. Adams has denied any involvement in the killing of McConville, a mother of 10 who the IRA believed was an informer.

McConville was abducted and secretly buried. Years later, the IRA admitted responsibility for her death.

Information from the interviews also led to the arrest of Ivor Bell, a former IRA member who was charged in the slaying of McConville.

The arrests have led to criticism that Northern Irish authorities are exploiting the archives to cause political damage to Adams and Sinn Fein, the former political arm of the Irish Republican Army. Adams has criticized researchers for focusing on former IRA members who became critics of Adams and the peace process.

After Adams’s arrest, Boston College said it would return interviews to any participants who requested them and would not keep copies. Several people had already made requests.

Ed Moloney, an Irish journalist who led the project, blasted the British authorities’ latest bid to obtain the archives.

“I call upon the US government to resist this fishing expedition by the PSNI and to remember that the major consequence of this bid to invade an American college’s private archive will be to undermine a peace deal that was in no small way the product of careful American diplomacy and peace building,” he wrote on his blog.

“I also call upon Boston College to vigorously resist this action and to rally the rest of American academe in the cause of research confidentiality,” he wrote.

NBC News has also requested that previously subpoenaed materials be unsealed, writing that “any case involving incidents of terrorism and criminality . . . is a matter of great public interest.”

Sarah Wunsch — staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, which backed two project researchers in their effort to protect the interviews — called on American authorities to reject the police request.

“I think it’s time for the US government to call a halt to this, which is not only damaging to oral history and academic freedom, but also immensely damaging to peace in Northern Ireland,” she said.

Northern Irish Police Seek Entire Oral-History Archive at Boston College

Northern Irish Police Seek Entire Oral-History Archive at Boston College
By Beth McMurtrie
Chronicle of Higher Education
May 23, 2014

Three years after Boston College began a lengthy battle to retain control over an oral-history project on the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the college may find itself back in court again. The Police Services of Northern Ireland said on Thursday that they would seek the entire archive—all 46 interviews—in which former members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army and loyalist paramilitary groups talked about their activities during the decades-long civil conflict. Some of those conversations relate to crimes they and others may have committed.

“Detectives in Serious Crime Branch have initiated steps to obtain all the material from Boston College as part of the Belfast Project,” according to a statement provided to the BBC by the police. “This is in line with the PSNI’s statutory duty to investigate fully all matters of serious crime, including murder.”

In 2011 the police sought, and later received, interviews that discussed one of the most notorious murders in Northern Ireland, the killing of Jean McConville, a widow and mother of 10 whom the IRA believed to be an informer for the British. Boston College relinquished the complete interviews of two former IRA members along with portions of interviews of a number of other participants.

The police in Belfast subsequently brought in several people for questioning, most notably Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political counterpart, and a major figure in Northern Ireland. They have so far charged only one person, Ivor Bell, with aiding and abetting Ms. McConville’s murder.

The investigation has caused turmoil in Northern Ireland, with Mr. Adams’s supporters arguing that his interrogation had been politically motivated by opponents out to embarrass him and to dismantle the fragile power-sharing arrangement between republicans and loyalists. The Good Friday Agreement, which took effect in 1998, was the result of negotiations led by a U.S. envoy, George J. Mitchell.

Boston College’s spokesman, Jack Dunn, said by email on Thursday that the college had not been contacted by the U.S. Department of Justice about the latest police effort, and thus it would be “inappropriate to comment on speculation within Northern Ireland.” The Justice Department began a court case against the college in 2011 on behalf of British authorities through a treaty pledging mutual legal assistance. Christina Sterling, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Massachusetts, which handled that case, declined to comment.

‘Resist This Raid’

Ed Moloney, who directed the project for Boston College, called on the U.S. government “to resist this raid on an American college’s archive and to remember that the ultimate victim, if this succeeds, will be a peace process that was the product of American diplomacy and peace building.”

Mr. Moloney, an Irish journalist, and Anthony McIntyre, an Irish researcher and writer who conducted the interviews with former IRA members, ultimately fell out with Boston College over the handling of the court case. The two men argued that the college should have refused to turn over any materials. In an email Mr. Moloney said that Boston College should “resist to the utmost this attempt to raid its private archives.”

Mr. McIntyre said he was not surprised by the latest move by the police. When Boston College publicly announced that it would return interview materials to participants upon request once the court case was over, he argued, the college created a window of opportunity for the police to go after the remainder of the archive. Mr. Dunn declined to say whether the college had yet returned any materials to people who had requested the return of their interviews.

Mr. McIntyre called the latest effort by the police “politically driven in that they probably want further grounds to re-arrest Adams.”

Sarah Wunsch, a staff lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of Mr. Moloney and Mr. McIntyre in 2012, called the latest police pursuit “very dangerous.”

“It raises very important issues for the secretary of state [John F. Kerry] and the attorney general [Eric H. Holder], possibly putting in jeopardy the peace process,” she said, noting that when he was a U.S. senator, Mr. Kerry argued that the United States should ask the British authorities to withdraw their request for the tapes for that very reason.

The project has continued to generate fallout in recent weeks. One participant, Richard O’Rawe, a former IRA member, said he planned to sue Boston College for failing to make him aware of the legal risks and subsequently endangering his life. Graffiti has popped up around Belfast deriding “Boston College touts,” as informers are called. And this week it was revealed that NBC News had petitioned the U.S. district court in Boston for full access to the archives.

Moloney Statement On PSNI Threat To Boston Archive

Ed Moloney with a statement in response to the British PSNI moving to raid the remainder of the Boston College oral history project. It featured on The Broken Elbow today 22 May 2014.

I call upon the US government to resist this fishing expedition by the PSNI and to remember that the major casualty of this bid to invade an American college’s private archive will be to undermine a peace deal that was in no small way the product of careful American diplomacy and peace building. The United States has the power to invoke vital foreign policy interests in order to reject this PSNI action.

I also call upon Boston College to vigorously resist this action and to rally the rest of American academe in the cause of research confidentiality. It is no accident that this move comes hard on the heels of BC’s spokesman Jack Dunn’s public announcement that interviews could be returned. This action by the PSNI raises serious questions about the motivation and control of the police in Northern Ireland. Those in the PSNI who took and approved this decision could hardly have been unaware of the grave political consequences of their planned action.

TRANSCRIPT: BBC Radio Ulster interviews Dr. Anthony McIntyre about PSNI announcement about a fresh pursuit of the Boston College tapes

Good Morning Ulster
BBC Radio Ulster
23 May 2014

Conor Bradford (CB) interviews Dr. Anthony McIntyre (AM) about the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) announcement about a fresh pursuit of the Boston College tapes.

(begins time stamp 1:56:50)

CB: Police here are trying to obtain all material relating to Boston College’s Belfast Project which features interviews with dozens of former paramilitaries.

Previously the PSNI gained access to material from the project relating to the 1972 murder of Jean McConville. Information from the recordings led to a series of arrests including that of Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams.

Former IRA member turned writer and academic Anthony McIntyre worked on the archive and he’s on the line now.

Anthony, whenever you take a listen to the police it seems very clear that they want to try and get all of this material. What’s your reaction?

AM: My reaction is one of anger but I did predict this a number of weeks ago when Boston College announced publicly rather than approaching the interviewees privately that they would start returning material.

That was a clear signal to the PSNI that they had a window of opportunity to seize the rest of the archive and they have proceeded to do that.

CB: And legally what position is that in at the moment? Boston College as you say wants to return this material. Has that begun or does this potentially now stop any material being returned?

AM: Well, I’m in discussions with legal people at the moment on the matter and I’m not in the position to say whether people have had material returned or not or whether applications have been made. I do know the situation I’m just not in the position to comment.

CB: So you do know though legally where everything stands at the moment and where the interviews go?

AM: No, I don’t know legally where everything stands. But I know the position in relation to whether people have made applications or not.

CB: Okay. There will be people who’ll be listening to this and saying: Why shouldn’t the police have access to this information?

Often it’s been a very great focus on police trying to recover information and the upset of former paramilitaries at that.

But if they are investigating murders and if this information could be useful and if this could help get to the truth of murders why should all this material not be given to the police?

AM: This is an academic project it’s not gathered for the…

CB: …It’s people’s real lives though.

AM: It is people’s real lives. I accept that.

But at the same time there’s more people…there’s a lot of real lives that are affected by this: there’s political processes, academic integrity, protection of sources, the right to carry out research. So there’s a lot of things at play here now.

CB: Are there people worried by this development? Have you spoken to people who are concerned?

AM: Well people are concerned. But I mean it was predictable. But in terms of the PSNI wanting to solve murders: the PSNI are selectively addressing the past.

The PSNI are not…for example… are they subpoenaing the documents that the British government have in relation to state murders of Irish civilians? No they’re not.

What are they going to do about people like Freddie Scappatici? Are we to believe they don’t have documentation in relation to people like that that that could maybe solve murders if they were interested?

No. What the PSNI are doing here is keeping away anything that might lead back to the role of the British state.

They have easily accessible material on the part of the British state which would solve an awful lot of killings here. They’re not going for it. They’ve been very selective and tendentious.

CB: Okay, Anthony McIntyre, we have to leave it there but thank you very much. We did ask to speak to someone from Boston College but a spokesman told us it would be inappropriate to comment as the college had not received anything from the US Department of Justice.

(ends time stamp 2:00)

BREAKING: PSNI bid to obtain all material held by Boston College

Boston College tapes: PSNI bid to obtain all material
BBC News
22 May 2014

The Police Service of Northern Ireland have confirmed that they are seeking to obtain all material relating to Boston College’s Belfast Project.

The project features interviews with dozens of former paramilitaries.

Previously, the PSNI gained access to material from the project relating to the 1972 murder of Jean McConville.

Information from the recordings led to a series of arrests, including that of Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams.

The PSNI said: “Detectives in Serious Crime Branch have initiated steps to obtain all the material from Boston College as part of the Belfast Project.

“This is in line with the PSNI’s statutory duty to investigate fully all matters of serious crime, including murder.”

The Boston College project was designed as an oral history of the Troubles.

Breach of contract

Paramilitaries from the IRA and the Ulster Volunteer Force gave candid interviews to researchers employed by the university, on the understanding that their involvement would not be made public until after their deaths.

The PSNI used a treaty between Britain and the United States to obtain material relating to Mrs McConville.

Researchers fought the release of the interviews through the US courts.

They maintained that it would represent a breach of contract and trust, and violate the ethical code on the protection of sources.

Judge Young, who read the archive in order to determine which testimonies made reference to Mrs McConville, acceded to the PSNI request.

He did, however, describe the project as “a bone fide academic exercise of considerable merit”.

Gerry Adams: Arrested by Northern Ireland’s past

Gerry Adams: Arrested by Northern Ireland’s past
Kevin Rooney
Spiked Online
2 May 2014

Northern Irish politicians have allowed the ghosts of war to rule the present.

It was 11 in December 1972 when Jean McConville was taken from her home down the road from where I lived in West Belfast. It was not until 1999 that the Provisional IRA admitted responsibility for her killing and informed the authorities where the body was buried.

You would hardly know it from the current media coverage of McConville’s killing, following the arrest of Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams in connection with it this week, but McConville’s disappearance was not the stand-out event of 1972. There was a lot going on in West Belfast. Just a few years before McConville disappeared, the British state had sent the Army into Northern Ireland to occupy our streets and quell the growing civil-rights uprising. In 1971, the British had introduced internment without trial for those same civil-rights activists who were defying bans on demonstrations. And in the same year as McConville’s disappearance, on Bloody Sunday, the Army shot dead 14 unarmed people who had taken to the streets with thousands of others to protest against internment. And there was more. About 500 people died on all sides in the Irish war in 1972 and, in the weeks running up to McConville’s disappearance, 11 people were shot dead by British paratroops in the streets around Ballymurphy where I lived. There were also numerous republicans and Catholic civilians assassinated by British soldiers acting on information from touts (informants). Indeed, the IRA killed McConville because they believed she was a tout.

I would apologise for the quick history lesson were it not for the fact that Adams’ arrest seems to have prompted a rather more selective retelling of that period, with journalists and commentators presenting this event as a uniquely brutal and heinous crime carried out by cold-blooded murderers. It was not; it was part of a war.

The reason you will not hear anyone else present this wider context is that in Northern Ireland today a social and political history of the Irish war has been replaced by a victims’ history of that war. We now rarely talk about the fundamental conflict at the heart of this long war – the struggle of Irish nationalists for a united Ireland against the British state determined to maintain the union with Britain. So fundamental was this political principle that people on both sides were willing to kill and be killed for it. Both the IRA and the British Army continued to fight for many years knowing full well that innocents would die, that normal peacetime values would be perverted, and that things never tolerated in peacetime would be justified by both sides. The IRA stated clearly that informers were legitimate targets; in 1981, the then UK prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, allowed 10 men to die on hunger strike rather than concede the principle that they were political prisoners.

But today, few are prepared to provide the context, or to explain the wartime backdrop against which the killings and the bombings took place. Instead, we talk about the legacy of pain and hurt left by individual deaths. We talk of the need for closure and catharsis, and of the rights of victims. Therapeutic politics has usurped politics proper, and anyone daring to suggest we should leave the past behind and ‘move on’ is lambasted by Northern Ireland’s victims’ commissioner. Our political news programmes, like Today and Newsnight, replace political actors with family members and the spokespeople for victims’ groups. And when politicians do appear, they talk about victims’ rights rather than politics.

But the victim culture embraced by all shades of political opinion presents problems for all. Sinn Féin has virtually transformed itself into the party of victims in recent years; it must often have felt that this approach had finally given nationalists the equality they failed to achieve through an armed struggle. After all, if all suffering is equal, then the nationalist community can certainly claim its fair share of grief.

However, as Gerry Adams languishes in a police cell, he should reflect on the way that he and his party have been hoist by their own petard. He was only too happy to turn the complex political struggles of the past into a tale of victims and victimisers when it benefited him; now this strategy appears to have bitten him.

The British and Irish governments clearly want to move on and are prepared to issue limited apologies and make symbolic gestures and compromises. But the constant dredging up of the past is preventing the progress they seek. The next 10 years in Northern Ireland look set to be dominated by backward-looking commemorations and investigations into past crimes that are likely to be bitter and divisive.

I am not interested in re-fighting the war in Ireland through the lens of the victims. No one listening to the children of Jean McConville telling their story can feel anything other than pity and sympathy. It was a terrible tragedy and it wrecked their lives. But it does not follow that those who suffered during this period of history should get to block progress and keep us in the past. Victim culture is essentially undemocratic. This was demonstrated recently when a campaign by one victim’s family resulted in two Sinn Féin politicians being barred from holding office because of their past IRA activity.

While it might be necessary to accept that we may not see a united Ireland in our lifetimes, we can at least ensure that we do not spend the next 10 years obsessing over each tragic act from a long, drawn-out conflict. Revelling in this mawkish and divisive raking over of the past will do no one in Ireland any good – least of all the victims. We should instead learn the lessons of the war and work together to create a progressive and less divided political future.

Kevin Rooney is a writer and based in London.

Oral History Society Statement on the Boston College Belfast Project, May 2014

Oral History Society Statement on the Boston College Belfast Project, May 2014
The Oral History Noticeboard
A noticeboard for Oral History in the UK
19 May 2014

The legal action taken by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) to seize oral histories held by Boston College serves as a warning not only to oral historians, but to all those engaged in collecting historical data about criminal activity or allegations of criminal offences. The case raises legal, ethical and moral issues for researchers and archivists.

We do not believe that there is a lack of legal clarity regarding the status of oral history confidentiality and recording agreements. The law is quite clear. The Oral History Society has consistently advised that we can continue to offer assurances to our interviewees about the closure and confidentiality of their interviews, or parts of their interviews, within archives and other places of deposit, except where they have revealed criminal acts.[1] Furthermore, whilst publicly-funded archives and other bodies holding archive materials are legally obliged to respond to requests under the Freedom of Information and Data Protection Acts, this does not mean that they have to provide access to closed and/or restricted and confidential interviews.

Nonetheless disclosure of confidential information to meet a legal requirement can be mandatory, and beyond the reasonable control of an archive. Such legal obligations may include (but are not limited to) court orders; or mandatory obligations of disclosure arising from statutory legislation. Oral historians and archivists should be clear about these limitations when working with interviewees. Where illegal activities are divulged and recorded as part of an oral history interview, it is not possible to guarantee that such data, if closed or restricted, will not be accessed in the case of a court order compelling the release of such material.

The Oral History Society has continued to invest effort in keeping our ethical and legal guidelines up to date (see http://www.ohs.org.uk/ethics.php), and remains convinced that oral historians must work to meet legal and ethical standards that protect the people we interview.

We also believe, however, that oral history can make an important contribution to our understanding of the past. Current sensitivities, whether personal or political, may change, as the situation relating to the Boston College Belfast Project shows.  Priorities and policies may also change. In this case, state actions, such as the PSNI subpoenas, are potentially harmful to research which is based in the elicitation of the memories of participants in conflict and struggle. This is particularly so when that research is into areas that have not been spoken about publicly and where reprisal is a real fear amongst divided protagonists and victims. But it might also have the effect of discouraging individuals from speaking openly and honestly in a wide variety of contexts.

An overlooked and more reassuring aspect of the US court judgment was that only material specific to a named crime need be disclosed, thus partly dispelling fears that the police can go on ‘fishing trips’ in archives.[2]

PSNI made use of the subpoenas in the stated belief that the oral history materials might form the basis for criminal investigations leading to prosecutions. When archives are drawn into legal processes by the state or its agents historians are placed in a difficult position and this is particularly the case for oral historians who depend on participants having confidence in our practices. The state itself is of course not always neutral in its use of archived material. We also would note the continuing use of embargoes by civil servants and politicians in other circumstances that have served to avoid legal redress.

The Boston case highlights a key challenge for researchers operating in post-conflict situations in which peace settlements have inadequately addressed past crimes. There can be a lack of clarity for oral historians working in particular contexts. For example, in post-conflict situations in which a peace process has failed to address past culpability, by means of either amnesty or ‘special’, statute of limitations. Silencing the voices of the past, while undertaking partial and selective legal actions, does not bode well for the future.  History, left unaddressed, to paraphrase James Joyce, may well result in a nightmare from which we will struggle to awake.

The Trustees of the Oral History Society

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[1] See ‘What should I do if the police want access to interviews in my collection?’ in Frequently Asked Questions, Is your oral history legal and ethical?: practical steps, http://www.ohs.org.uk/ethics.php (last accessed 13 May 2014).

 

[2] In the Boston College Belfast Project case the initial judgment to release all the materials (as subpoenaed up to 2011) was overturned, and only relevant material specific to a named crime was required to be turned over. Sensationalist and inaccurate media reports, failed to note Judge Young’s judgment which basically was that there was a ‘paucity of information’ in respect to the crime and that Boston College need only provide parts of two interviews from two interviewees. Judge Young also stated that the Court was mindful of the requirements of academic freedom.

Source Protection Be Damned: Just Get a Scoop

Source Protection Be Damned: Just Get a Scoop
Anthony McIntyre
The Pensive Quill

The attempt by NBC News to plunder the Boston College oral history archive is nothing short of reprehensible journalistic pirating. I first learned of it when roused from my sleep around 4 am this morning by my wife who had been alerted by a friend to the story when Ed Moloney ran it as breaking news on his blog, The Broken Elbow. She and I were both outraged by it.

The “breaking news” on Ed Moloney’s site was a letter from NBC News asking U.S. Federal Judge William Young to turn over the Belfast Project transcripts to them. In its action, the network is attempting to make a flawed public interest claim in an attempt gain access to the confidential materials and sources at the heart of the Belfast Project.

After a prolonged battle in American courts buttressed by a legal fight in a British courtroom we might be forgiven for imagining that journalists and media outlets would be more sensitive than usual to the need for source protection in light of the sustained assault on the Boston College Archive by British political policing agencies.

There are two kinds of issues when it comes to the public interest. There is the public’s right to know what their government is doing in their name and there is the right of journalists to protect their confidential sources so that the public can be better informed. If there is not source protection, there will be no sources and important stories will evaporate. It is a balancing act that every reputable journalist respects and adheres to.

That a major news agency should step in and attempt to do what the British Police Service of Northern Ireland has done is an outrageous and egregious act. It is doubtful that NBC would take the same action if this involved a source protection case in the United States. They would be vilified by American journalists for such an action. Earlier today I told the BBC that “I am furious that a news agency is trying to expose sources. I am extremely hostile to this action.”

NBC’s legal action comes at a time when there is an organized Sinn Fein hate campaign underway against those it accuses of having been involved in the Boston College project. This campaign has threatened the safety of participants, the lead researchers and individuals that had no involvement whatsoever in the project.

It is a long standing tradition and obligation of all journalists to protect sources of confidential information from all harm that might accrue to them*. NBC is clearly unconcerned with the fate of the people involved in the Belfast Project. The Boston College Archive story has been going on for three years, and yet it is only now, in the wake of Gerry Adams’ arrest, that NBC has shown much interest in the case. Instead of spending time and resources on the story, they have simply gone to court to get at sources and material in an attempt to make headlines during Gerry Adam’s upcoming visit to the United States. At minimum, it is lazy journalism.

What is egregious is that they are attempting to set a very dangerous legal precedent. Their request has been submitted to Judge Young, the same judge that a U.S. Appellate Court slapped down when Judge Young tried to hand over parts of the Boston College archive that wasn’t even responsive to the subpoenas. If NBC is successful in their request, they may find down the road that they will bear responsibility for piercing a bigger hole in source protection laws which are already under assault by governments on both sides of the Atlantic.

NBC News is only concerned not with the protection of sources but with creating headlines that might accrue from getting ‘the dirt’ on Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams who is due to visit America next week. The network would love a great scoop while Adams is in the US. It hardly takes a great intellectual endeavour to decode the following: 

‘This case or any case involving incidents of terrorism committed by several and various parties … is a matter of great public interest. These parties may also at this time or in the past have had direct official contact with the government of the United States of America.’

If NBC News wants to investigate Sinn Fein leadership or anyone else it should send out its own journalists to do the hard work instead of jeopardizing journalistic standards and practices or risking the lives of sources they know nothing about.

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Branch statement in support of Anthony McIntyre & #NUJ rule re: protection of sources: Belfast Project Boston College pic.twitter.com/CLGceXpW4d
— ManchesterSalfordNUJ (@NUJMcrSalford) May 9, 2014

Boston College tapes: US network NBC launches legal bid

Boston College tapes: US network NBC launches legal bid
Andy Martin
BBC Ireland Correspondent
BBC News

The American news network, NBC, has made a formal request to have transcripts from Boston College’s Belfast Project released.

Its news investigations team made the application to a US Judge, William Young, who is one of the few people to have read the entire archive.

Information from the recordings has led to a series of arrests, including that of Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams.

The project was designed as an oral history of the Troubles.

Dozens of former paramilitaries from the IRA and the Ulster Volunteer Force gave candid interviews to researchers employed by the university, on the understanding that their involvement would not be made public until after their deaths.

“I am furious that a news agency is trying to expose sources. I am extremely hostile to this action.”
Anthony McIntyre
Lead researcher, Boston College oral project

The course director, journalist Ed Moloney, published a book based on two of the accounts given to the project, after the interviewees had died.

However, the PSNI became aware of the existence of the tapes.

They used a treaty between Britain and the United States to obtain any material that could help their investigation into the murder of Jean McConville in 1972.

Mrs McConville is the best known of The Disappeared, a group of people abducted, murdered and secretly buried by republicans.

The researchers fought the release of the interviews through the US courts, maintaining that it would represent a breach of contract and trust, and violate the ethical code on the protection of sources.

Judge Young, who read the archive in order to determine which testimonies made reference to Mrs McConville, acceded to the PSNI request.

He did, however, describe the project as “a bone fide academic exercise of considerable merit”.

‘Furious’

Dr Anthony McIntyre, who conducted the interviews with former IRA members, said he was shocked to learn that a news organisation had attempted to have the documents released.

Mr McIntyre has been made aware of threats to his life as a result of his involvement in the project.

He said he could not understand how a news organisation could be prepared to violate the code on the protection of sources.

“I am furious that a news agency is trying to expose sources,” he said. “I am extremely hostile to this action.”