Boston College ordered to hand over IRA interview recordings.

[cathalbrugha]

The LCR is perhaps employing hyperbole in their account of the prison split of 1986.

A letter from one of those who broke away during this period merely cites a 'minimum of 30' prisoner who were 'bitterly dissatisfied' with the 'Adams faction'. This figure includes those who would have aligned themselves with Ó Conaill and Ó Brádaigh.*

Resignations were piecemeal, not mass. And how a 'minimum of 30' could become 100 is beyond me.

*(MS 44, 162 /5, Seán O'Mahony Papers, National Library of Ireland)

The above quote was taken from the CPI.And not the LCR.Or if you like,a correspondence that took place from that period.The CPIs are disgruntled Sticks to the best of my knowledge,which is limited,but i think their Maoist outlook on Éire is faulty,to say the least.The LCR were,imo,one of the most progressive commie tink-tanks since the RC in the 30s,but,alas,this is Ireland .....The reason i think they were progressive is because they made the effort to apply their political philosophy to the Ireland of 'their day',unlike the CPI/WP who looked to both mother china and mother russia respectively,with one sect,of the CPI,to the best of my limited knowledge,adapting mother albania as their model for the lumpen proletariat.I'm only a floating voter meself with nothing more than a passing interest....'Hyperbole' i think is the most appropriate name one could give to the broad left of today......Social Media Revolutionaries.....But,at least they've managed to piss Ho Chi Quinn off...The millionaire merchant labourite ..... Jóseph would be proud.....I think Obesity will be the down fall of Labour,rather than anything else....I mean,have you seen the size of Gilmore and Wabbit lately..... I've invested me savings in a mirror so i can watch meself starve...... And dream of the Limerick Soviets.....The Moyross-Ballinacurra Soviet?That'll be the day the Pígs tremble.....

[SeamusNapoleon]

The above quote was taken from the CPI.And not the LCR.Or if you like,a correspondence that took place from that period.The CPIs are disgruntled Sticks to the best of my knowledge,which is limited,but i think their Maoist outlook on Éire is faulty,to say the least.The LCR were,imo,one of the most progressive commie tink-tanks since the RC in the 30s,but,alas,this is Ireland .....The reason i think they were progressive is because they made the effort to apply their political philosophy to the Ireland of 'their day',unlike the CPI/WP who looked to both mother china and mother russia respectively,with one sect,of the CPI,to the best of my limited knowledge,adapting mother albania as their model for the lumpen proletariat.I'm only a floating voter meself with nothing more than a passing interest....'Hyperbole' i think is the most appropriate name one could give to the broad left of today......Social Media Revolutionaries.....But,at least they've managed to piss Ho Chi Quinn off...The millionaire merchant labourite ..... Jóseph would be proud.....I think Obesity will be the down fall of Labour,rather than anything else....I mean,have you seen the size of Gilmore and Wabbit lately..... I've invested me savings in a mirror so i can watch meself starve...... And dream of the Limerick Soviets.....The Moyross-Ballinacurra Soviet?That'll be the day the Pígs tremble.....

Apologies, the CPI are pone to hyperbole then.
Kudos for the latter part of your post - The Moyross-Ballincurra Soviet, never say never!

[Pat Mc Larnon]

Interesting article here from Eamonn Mc Cann. It throws up the new role of Norman Baxter, a former senior RUC officer and his employment in Afghanistan. The role of the HET and the request for information from Boston College also come into view.

[harry_w]

Interesting article here from Eamonn Mc Cann. It throws up the new role of Norman Baxter, a former senior RUC officer and his employment in Afghanistan. The role of the HET and the request for information from Boston College also come into view.

I thought it was implausible to suggest Baxter has such influence from a remote position, a tempting diversion from those within the RUC/PSNI, principally the HET and Special Branch for the duration of the Boston College Belfast Project.

Ed Moloney was playing witchfinder among comments on a piece in the Times Higher Education Supplement last week:

Times Higher Education - Law and academy clash in the long shadow of the gun
16 February 2012
By Jon Marcus

Harvey A. Silverglate, who wrote a piece in Forbes on behalf of Moloney and McIntyre and 'academic freedom' (or licence in this case) also commented congratulating the Boston author for his 'discerning' piece. He was followed by Moloney also flattering the author, which can be so disarming.

Moloney rehearsed his latest defence again, the highlight this time being comparing himself and McIntyre to underlings implementing a torture policy at Abu Ghraib devised and implemented by those above them.

As any oral historian can tell you, the key document in such a project is the contract given to the interviewee to sign. This must specify any risks that exist so that the interviewee knows what he or she is getting into. It is called informed consent. If a risk of subpoena exists this is the place where it should be clearly identified.

But what did the contract drawn up by Boston College tell the interviewees? It gave them “ultimate power” over disclosure until their death. Any reasonable reading of that would have to conclude that the interviews were therefore secure from legal risk. Any effort by Boston College now to say that this risk was implicitly evident in other contracts with myself or the researchers - and the language employed in these other documents was ambiguous to say the least - has to be outweighed by the evidence that the college seemingly went out of its way to mislead the only people who mattered, the interviewees, and to hide this important legal caveat from them - and also from us.

The next question is why did they do this? One answer that leaps to mind is the knowledge that if Boston College had been candid with the interviewees the research project would have been stillborn. No interviewee would have dared participate and myself and the researchers would have walked away. Had it been honest and clear in its dealings with the interviewees Boston College would have lost the opportunity to collect a unique and historically valuable archive.

Throughout the sorry affair Boston College has suffered from a bad case of what I like to call ‘Abu Ghraib syndrome’. Like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the generals who devised and implemented the torture policy in Iraq, they have pushed responsibility for their misdeeds on to other, less powerful figures. In Iraq it was was privates and lower ranks who went to jail; in this affair Boston College is shifting blame on to its research workers. How shameful is that?

The Ghraib variation on the Nuremberg defence? Such are the perils of false analogy.

I wonder if Moloney and McIntyre concealed their contracts from themselves? They concealed the caveat from the interviewees, but their defence it was on behalf of and under direction the institution. I thought I'd point out some of what I've said here before, and posted it, but it was taken down within a few hours:

McIntryre and Moloney are just as culpable as Boston College for the spurious promise of confidentiality made to interviewees, and they offer no anonymity or protection to anyone those interviewees wished to incriminate in the eyes of the British Crown.

The Boston College case against the subpoena was posturing for their alibi to hand over the interviews, which they got from the judge's review of the materials before ruling on them.

Moloney and McIntyre's case is more posturing, they still require an alibi because they delivered that spurious promise of confidentiality to interviewees on behalf of Boston College. Both knew Boston College could only offer confidentiality to the extent allowed for by American law, their contracts with BC specified this.

Boston College - Moloney contract 1
Boston College - Moloney contract 2

Moloney - McIntyre contract

Both they and Boston College knew the deception in the donor agreement offered to interviewees which contained no such caveat, offering 'ultimate power' over disclosure to the interviewees. Moloney and McIntyre conducted the interviews based on a spurious promise of 'ulitmate power' which their contracts explicitly said was only 'to the extent American law allows'.

Donor Agreement (Brendan Hughes):
hughesdonation.jpg

Those contracts also obliged them to observe professional standards in Oral History, which they and the 'oversight committee' at Boston College all ignored.

Boston College, Moloney and McIntyre appear to have conspired to deliberately turn a blind eye to each others breach in any legal and academic standards which would require informed consent from interviewees. Now there aren't enough alibis to go around for the deception, so they are forced to blame one another.

Moloney draws attention to the collaboration of the UVF in the Boston College 'Belfast Project', but neglects to mention McIntyre conducted his interviews in secret from the IRA. Obviously this led to the anodyne recollections of David Ervine, who didn't incriminate anyone, in contrast to those with Brendan Hughes who chose to do just that, from beyond the grave.

Delours Price contrived to make her interviews obtainable by subpoena with her account of Jean McConville's abduction given to the Irish News shortly after Moloney's book and film 'Voices from the Grave' of the Hughes and Ervine material was released. That was when she announced she would cooperate with the International Commission for the Disappeared, gaining immunity for the act in the process.

The lack of academic ethics involved was perhaps best summed up by Prof. John D. Brewer (Department of Sociology, University of Aberdeen), here in the Times Higher:

Times Higher Education - Inescapable burden of 'guilty knowledge'
26 January 2012

"... This is not a tale of researchers betrayed by Boston College or hounded by callous lawyers: they are largely responsible for their misfortune.

"... informed-consent forms always explain that confidentiality will be maintained only to the full extent provided under the law - and why respondents' attention must be drawn to the risks.

"... spare a thought for the respondents duped by the reported concealment from them of the risks of participating. Think, too, of the impact on other researchers' access, let alone the potential destabilisation of the peace process.

"... the journalists felt themselves under no obligation to act responsibly. Careless Talk might have been a better title for the book. They are not the victims here."

I noticed McIntyre had already been stung into responding to Brewer's pointed criticism. After insinuating the Professor hadn't done sufficient research to inform his comments, and that he was servile towards Boston College as an institution for holding researchers responsible for their part, he drops a little more information about who profited from Voices From the Grave: "... why didn't Boston College with its phalanx of lawyers state this at the time rather than press for publication while securing royalty contracts for two of its senior staff?"

Times Higher Education - The sin of omission was Boston's, not ours
2 February 2012
... Brewer makes the point that "informed-consent forms always explain that confidentiality will be maintained only to the full extent provided under the law". Always...except when the forms are issued by Boston College. You would imagine that an informed writer would draw attention to the fact that nothing of the sort was explained in the consent form drawn up by the institution and given to the interviewees.

The contract form stated explicitly that the interviewee would have "ultimate power" of release. So when Brewer pleads, "spare a thought for the respondents duped by the reported concealment from them of the risks of participating", he fails to mention it was concealment perpetrated by the institution responsible for drawing up the contract - Boston College.

Moloney was of course right when he suggested that this was one reason why Boston College never made the risks explicit in the contract. That's why he told The Boston Globe newspaper that had the college done so there would have been no Belfast Project. Neither Moloney nor I would have been associated with it.

Anthony McIntyre, Drogheda, Republic of Ireland

We all know it was explicit in Moloney's contract and McIntyre was shown that. They were key parties to the "concealment perpetrated by the institution responsible for drawing up the contract".

McIntyre and Moloney's blame-shifting back and forth with Boston College reminds me of an endless three card trick by reference to these documents, each playing taking turns to shift the blame again and win their alibi.

[Roisin3]

So, Boston College staff wanted a cut of the royalties from Voices from the Grave, and wanted to persuade interviewees to publish their accounts while they were still living.

No-one is gonna come out of this thing smelling of roses.

[Pat Mc Larnon]

Once again, as Moloney and McIntyre try to worm their way out of any blame, it is worth re-visiting the piece by Jude Collins written here.

[Roisin3]

That was Jude Collins. What was the piece he wrote that earned him an email from Moloney?

[harry_w]

That was Jude Collins. What was the piece he wrote that earned him an email from Moloney?

Collins responded to this piece by McIntyre: The IRA Is Morphing Into the 'Rafia'
Defeatist, autocratic leaders are remaking an army of liberation into a gang of thugs.
March 10, 2005|Anthony McIntyre | latimes.com

Collins' criticism of McIntyre was in relation to the murder of Robert McCartney:

Daily Ireland
Agreement is the greatest threat to unionism
Jude Collins, 26/3/2005
Anthony McIntyre deserves to be heard when he speaks of politics. As he explains in some detail in an article in the LA Times recently (‘The IRA is Morphing into the “Rafia” ‘ LA Times, March 10) he was a member of the IRA, was imprisoned for killing a unionist paramilitary and took part in the prison protest against criminalisation of political prisoners.

Mr McIntyre, it could be said, has paid his republican dues and his claims in the article merit a hearing. Unfortunately, most of the claims appear to be built on air.

Claim 1. Gerry Adams smothers internal discussion in his party and surrounds himself with head-nodding lackeys. Evidence for this charge: none. How could there be? Like most political parties, Sinn Féin presumably doesn’t invite its most vocal opponents to sit in on internal discussions.

Claim 2: By signing the Good Friday Agreement, Sinn Féin committed themselves to ‘celebrating’ the defeat of republicanism. Evidence: some. Gerry Adams’s party did indeed sign the GFA in 1998. Since then, support for that party has grown with every election. Two weeks ago, amid the media firestorm, the Sinn Féin candidate in the Meath by-election increased his vote share by 25 per cent. Over 300,000 people now vote for Sinn Féin, making it the third biggest political party on the island. Irish republicanism hasn’t been this strong since the 1920s.

Claim 3: Republicans have no strategic framework for securing the withdrawal of the British state from Ireland. Evidence: none. On the contrary, when the IRA called its ceasefire in the early 1990s, the Ulster Unionist leader James Molyneaux declared that the union with Britain was now faced with its biggest threat since the foundation of the state. Ian Paisley has repeatedly said words to the same effect, pointing to the GFA as evidence. Mr McIntyre may see no strategy for reunification, but Jim Molyneaux then and Ian Paisley today clearly do.

Claim 4: The IRA exists to enhance the power and prosperity of republican leaders. Evidence: none. Few political parties anywhere in the world have their accounts scrutinised with the rigour those of Sinn Féin receive, yet no accounting irregularity or figure manipulation has been detected.

Much sound and fury from Mr McIntyre, then, signifying not a lot. Of course his voice is not alone in attacking Mr Adams’ party. For months now, a blitzkrieg of criticism has been unloaded on Irish republicans. ...

...So yes, nationalist Ireland is united in sympathy with the rest of the world for the McCartney sisters and does hunger for an end to violence. But it is getting increasingly fed up with those like Mr McIntyre who stand on the coffin of Robert McCartney and indulge in finger-pointing unsupported by evidence.

From Collins' accounts I suppose Ed Moloney e-mailed in response to that, and in the meantime he also became a focus for attention from The Blanket: Truth Better Than Spin, Mick Hall • 5 April 2005, The Blanket

It came to a head with the publication of pieces by Ed Moloney and Jude Collins, but the link has expired (like Daily Ireland): Nasty nudge from the top – part II: Daily Ireland, Ed Moloney / Jude Collins, Wednesday, April 20

You can read various reactions to it at the time on sluggerotoole.com: Weighing the pen and the sword
admin, Wed 20 April 2005, 12:00am, sluggerotoole.com

Several viewed it as Moloney 'career threatening' Collins for taking Sinn Fein seriously, and threatening to hold him responsible for any harm that might come to McIntyre. One P.ie poster noted it here a month later: Provos have no right to use Sinn Féin name

... The tone of the letter was rather threatening and smacked of a journalistic bully. Mr Collins defiantly printed a reply to the letter without naming the author.

Ed Maloney then subsequently demanded that his anonymity be waved and that the original letter be published along with Jude Collin's response. Why, who knows, it certainly did nothing to exonerate him. ...

Then McIntyre himself deigns to respond with his own volley of ad hominem abuse on 'Jude the Obscure':

Jude The Obscure Republican
Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self - Cyril Connolly
Anthony McIntyre • 28 April 2005, The Blanket
That the writings of Jude Collins are now being openly discussed by people other than Jude himself must come as a fillip to his artistic pride. With journalists such as Ed Moloney - who was up to his neck in the dangerous quagmire that invariably accompanies serious investigative reporting, while Jude was writing about getting his washing machine fixed - commenting on what he writes, might mark in Jude's mind a coming of age. Plodding away for decades with nobody giving a toss, other than to possess some faint awareness of the writers name and absolutely nothing of what is written, can quickly demoralise the scribe. A fragile self-image may find it difficult to cope with obscurity. ...

...In his bid to become Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Leadership over at Daily Ireland Cardinal Jude has taken to launching attacks on those who are at odds with such concepts as presidential infallibility. I was sufficiently interested to learn that he had penned a column in defence of the Provisional leadership in which I was the focus of the inquisitorial cleansing, that I bought a copy of Daily Ireland on my way through town. Good for the Cardinal; the very man to unravel the mysterium iniquitatis that sits like some dark halo around the necks of those who have the audacity to disbelieve. ...

... As for Jude Collins' contention that I am standing on the coffin of Robert McCartney, let 'nationalist Ireland' make up its own mind about that rather than have the Cardinal look into his own heart to tell us what the people think. Just how many republican coffins did Jude Collins refuse to stand beside when there was a price to pay for doing so? If Cardinal Jude wants to lead the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Leadership and assume the mantle of the literary equivalent of the ceasefire soldier he should at least be honest about it, rather than mask his aspirations in the false narrative of political advancement. There was a time to rub shoulders with the boys - when they stood in the Bearna Baoil, the gap of danger, rather than in the gap of deceit and diesel. ...

Collins recalled the incident more recently:

FRIDAY, 16 APRIL 2010
How to sell a book
Jude Collins

Ed Moloney ( or 'Maloney', as that venerable organ The Irish News today calls him) is a funny man. Funny-peculiar, that is, not funny ha-ha. Ed's consuming passion at the moment is to shift copies of his book 'Voices from the Grave'. That's understandable. You've worked long and hard on a book so of course you want to sell as many copies as you can. Ed's lever to get public attention this time involves reported death threats against Anthony McIntyre. McIntyre, who detests Gerry Adams and the Sinn Fein leadership, conducted an interview for the book with the late Brendan Hughes - you know, the one where he says that Gerry Adams among other things ordered the killing of Jean McConville. Moloney/Maloney says he knows who the people are who made the threats (he doesn't say how he knows) and if they 'touch a hair on Anthony McIntyre's head...I will spare no effort in exposing those responsible'.

Dramatic stuff, eh? Especially the 'touch a hair' bit. Visions of Ed as a hovering guardian angel, protecting McIntyre from any and all evil. He's had practice in the role. About six years ago I wrote an article for Daily Ireland in which I suggested that McIntyre was using the emotion surrounding dead republicans to point an accusing finger at the Sinn Fein leadership. Well. Before I could say 'hack' this emotional, slightly confused email from Mr Moloney/Maloney hit my inbox, telling me what a worthless, pointless person I was, how I really shouldn't have the temerity to write about this subject and that I had put McIntyre's life at risk by what I'd written. What's more, if anything were to happen to McIntyre, he Moloney/Maloney would make sure the world knew that I was to blame, because I'd written what I'd written. ...

SUNDAY, 3 OCTOBER 2010
All men are moral, but some are more moral than others...
I see my dear old friend Ed Moloney has been writing about when it makes sense to negotiate with terrorists. Ed and I, as they say, go back a long way - back to the days when Anthony McIntyre was a republican critic to be reckoned with. That is to say, he was critical of republicans other than himself and a few mates because he didn’t think they – all the other republicans – were republican enough. I wrote a piece about Anthony in the late lamented Daily Ireland and almost immediately got an emotional and tired email from Ed on the other side of the Atlantic, telling me that if anything were to happen to Mr McIntyre, I’d be responsible. Cheesh. We then had a kind of verbal war for a while on the pages of DI, which was good fun but irrelevant to this blog. ...

McIntyre claiming he never reads Jude Collins and it's 'nothing personal'. Collins then comments on the piece, upstaging him with flattery, leading McIntyre to promise to read Collins in future:

Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Government by Google
Anthony McIntyre
I never read Jude Collins. Whatever he is for or against his writing has invariably failed to stir anything remotely resembling interest in me. There is nothing personal in it. Some writers, adore them or abhor them, hit the spot and others fail to.

Formerly a columnist with the Irish News and then with the failed Daily Ireland, Jude Collins would write regularly. Yet for the world of me, apart from one piece in each where he first defended me against a PSNI raid on my home, and then in another attacked me because the McCartney sisters campaign annoyed him, there is virtually nothing of what flowed from his pen that has left an indelible trace in my memory. During the peace process he emerged as a bit of a republican. If he was a republican earlier it was something he successfully concealed. ...

[Roisin3]

Blesses oh, when egos are bruised and feathers ruffled. Thanks for the info and links, Harry. Do these fellas put ink in their pens or acid?

[Pat Mc Larnon]

Roisin 3, thanks for that.

It now appears that Boston College are to launch an appeal of sorts against the handover of some of the interviews, reported here . They are unwilling to appeal over the interview given by Dolours Price, that was subsequently quoted at length in the Irish News.

This has sparked the ire of Mc Intyre he states, “They are covering their tracks and have abandoned Dolours. There is no rhyme, reason or consistency or logic to it. We are still in the fight to protect Dolours and everybody else, and Boston College should do the same,”

This is the same researcher who did not seek cast iron legal advice over said interviews and allowed people to implicate themselves in very serious offences.