Key figures ‘upping the ante’ over Boston College tapes

Gemma Murray writing in the Newsletter earlier this month about claims that Sinn Fein have been organising a campaign of intimidation in the wake of the arrest of Gerry Adams. It featured in Boston College Subpoena News on 5 May 2014.

The chief researcher in the Boston College project last night said “key figures” have been “upping the ante” against him after the arrest of Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams.

Anthony McIntyre, a former IRA life sentence prisoner turned writer and researcher, carried out a series of candid interviews with IRA men for the oral history of the Troubles.

Those taking part in the project, which began in 2001, were all promised that none of the taped material, much of it candid confessions of their own role in violence, would be released until their deaths.

However, after a landmark legal judgment in the US supreme court the Boston College authorities handed over 10 taped testimonies that included material about the kidnapping and murder of mother-of-ten Jean McConville.

Mr McIntyre told the News Letter:

I have had no specific threats, but I am aware about the graffiti on the wall and the tweets. I feel they are upping the ante. They are trying to create an atmosphere of intimidation but not just for me, for the people they are accusing of having spoken to me. They are accusing people in many cases of having spoken to Boston College and of being touts. They defaced Brendan Hughes’ mural and wrote Boston College tout. They are going into the vicious politics of the gutter and they are trying to create a dangerous situation.

In March 77-year-old Ivor Bell was arrested in connection with an interview he allegedly gave to researchers at Boston College.

Since the arrest of the Sinn Fein leader former republican prisoner and commentator Danny Morrison tweeted: “Take a bow BC, Ed Moloney & Anthony McIntyre – you have done a wonderful job on behalf of British spookdom…”