Boston College and the Belfast Tapes
by Anphoblacht	25 May 2014
A voice from the grave, or a foot in the mouth?
BOSTON COLLEGE has accused Ed Moloney and Anthony McIntyre of a “shameful attempt” not to accept any responsibility for the fiasco and fall-out from the ‘Boston College Tapes’ interviews with former republican and unionist activists. The tapes include the late Brendan Hughes and Dolours Price and were obtained by the PSNI through the US courts to pursue possible prosecutions and reportedly cited in the arrest of Gerry Adams last week before the Sinn Féin leader was released without charge. Admitting that everyone involved, including Boston College, had “made mistakes” Jack Dunn, a spokesperson for Boston College, on RTÉ Radio’s Morning Ireland programme on Wednesday accused Moloney and McIntyre of “trying to deflect blame away from themselves consistently that does not stand up in the light of scrutiny”. Ed Moloney was Director of the Belfast Project, initiated by Lord Paul Bew. Bew, a former adviser to Unionist Party leader David Trimble and a politics professor at Queens University Belfast, was a visiting professor at Boston College’s Burns Library. He later recommended to Burns Librarian Robert O’Neill an oral history project recording first-hand accounts of participants in ‘The Troubles’ in the North of Ireland for scholars and researchers of conflict. The Belfast Project began in 2001. Lord Bew appointed as Belfast Project Director Ed Moloney, a trenchant critic of Gerry Adams. Moloney subsequently recruited as Researcher Anthony McIntyre, a former IRA member and long-time open critic of Sinn Féin. This has led to such widespread accusations of bias that Jack Dunn and Boston College now feel have “called the validity of the archive into question”. Jack Dunn said that the Anglo-US Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) under which the PSNI sought and obtained the ‘confidential’ interviews given to Moloney and McIntyre under guarantees by them had been signed in 1994. He said a legal clause was inserted in the contract signed by Ed Moloney as Director of the Belfast Project and it was confirmed in a letter to Moloney by Robert O’Neill that confidentiality could only be assured by Boston College “to the extent that American law would allow”, Jack Dunn said. American law included MLAT. Jack Dunn told RTÉ he thinks it was “a caveat that was ignored” by Moloney and McIntyre. There was also a general assumption that the British, Irish and US governments would not consider a move to obtain the tapes given the bedding down of the Peace Process. The Boston College spokesperson said that he found it “impossible to believe” that an experienced journalist such as Ed Moloney (who has been based in the USA for many years) could not know that MLAT was in existence well before the Belfast Project was launched. “It is unconscionable to me that they [Moloney and McIntyre] would claim not to know this when the court records state otherwise.” Claims by Anthony McIntyre and Ed Moloney that Boston College had not done enough to fight the PSNI action in the US courts despite a two-year legal battle were described by the Boston College spokesperson as “tired rhetoric issued repeatedly by Ed Moloney and Anthony McIntyre and, quite frankly, that’s been too willingly accepted by the Irish media”. He pointed out that US academic institutions have no protection against federal court subpoenas against oral history projects. • The scandal has prompted Boston College’s History Department to publicly disown the Belfast Project, saying it “is not and never was a Boston College History Department project”.