Category Archives: Boston College

Source Protection Be Damned: Just Get a Scoop

Boston College, Confidentiality, Journalism

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.

Boston College tapes: US network NBC launches legal bid

Boston College, Confidentiality, Ed Moloney, Journalism

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.”

NBC News Seeks Subpoenaed Interviews From Boston Court

Boston College

Breaking News: NBC News Seeks Subpoenaed Interviews From Boston Court
May 20, 2014

Thebrokenelbow.com has learned in the last few minutes that NBC News has written to Judge William Young of the Boston Federal District Court asking that the court unseal all transcripts, audio recordings and documents handed over to the PSNI on foot of the subpoenas served on Boston College.

NBC wrote to Judge Young on May 6th, two weeks ago and the letter was sent by Thomas J Winter of NBC News Investigations. It is not known what response Judge Young has made, if any.

Arguing that American citizens have the right under a Supreme Court judgement in 1978 to gain access to judicial documents, NBC also maintains that: “This case or any case involving incidents of terrorism and criminality committed by several and various parties representing diverse ideologies both political and religious is a matter of great public interest”. NBC News told Judge Young it wanted the documents released “as soon as possible”.

Judge Young presided over the hearing in December 2011 and January 2012 which overruled Boston College’s attempt to quash the PSNI subpoena and he later personally determined which of the interviews should be handed over, a decision he took when Boston College’s lawyers claimed college staff had never read the interviews and could not help.

Here is the full text of the NBC letter to Judge Young:

Case 1:11-mc-91078-WGY Document 80 Filed 05/06/14

A Division of NBC Universal Media, LLC
30 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10112
212 664-4444

May 6, 2014

Hon. William G. Young
United States District Court
1 Courthouse Way, Suite 2300
Boston, MA 02210
A Division

Re: United States of America / Trustees of Boston College (Case: 1:11-mc-91078-WGY)

Dear Judge Young:

NBC News respectfully writes to request that the Court unseal any and all transcripts, audio recordings, and/or documents related to a subpoena served to the Trustees of Boston College by the United States of America and referred to in the above noted case.

The knowledge of a subpoena served by the U.S. Attorney regarding an oral history project by Boston College has been made public through published work(s) by the school. This Court has entertained legal proceedings regarding the production of records created by Boston College and their eventual transfer to foreign government(s).

As the Court is aware, the public and the press have a presumptive right of access to court records. In Nixon v. Warner Cable, the Supreme Court recognized an historic common law right of access to judicial documents. 435 U.S. 589, 597 (1978). “The common law right of access is not limited to evidence, but rather encompasses all ‘judicial records and documents.'” Quoting Chief Justice Burger in Richmond Newspapers, “To work effectively, it is important that society’s criminal process ‘satisfy the appearance of justice,’ and the appearance of justice can best be provided by allowing people to observe it.” Id. at 821 (quoting Richmond Newspapers, Inc. v. Virginia, 448 U.S. 555 (1980).

This case or any case involving incidents of terrorism and criminality committed by several and various parties representing diverse ideologies both political and religious 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.

As the Court is aware, allowing public access to court proceedings not only helps to ensure the public is informed but also demonstrates the fairness of the law being administered to all the citizenry; in the check that such
openness provides on the judiciary as a restraint against possible abuse of power; and helps to ensure the propriety and appearance of propriety in judicial proceedings. Particularly of interest in this case is propriety and appearance of propriety in judicial proceedings involving the United States of America and foreign government(s).

We understand there are times that other concerns may outweigh the strong presumption of access. But we believe the Court should put the burden on the parties, including the Court itself, as to why documents should remain sealed in this important case — not the members of the press seeking access. If there is a specific finding to continue to keep some materials sealed, we request the Court keep such sealing limited in scope with perhaps limited redactions instead of sealing the records in their entirety. NBC News also requests the Court provide particularized findings if the materials are to be remained sealed and as a result remain hidden from public view at this time.

We believe these materials should be made public as soon as possible. We request they be put in the public court file at no expense to the public since the public could not attend the initial hearing in question due to the Court’s sealing order.

Should the Court have any questions or require further information, please feel free to contact me by phone at 212 413-6446.

Your time and consideration in this matter is greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

Thomas J. Winter
NBC News Investigations

 

 

Arrest of Adams: New Guard, Old Methods

Boston College, British Army, Gerry Adams, NI Secretary of State, PSNI

The arrest of Gerry Adams was a clear example of the new guard using the old methods
Mick Hall
Organized Rage
14 May 2014

When Gerry Adams denies IRA membership it means that people like myself … have to carry the responsibility for all those deaths, for sending men out to die and sending women out to die, and Gerry was sitting there … trying to stop us from doing it? I’m disgusted by it because it’s so untrue and everybody knows it.” Brendan Hughes

Sinn Féin can huff and puff all they like and claim the arrest of party leader Gerry Adams was brought about by a small cabal of British police officers who are determined to “settle old scores,” but it will not make it so. No matter what David Cameron might say, having invested so much time and money in the Peace Process there is absolutely no way Mr Adams would be arrested by the PSNI without it first being green lighted by the British government.

Mr Adams was arrested because it suited David Cameron and the British security services. Never forget it was the English ruling class who stole the Pashtun proverb and made it their own. For the public school and Oxbridge educated upper middle class louts, who once again control the British State, revenge is indeed a dish best served cold.

There was something surreal about Gerry Adams behavior on his release. Why did he feel it was necessary to mention whilst held in custody the PSNI claimed they knew he had been an agent of MI5 since 1972? It seems an odd thing to say. He must also be the first innocent Irish man to be wrongly arrested and, having spent four nights banged up in a British police cell, to emerge a free man and declare his full support to the very police force who took away his liberty.

Hinting at the few rotten apples theory so beloved by corrupt police forces around the world whenever their shortcomings are exposed, Mr Adams went on to say: “My arrest was a result of the old guard using the old methods.”

If he truly believes this it seems to me he misses the point entirely, for what his arrest shows is as far as the British state is concerned the role of the leader of Sinn Féin in the peace process has outlived its usefulness. Thus his arrest was the result of the new guard reverting to old methods.

However the arrest of Gerry Adams was undoubtedly a travesty of justice, and the gross hypocrisy of the Irish and British governments, and their creatures within the mainstream media knows no bounds. The UK government did not enter into negotiations with Gerry Adams in the 1980s because he was the tiddly winks champion of Ireland, but because their intelligence services told them he was the most senior and influential member of the PIRA.

The British security services have targeted Adams for well over four decades. They hold chapter and verse on his public and private life since he was released from prison in 1972 and included as a 23 year old in the PIRA delegation which held secret talks in a house in Cheyne Walk, West London with the British Home Secretary, William Whitelaw. The delegation included Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness, Sean Mac Stiofain (Chief of Staff),  Daithi O’Conaill, Seamus Twomey, and Ivor Bell. (The latter was once one of Adams’ most trusted comrades, who has also been arrested recently for so called historical crimes.) With Mac Stiofain, O’Conaill, and Twomey all dead,  McGuinness is the only member of the sixtet which visited Cheyne Walk all those years ago who has not recently seen the inside of a British police cell.

It’s worth noting. Martin McGuiness and a senior party colleague allegedly were so ‘cut up’ about Adams arrest, they joined DUP leader Peter Robinson two days after the arrest of their party leader in the executive box at a Belfast rugby ground to watch Ulster play Leinster.

The Good Friday Agreement

In the 1980s I once watched Gerry Adams shoulder the coffin of yet another dead volunteer and thought to myself how many fallen soldiers can one man bear.

After Mairéad Farrell, Sean Savage and Daniel McCann were killed in cold blood by a British army hit squad in 1988 on the streets of Gibraltar, it became clear to all but the most blinkered the long war was lost. All three were well known to the security forces as seasoned volunteers. Their absence from Belfast would have been noticed and an All Points Bulletin posted. The fact they were sent to Gibraltar showed at best recruitment to the IRA was drying up.

No, Adams mistake was not negotiating the end of the war, but allowing the British state to set his agenda when negotiating the fine detail of the peace process, and later how Sinn Féin went on to conduct its political campaigns in the north: it was bourgeoisie politics to the core. All radical sharp edges were ironed out and the troops were ordered to keep to the plan which basically boiled down to entering government in both Irish jurisdictions.

The fault line running throughout this strategy was the desire for power. Nothing wrong with that, its what politics is about. But when it’s accompanied with little else, it poses the question what is the purpose of this grab for power beyond power itself? Sinn Féin’s annual conference yearly passes resolutions which on the face of it makes the party amongst the most radical within the UK and Ireland. However its record on the ground is far more patchy.

Whilst it has a formidable electoral machine which still manages to get the Sinn Féin vote in during local and national elections, those it represents in the working class communities of the north and south have fared less well.

According to a new report from the End Child Poverty campaign, West Belfast, the constituency which Mr Adams represented on and off between 1983-2010, has the second highest level of child poverty in the UK. Out of the UK’s 650 parliamentary constituencies, only Manchester Central recorded a higher level of deprivation. The survey found that 43% of children grow up in poverty in West Belfast.

In truth that is not a record any MP should be proud of, and many might see it as a mark of shame. Although Adams’ successor as MP, Paul Maskey, has worked hard to bring employment opportunities into west Belfast, they’re within the neo liberal perimeters set by London, which mainly means jobs in the service industries, which are zero hours contracts, low wage, low skilled.

What West Belfast needed from its MP was less PR window dressing, and a spot of pork barreling, which provided high income manufacturing, along with government public service contracts which could have lifted the majority above the poverty line.

Support for Sinn Féin today while holding up electorally is not what it was, for people need food on the table, a roof over their heads and a future which offers some bright sunny uplands. Jobs now is what they need, not a promise of a  32 county republic at some time in the distant future.

Before someone says this is not the fault of Sinn Féin, let alone Mr Adams, I would remind them he has trumpeted the fact Sinn Féin have been in government in the six counties for a good many years, yet beyond the peace process, not an inconsiderable achievement admittedly, what else have they actually achieved? Are their constituents better off economically? Has their been a massive house building program of publicly owned homes for rent, has health care, social services, employment prospects, education services, outstripped the rest of the UK and Ireland?

As a party of government Sinn Féin electoral campaigns make light reading. In truth, their years in government in the North have produced a very thin gruel for its core support base. Like New Labour they have produced much fluff and window dressing, and jobs for the anointed ones courtesy of the crown’s exchequer. But a party of government, especially a party of the left, needs to be able to trumpet it’s achievements come election day. But when it comes to Sinn Féin they act as if they have been out of power since 1922.

When I saw Adams leaving police custody in a convoy of four by four cars my heart sank. Presumably his destination was a press conference in West Belfast, his old constituency.

The Gerry Adams of old would have instinctively understood luxury cars and the second highest level of child poverty in the UK is not a good mix, let alone a bright idea. He also would not have prattled on about his arrest being the work of a small cabal of the PSNI old guard coming as it did in the same week as Theresa Villiers, David Cameron’s Viceroy in the northeast of Ireland, ruled out a review panel to assess the evidence on the Ballymurphy massacre, when members of Parachute Regiment, the same regiment who were later responsible for the Bloody Sunday shootings in Derry, shot dead eleven innocent civilians in Belfast, claiming it would not serve the public interest.

Gerry Adams must understand full well Villiers’ statement, and his own arrest, was a public declaration by the British government that former PIRA volunteers must answer for so called historical crimes — but former members of the security forces, police, army and intelligence services who committed or colluded in crimes are to be allowed to walk away scot-free.

 

More here about the double standards of the British judicial process

 

 

Deprived by the Actions of Malevolent Forces

Boston College, Confidentiality

Deprived by the Actions of Malevolent Forces
Andrew Sanders
The Pensive Quill
17 May 2014

Guest writer Andrew Sanders writes for TPQ on the need to protect history research.

The Boston College Oral History project, often known as the Voices from the Grave project has revolutionised the way we think about the Northern Ireland conflict. In the first instance, it prompted the publication of Blanketmen, Richard O’Rawe’s account of the 1981 hunger strike, a book that changed the way we think about one of the most significant turning points in recent British and Irish history. Some have criticised O’Rawe and claimed he has fabricated parts of the book. I personally believe him, having spoken to him and corroborated parts of his story independently.

Corroboration is the essence of good history. A historian who does not seek to corroborate might as well be writing fiction. It is the duty of the historian to gather and interpret information and present it to others in a way that can itself be interpreted by the reader.

If we are really honest with ourselves, despite our claims – usually aimed at convincing publishers to accept our work and turn it into a book that we hope will be attractively priced, but very often is not – to the contrary,we are not creating “definitive histories” of anything. It’s arrogant to assume that anyone can create a definitive history. Rather, what we are really doing is adding our angle on an issue in the hope that somewhere down the line it contributes to a fuller understanding of wider, more important things. Ian Wood, my friend and mentor, talks about “adding a brick to the wall” of knowledge.

Those of us who have devoted years of our lives to understanding Northern Ireland, be it from the perspective of a Catholic who was burned out of their home in the late 1960s, a Protestant who lost a relative in an IRA bomb attack, a mother who lost her son or daughter to a British soldiers bullet, or someone in Scotland who used to watch news reports of Northern Ireland in the 1980s and wonder how these things could be going on mere miles from his doorstep before revisiting the history of the conflict as part of his undergraduate studies, are all now united in a form of loss.

We have lost, in the Boston College tapes and transcripts, a significant resource, something that was sure to offer us unique insight into exactly why certain things happened on this small patch of land in the eastern Atlantic over the course of three decades.

It has been taken from us by the actions of malevolent forces. Gerry Adams was never going to be convicted of anything on the basis of a taped conversation between an academic researcher and a former member of the Irish Republican Army. How quickly would any lawyer worth his or her salt establish in the minds of the jury that the evidence came from an unreliable source? Need we cast our minds back to the deaths of Brendan Hughes and Dolours Price and the language that was used in reference to these two people who devoted their lives to a form of Irish Republicanism that has long since been abandoned by Adams?

In a perverse way, the demise of the project actually benefits Adams, because the chances are that his political career will be long over before the evidence sees the light of day. It is true that he did spend time in police custody being questioned over his membership of the IRA, but I cannot fathom what the authorities expected to gain from this line of questioning.

Meanwhile, we lose sight of the fact that ten children had their recently widowed mother torn from them and were forcibly separated once social services learned of their mother’s disappearance. The injustice cast upon the McConville children rivals that of any other who lost a loved one in the conflict, exacerbated by the continued lies on the part of the IRA about their role in Jean McConville’s abduction, torture and murder and the common knowledge that a senior figure in the West Belfast IRA was responsible for them. So much rhetorical evidence points to Gerry Adams asthe IRA leader who ordered the McConville disappearance and yet it remains unproven.

When “Voices from the Grave” was published, it took the momentum of Blanketmen and opened up the operations of the Belfast Brigade of the IRA to the public. Brendan Hughes saw things and did things and knew things that rival the experiences of any other senior republican. We were told he was an alcoholic. An unreliable witness. A liar. David Ervine also featured in that book, although his tale left something to be desired; it ended with the feeling that he had withheld information. With a political party to protect, this was perfectly understandable. Ervine could not have foreseen his early passing and the impact it would have on the Progressive Unionist Party.

Aaron Edwards wrote powerfully in the News Letter on Thursday 15 May, questioning the motivations of senior republicans who demand inquiries into events of the past, but only those events that involved the security forces. Behind the hypocrisy of a leadership that can demand justice for one person and speak of “dark forces” behind the quest of another, are the ordinary people who have suffered deeply. The families of the people killed in Ballymurphy following the introduction of Internment without trial in 1971 have seen their quest for truth and justice become the cause celebre of the Sinn Fein leadership, but the use of their campaign as a tool to deflect criticism over the disappeared has been crass.

Consequently, those of us who seek inquiries into the events of the past often do so in hope rather than expectation. The cost of the Saville Inquiry was huge and the reluctance of the London government to even entertain any further reviews will undoubtedly leave hundreds without answers. Some politicians claim that these people should just move on. It is a persuasive argument: leave it all behind us and do all we can to better the future for the children of Ireland, north and south, so that they never need to endure the tragedies of the past. But it is also a persuasive argument to those of us who have never lost anyone, who have never had their brother shot dead for attending a protest march, who have never seen their small child blown up whilst shopping for a Mothers’ Day present.

At present we are all stuck in limbo. We cannot properly move on, yet we know that we cannot stay where we are. To me, there is a solution. It will not help everyone, but it might help some.

We must, together, continue to encourage academic research into Northern Ireland’s past. Again, this was raised by Aaron Edwards in his News Letter opinion article. We can adopt the Historical Timeline Group of the Richard Haass proposals. Indeed, we can take it further. We can petition the government to create more PhD scholarships so that the academics of the present can train the academics of the future and further our collective understanding of why things happened there.

Sinn Fein has criticised the Boston College project for only featuring people who are now opposed to the Gerry Adams-led movement and yet it is incredibly difficult for a young researcher to actually talk to those who were in the IRA who remain loyal to Adams. Of course you can get in touch with Sinn Fein, but what is a Sinn Fein representative to say about the conflict? Increasingly, the younger members of Sinn Fein are without ties to the IRA.

The answer? We don’t need to talk of amnesty, but rather collectively move past the issue of seeking convictions for killings before 1998, developing the principles of Good Friday, and encourage those involved in the conflict to open up to researchers, carefully managed by the experts in their field, to talk about their experiences, we can still salvage something for the future.

We will not get Soldier F opening up and explaining why he thought that the protesters of 30 January 1972 deserved to be shot. We will not get the South Armagh IRA explaining the final moment of the life of Robert Nairac. But we might just get enough so that we can explain to someone why a person thought that planting a bomb in the place that their loved one just happened to be was something they had to do. In many cases, this is all they want.

It will not satisfy everyone, but if we continue down the path that we are headed, then the results will be disastrous for us all.

I encourage those of you reading who have a past that is tied to the conflict to make yourselves available to the PhD and MA students of Queen’s University and the University of Ulster, indeed any university where someone has decided that Northern Ireland is something that merits their time and focus.

Talk to them, be as honest as you like or as honest as you can.

Alternatively, find an academic you can trust and talk to them. Ask around, some of your former comrades will be able to vouch for people.

If you really don’t want to talk, please record your story. It is important. Write it down, tape it, save it on your computer. Store it with your most trusted friend. Don’t tell anyone about it, hide it from subpoenas. Just make sure it exists and can be made available to people in the future.

We can continue to build understanding of the conflict that claimed 3500 lives. We can deepen our understanding of all perspectives – particularly those we are not predisposed to agree with. We will not dismiss them, rather embrace them and seek to establish the bank of knowledge about the past that we all share, in one way or another.

We have suffered a blow with the demise of the Boston College archive but it need not hinder our investigations into the past.

Andrew Sanders, PhD, is a John Moore Newman Fellow in Diaspora, Conflict and Diplomacy at University College Dublin.

Boston College reflects on missteps in Northern Ireland project

Boston College, Confidentiality

BC reflects on missteps in Northern Ireland project
Oral history project is over, but scars remain
By Peter Schworm
Boston Globe
May 18, 2014

The idea was tantalizing: a firsthand account of the Northern Ireland conflict from the front lines. Through confidential interviews, the Boston College oral history project would safeguard stories that might otherwise go to the grave, shedding light on a dark time.

But in many ways, the Belfast Project was mismanaged from the start, critics say, a victim of careless legal vetting and lax oversight, and was kept secret for years from the BC historians who should have supervised it.

In the end, when British authorities took advantage of an obscure treaty to gain access to the trove of interviews, a move that ultimately led to the stunning arrest of Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams in an infamous 42-year-old killing, the project fell victim to the same sectarian divide it sought to chronicle.

Adams would be released without charges, after five days of questioning, but the fact of his brief detention stirred the old hatreds and made some worry anew about the durability of the hard-won peace.

For Boston College, the episode has left deep scars. The college recently announced it would relinquish the interviews, bringing the protracted dispute to a likely end. But the controversy has left a trail of recrimination and blame, and many scholars on and off the campus say it carries a painful legacy that discourages confidential research and undercuts academic freedoms.

“What you have here is, at some level, the perfect storm,” said Ted Palys, a professor at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia who has written about the controversy in the Journal of Academic Ethics. “This was clearly botched in many ways.”

BC faculty members remain angry that such a sensitive undertaking could remain in the shadows, with virtually none of the oversight standard with academic projects.

History professors have long chafed over the project’s association with the university. Now, many are calling for an independent review of the university’s handling of the project, in hopes of avoiding
similar mistakes in the future.

“The question that is unanswered is, why was the process not followed with this project?” said Susan Michalczyk, assistant director of BC’s Arts and Sciences honors program and president of the university’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors. “There should have been direct faculty oversight. Academic freedom can only be maintained when people adhere to the policies that preserve ethical practices.”

Yet others say oversight might have made little difference. The notion that government officials across the Atlantic would move to seize the archives to investigate long-ago crimes could hardly have been predicted, they say.

“I don’t fault Boston College at all,” said Thomas Groome, professor of theology and religious education at BC. “I don’t think anyone could have known this was going to happen.”

Groome said he blames the British government for pressing the issue, overriding concerns of academic freedom, and putting a fragile peace in jeopardy.

“Why would they insist on these tapes? They know they would never be credible enough to convict anyone,” Groome said. “They’ve ruined oral history and achieved nothing but returning us to the sectarian tensions of bygone years. It’s unfortunate, because there are so many stories that now will go to the grave.”

The project began in 2001, when a team led by Irish journalist Ed Moloney paired up with two BC representatives, including the Irish historian Thomas Hachey. Over the next five years, 46 people were interviewed on both sides of the conflict: 26 former members of the Irish Republican Army, who sought a united Ireland, and 20 former members of the Ulster Volunteer Force, a paramilitary group that wanted Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom.

Even though a fragile peace had come to Northern Ireland with the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, such a venture was fraught with tangled political and legal allegiances and festering grudges. To persuade them to speak candidly, participants were assured the interviews would remain confidential until they died.

But documents from the legal battles that would ensue — involving BC, the research team, and the US Justice Department, acting at the behest of British authorities — suggest that the promise of confidentiality was not as absolute as project researchers believed.

The pact with Moloney stated that contracts with the oral history participants would guarantee the conditions of the interview “to the extent American law allows.”

No lawyers at Boston College reviewed that participant agreement, a lapse that would come to symbolize the university’s shaky supervision of the project, faculty members say.

University spokesman Jack Dunn said Robert K. O’Neill, then head of BC’s John J. Burns Library of Rare Books and Special Collections, which houses a highly regarded Irish collection, “has stated his regrets that he did not run the agreement by legal counsel.”

O’Neill did speak to a Boston College lawyer who advised him to include the clause about the limitation of confidentiality in Moloney’s contract, the university said.

Dunn added that Moloney and his project interviewer, Anthony McIntyre, wrote the agreement, based on a standard oral history release form.

“This is clearly a case of shared responsibility,” he said.

Moloney said it was his understanding that university lawyers had reviewed the participant agreements to ensure confidentiality could not be threatened. “At that stage, we had complete trust in BC,” he said.

In an affidavit filed in the case, O’Neill said it was doubtful anyone would have agreed to participate without “assurances of confidentiality.”

“Their stories would have died with them, and an opportunity to document and preserve a critical part of the historical record would have been lost forever,” he stated.

O’Neill, who has since retired, said in his affidavit he initially raised concern that a court might demand access to the interviews, but “was persuaded that it would be highly unlikely.”

Hachey, in an affidavit, said interviewers were required to give participants “the absolute promise” their accounts would remain confidential until they died.

The project contract also called for an oversight committee “to assure that the strictest standards of historical documentation are to be followed.”

“None of that ever happened,” said Kevin O’Neill, cofounder of BC’s Irish Studies program.

The committee was supposed to include Kevin O’Neill. But his involvement with the project was informal and brief, he said.

In 2002, he said, he read a transcript from the project and expressed concern that the line of questioning revealed a clear political perspective. Critics said the researchers relied too heavily on interviews with hard-line republicans who faulted Adams and Sinn Fein for pursing the peace accord.

“Such leading of subjects would be thrown out in a court,” Kevin O’Neill wrote in a memo to Hachey, a copy of which was provided to the Globe. “They are equally damaging in the collection of oral history.” Kevin O’Neill said Hachey never responded to his concerns.

Moloney has denied allegations that the interviews were one-sided, saying researchers spoke with everyone they could.

In a statement, Hachey said that the lack of oversight was a byproduct of the urgent need for secrecy.

“Given how the desire for confidentiality among the Belfast Project participants was so very strong from the outset, the prevailing wisdom at the time dictated keeping the details as secretive as possible,” he said.

“With the optic of hindsight, however, I do regret that we did not include a few colleague specialists from both Boston College and elsewhere in reviewing the project, despite the potential security risk in any wider exposure of the project,” he added.

Moloney said he supported a faculty review board, and that oversight may well have identified weaknesses in the project.

Many faculty remain stunned that a project with so many potential ethical and legal pitfalls could be run with so little supervision. Given the risks involved, the project might never have moved forward if other scholars had been given a chance to weigh in, many said.

“There are all sorts of reasons why this project should not have been done,” said Marilynn Johnson, a history professor. “It’s really hurt our credibility.”

A number of specialists agree that BC should commission an independent review.

“How do you take this horrible thing and turn it into a positive?” Palys said. “You have to go back to square one.”

Culture Shock: Belfast Project is a crisis in Irish academia

Boston College, Confidentiality, Journalism

Culture Shock: Belfast Project is a crisis in Irish academia
Everyone involved – Boston College, the interviewers, the interviewees and those against whom allegations were made – has been left feeling enraged, betrayed and bewildered
Cock-up rather than conspiracy
Fintan O’Toole
Irish Times
Sat, May 17, 2014

Last week Boston College announced it would return interviews to the former Northern Ireland paramilitaries who recorded them for its now infamous Belfast Project oral history.

This week four of those paramilitaries, led by the former IRA prisoner Richard O’Rawe, declared their intention to sue Boston College for allegedly breaching its contracts with them by not advising them that their testimony could be released on foot of a court order. (The Police Service of Northern Ireland secured US court orders to release 11 recordings for its investigation into the murder of Jean McConville.) And the current and four previous chairs of the history department at Boston College itself issued a statement distancing themselves from the affair: “Successive department chairs had not been informed of the project, nor had they or the department been consulted on the merits of the effort or the appropriate procedures to be followed in carrying out such a fraught and potentially controversial venture.”

It doesn’t seem too much of an exaggeration to say that this has turned into the worst debacle in the history of Irish academic research. Everyone involved – Boston College, the interviewers, the interviewees and those against whom allegations were made – has been left feeling enraged, betrayed and bewildered, often for entirely different reasons.

What has happened bears the hallmarks of a cock-up rather than of a conspiracy. There is a deliberate attempt to generate a literally dangerous hysteria around the project by questioning not just the motives of those involved but the validity of this kind of research. Sinn Féin has very publicly labelled those involved as touts – a term saturated with threat.

Gerry Adams made a great deal of the fact that the Belfast Project was “conceived by Paul Bew, university lecturer and a former advisor to former unionist leader David Trimble”. The implication is that Bew’s suggestion, in 2000, that Boston College should start an oral archive of the Troubles was a unionist plot. But Bew is hugely respected as a historian of modern Ireland: there is not a shred of evidence that his work has ever been to anything but the highest professional and ethical standards. Insidious suggestions that he was part of a political conspiracy are not just wrong in themselves but are an attack on academic and intellectual freedom.

Bew’s suggestion was a very good one. It is somewhat ironic that, even while the Belfast Project is imploding, the understanding of the Irish conflicts whose centenaries we are now marking has been revolutionised by the fruits of a similar project: the Bureau of Military History’s records of interviews with participants in those conflicts. Testimonies from people directly involved in violent acts are not unimpeachable: such people usually have personal or political agendas. But used collectively, by careful researchers, they are invaluable. They counterbalance the tendency to write history from the limited perspective of the official records.

In retrospect it is easy to see that the Belfast Project had serious design flaws. It seems extraordinary that Boston’s own historians were not consulted. There was no independent oversight committee. No one seems to have worked out answers to basic questions such as who would have access to the recordings and when. The IRA’s rules of omerta meant that participation was likely to be skewed towards those who were unhappy with the official line.

Most significantly, there seems to have been no coherent thought about the legal framework in which the project would operate. It is crucial to any oral history project, let alone one as sensitive as this, that the participants are fully informed about what will happen to their records. With the Belfast Project, those involved ended up (I believe in good faith) giving participants guarantees they could not stand over. Ed Moloney’s contract as project director, which he signed in January 2001, stated that each interviewee was in turn to be given a contract “guaranteeing to the extent American law allows the conditions of the interview and the conditions of its deposit” at Boston College. But the contracts actually given to interviewees did not contain this crucial qualification. Neither Moloney nor the principal interviewers, Anthony McIntyre and Wilson McArthur, knew what American law might mean for confidentiality.

These are bad mistakes, and they wound up destroying the project. But the biggest mistake was to believe that history could be recorded safely because the Troubles were over. They’re not over: they are in a weird new phase where what is being contested is control of the meaning of the past. The biggest critics of the project are themselves participants in this battle. They are hardly standard bearers for objective and independent research into what happened.

The one useful aspect of this debacle is that it has shown the need for that research to be backed by the only forces that can really underwrite it: the British, Irish and Northern Irish governments. An oral archive of the Troubles is still possible, but only as part of a wider process of truth and reconciliation. Capturing what happened in Ireland should never have been the responsibility of an American university.

#AskUKUS Twitter Q&A

Boston College, Jurisdictional Issues

#AskUKUS Twitter Q & A

Earlier today the US Embassy in London held a Q & A featuring diplomats @MatthewBarzun & @PeterWestmacott. We asked questions about the UK MLAT subpoena request of the Boston College archives and its impact on the peace process. No answers were forthcoming.

[View the story “#AskUKUS Twitter Q & A” on Storify]

https://twitter.com/DustinSlaughter/statuses/467298225423400961

https://twitter.com/DustinSlaughter/statuses/467303821287628800

https://twitter.com/DustinSlaughter/statuses/467306510541148160

SUNDAY WORLD: The Boston Time Bomb

Boston College

THE BOSTON TIME BOMB
Now more IRA men fear being lifted over Ivor
We name four Provo veterans who were taped
Ivor Bell facing demands to tell all over Boston Tapes
Sunday World
Sunday – Tuesday 11th/13th May 2014

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EXCLUSIVE BY PAULA MACKIN

  • ‘BOSTON TOUT’ Ivor Bell is under pressure to come clean over the contents of the controversial Boston Tapes.
  • One time Provo OC Bell is facing demands to reveal the dark detail contained in interviewd he gave for the controversial project.
  • Now there are growing fears the tapes could spark a police republican round up of those named by an estimated 27 ex-combatants
  • Today, for the first time, the Sunday World can reveal the identity of a number of the republican veterans.

STATE OF PANIC

Ex-Provo boss told to spit out who he named when he spoke to Boston College 

Former IRA chief Ivor Bell is under pressure to reveal the names of former comrades he exposed during interviews he gave to Boston College.

Dozens of former IRA members across Belfast are said to be in a ‘state of panic’ as the extent of the Boston College tapes becomes known.

Demands are now being made that Bell reveals all to those he has named during the controversial recordings in order to prepare them for possible future police investigations.

Today the Sunday World can reveal the identities of a number of prominent republican veterans dubbed the ‘Boston Touts’ who have recorded interviews with Boston College.

In recent weeks it has emerged that the former IRA OC Bell has completed over 40 interviews with project co-founder and former IRA prisoner, Anthony “Mackers” McIntyre.

“Ivor has given absolutely everything and there is massive anger growing because of that,” said one republican source.

“He has named dozens of people and Ivor needs tell the people he has named exactly what he said on the tapes. There is an acceptance that he has told everything so now he needs to go to the doors of those he has named and come clean.

“Ivor has gone further than anyone, it was designed as payback to republicanism which he came to hate and manifested itself for years,” the source said.

SHAFTED

The Sunday World can reveal that in addition to Bell and deceased former provos Dolours Price and Brendan Hughes others including former escapee Tommy Gorman, blanketman Richard O’Rawe, and former IRA men Brendan ‘Shando’ Shannon and Paddy Joe Rice have also made tapes.

They are believed to have named dozens of people involved in IRA activity in Belfast in the 1970s.

The former IRA figures made the tapes on the basis that McIntyre and his colleague journalist Ed Moloney promised them that the contents of the tapes wouldn’t be released until the interviewees had died.

These assurances were blown out of the water by a US judge earlier this year when he ordered the tapes relating to the murder of Jean McConville to be handed over to the PSNI.

Anthony McIntyre has stated he believes he and his project has been “shafted” and at no stage was any of the information intended for police investigations including the murder of Jean McConville which Sinn Fein boss Gerry Adams was arrested in connection with last week.

The police have also used Ivor Bell’s own words to place him before the courts.

One former Belfast IRA figure told the Sunday World last night that concern was growing among many former IRA members in the city.

“If somebody like Ivor can spend hours on tape talking openly about his time in the army and possibly implicating himself in something like the McConville killing then god only knows what he has said about other things,” the former IRA figure said.

“Mackers [Anthony McIntyre] has managed to do what countless RUC men failed to do, he has turned good people into touts. He has got paid a fortune by the Americans to do this project and has now left those of us who served in the IRA at great personal cost to pick up the pieces.

“Many of the people who may be implicated here haven’t been active in republicanism since the 1970s, many are now grandparents and great grandparents but because of McIntyre’s greed and his reckless need to try and damage Sinn Féin our families will now have to suffer. The man is a disgrace,” the one time IRA man said.

The republican also repeated calls to Ivor Bell and Anthony McIntyre to come clean about the contents of the controversial Boston Tapes.

“Back in the day there were people who wouldn’t have thought twice about leaving a tout dead on the border. Now through their own arrogance some of those who did the tapes are no better than then the people they once condemned. Indeed it is worse, lads who broke under torture in Castlereagh can’t be compared to those who have broken every rule in the book for a few quid or because they needed their egos massaged.

“Mackers, Ivor and the rest need to come forward and tell those people they have informed on of the craic. People can’t be expected to sit here waiting for a knock on the door.” he added.

ASSIST

The Sunday World has learned that Anthony McIntyre was paid £26,000 a year over a five year period by Boston College to carry out the interviews, his partner was also employed to assist in compiling the information gained from the interviews.

 

 

PODCAST: The IRA, the Boston College Tapes and Who Tells the Past?

Boston College, Confidentiality, Gerry Adams, Jean McConville, Journalism

Right Click to download: Who Tells the Past?

The IRA, the Boston College Tapes and who tells the past?
Fin Dwyer
Irish History Podcast
12 May 2014

In the last two weeks the Boston College Belfast Project has been brought centre stage since the arrest of Gerry Adams. This has had huge implications for history, as much of the questioning of Adams appears to have based on the projects archive seized by the P.S.N.I. in Boston.

This podcast begins by looking at the events in Ireland in 1972 and how it has come to pass that 42 years later one of the Ireland’s most prominent politicians arrested. What was in this historical archive? What are the rights of historians to record history vs. the rights of families of victims who may want to read private archives looking of answers? What are the rights of people to their good name when allegations are made about them in historical interviews? Finally perhaps the most important question for historians – who has the right to record our history? This show takes you through these controversial questions and indeed the interviews conducted with former members of the IRA revealing what the allegations made were.

 

Fin Dwyer is a historian, blogger and author. You can read his site at www.irishhistorypodcast.ie