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Showing posts with label Boston College Subpoena. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Boston College Subpoena. Show all posts
Des Dalton doesn't think much of recent commentary on an award winning book on the Northern conflict. 

Danny Morrison recently used his blog to platform a review by his “friend” Irish - American writer Timothy O’Grady of Patrick Radden Keefe’s book Say Nothing. The book review was merely a front to launch yet another attack on Dr Anthony McIntyre.

The perverse obsession that senior and former senior members of Provisional Sinn Féin have with Anthony McIntyre is almost inexplicable. Inexplicable when one considers that since at least 1986 there have been a raft of former senior members of the Provisional Movement who have been willing to put their head above the parapet and challenge the various political somersaults performed by what, for the sake of convenience, I will call the Gerry Adams leadership.

Many of these people were serious players within the Republican Movement at both political and military level, in some cases both. Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, Dolours Price, Brendan Hughes, Richard O’Rawe, Tommy McKearney etc. Consequently, what they had to say carried considerable weight. While to a greater or lesser extent many of these people faced a backlash from the Adams camp – one has only to read Richard O’Rawe’s book Afterlives to get a glimpse of the high personal price he paid for exposing the truth of the 1981 hunger strikes – none have faced the same level of sustained attack, physical threat, and character assassination as that endured by Anthony McIntyre over the course of two decades. 

I say it is almost inexplicable because there is an obvious reason that McIntyre has been the primary target of their malevolent spleen for so long. It is that he has consistently challenged Provisional Sinn Féin’s historical narrative of the 1969 to 1997 war. A narrative carefully constructed over many years by Adams and his close acolytes. Not only did he challenge that narrative but crucially he set out to ensure that the voices of those republican activists who had fought the war would have their narrative preserved and placed on the historical record through his work on the Boston College Project.

The story of the conflict as told by the veterans interviewed by Anthony McIntyre challenged the narrative advanced by Gerry Adams and those close to him. For Provisional Sinn Féin this was the ultimate heresy. And Anthony McIntyre’s punishment for committing this mortal sin was to have calumny cast on his good name, his professional integrity impugned, to be cast into the outer darkness. Thus, all who took it upon themselves to question the historical orthodoxy handed down by the “Great Leader” would be duly warned as to the fate that awaited them.

Danny Morrison introduces the book review by launching a disingenuous attack on the integrity of Anthony McIntyre and the other researchers involved in the Boston College Project. Danny Morrison knows only too well that nobody was “encouraged to incriminate themselves” by taking part in the collection of what was a legitimate and academically sound attempt to gather an oral history of the 1969-97 conflict. If the architects and researchers of the Boston College interviews are guilty of anything it is that they accepted in good faith the narrative peddled by Danny Morrison’s erstwhile political masters that “the war was over” and there was now a new political dispensation for all, including former combatants.

Unfortunately, the British Government had other ideas. Their war certainly was not over as they have shown with their relentless pursuit of veteran republican activists over the intervening years. The much-lauded release of prisoners was of course under licence, licences which could be revoked at the pleasure of the British “Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.” For those serving life sentences their release remains on permanent license. The message to the troops was clear:

Stick to the political programme of Adams and his “Kitchen Cabinet” and you will not be touched, we may even get you a job. Step outside and deign to question the “tablets of stone” or “Good Friday Agreement”, to stick with the biblical and religious imagery so beloved of the “peace processors”, then you would find yourself out in the cold. Or in some cases back behind bars. 

Unlike the release of prisoners following previous IRA campaigns since 1921, this one had strings attached. All with the connivance of those who claimed to be the leaders of republicanism. Unlike other theatres of conflict such as South Africa where similar projects have been launched to collect the testimony of former combatants, here the fundamental causes of the conflict have not been resolved.

Timothy O’Grady for whatever reason takes it upon himself, under the guise of a book review, to launch what is but the latest in a long line of such attacks on Anthony McIntyre and the Boston College Project. Not for the first time the basis of this latest attack is both spurious and laced with a particularly nasty and snide attempt to smear Anthony McIntyre. He has two primary criticisms of the project, the first of which is that the interviewees were chosen solely because of their opposition to the so-called ‘Peace Process.’

Unlike Timothy O’Grady I will not attempt to second guess the criteria used to select either Republican or Loyalist interviewees. What I will say is that as a criticism it does not stack up. If indeed Anthony McIntyre and the other researchers did select Republican interviewees on that basis it does not delegitimise the integrity of the project. In the Post-Civil War period, the nascent Free State were determined to not only remove Republicans from all aspects of public life, but also to erase their narrative from any account of the 1916-23 period. In the 1930s and ‘40s Ernie O’Malley sought to counter this by conducting interviews with IRA veterans from across Ireland, the vast majority of whom opposed the 1921 Treaty. Similarly, in the immediate aftermath of the 1998 Belfast Agreement the voices of those republicans opposed to it were marginalised. The likelihood is that their narrative would be similarly ignored or at best given token representation when it came to the recording of the post-1969 conflict. 

The winners after all get to write the history. If like Ernie O’Malley, Anthony McIntyre and his colleagues sought to ensure that these veterans, who represented an authentic traditional Irish Republican viewpoint, would have their voices preserved on the historical record, then that was a perfectly legitimate criteria to use in the selection of interviewees. Rather than being subjects of attack and misrepresentation, he and his colleagues should be lauded for their efforts.

Such conflicts over historical narrative and whose story gets told are not unique to Ireland. In The aftermath of the World War II the French Government established two committees, later merged in 1952 to form The Committee on the History of the Second Word War (Comité d’histoire de la deuxième guerre mondiale; CH2GM), which between 1945 and 1947 collected over 2,000 testimonies of French Resistance veterans. Even in a context where the common enemy had been decisively defeated and French sovereignty fully restored there was still conflict about contesting narratives of the resistance. Veterans of the Communist Resistance protested that their accounts were being marginalised and only given token recognition in the official Gaullist account of the war.

Timothy O’Grady’s second main criticism turns on the fact that no British soldiers or members of the RUC were interviewed. From this he deduces that the entire project presents the conflict as one motivated by sectarianism rather than a war of national liberation. He presents no evidence to back up such a sweeping judgement. Not content with smearing the project and the content of the interviews with the taint of sectarianism he makes a snide attempt to lay the same charge at Anthony McIntyre’s door. Character assassination and smear is a long-standing weapon of choice for Provisional Sinn Féin when dealing with people who challenge them. Frankly, it is sad to see Timothy O’Grady, whose previous work, notably Curious Journey (a series of interviews with veterans of the 1916-23) I would have admired, tarnish his reputation by employing such base methods rather than engaging in robust and honest critical analysis.

Provisional Sinn Féin is grappling with its own contradictions, which gives the battle over memory and whose story gets to be told an added potency. On the one hand it wants to hold on to its traditional Republican base as well denying legitimacy to those Republicans who do not support them. This involves paying lip service to their Republican past, doing the rounds of commemorations with the customary speeches to the faithful. But here is the crux. These events can often cause offence to other constituencies that they are trying to cultivate, including actual and potential partners in government, such as the DUP in the Six Counties and Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in the 26 Counties. As they attempt to walk this tightrope a pattern has emerged. Firstly, a relatively low profile PSF public representative issues a seemingly hard-line Republican statement or tweet linking their party with a historical revolutionary event such as the Kilmichael ambush. This pleases the base but also invites a backlash from the mainstream media and the wider political establishment on both sides of the border. There then follows a torrent of condemnation of the said statement. Soon after a grovelling apology and retraction of the offending statement is made by the suitably chastised PSF representative.

Speaking out of both sides of their mouths is of course a skill they long ago perfected but it is becoming an increasingly more difficult trick for them to pull off. Their strength has always been that they have managed to fool enough people into believing that they are anti-establishment when in fact they are an integral part of the establishment north and south. An example of this sleight of hand was seen in the fallout from the PSNI attack on those gathered to remember victims of the 1992 loyalist attack on Sean Graham’s Book makers on the Ormeau Road. Provisional Sinn Féin rushed to the media to voice their protestations about the actions of the PSNI. They behaved as if they were a party of protest representing the oppressed minority when in fact they sit on the policing boards and are part of the Stormont Executive which sets policing policy.

History may not repeat itself but can often rhyme. Just prior to coming to power in the Free State in 1932 Fianna Fáil faced a similar dilemma. How to retain a republican base while preparing themselves for government. This too involved control of the narrative and ownership of the revolutionary 1916-23 period. Like Provisional Sinn Féin today, this was to confirm their republican credentials while also denying legitimacy to any challengers. Fianna Fáil kept an iron like grip on the commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the 1916 Rising in 1966. Expect Provisional Sinn Féin to do likewise with this year’s 40th Anniversary of the 1981 Hunger Strikes, as seminal an event in their carefully crafted historical narrative as 1916 was to Fianna Fáil’s foundation myth.

Those who know Anthony McIntyre know that the recurring sniping and attacks do not worry him in the slightest and nor should they. He is somebody who is highly regarded by leading academics and journalists, evidenced by the fact so many of them were willing to sign a public letter in his defence at the height of the whole Boston College Tapes debacle. Indeed, Dr Anthony McIntyre could by now have easily occupied a lucrative academic post if he had so chosen. Instead, he turned his back on academia such was his anger at Boston College’s failure to honour its promise to secure the tapes.

Anthony McIntyre’s crime is that he declared that the Emperor has no clothes and sought to give a voice to those who refused to swallow the big lie.  

⏭Des Dalton is a long time republican activist.

Nailing The Big Lie ➖ The Fight For Republican Memory

In Left From The West Alfie Gallagher interviews Anthony McIntyre about the Boston College Subpoena and the collapse of the British police case against Ivor Bell. 

Following the acquittal of Ivor Bell, I conducted this extensive interview with Anthony McIntyre exploring the trial, the judgment and the ongoing legal battle to prevent further PSNI access to the Boston College Belfast Project

Anthony McIntyre
Alfie Gallagher: When I first interviewed you about the Boston College Belfast Project oral history archive over five years ago, the PSNI had gained access to the archive and arrested Gerry Adams in connection with the murder of Jean McConville. Though Adams was released without charge, Ivor Bell faced prosecution for aiding and abetting her murder.

Having been deemed unfit to stand trial, Bell was eventually found not guilty in a non-criminal trial of facts in Belfast on 17 October 2019 after the judge in the case ruled that the tapes from the Boston College archive were "unreliable" and therefore legally inadmissible. How significant, in your view, is this verdict? What are its implications for you and the other interviewees?

Anthony McIntyre: Firstly, I very much welcome the acquittal of Bell. As I said to you in the previous interview, “I would sincerely hope my research would be thrown out in court for the very reason that it was never gathered for court.”

Implications? Impossible to tell. All else being equal, given the grounds cited by the judge for his ruling, the chances of any successful prosecution must be limited. Everybody, loyalists as well, were given the exact same assurances on confidentiality. But we are talking about the PSNI here and the large swathe of DUP influence that holds sway within it. A force determined to cover up the past yet pretending to address it through prosecutions. It is a sleight of hand.

Alfie Gallagher: Justice John O'Hara acquitted Ivor Bell, but he was withering in his criticism of the oral history project in general and your own research methods in particular. On the second page of his judgement, O'Hara highlights the discrepancy between the absolute guarantee of confidentiality in the interviewee's donation agreement and the much more qualified language of Project Director Ed Moloney's contract, which promises to protect an interviewee's tapes only "to the extent American law allows". The judge argues that this "false guarantee" enabled you to "improperly and dishonestly" induce "unreliable" confessions from the people you interviewed.

How do you respond to this accusation of dishonesty? How do you explain the discrepancy between the two contracts?

Anthony McIntyre: A read of Ed Moloney’s contract reveals that the reference “to the extent American law allows” failed to make explicit that this was a reference to the confidentiality aspect of the project, referring in more general terms to conditions. Nor did it say “only” to that extent. Had it done so this would have raised eyebrows. There were discussions with BC [Boston College] around Brendan Hughes’s added conditions and if I recall properly BC’s response was that while US law allowed the College copyright, he was not prevented from publishing his account independent of BC.

Moreover, as the donor contract was predicated on Ed Moloney’s contract, it followed that whatever was contained within it had to be permissible “to the extent American law allows"; otherwise to provide a contract not permissible “to the extent American law allows" would have been in clear breach of what was permissible. As it turned out, US law did not enable the donor contract but in fact restricted it and this should have been spelt out clearly by Boston College to all. The issue of confidentiality delayed the project for eight months. I had made it clear from the get-go that without unlimited confidentiality, it would not happen.

This is one of the problems with parsing the documents after the event when the mind is concentrated like never before. It opens a whole new raft of interpretations which we should have been more panoramic about back then. We live and learn if we manage to survive the experience.

Running parallel with the contracts were the continuous assurances from BC about the inviolable nature of the guarantees. I was at a meeting with BC accompanied by the person researching the loyalists and a difference of opinion arose. The BC professor was suggesting that the length of the embargo could be shortened to allow for greater access by researchers. When the loyalist researcher objected strongly that such a proposal encroached on the guarantee of absolute confidentiality he was told very firmly that the guarantee was “ironclad”. Ed Moloney had earlier insisted that the librarian get the donor contract approved by the BC lawyers. The librarian told Moloney he would do that and later confirmed that he had done so. It subsequently transpired through the Chronicle of Higher Education that he had not in fact gone to the lawyers. This is now all a matter of record.

I think Justice O’Hara has a point when he refers to the material being dishonestly induced. What he should have done was state where responsibility for the dishonesty lay. It certainly did not lie with me as I gave my own interviews as part of the project under the same conditions as every other participant. Which means my own too were dishonestly induced as I was operating under the same false guarantee and it was not dishonesty on the part of the person who interviewed me. I would have been off my rocker to have done interviews knowing that they were not fully protected by American law. The dishonesty was institutional.

I think we can get a measure of the dishonesty employed by BC who, once it had all gone belly-up opted to blame the research team for giving the guarantees, but it was unable to sustain that falsehood the more journalists delved into it. I was even accused in the Irish Times by BC of being responsible for the judicial decision to hand over all the republican interviews on the grounds that I had refused to sift through them for the purposes of assisting the judge in his deliberations on what was relevant to the investigation. There was never a chance of my assisting a police investigation. I would face prison first. BC was not prepared to do likewise. It wound up the clock and was not there when it struck.

In all of this, I remember being chilled by the conversation I had with the librarian immediately after the first subpoena was issued. He told me that while he was supportive, the attitude among many of the leading lights at the college was that it should not fight the subpoenas as the interviewees “were all terrorists.”

Alfie Gallagher: According to the investigation by the Chronicle of Higher Education which you mention above, email exchanges between Ed Moloney and Boston College librarian Robert O’Neill confirm that O’Neill himself drafted the interviewee donor agreement and that he promised Moloney he would run it by university counsel. He subsequently admitted that he never did so.

This is astonishingly negligent and dishonest. But surely it was careless of Ed Moloney to rely on Robert O'Neill's verbal assurances rather than written legal advice? You've said above that the entire project was delayed for eight months because of the issue of confidentiality. What precisely was the problem? How could it possibly have been resolved to your satisfaction other than by written proof that legal advice was sought?

Anthony McIntyre: It was wider than Moloney. I was always guided by the view that the fewer who knew the better, constantly probing BC on the tightness of the project. It was not prosecutions I was concerned about as I had accepted the assurances from BC about the nature of the guarantee. I was cautious in case people in Boston either genuinely sympathetic to Sinn Fein or taken in by it, discovered what was going on and blew it wide open. So, I guess I was a constant source of pressure to keep the circle small and tight. Yet none of that should have impacted on diligently legally anchoring the project.

Due diligence missed a step because of the institution we were engaged with, its integrity, history, involvement in the peace process, its law faculty, its influence and range of contacts. As the Loyalist researcher said, he felt BC was a truly serious player, it had to know what it was about, it was hardly going to get something so badly wrong, there was never an inkling of suspicion that it might make such a bad call. He was also in a meeting that I did not attend with the librarian where he was told that the whole venture was legally protected, that the police could not even get a “sneak-peek” never mind more serious access. He will confirm all of that for you. Consequently, we ended up scorched but have to take a hit for it.

The lengthy delay occurred after a meeting with the BC Librarian around June 2000. He didn’t have the confidence to give the assurances that were required. He was speculative rather than firm. He did say that the college would not accept anything into its vaults if there was any possibility of “legal repercussions.” That was it as far as I was concerned – a non-starter. Then after a lot of back and forth between him and Ed Moloney, the assurance was given. We could and should have asked for that specifically in writing but even had it been in writing we would still have been stung. The donor agreement seemed to be the “in writing” that was required and ultimately that turned out as not worth the paper it was written on.

At this time the mood music about the past was nothing like it is today. It had not become so weaponised to borrow an in-vogue term. Ultimately, I think BC were of the view that the British were not going to be as vindictive as they turned out to be, and made calculations based on that assessment rather than on what was legally doable. But even here, when the moment of reckoning came, BC had power and influence which it desisted from using, opting instead to seek judicial redress, and then hide behind the ruling of the courts and loudly proclaim, “We did all we could. We fought and we lost. Too bad. Get on with it and have a nice day. By the way, we will not foot any legal bills for people hauled before the courts.”

I suppose that is one commitment it did stick to. BC have not contributed one cent to the legal battle waged by the researchers against the PSNI raid on the archive, nor has it provided one cent to the legal defence of those who ended up in court as a result of the tapes. BC abandoned everyone.

As for Moloney’s judgement, unlike me, he had been through a serious source protection case in Belfast around the Pat Finucane case. That made him cautious, not wanting to rush his fences on the project. His assessment of what the librarian conveyed to him was hardly an abandonment of his instinct, but was based on a wide range of factors probably similar to those outlined by the loyalist researcher and views held by myself. As it turned out he was mistaken, but no more than me. In his view everything was set in stone.

When you think of the publication of Voices From The Grave, if BC had the slightest doubt about the guarantees being absolute, that was the point where they should have been brandishing the halt sign. Instead, they were writing forwards for the book. Why did they allow the publication to go ahead and speak publicly about the existence of the archive if they knew it was not resistant to a court order?

Moreover – and this is easily forgotten over the course of time and the evolution of the blame game – Moloney made two crucial interventions early on which prevented the entire archive falling into the hands of the PSNI. The first was to alert the New York Times to the existence of the subpoena at a moment when BC was trying to smother any suggestion of going to the media. That prevented BC getting its shafting act together. It was forced into putting up a fight of sorts. Sham as it was, the College could no longer hand the archive over and be done with as now we suspect was its preferred option. He then moved to get independent legal counsel for both of us. That ensured we were not chained below deck on the BC ship once the captain and his crew decided to scuttle the vessel and jump to safety, abandoning all passengers on the grounds that “sure they are all terrorists anyway.” That allowed a serious campaign, for the most part coordinated by my wife, to get into gear.

Looking back through a prism of what has occurred since the project began and knowing what I now do, were I to do it again, I would want it all done very differently. Even the donor contract would no longer suffice for me. I would insist on it being much more specific, substantively more robust. So now we sit holding the black swan, best defined in a Mick Herron novel as “a totally unexpected event with a big impact. But one that seems predictable afterwards, with the benefit of hindsight.”

Alfie Gallagher: Long-standing critics of the Belfast Project like Danny Morrison and Allison Morris would probably say that you and Ed Moloney were blinded to such dangers by an overarching desire to damage the reputation of Gerry Adams. Justice John O'Hara would seem to agree with them. In his judgment, O'Hara says that the tapes in the Bell case demonstrate that you had "a clear bias" against Adams and that you were "out to get" him. Would you accept that this judgment is a vindication for your critics? Does it not irreparably damage the credibility of the project?

Anthony McIntyre: They would wouldn’t they, to borrow a well-worn phrase. I haven’t read a thing by Allison in yonks. The last time she came up was when one of the families from the Shankill bombing accused her of lying in relation to the Castlereagh material. And I only ever read Danny to find out what he is lying about. I suppose both have a dog in the fight. Almost everybody accepts that Allison handed her Dolours Price material to the Sunday Life despite her denials. That helped start the Boston College subpoena although that was not her intention. I was pretty philosophical about her doing what she did in spite of the problems it caused. She has as much right to interview Dolours as anybody else. My issue with her was the extent she went to cover up her action through frivolous complaints in the NUJ and smearing. It all came to nought.

Morrison was left badly exposed as a result of the oral history for his role in causing the deaths of six hunger strikers, hence his visceral hatred of it and those associated with it. And I think ultimately, he had a much more nefarious role than Morris because of who, in my view, he has been working for.

Justice O’Hara’s claims about bias failed to disconcert me in the slightest. I have a bias towards a belief that Adams was a key IRA strategist, towards a belief that he was the architect of the Disappeared, towards a belief that he served as the IRA chief of staff, a bias towards a view that he served on the IRA’s army council. I would be surprised if Justice O’Hara failed to share that bias. He would need to be chronically stupid not to. Did that bias towards those views lead me to ask any question designed to prompt a dishonest response? Not the slightest shred of evidence that it did. So was my probing on Adams out to get him or to get the truth about him?

It won’t damage the credibility of the project because far too many people are interested in the contents of the tapes, the general public, academics and journalists. The reading I am getting is that while there were plenty of lies told at the Bell trial about Gerry Adams, they were all told by Gerry Adams who gave evidence of never having been in the IRA plus the usual crap he spews.

An additional factor is that Interviewee Z also wrote into the conditions of his contract, which it is suggested BC managed to lose, that his interviews were not to be released until 30 years after both he and his partner had died. That was hardly the action of a person or project out to sabotage the political career of Gerry Adams.

Alfie Gallagher: The tapes at the centre of the Bell trial have not yet been made public, but Justice O'Hara argues that they "clearly show" you leading Ivor Bell to "speak against" Gerry Adams and to corroborate the claim that Adams ordered the disappearance of Jean McConville. O'Hara's view is supported by Gerry Moriarty's detailed report on the trial in the Irish Times and the testimony of Professor Kevin O'Neill. So when did you first become aware of Gerry Adams's alleged involvement in Jean McConville's murder? Were you not leading Ivor Bell to confirm this allegation in these tapes?

Anthony McIntyre: I have at no time said I interviewed Ivor Bell. Nor has he said he was interviewed by me. Interviewee Z has never given me permission to reveal his identity, so I will address the question in terms of Z.

There was nothing about either Kevin O’Neill’s testimony or Gerry Moriarty’s reporting that I found objectionable. Would I have preferred they said something different? Of course, but it is not for me to impose my preferences on them nor for them to be guided by how I might view matters. Kevin O’Neill’s testimony proved crucial to the verdict. I welcome the verdict, much as I would welcome a similar verdict if reached in the Winston Rea case. Kevin O’Neill gave what I believe was his genuinely held appraisal of the interview technique. Now, I can counter it with a defence of my own technique, rightly described by Ed Moloney as unconventional. But Kevin O’Neill was not in court to make an argument on my behalf. He was there to give his view as a competent historian on what he listened to on tape. And he reached conclusions that it was not the way to do oral history. I agree it was not the way to do conventional oral history.

At the heart of Kevin O’Neill’s argument was his contention that my questions were leading. He has previously made the same observation. I’ll cite from my own contribution to an interview with Marian Finucane in 2014:

Ed Moloney would then come back and he might be critical, he might say: you didn't emphasise this or you've asked a leading question. And on occasion Ed did criticise me for asking leading questions and he said look, don't be asking leading questions. And others had felt I asked leading questions … But I mean my own view of an interview is: there's no purpose in asking a question that doesn't lead to something. Why bother?

People will have to make up their own minds about the extent, if any, to which questions shaped answers. Z was free to answer whatever way he chose. Justice O’Hara at no point claimed Z was malleable and like putty in my hands. I suppose from my point of view I employed a probing technique designed to unlock knowledge. Was it designed to produce accounts that were not true? No. Did it challenge anything that seemed to be inaccurate? Yes.

As for first time I learned of the allegations against Adams, at this point it is impossible to say. It was a long time ago. What I can do is cite the record: in the Sunday Tribune in 1999, I wrote a piece stating that the policy of disappearing people was initiated by the post Twomey leadership in 1972. Adams was the Belfast commander immediately after Twomey.

Alfie Gallagher: But Kevin O'Neill did not merely testify that your questions were leading. He said that the tapes that were played during the Bell trial were "much more compromised" than the archive material he reviewed in 2002. In Gerry Moriarty's trial report, O'Neill says that one of the "serious concerns" he has about these tapes is that "there was preparation by McIntyre of Bell off tape". Presumably O'Neill is referring to an off-tape conversation between you and interviewee Z, before which Z is unsure whether Gerry Adams ordered the disappearance of Jean McConville but after which Z has "come to the conclusion that Gerry [Adams] did give the order to disappear her”. In retrospect, do you not think this was inappropriate? Isn't it possible that because of your bias against Gerry Adams, you were looking exclusively for answers that confirmed your hostile view of him whilst ignoring evidence to the contrary?

Anthony McIntyre: Kevin O’Neill would have to detail exactly what he meant by that. You should talk to him. All interviewees were talked to off the tape. I would always cover the ground with them in respect of the areas to be covered and the no-go areas. There is a demonstrable gulf between preparing and prompting. If it was a mere question of seeking interviewees who would confirm a hostile view of Adams and ignoring evidence to the contrary, the advice I gave to Dolours Price – which ultimately led to her not talking about the McConville incident – would not have been proffered. I at no time interviewed anybody, either as part of the BC project or separate from it who told me that Gerry Adams was never in the IRA. If an interviewee was to tell me that in May 72 Gerry Adams killed two women in an explosion, I would have immediately contested this by pointing out on tape that Adams could not have done so as he was in prison at the time.

It is through the recorded interviews that I reveal the existence of a discussion off tape. That is laid out there for the audience to weigh up when they are making a judgement on the authenticity of everything that is said. I could have chosen to conceal that. Revealing not concealing was the purpose of the project.

My modus operandi is only inappropriate if I prompt an interviewee to make an allegation which I know to be untrue. As an evidence gathering exercise, it is all inappropriate, but the people culpable of impropriety here are those who seek to use it as evidence, not those who gathered it as something else.

Would I adopt the same approach if I was to interview people tomorrow? Yes.

Alfie Gallagher: I'm not aware of anyone – outside of Sinn Féin at least – who claims to believe Gerry Adams's denials of IRA membership. Indeed, I'd say most people find a lot of the allegations made against Adams in the Boston tapes to be credible. But however many skeletons there might be in his closet, most people credit Gerry Adams for ending the IRA's armed struggle and steering the Republican Movement into constitutional politics. Vincent Browne gives a succinct expression of this view in his documentary about Adams: "Without him, the atrocities almost certainly would have happened anyway, but without him, peace wouldn’t have happened when it did.”

Is it not the case that if you and other critics of Gerry Adams had won the debate within the Republican Movement in the mid-90s, then the IRA's armed campaign would have lasted a lot longer? Wasn't the alternative to Gerry's jaw-jaw just dissident war-war?

Anthony McIntyre: I have never bought into the Vincent Browne perspective that peace only came about because of Adams. It can be argued that in order to make peace an essential component of his political career the IRA’s war was extended in time well beyond what was necessary. If you consider how little was really achieved between 1974 and 1998 it makes a mockery of the war. Therefore we have so much Sinn Fein revisionism today. I think had the debate been won by other critics, there would have been a different type of peace, one fuelled by the needs of the most disadvantaged and not shaped by the exigencies of political careers. I feel the odyssey of Adams needs viewed as a full reel and not as a still shot of a moment in time when he is brandishing a dove. The title of the Davenport-Sharrock book Man Of War, Man of Peace? is illustrative of the point I make. What use is a history of George Best where it does not address his role in Manchester United?

Alfie Gallagher: But isn't it true that Adams's critics within the Republican Movement in the early 90s were in favour of continuing the armed struggle? Isn't that one of the main reasons why the first ceasefire collapsed?

Anthony McIntyre: Many of them were, the majority I would safely guess. Were they indifferent to reasoned argument or were they resentful of Adams trying to stroke them? I think the way he conducted business, his endless deception, the pursuit of his own career to the detriment of all else, was arguably a rallying point for much of the opposition. An argument not given enough credence is that when Adams abandoned it, the armed struggle collapsed. The inference to be drawn is that it only carried on as long as it did because his input was essential: that’s another reason I don’t buy into the rather benign interpretation offered by Vincent.

Alfie Gallagher: Returning to Bell trial, I think the glaring flaw in Justice John O'Hara's written judgment is his claim that you deliberately gave a false guarantee of anonymity to your interviewees. As you said above, you were given the same false guarantee by Boston College yourself when you were interviewed for the Belfast Project. Indeed, the PSNI has spent the last three years fighting for legal access to your interviews in an attempt to prosecute you. Where does your case currently stand? Why do you think the PSNI is devoting so much time and resources to access the Boston College tapes when their legal admissibility was always in serious doubt?

Anthony McIntyre: Justice O’Hara was patently wrong, but it is the type of error that has been so well cancelled out by events and documentation, that it is no longer necessary to address it. The PSNI reflects the community it hails from. A more accurate name for it would have been the DUPSNI. The same deep-rooted strain of antipathy towards republicanism that permeates the DUP is manifested in the PSNI. Given the polarised nature of Northern society, it would be strange if it were any other way. And there is no one there to put manners on the PSNI because it has put manners on Sinn Fein.

The PSNI went after the BC tapes with a gusto never on display when in supposed pursuit of police and troop transgression. The instinct there is to cover up, make sure evidence stays beyond the reach of lawyers acting on behalf of the families of those killed by state actors. For all the talk about legacy they have never once investigated police torture or prison staff violence despite it being as systemic as clerical abuse. My own case has moved from the Divisional Court in Belfast to the Supreme Court in London and back to Belfast where it is currently seeking to go before the Appeal Court there. The PSNI motive is most likely to be found in a blend of vindictiveness and fishing. The courts in the North are so timid and on message that the PSNI would be foolish not to try it on with the judges. There is a good reason for the quip about the judiciary in the North – “If you want justice go to a brothel; if you want screwed go to a court.”

The fabricated investigation – there was no investigation – the PSNI concocted one as an excuse, much as they sought to bribe a son of Jean McConville in a bid to create a pretext for an investigation and a bid to plunder a history archive. The PSNI have been lying through their teeth since the get go. In my own case, they have been lying on oath, making up armed robberies and concocting prison sentences that demonstrably never happened, fabricating narratives about bomb attacks. There is also the possibility that they want to access as much as they can in a bid to measure what damage if any has been done to the agents they were running. Before they issued a subpoena, they, in my view, had one of their agents make a written approach to BC seeking access to the archive. When it was rebuffed, the subpoena was resorted to.

The PSNI might speak to me at some point in the future but I will not be speaking to them. Not a word.

Alfie Gallagher: Finally, Anthony, what are your hopes for the future of the archive in Boston College and its historical legacy?

Anthony McIntyre: I have few hopes for the archive. I regard it as an opportunity lost. Consider the chill effect that has been in place since the first PSNI sabotage, which has inhibited researchers reaching out and the researched opening up. Couple this to a lot of people – who could have made a major contribution to the type of truth recovery it rendered possible – having died during that chill season. The aggregated effect is a considerable swathe of the tillable history terrain being lost to us forever. Those knowledgeable but now silent voices will never speak again.

When I listen to some of the public broadcast discussion, particularly around the Patrick Radden Keefe book Say Nothing, it makes me think that people like Dolours Price and Brendan Hughes have left a rich mine for future students to excavate. Also, that their humanity has been crystallised and preserved in a manner robust enough to resist the sustained erosion of a revisionism which tries to rewrite the past with a pen filled with ink from the present. Brendan and Dolours brought to the fore a more subterranean narrative that ruptured the self-serving official mulch of those who would rather it had never seen the light of day. Their past is not a mere cog in somebody else’s wheel. It has an autonomous force of its own.

⏭ Alfie Gallagher is a Sligo based blogger.

The Boston Tapes Revisited: An Interview With Anthony McIntyre

Donald M. Beaudette & Laura Weinstein write for The Washington Post on the recent Trial Of Facts in Belfast. 

In a recent decision, a court in Northern Ireland ruled that evidence from an oral history project could not be considered in a 1972 murder case, clearing 82-year-old Ivor Bell of soliciting the killing of Jean McConville. Evidence from the Belfast Project, an oral history of Northern Ireland’s Troubles, indicated Bell and other members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) kidnapped and murdered McConville because they incorrectly believed she had provided information to the British Army about IRA activity in Belfast. This evidence played an important role in Bell’s indictment and trial in the McConville case.

The body of the widowed mother of 10 was not uncovered until three decades later, and her surviving children continue to wait for justice. Bell will not face punishment for his alleged role in this crime, however.

This ordeal strained the relationship between legal justice and historical truth. While legal decisions and records inform history, historians also draw on other types of records — including oral histories — to bring forward the voices of the weak or underrepresented. The courts evaluate evidence differently, weighing only information and testimony that conforms to strict legal standards that are designed to protect the rights of accused people, not to allow the consideration of all available sources. Integrity in the historical process, however, requires the consideration of every piece of evidence.

Bell was implicated in McConville’s murder after the publication of Ed Moloney’s “Voices From the Grave: Two Men’s War in Ireland” in 2010. Moloney’s work drew on the Belfast Project, an oral history project that aimed to collect first hand accounts from people who had participated in paramilitary activity on both sides of the conflict in Northern Ireland. “The Troubles” refers to the period from 1969 to 1998, during which the IRA used violence in an attempt to force the British government off the island of Ireland. At the same time, loyalist paramilitaries deployed their own acts of terrorism in defense of Northern Ireland’s union with Britain, and atrocities were also committed by the British security forces. During that period, more than 3,500 people died.

Moloney and Anthony McIntyre, a former IRA member who went on to earn a PhD in history from Queen’s University in Belfast, took the lead in conducting the interviews beginning in 2001. They promised interviewees that their recorded statements, which are kept in the Boston College archives in Massachusetts, would remain confidential until their death.

However, as part of the ongoing inquiry into the murder of McConville, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) sought cooperation from the U.S. Department of Justice to obtain the recorded interviews of a number of former IRA members. Their pursuit of these accounts opened the doors for the PSNI to also demand access to other records of Belfast Project interviewees who were still living, launching a legal battle that played out in U.S. court. McIntyre and Moloney claimed their interviewees had confidentiality and therefore oral history records could not be used as evidence. But the American courts decided such promises of confidentiality were legally dubious and could not be upheld.

So, in 2014, armed with evidence from the oral history tapes, prosecutors charged Bell, a longtime member of the IRA, with abetting the murder of McConville. “Interviewee Z,” who is widely believed to be Bell, claimed that in late 1972, he, Gerry Adams and a third IRA member decided McConville should be killed for being an informant.

The inclusion of Adams in this account made the case even more controversial. Adams was the president of Sinn Fein, the Irish republican political party, and is remembered by his supporters as the hero of the peace process that led to the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement of 1998, bringing the violence of the Troubles to a close. But he was allegedly also a leading member of the IRA’s governing Army Council. Adams has denied this accusation and any role in the death of McConville or other cases, emphasizing his role as a statesman of Irish politics, rather than his alleged actions as an IRA terrorist.

When Adams was called to testify in the Bell trial, he again denied the accusations. After all, admitting to an IRA leadership role would undermine his carefully crafted legacy as a peacemaker. Adams criticized Moloney and McIntyre, charging the Belfast Project lacked “real scholarly, historical process of evaluating and bringing forward facts about Irish history.” He accused McIntyre of asking “leading questions” and of being motivated by his “hostility” to the peace process and to Adams himself.

The legal debates about the oral history project came to an abrupt close on Oct. 17, when Bell was cleared of charges and Irish Justice John O’Hara ruled the statements recorded on the tapes were not admissible as evidence. But O’Hara also questioned the motivations and scholarly value of the oral history project, raising concern about the reliability of Z’s statements because the “person interviewing him [McIntyre] had a clear bias” and was “out to get” Adams and others.

By adopting the view that the Belfast Project was illegitimate, the judge implicitly endorsed the now dominant, but empirically dubious, narrative of the Troubles that Adams was the chief architect of the peace process. Indeed, this interpretation blatantly ignores the central roles played by John Hume and David Trimble, who were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for brokering the Good Friday Agreement.

By casting doubt on the truthfulness of Z’s interview, and thus of all of the interviews in the Belfast Project, the judge dismissed dissenting voices and perspectives, writing them out of the official narrative. By discrediting the project, the judge affirmed one perspective on the collective memory of this era.

Though in court, lawyers, judges and juries assess the guilt of alleged offenders according to well-honed rules of evidence and interpretations of the law, assessing historical truth is more complex.

Scholars are trained to read and interpret primary sources, including eyewitness recollections recorded in interviews, not according to evidentiary rules but in the broader context of sources and information that are available. Dissenting voices, even those who harbor animosity toward some of the people about whom they speak, must be heard so the truth of their stories can be weighed and evaluated against other evidence.

But O’Hara’s decision dismissing the viability of the Belfast Project will make oral histories of this pivotal 30-year period in Northern Ireland harder to procure, and this is a tragic loss for scholars and for the cause of truth itself.

Yet his decision does spotlight areas in which scholars must do better in the future: providing clarity and transparency about the ethical and legal implications of their work, and what promises they can and cannot make to people whose stories they collect in oral history projects. However, scholars also can and must write and speak more broadly about how historical interpretation works, so citizens are better equipped to understand that the dominant interpretation of history is not the only one, nor is it necessarily the correct one.

⏭ Donald M. Beaudette is an assistant professor of political science at Oxford College of Emory University. He is currently writing a book on punishment attacks and policing during Northern Ireland’s Troubles

⏭ Laura Weinstein is an independent scholar and analyst of Irish politics. She is currently researching a book on racism and far-right nationalism in Ireland.

Why A 1972 Northern Ireland Murder Matters So Much To Historians


Carrie Twomey writes on the inadmissibility of the Boston College tapes

A point on yesterday's ruling, which some commentary is getting confused. The guarantee of confidentiality is what makes them unreliable, not the bias of the interviewer or interviewee.

The perception of bias was an argument put forth by the defense during the case to illustrate the unreliability of the contents of the tapes.

It is not, however, what undermines the tapes legally or fatally. The guarantee of confidentiality and the structure of the project is what killed the tapes legally.

The judge observed that the promise of withholding the tapes until death gave
"freedom to speak the truth but it also gave freedom to lie, to distort, to exaggerate, to blame and to mislead".
(Application to Exclude the Boston Tapes Evidence, paragraph 37)

"The prosecution simply cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that whether it is true or not the confession was not the consequence of the false guarantee"
(Application to Exclude the Boston Tapes Evidence, paragraph 25)

The false guarantee referred to is the promise of confidentiality until the death of the participant given in the donor agreement, which allowed the interviewee to speak freely.

"I find that the confession is likely to be unreliable in the sense that it may well be unreliable as a direct result of the circumstances in which it was improperly and dishonestly induced by Mr. McIntyre working under the auspices of the Project Director Mr. Moloney in conjunction with Boston College"
(Application to Exclude the Boston Tapes Evidence, paragraph 33)

The donor agreements for the loyalists were the same as the donor agreements for the republicans. All donor agreements had the same flaw: in contrast to Boston College's contract with Ed Moloney, which had the key phrase limiting the confidentiality of the archives 'to the extent of American law' in it, the donor agreements did not.

That is where phrase 'improperly and dishonestly induced' comes in, because the donor agreements stated the donor would have control until death and their interviews would be protected until death which as we all know now – but did not know then – was not true.

The lack of oversight of the project also contributed to the unreliability of the tapes as evidence.

All of this is important to clarify because it means the ruling applies to the Winston Rea case as well as Anthony’s own – it is not because of the interviewer, it is the conditions of the interview that renders them inadmissible as evidence.

A last point. Oral history is not evidence. Oral histories are not "confessions". Oral history is not "sworn testimony", and it is never meant to be.

The PSNI and the PPS have a lot of questions to answer about how they went on this wild goose chase, especially in regards to how much time, money, and resources they wasted in doing so.

Hopefully some journalists have already filed FOIs and/or asked their MPs to find out how much the PPS and PSNI have spent on the international subpoenas, how many detectives and police support staff have been tasked to the cases, and how many man-hours have been dedicated to everything Boston College related. This should be contrasted to the lack of resources the PSNI says it suffers from in its ability to handle legacy cases.

It is a travesty that it took this long – over 8 years – for the courts to confirm what has been obvious and known since the start.

As much as the Boston College tapes can be held up as an example of how not to conduct an oral history project, so too can the pursuit of the tapes by the PSNI and PPS be held up as an example of how not to police the past.

How Not to Police The Past


Carrie Twomey with a response to today's ruling in the Bell case. 

I am so sorry for everyone that has had to go through this for so many years. For the waste of time, resources, and money, chasing something that was always a sham and mockery of justice.

The Boston College archive was an oral history, with all that entails: memory, a rough draft, and opinion. Oral histories are a guidebook, sign-posts, maps to be used in excavating history. They are not confessions for use in prosecution, nor are they perfect or corroborated histories. They are not meant to be. They are one person's recollections. They are meant to be challenged, and filled out. They turn history into people and their personalities, with all their flaws and imperfections. They are important and they have their value and place.

Their place however is not in a courtroom. Today's ruling recognizes that. This is something we have said all along. The Boston College archive was worthless as evidence. It is a travesty of justice that it has taken as long as it has, and cost as much as it has, in terms of people's lives, emotions, expectations, and in monetary terms, for the court to finally put an end to their pursuit. Farce does not begin to cover what this has been.

We are in the Supreme Court in London next week fighting the subpoena of Anthony's materials, another sham case pursued in part I believe to create the pretext to arrest Anthony in order to put pressure on him to become a witness in the Bell case, something they were never going to achieve regardless.

The Bell case collapsed because the court ruled the tapes are inadmissible. It ruled that their inadmissibility goes beyond the narrow Trial of the Facts, and the PPS has declined to appeal the ruling.

“The tapes will become public with the end of this trial. Everyone who reads about them can form their own view, informed or otherwise, on the many issues they raise. But in the context of a criminal trial they are just not reliable or fairly obtained evidence.” - Judgement: Application to Exclude the Boston Tapes Evidence

We knew that from the first subpoena issued. Boston College had a duty to fight much harder against the subpoenas than what they did for precisely this reason: they were not evidence, they would never stand up in court, the pursuit of them was an abuse of process, and an egregious abuse of the US-UK MLAT. Shame on Boston College. Shame on them for not standing up for history. Shame on them for not protecting their researchers, their research, and, most importantly, their research participants. Shame on them.

A lot of things have been, are being, and will be said about Anthony and his involvement in the project. Some of which we would agree with, especially with the gift of hindsight! But I still passionately believe history belongs to people, and it is important it be told – especially in times and eras where it is contested, silenced, censored, and oppressed. The Belfast Project meets all those criteria. It is a history that the state wanted suppressed. State actors, supporters, and agents never wanted the histories contained in the Boston College archive told. We know this by the lengths they have gone to in destroying it. The histories in the archive are a means of unravelling the state’s carefully constructed façade.

Keep digging, keep pushing against the pricks, keep telling your truth.

History Belongs to People, Not the State

Via Boston College Subpoena News a press release from Phoenix Law:

The Boston College Tapes case to be heard by the UK Supreme Court


Phoenix Law
Human Rights Lawyers
21 June 2019
Press Release PDF

Anthony McIntyre has been granted permission by the UK Supreme Court under Lord Kerr, Lord Carnwatch and Lady Arden to have an oral hearing in respect of Jurisdiction into the request by the PSNI to obtain the Boston College tapes from America.

By way of background on 3 September 2014 the PSNI requested that the PPS issue an ILOR in respect of the applicant’s interviews given to Boston College for academic purposes. The PSNI upon learning of the applicant tapes issued an ILOR on 9 February 2015 pursuant to section 7(5) of the Crime (International Cooperation) Act 2003. There were a number of errors in this ILOR which the Divisional Court in Belfast noted were due “to a distinct and surprising lack of care on the part of the PSNI and the PPS”.

The applicant issued Judicial Review proceedings against the PSNI and PPS on 23 May 2016 seeking to prevent the DPP or PSNI from taking any further steps in the utilisation of the interview materials requested from the United States Central Authority. The Supreme Court sitting in London has now confirmed it will hear an appeal regarding the Boston College tapes on the issue surrounding jurisdiction. A hearing is expected for later this year. 

Anthony McIntyre, one of the participants of the Boston college tape said today:

These tapes were made solely for academic purposes. They were never intended to be used for criminal investigations. I welcome the fact that the Supreme Court will now hear this case given the important issues at hand.

Gavin Booth of Phoenix Law, solicitor for Mr. McIntyre said: 

We welcome the decision of the UK Supreme Court to allow us to be heard on the issues critical to Mr. McIntyre’s case. The Court is expected to sit in early October 2019. We look forward to this hearing before the Supreme Court.


Notes for Editors: 

In 2001 Anthony McIntyre became involved in an academic oral history project known as the “Belfast Project” with the journalist and author Ed Moloney who was the project Director.

The project was sponsored by Boston College, Massachusetts, USA. The object of the project was to collect and preserve for academic research the recollections of members of republican and loyalist paramilitary organisations. The methodology was to gather first-hand testimony by way of voice recordings from participants.

The project lasted from 2001 until May 2006. It began with interviews of former members of the Provisional IRA and was subsequently expanded to include interviews with former members of the Ulster Volunteer Force. The applicant was a researcher. He interviewed past participants in the conflict recording their personal recollections. His experience as a journalist and a participant gave him access to those people and enabled them to repose a degree of trust in him which they might not otherwise have had.

Each participant gave the content of the recordings into the possession of Boston College for preservation. Access to the tapes was to be restricted until after the interviewee’s death except where they provided prior written authority for their use otherwise. The applicant maintains that it was always understood that the contents of the interviews might be accessible after death, primarily for academic purposes. He says that it was never envisaged that the contents would be accessed by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (“PSNI”) for the purposes of criminal investigation or prosecution.

Upon learning of the attempts by the PSNI and PPS to obtain the clients tapes he initiated Judicial Review proceedings in the Divisional Court in Belfast.

Judgement was handed down on 22 October 2018 In the matter of an application for Judicial Review by Anthony McIntyre [2018] NIQB 79 is available here. 

On 22 May 2019 Mr. McIntyre was granted an appeal to the UK Supreme Court. 


⏭ Keep up with Boston College Subpoena News ⬌ Follow on Twitter @BCSubpoenaNews

Boston College Tapes Case To Be Heard By the UK Supreme Court

Anthony McIntyre responds to vacuous reasoning from Niall O'Dowd in a recent column in Irish Voice column.

On reading Niall O’Dowd’s recent Irish Voice column, the thought struck me that he might also be double jobbing by writing Saoradh statements. The same torturous logic is a feature common to both. O’Dowd continues to entertain his detractors when as a newspaper columnist, and not a circus clown, his job is to persuade others, not parody himself. His reasoning is something I have not quite figured out.

Although a member of the Adams camarilla he doesn’t seem the worst of people, quite personable and courteous to me on the few occasions we have interacted. I can only imagine that he is a firm believer that truth must be the first casualty in peace, seeming to share Adams' own aversion to it. He not only pretends to believe serial liars but is eager to recycle their trash long beyond salvaging point.

Patrick Radden Keefe’s widely acclaimed book Say Nothing is obviously having such an effect on brand Adams in the US that O'Dowd has been put forward to redirect the onlookers away from the areas designated "secret graves." The entire column was spent trying to savage the book. Perhaps use of the word "savage" will lead to accusations that I too am a racist. In trying to shield Gerry Django from anything faintly suggesting truth recovery, he accused Keefe of sailing close to the racist wind for having once opined that the brute came out in Adams when the former Provisional IRA chief of staff proposed in a plausibly deniable manner that the Independent newspaper should be shut down at gunpoint. Even if Keefe’s take on this matter is inaccurate it is simply wrong, not racist. When Adams once claimed of unionists that “the point is to break these bastards” the inherent sectarianism suggests O'Dowd, if he genuinely wants to confront a strain of racism, should look upwards to his caudillo.

While conceding that Keefe’s “prose and narrative are superb”, Say Nothing is dismissed as a "Get Adams" exercise, penned by an author whose critical insight is lacking and seriously flawed. The implication is that O’Dowd’s insight is substantive and flawless. The hilarity that will cause to erupt needs no prompting from this quarter. The emails I got from friends and journalists were not out of concern, merely derision. Seriously, as an investigative journalist, O'Dowd does not have a patch on Keefe. There is no way in this world would Keefe sacrifice his professional reputation by, say, telling Americans that Roberto D'Aubisson was an okay sort of guy - look, he is a former combatant but who is now a peace activist and heads a political party back home. Everyone who delves into his past is a Bob Basher and pro-war. Just shut up and get with the peace process. 

The complaint that there is no interview with “Gerry Adams, a central figure in the narrative” is groundless, for as Keefe wrote in the New Yorker, "Adams declined repeated requests to speak with me for this article". Sinn Fein denied access to the great leader each time Keefe approached them in respect of the book. The New Yorker article exhibited a brilliant piece of investigative journalism but for O’Dowd it merely revealed Keefe's dislike of Adams. This type of slapstick journalism is made look even more fatuous when placed beside O'Dowd's characterisation of anyone who dissents from the old caudillo as an "Adams Hater." O'Dowd really needs to develop a more pluralistic outlook and accept that for every photo of a studious Adams seated amongst people he is looking out for, there are others, more authentic, depicting Adams in the midst of people he is looking to screw over.

For O'Dowd, Keefe had already made his “dislike of Adams” very evident in the New Yorker article. This is a lengthy exploration of Adams' supposed role in the disappearance of Jean McConville, which some speculate helped frustrate Adams gaining access to the White House.

In the wake of that New Yorker piece Gerry Adams was on the receiving end of an apparently deliberate White House snub when he was denied face-to-face meetings with Obama or senior administration officials during the 2015 St Patrick’s Day festivities and palmed off with low level State Department officials instead.

Keefe stands accused of having presented "the disastrous Boston College tapes episode as of major significance without any sense of what was really going on." He had a much better sense of what was going on than O'Dowd who since the outset has either demonstrated a monumental ignorance or promoted an equally monumental fabrication. The real sense of what went on has long since been settled. The narrative about the Boston College project, its rights and wrongs, its flaws and failings, its ethos and ethics, have been well documented and hardly need revisiting here. The only people left sharing O'Dowd's view are those who believe Adams was never chief of staff of the Provisional IRA. Which explains why he began immediately tweeting his article to Sinn Fein in Belfast and Derry, themselves alone capable of buying into it. Nobody serious takes Niall O'Dowd seriously when he writes hagiographies about Adams.

The Boston College oral history project, which O'Dowd argues informed "a large part of the book’s narrative" - he really does need to get out and about more - was also a 'Get Adams' exercise according to O'Dowd. This larkin about line was tried before by an English fantasist only to fall flat on its face and has not been heard of since.

Myself and Ed Moloney were described as “two avowedly anti-Adams journalists and researchers”. One of the long standing reasons for being opposed to Adams is that he is, in the words of Kieran Conway, a "mendacious lying bastard." Should journalists and researchers not be avowedly anti-serial liars and their mendacity, and instead defer to lies in the interest of the peace process? What sort of peace is in the peace process if it cannot tolerate being peacefully dissented from?

Even more inanely, in an act of cerebral hari-kari, O'Dowd cites Boston College spin doctor, Jack Dunn, who “confirmed the project was ill-conceived and amazingly, took Adams side.” Damnation enough given the number of times Dunn has been caught out. A character with his reputation in seemingly unwarranted ruins as a result of the Spotlight film on clerical child rape in Boston, will not be regarded as the most reliable witness.

Dunn's claim that Boston librarian Robert O’Neill’s mistake was "in hiring Ed Moloney" as project director is as lacking in surprise at it is replete with self service. But for Moloney’s crucial early intervention having upended Boston College’s design to surreptitiously surrender all tapes to the British police, matters would have been infinitely worse. Dunn presumably wishes O'Neill had hired someone more compliant, a person like, well, Jack Dunn, who would have emulated the College's roll over at the first sign of trouble, and shafted the participants.

“Boston College tapes were an all-out attempt to get Adams which almost worked" is arguably the most scurrilous and malevolent of O’Dowd’s assertions in his slavish deference to the Adams narrative. Through it he has sought to leave an impression that the BC project and the PSNI were in cahoots to have Adams prosecuted. This is a slur that even Danny Morrison, who has smeared more people than David Duckenfield, would be proud to have launched.

O'Dowd does admit that Adams has been lying about his membership of the IRA but goes on to defend the denials on the grounds that without them there would have been a prosecution. It seems never to have occurred to O’Dowd, the man who slams Keefe for an alleged lack of critical insight, that Adams need not have lied but could as effectively have fallen back on the “no comment” response to probes about his membership of the IRA. Adams' lying was not to avoid prosecution but to manipulate public opinion in pursuit of his political career. But in Niall's Niche journalists and researchers are not supposed to tackle issues of public deception. Critical insight means an ability not to see what is there.

At the heel of the hunt, O'Dowd knows that the Adams brand is taking a serious battering in the States, and Keefe is not getting the hard time from Irish America that Adams acolytes might have hoped for when he promotes his book from coast to coast. O'Dowd's insistence that "knowing the context is key to writing about Northern Ireland" is true. We can now safely assume what his context is – alibi.

Adams, a martial politician, is being described frequently and unambiguously by Keefe as a person who ordered a war crime. At a time when Adams is almost certainly plotting his course to Phoenix Park in 2025 – and almost as certainly a futile endeavour if he does not persuade a potential voting bloc, Irish referendum permitting, the US Irish diaspora – the stench of decomposition must be excised from the narrative. The pests who help retain it must be fumigated. That's Niall O'Dowd's job, and Upton Sinclair had the prescience to see him coming a long time ago with his quip that “it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

The Great Fumigator

Chris Bray on the farcical High Court decision, giving cover to the PSNI when caught lying. 

Farcical High Court Decision Backs PSNI Farce

Anthony McIntyre thinks Danny Morrison is a veteran errorist and wonders what lies behind his latest demonstration of being wrong.

A Wrong Man Calls It Wrong ... Again

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