TPQ features a transcript of Lisa Millar of ABC News, Australia, who as part of Foreign Correspondent's documentary The Disappeared visited Ireland to speak with some of the families who are fighting to find their loved ones. She also talks to Anthony McIntyre, who conducted the interviews with the republicans involved in the Boston College project.
Millar: Off an isolated laneway in country Ireland, just across the border from Northern Ireland, surveyors arrive to start a new job. It looks for all the world like the local council might be figuring out how to carve up a rural subdivision — but they're not scoping boundaries, these geo-physicists and forensic archaeologists are looking for a body.
Irish Reporter: "What's the confidence level in getting a result here this week?"
Jon Hill: "This is a very, very difficult situation and I wouldn't like to put any numbers between one and ten on it, but we are very much at the age of what's possible and what's not possible".
Millar: Just like us, the local media are here to cover the latest phase in the search for a man missing, believed murdered, thirty six years ago. Brendan Megraw is one of the victims of a notorious series of kidnappings and killings carried out by the Irish Republican Army. These unsolved cold cases are known as "The Disappeared".
Sixteen years after Northern Ireland's peace agreement, The Disappeared have been catapulted back into the spotlight. A once deeply troubled place is trying to reconcile its past, ease the suffering of families and now because of an explosive series of recorded interviews, renew the pursuit of the perpetrators.
Jon Hill: [Forensic Officer] "Without doubt, the news that I want to bring is actually the bad news that we've found their brother's remains and it's so sad that the only news you can bring them that will bring them any satisfaction is dreadful news like that".
Sean Megraw: "There are not very many photographs of the three of us".
Millar: "So who have we got here?"
Sean Megraw: "That's me in the middle there and that's Brendan and that's Kieran. That was up in Port Stewart...".
Millar: "You're definitely the big brother".
Sean Megraw: "Oh yeah".
Millar: At times Northern Ireland has tried to forget The Disappeared - consign the cases to history. Not Sean Megraw.
"This was not long before he was taken?"
Sean Megraw: "Yeah. Oh it was less...".
Millar: "This would be one of the last photos that would have been taken of him".
Sean Megraw: "Yeah, yeah".
Millar: He's Brendan Megraw's brother. He remembers a young man, newly married and expecting a child with wife Marie and he remembers Brendan's disappearance like it was yesterday.
Sean Megraw: "Some people came to the house looking for him, about nine men altogether, and the wife said he's not here. So they decided to wait and when Brendan walked in the door, they said they were taking him away — wanted to talk to him. And Brendan's last words to Marie were something like, don't worry, I haven't done anything".
Millar: "Did she ever see him again?"
Sean Megraw: "She never seen him again. None of us heard from him — nothing at all".
Millar: Around three and a half thousand people died during the troubles, the brutal, bloody, long running struggle between Northern Island's hard line loyalists and republican paramilitary groups. But amid the bombings and shootings and pitched battles, about 16 victims hold a particular place in that saga. They were suspected by the IRA of being informants and for that, execution wasn't enough. It was as if their entire existence had to be completely erased, a message that betrayal was the highest crime of all.
Sean Megraw: "I remember the first week that he.... I didn't sleep for seven days. You just went to bed but you couldn't sleep. You didn't even go to bed really and you were thinking we should be doing this, we should be doing that — going here, going there, ringing people — just no news. It's as if he'd dropped off the face of the earth basically. I believe that their idea was to take away not just their life, but their identity. You know there's no trace of you left. You're eliminated. There's no burial, there's no grave to go to. You've disappeared completely".
Millar: Phil McKee also carries the horrible burden of losing family to the IRA's savage program. She's a single parent, cares for her grandson and once a month her son shouts her a trip to the hairdresser. It's one bright day in so many gloomy ones. She's struggled with depression ever since her brother Kevin disappeared over forty years ago.
Phil McKee: "As I remember Kevin as a big brother he was very quiet, refined and very gentle person, a very caring person".
Millar: Kevin McKee was grabbed off the street by the IRA, accused of ratting on the organisation. He was just 17. Not long after his abduction, someone telephoned the family telling them to come and get him, but by the time they arrived, it was too late.
Phil McKee: "So me Aunt Phil went up and drove her down to Dundalk and when she got there, there was a young lad answered the door, and said tell her that he's not here. And Phil says what do you mean he's not here, because he phoned us and told us he was here. And Phil says, will I just leave his clothes for him? And he says, no you can take the clothes away, he'll not be back. And that was the last of anything we ever heard".
I just remember having a horrible life, my mother turning from one person to another. She used to waken us up during the night as the months went on and we heard her stopping cars. At 3 o'clock in the morning, we had to get out of our beds".
Millar: "Looking for him".
Phil McKee: "Looking for him. She used to stop cars and ask them could she look in the boot of it".
Millar: It was 1972 — one of the deadliest years of The Troubles and the height of the IRA's campaign of intimidation. No one was about to reveal what happened to Kevin McKee. It'd be 27 years before there was a breakthrough in this and other cases of The Disappeared. After the Good Friday Peace Agreement was signed, the IRA agreed to release the names of nine of The Disappeared. Kevin McKee's name was on it.
Phil McKee: "Did they torture him before he died? Well obviously they did. Did they shoot him and just put him down the hole or did they make sure he took his last breath."
Millar: Details on the locations of the bodies began to emerge and a special commission was formed - its objective, to find the remains but not the murderers. In return for information it provided partial immunity from prosecution and complete confidentiality.
"When your mum realised, when your family realised that Kevin was on that list that the IRA put out, did you think it was going to be a quick process to find his body?"
Phil McKee: "Yeah, definitely. We thought because of the first bodies so easily got, we thought for sure that it was... you know it was sort of... we were running about doing things and thinking about headstones and what about the grave, and wee things like that. It was like happy thoughts, though people would find that strange me saying that, you know but it was happy thoughts - we're going to do this and we're going to do that. We'll have him home again".
Millar: "Because it was so important to get him back?"
Phil McKee: "It was so, so important just to get him back and have somewhere to go".
Millar: But despite the IRA's revelations, finding the bodies years later wasn't going to be straightforward.
"Sean how many times do you think you've driven this road over the years?"
Sean Megraw:: "I used to come very regularly but now a couple of times a year or so. I've probably been up about 60, 70 times altogether".
Millar: Sean Megraw's brother Brendan was on the list as well and gradually details of his whereabouts have been handed over. But so far, three detailed searches of the peat bog site have failed to locate his body.
Sean Megraw: "It's fairly isolated. It's off the beaten track and it's certainly not the type of place you would visit unless you have to come to something like this".
Millar: The Commission has received new information and it will start searching again for Brendan's body — the fourth attempt in 15 years.
Sean Megraw: "Since my mother died I feel it's my responsibility to find him. I know that was her biggest aim to find his remains".
Millar: Geoff Knupfer, from the Commission for The Disappeared, has flown in from England to brief Sean. He's a retired detective who was instrumental in closing the case on the notorious Moors murders in England. In this role though, he's legally bound not to hunt for criminals but simply retrieve their victims.
Geoff Knupfer: "Sean if we could perhaps pop down here and I'll just show you what we're proposing to do".
Sean Megraw: "Okay".
Geoff Knupfer: "Cause we've got imagery from that time, aerial imagery from the Odin survey.
Sean Megraw: "Right".
Geoff Knupfer: "So we know roughly where the peat face was and we know that he was not buried in the peat, he was in the dug out peat on this side of it".
Sean Megraw: "Closer to the road and the path?"
Geoff Knupfer: "Absolutely, yeah, yeah. So we did virtually all of this in 2010 and we did two or three banks upon the other side of the main drain running through here".
Millar: Like so many of the other families of The Disappeared, Sean has dealt with the disappointment of searches starting and failing.
Geoff Knupfer: "We're satisfied that Brendan was buried here. What we don't know is what happened to the grave in the intervening period".
Millar: These bogs cover a large swathe of Ireland. Cut up and dried, the peat is a valuable fuel for fires.
Sean Megraw: "That's the worst scenario you know that the remains have just been taken and burnt".
Geoff Knupfer: [Independent Commission for the Location of Victims' Remains] "Some of these cases are 40 years old now and an awful lot could have happened to the ground in which these bodies were originally buried so we try and get across to the families just what a difficult, uphill struggle this is going to be".
Millar: But the passing years pose another problem — perspective witnesses are also getting old.
"Aren't you now in a race against time?"
Geoff Knupfer: "Absolutely a race against time because these people who were in their 20s when these things happened, will now be in their 60s or could well be in their 60s".
Millar: "And they could take the information to their graves?"
Geoff Knupfer: "Absolutely. Well we know in some cases that has actually happened".
Millar: IRA Belfast Commander Brendan Hughes could have taken his intimate knowledge of The Disappeared to the grave when he died in 2008. He didn't. His account of his involvement in and knowledge of the kidnappings and murders has been laid out in detail as part of a series of extraordinary interviews recorded by this man, another former IRA operative Anthony McIntyre.
"Was it hard to convince people to talk to you?"
Anthony McIntyre: "Some did want to, some didn't. Others wanted it, others found it cathartic. They trusted me".
Millar: Anthony McIntyre spent nearly 20 years in gaol for killing a soldier. He was loyal to the cause and prepared to do whatever was asked of him without question.
"If they'd asked you to disappear people, would you have done that?"
Anthony McIntyre: [Historian and former IRA soldier] "Yes I would have done that without question — wrongly so — and I felt at the time that you know these people are informers and the more we target those who inform, the better. You know it was a totally wrong position to hold, but I would have done it, yeah".
Millar: "How does that make you feel?"
Anthony McIntyre: "I regret the fact that it happened but if you ask me is it one of the things that keeps me awake at night, no it isn't and I don't pretend that it does".
Millar: Anthony McIntyre emerged from gaol to recast himself as a historian, an academic and works here at an Irish history museum over the border in the republic. Importantly he conducted the interviews with fellow IRA members for what's known here as the Belfast Project — an oral history of The Troubles. The recordings were to be stored securely by an American University.
Anthony McIntyre: "So it seemed to me to be a worthwhile project for the benefit of posterity. That people would know more, rather than less about the Northern conflict and I only think it's... in many ways it merely replicates projects that have been done throughout the world in places like Rwanda and Vietnam".
Millar: Brendan Hughes' account is arguably the most explosive. He spoke on condition nothing would be released until his death. Now those words from the grave are providing new clues to the final days of people like Kevin McKee.
Voice of Brendan Hughes: "Actually McKee... the people who were holding him, liked him — good cook, good craic - and the order was given for them to be put down. I didn't give the order. I felt betrayed to some extent. The people who were holding them liked them, and couldn't execute them. People were sent from Belfast to do the actual execution. There was no purpose in it. It was pure revenge, I think".
Millar: "How do you feel for the families of The Disappeared?"
Anthony McIntyre: "I look at my own children and I wonder how I would feel if they were to walk out of my life and to disappear, not knowing what happened to them. And I think it's a fate worse than death".
Millar: But lurking in the detail of almost twenty hours of interview with Brendan Hughes, there was a ticking time bomb. Earlier this year it exploded — implicating one of Northern Ireland's most prominent Republican figures - Gerry Adams, President of Sinn Fein, the party long regarded as the IRA's political wing.
Anthony McIntyre: : "Well the accusations were Mr Adams was a senior commander, the Belfast Brigade Commander in the early 1970s and that he directed and ordered a number of IRA operations, including the London bombings, the bombings in Belfast, directive in Belfast and also the disappearance, killing and disappearance, of Mrs Jean McConville".
Voice of Brendan Hughes: "This woman was taken away and executed. Jean McConville. There's only one man that gave the order for that woman to be executed. That man is now the head of Sinn Fein. And he went to this family's house and promised them an investigation into the woman's disappearance. That man is the man who killed that woman, I did not give the order to execute that woman. He did".
Millar: The kidnapping and murder of Jean McConville has become one of the most sensitive cases of The Disappeared and because of the way it's unfolded, the Commission's immunity may not apply.
Gerry Adams: [President, Sinn Fein] "There's been a lengthy malicious campaign against me. I will tell the police that I'm innocent totally of any part in the abduction, the killing and the burial of Jean McConville".
Millar: Michael McConville is one of Jean's ten children and leads the family's campaign for justice. The McConville men have always kept pigeons, it's a family tradition and connects him to a happier past.
Michael McConville: "Since I was a young boy the pigeons have always been in the family. My father kept pigeons... my two older brothers kept them, and when I was born in the family the pigeons were always there. When I see the pigeons and have the pigeons it puts me back to good memories when my father was alive and my mother was alive and all of our family was together".
Millar: : In 1972 when Michael was just eleven years old, sectarian violence was raging in Belfast. Five hundred people would be killed that year.
Michael McConville: "The people there were out rioting and burning cars, lorries, buses — you name it they were burning it. It was total chaos. You wouldn't heard the gunshots and the bullets ricocheting off the wall so you would've... when they hit the wall they made a funny sound. Just used to go ping ping all the time, so then that's what you used to hear coming off the concrete walls".
Millar: Jean McConville was taken from her home just before Christmas in 1972 and never seen again.
Reporter: [Archive footage] "When you think you'll see your mummy again?"
McConville child: "Don't know.
Second McConville child: "Keep our fingers crossed and pray hard for her coming back".
Michael McConville: "One of the family members went to answer the door and these people just barged on past him and pushed their way in the house. They were wanting my mother. They were asking, where is your mother? And the next thing, they had grabbed my mother and we had all wrapped our arms and legs around my mother and wouldn't let her go anywhere. And we were all crying and screaming, so we were. And these people started calling us by name and tried to take the attention away from what was taking place. And they were telling us they'd only have our mother for a short period of time".
Millar: Of the dozen or so kidnappers, some wore masks, some didn't. Michael recognised them as neighbours but just in case he thought about telling the authorities, days later he got a message — stay quiet.
Michael McConville: "They pulled a hood across my head — must have been a sleeve of a woolly jumper because I could see right through it. The stuck a gun to my head and said they were doing to shoot me. They said to me if I told on any members of the IRA that they were going to shoot me or shoot one of my family members. A week later when one of the IRA men came to our door and handed in my mother's wedding rings and her purse, I was 11 years of age at the time and I realised that these people had murdered our mother".
Millar: "It's hard to imagine what they must have been thinking being driven down these lonely isolated roads, not a light to be seen. You don't know where you are, you don't know where you're going but you've got a pretty good idea you're not coming back".
Michael McConville: "It was just a wee small car park and when we first came here the guards had told us that our mother was buried in the third bay of the car park".
Millar: "They were that specific that they said three bays in, that's where you'd find your mother's body".
Michael McConville: "Yeah, and they had it all cordoned off".
Millar: Almost 30 years after Jean McConville was taken, the IRA revealed where she was buried and police started digging at this beach an hour or so from Belfast. Michael McConville and his brothers and sisters watched the search every day.
Michael McConville: "Fifty days is a long time to be sitting down on this beach waiting for your mother's body. Every time you see them digging it was giving you hope. Maybe the next digger load that they were taking out, your mother's body would be found - and it wasn't the case because our mother wasn't there".
Millar: The information from the IRA was wrong. In 2003 Jean McConville's remains were found at a nearby beach, not by the official search party, but by a passer-by. That meant her case wasn't covered by the Commission's provisions for indemnity.
"How do you feel when you come along here Michael?"
Michael McConville: "It's really hard coming to this spot. This is the place where our mother was murdered. These steps that we've just taken were probably the last steps that our mother took in her life coming down here to be murdered".
Voice of Brendan Hughes: "A special squad was brought into the operation then, called The Unknowns — and anyone that needed to be taken away, they normally done it. I had no control over this squad. Gerry had control over this particular squad".
Millar: When police obtained the Hughes interview and examined its contents, Gerry Adams, now a senior parliamentarian in the Irish Doyle was arrested and questioned. He vehemently denies all the claims. The case remains open and with Northern Ireland prosecutors.
"Since the peace process Sinn Fein has worked to become a respected political force, unshackling itself from its links to the IRA and the violence of the past, but these allegations against Gerry Adams, that he was involved in the murder of Jean McConville threaten those ambitions. We've tried to speak to the Sinn Fein leader and others from the party but it seems no one wants to address these issues. It would easier if they simply went away".
"He says the tapes are dubious, conducted by and involving people who had a grudge against him".
Anthony McIntyre: : "He is dubious, devious and holds a grudge against people who disagree with him".
Millar: "So you don't buy that argument of his at all?"
Anthony McIntyre: "Not any more than I bear the argument that he was never in the IRA".
Millar: Anthony McIntyre stands by the authenticity of the Belfast Project interviews. He's no fan of Gerry Adams but he doesn't want this candid account of IRA history turned into a brief for the prosecution.
"What should happen to those audio tapes?"
Anthony McIntyre: "They should be destroyed forthwith. The university should never participate in a collaborative exercise with law enforcement against its own researchers which is precisely what Boston College has done".
Millar: "The fact that there are so many bodies still missing, does that stop the peace process truly moving forward?"
Anthony McIntyre: "I don't think it stops the peace process moving on but what I think it does do is it leaves a peace process with a wound, an ugly scar that is a constant reminder of our past".
Millar: There's plenty of camaraderie at the Wave Trauma Centre which offers support to the families. Those who've found the remains of their loved ones are dedicated to helping those still looking.
Phil McKee lives in hope of finding the remains of her brother Kevin. Michael McConville believes one day authorities will identify those responsible for the murder of his mother. And Sean Megraw is optimistic a new search of the bog site will yield the body of this brother Brendan. Strange as it might seem, everybody here couldn't be happier knowing how much this new search will mean for the Megraw family.
Sandra Peake: [CEO, Wave Trauma Centre] "In Ireland there is a very strong culture and relation to people's right to burial. The right to be able to bury your loved ones, the right to have that ceremony, the right to wake them, the right to be able to have a place to mark in honour where they are and those families weren't given that and that's been a very heavy burden for them to carry all over the years".
Millar: All up the British and Irish Governments have spent six million pounds on the search for bodies. Since 2005 they've located just four. They're battling near impossible conditions but forensic science continues to improve and so far there's no limit on the resolve to find The Disappeared and close the door on a dark chapter of Ireland's past. But search leaders have to be realistic.
"So when does the job finish as far as you're concerned?"
Geoff Knupfer: "Well the job would finish when we've received every body and returned them to their families but that, I think that's probably a bit of a tall order because some I fear, some of these guys are not going to be found".
Millar: The Megraw's have dealt with a lot. The family headstone is already engraved with Brendan's name, all that's missing is his body. Being told there is no hope is something they don't want to face.
Sean Megraw: "If they walked away and said we're never going back, that would be a hard day. A very hard day to take".
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Remains believed to be those of newly-wed Brendan Megraw, from Twinbrook,
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