Reply To Hachey & O'Neill

Tonight the Pensive Quill carries a response from Anthony McIntyre and Ed Moloney to an op ed piece in the Irish Times written by Bob O'Neill and Tom Hachey of Boston College. Unfortunately, the Irish Times, supposedly a paper of record, refused to allow a right of reply to go on the record. A right to reply is a standard feature of most newspapers. Why the Old Lady of D'Olier Street surrendered her intellectual promiscuity and opted to breach the long standing principle is something only it can explain, if indeed an explanation as distinct from an excuse exists.  It was considerate enough to Boston College in the first place by allowing its representatives to make a case consistent with the College's moral torpitude. 

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It is an astounding abdication of responsibility that the trustees of Boston College, through their employees, Robert K. O’Neill, the Burns Librarian, and Professor Thomas E. Hachey should seek to lay culpability at the door of their researcher Anthony McIntyre for the Boston College tapes debacle while wrongfully accusing Ed Moloney of contempt of court.

At the same time they ignore the egregious hypocrisy of the PSNI, which has chosen not to pursue former RUC officers who allowed double agents in the IRA and UVF to murder at will and whose actions both threaten the lives of BC’s researchers and the wellbeing of the peace process in Northern Ireland. Nor do they take the US Attorney General to task for ignoring his obligation under international treaties not to assist in the pursuit of offenses preceding the Good Friday Agreement.

Messrs Hachey and O’Neill’s disgraceful disowning of responsibility is only matched by the naivety of the college’s legal strategy which collapsed ignominiously just a day after their article appeared in this newspaper. They wrote last Thursday that Boston College had declined to appeal Judge Young’s decision ordering the release of the Dolours Price interviews, in the “hope” that the rest of the archived material they had relinquished to him for review would not have to be released to the PSNI.

Yet by the following evening Judge Young announced that no less than seven other interviews would, if the stay and appeal secured by ourselves failed, be handed over to the PSNI. What a triumph! What a tribute to Boston College’s cunning legal master plan! Remember also that the same legal strategy involved an offer by Boston College to hand over the UVF archive to the court even though this information is not mentioned in the subpoenas, and no-one has ever associated that group with the disappearance of Jean McConville.

And so Boston College, to its eternal shame, declined the opportunity to appeal and left it to their researchers to fight their battles for them, with none of the resources or opportunities that Boston College has at its disposal. Now that its legal strategy has collapsed might Boston College now attempt to retrieve its name and appeal the latest order commanding the release of confidential materials?

The slur against Anthony McIntyre is nothing less than shameful. The facts are these: the first subpoena, in May 2011, had asked for Brendan Hughes and Dolours Price’s interviews; a second subpoena seeking other interviews that mentioned Jean McConville was served in August, 2011; five months later, on December 20, 2011, Judge Young ordered Boston College to review those other interviews and hand over the relevant ones.

Boston College’s response? The Court was informed that its Burns Librarian, Dr. O’Neill had not read all the interviews and could not help. Really? A library which has had custody of an important and sensitive archive since 2001 and in all that time had not made itself familiar with its contents!

At that point the judge suggested that Boston College instead approach Anthony McIntyre for assistance. He declined, but on grounds of principle, replying: “I cannot on ethical grounds engage in any activity that would lead me to assist in a process of morphing my research into evidence gathering.” How much better it would have been had Boston College asserted the same reasons.

The Boston College representatives also disingenuously allege that Ed Moloney suggested that Boston College “defy the court” and “pre-emptively burn the transcripts.”

Ed Moloney suggested no such thing, and never encouraged the college to risk contempt of court by proposing that archived interviews under subpoena be destroyed. Rather, the suggestion was that, after this case has concluded, the College must close down or destroy the archives if it is neither willing nor able to protect the participants from future invasions. The only items threatened with “burning” are the sources that Boston College promised to protect.

One could go on about Boston College’s lamentable legal strategy throughout this sorry affair. After the first subpoena was issued, Boston College was warned that a second one was possible and that they should make strenuous efforts to secure the archive. They ignored the advice, instead giving out assurances on the basis of advice from “practiced lawyers ... (and) ... people formally schooled in international law” that no further subpoena was likely.

When the second one arrived in August 2011, the college partly relied on the absurd suggestion that it did not know “whether the tapes and transcripts it holds are ‘easily searchable’ by any currently available computer-assisted or other means” such that the second subpoenas would impose an unreasonable burden on Boston College. That argument drew the deserved scorn of the US assistant Attorney who replied:

Such a response, from a chaired historian and the director of a distinguished college library, begs credulity. The task of searching this material would be fairly straightforward for a first year paralegal, much less a tenured historian and a library director.

It is only due to the order suspending Judge Young's decision that we secured on appeal to the First Circuit Court of Appeals that the Belfast Project interviews are not already in the hands of the PSNI. If this matter had been left to Boston College they would have been in Belfast long before this and their interviewees, to whom they gave the most solemn promises of confidentiality, would have been utterly betrayed. We, at least, will fight as long as we can to prevent that happening.

3 comments:

  1. Jack Dunn in the BC student magazine tells even more lies in his efforts to shift the blame for BC having handed over the republican archive to the court. He goes even further than Bob O'Neill and Tom Hachey. He now shouts that Ed Moloney was asked by the court to assist. There is no record of this other than Jack's own lies. I alone was asked by the BC lawyer at the suggestion of ther court; a request I refused on obvious grounds. But hey ho, let Jack go. Don't disturb an opponent when he is destroying his own credibility

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  2. Ha Anthony you couldnt make it up!

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  3. Marty,

    you certainly couldn't make it up like Jack Dunn makes it up. Any old lie will do, even the most stupid where getting caught out is a cert. It doesn't matter, go ahead and tell it anyway.

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