Radio Free Éireann
WBAI 99.5 FM Pacifica Radio
New York City
10 May 2014
SB: Welcome back to Radio Free Éireann and WBAI 99.5 FM and we are going to go now to Ed Moloney who is the author of Voices From the Grave and A Secret History of the IRA. Ed was the director of The Belfast Project, the oral history project upon which Gerry Adams was arrested and detained for four days. He says he was questioned for seventeen hours a day.
And one of the things they say they were doing was playing tapes from The Belfast Project in trying to, now of course we only have Gerry Adams' word for this, but they say he was, they were trying to interrogate him about that. But after four days Gerry Adams was released. He has not been charged. So Ed, welcome back to Radio Free Éireann.
EM: Hi, Sandy. Hi. Are you there?
SB: Yes, we're here – right here.
EM: Ok.
SB: Now that Gerry Adams has been released and now that he was questioned for four days where's the peace process stand? Because there's a lot of speculation that if Gerry Adams was ever arrested or ever charged Sinn Féin might have to pull out of the peace process. Is there any prospect of that?
EM: Well, that was the assumption I think of all of us when these subpoenas were first served by the British back in May, 2011 exactly three years ago. And that was the warning cry that we put out at that point – that the American government had done something extremely foolish here facilitating subpoenas that were going to damage a peace process that previous presidents had helped to put in place, primarily Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
And we said that because there was enough known about, in public at least, there was enough known about the “disappearance” of Jean McConville to know that any investigation that set off down that road would eventually end up at one door and that would be Mr. Adams' door. And we assumed that the Department of Justice had done their due diligence on that and evidently they hadn't. They just regarded this as like another request from a partner in the global war against terrorism. And I think this is what this is about.
That the US had said: Look, The British are giving us stuff about Al Qaeda and they're sending over radical Islamic clerics for us to try and put away in maximum security gaols for a hundred, a thousand years or whatever it is. Therefore, whatever they want - give it to them.
And they didn't think it through. So we just assumed that there would be, if it ended up with Adams being in gaol, or being tried or at worst, convicted, then a number of things would follow. And one of them would be that Sinn Féin could not stand the humiliation of this happening and stay in government at the same time.
But it's evident from the reaction during his arrest - and after his arrest in particular – that this was really the last thing on their minds, that they're determined to stay in there and I find that very interesting indeed.
SB: Well what was interesting is that Martin McGuinness made some noises. At one point he said: Oh my God! If they actually charge Gerry Adams we might have to withdraw some of our support, not all of our support, but just some of our support for the police and all of a sudden ... Boom! They renounced that and said: Oh, no! We'd never do any such thing!
EM: Yeah, yeah, which is a bit of a green light and I wonder why Adams has done this because it is actually signaling to the authorities if they do want to charge well this is now on record that they won't retaliate by withdrawing support for the police so: Go ahead!
(Ed Note: The audio archive of this second hour continues here)
EM: Because that's a very powerful weapon that Sinn Féin can wield. Because Peter Robinson immediately said, when there was speculation that the Shinners might link Adams' arrest with support for the PSNI, that if that happened then they would immediately put down a motion in The Assembly for the suspension of Sinn Féin from the government. And that would have been the end of the power sharing government. The power sharing government is the peace process in a sense. And if it goes then whole thing then is like really up in the air and we're into unknown territory. But that didn't happen. As soon as Gerry got out of Antrim police station the word went out, as you said, we're going to continue supporting the police no matter what.
SB: And Ed, Gerry Adams and his faithful companion, Niall O'Dowd, have been putting the word out, systematically over and over again: the whole Belfast oral history project was nothing but a “get Adams” project. That was the whole intent. That's all it amounted to. Can you comment on that?
EM: Yes, there is just so many things that I could say. Obviously, I don't share that view at all. I share the view of the only person who has actually read the archives aside from ourselves, because neither Gerry Adams and certainly not Niall O'Dowd have read any of this stuff apart from that which has been published in Voices From the Grave which is also only a portion of what Brendan Hughes had to say. The interviews took up an awful lot more space than that. They've read nothing apart from that. They think they know what might be in Dolours Price's interviews but they don't.
And Gerry Adams presumably got an inkling of what's in this interview by this mysterious character “Zed”, or “Z” as you say in America, who the police are claiming to be Ivor Bell, he probably got an inkling of that in his four day thing in Antrim police station but otherwise not at all.
The only one who has read this thing is Judge Young, the judge in Boston federal district court who had the job, largely because of Boston College's cowardice - they wouldn't go through the interviews themselves and they said that they couldn't do that because their librarian, believe it or not, had never read these interviews – an extraordinary claim to make!
But anyway ... he then said: Okay, well I'll read them. And he took them home at the Christmas holidays 2011-2012 and read every single one of them. And in his judgment about what should be handed over he described this as: “A bona fide academic exercise of considerable intellectual merit”.
And he went on to say how it would be of interest to a whole range of scholars ranging from conflict research people through to people who were studying the history of religions and so on and so forth. So that's the opinion that I go by.
And really when you examine what the Niall O'Dowds and Gerry Adamses and Tim Pat Coogans and Martin Manserghs are actually saying is that really the people who were asked to participate in this project should have been asked two simple questions:
First one was: Do you believe that Gerry Adams was ever in the IRA?
And if you said “no, I don't believe it” then you were disqualified from being interviewed - you weren't allowed to be interviewed. If you said “yes” then you were an acceptable participant in an historical research project.
Or they would be asked: Are you a supporter of the peace process?
If you said “yes” then you would be interviewed - if you said “no” then you were not allowed to be interviewed. And what this is about essentially is the control of the narrative. The control of the history of The Troubles ... of what happened in The Troubles.
They're also saying, incidentally, that key figures, prominent figures in the Belfast IRA such as Brendan Hughes, who was like a national figure - a massive presence in the IRA in Belfast - went on to command the IRA in Belfast, went on to lead the IRA hunger strike in Long Kesh in 1980, who everyone knows was a major, major figure; he should not be interviewed because he's not a hundred percent behind Gerry.
Dolours Price who as we all know came from a renowned Republican family - who are actually married into Adams' family – and who was involved in some of the most important operations of the early IRA campaign, notably the bombing of London in 1973 - she shouldn't be allowed to be interviewed because she doesn't go a hundred percent down the road with Gerry Adams.
And what these people are essentially saying is: the account of history of The Troubles should be censored to exclude all of these people. And it's about the control of the narrative - control of what the truth is.
And that's one of the things that we set out actually to challenge – to make sure that there were views and accounts of the history there from the grassroots activists who took part in the IRA's campaign.
And we also did the same on the UVF side - and people are forgetting that this archive was two-pronged - there's a Loyalist side to this as well which is equally important in its way.
So that's we set out to do. And we're not allowed to do that because we took in people who would have answered those questions that Martin Mansergh and Tim Pat Coogan and Niall O'Dowd and Gerry Adams would have put to them - they answered them wrongly and “tough luck”.
I've also argued, and I had a piece in The Guardian yesterday, arguing that in a sense, not only does Gerry Adams not know what's in the archive and therefore he's in no position to make a judgment about it - He's actually at fault. He's to blame for his own predicament. He's the architect of his own difficulties at the moment.
And that is because, and I need to explain this to your listeners, people who were in the IRA have always been asked: are you a member?
You know, people like Ruarí Ó Bradaígh, particularly leader figures, and they would never deny it because that would be like St. Peter denying Christ, you'd be denying your comrades, your beliefs, your life. So you never deny it.
But you never admit it either because to do so would be foolish - you'd end up in jail because you'd be admitting what was on the law books a criminal offence. So what they invariably did was to give an answer that varied between “no comment” and “mind your own business”.
Gerry Adams was the first Republican leader that I know of, and I've researched this quite closely, the first Republican leader to take this position to say: No. I was not in the IRA and never was in the IRA.
I think what is missed in all of this is the effect that this had upon the people who served along side him in the IRA. And let me quote what Brendan Hughes had to say in his Boston interview with Anthony McIntyre. He said this:
when Adams denies IRA membership it means that people like myself have to carry the responsibility for all those deaths – for sending men out to die and sending women out to die - and Gerry was sitting there trying to stop us from doing it? I'm disgusted by it because it is so untrue and everybody knows it. - Brendan Hughes
In other words this act of denying membership of the IRA is also washing his hands of responsibility of anything and everything that took place during the IRA's campaign and putting it on other people, Brendan Hughes being one and Dolours Price being another, and in those circumstances it's hardly surprising - in fact it would be extraordinary - if people like that did not say: hang on a sec, that's not true and here's what really happened. That's all they did.
And in that sense if Gerry Adams, and I've always said this, if Gerry Adams had not taken this position, this absurd position of denying what everyone knows to be the truth, which is that he was a senior figure in the IRA, not just in the IRA but a senior, pivotal, shaping figure in the IRA, I don't believe that either Brendan Hughes or Dolours Price would have given their interviews to us. They were motivated by that. They were motivated by the need in their minds to put the record straight ...
(audio interrupt time stamp 8:48 – 8:57)
...in 1974 Gerry Adams was in the IRA - They're telling lies. That's the origin of all of this, essentially.
JM: (Station identification)
Ed, anybody here in The States that's been watching the coverage here, in The New York Times, you were on CNN, Canadian Broadcasting's been covering it. But the coverage in Ireland – because now that you have iPhones that you listen to RTÉ. It seems there's not an event that happens in this country that RTÉ always goes to Niall O'Dowd. And when Niall O'Dowd comes on, particularly about this subject, about The Belfast Project, he always talks about: Ed Moloney's agenda, his motivation - Anthony McIntyre's motivation and agenda.
None of the presenters on RTÉ would ever go to Niall O'Dowd: What is your agenda?
You own a newspaper! Don't you take full page ads out from the Friends of Sinn Féin which are directly connected with Gerry Adams? Don't you have something financially at stake in supporting people like Gerry Adams? And all the ads that you get and maybe the odd column for Gerry Adams?
He is brought on as some sort of neutral person who's observing this thing from the upper east side of Manhattan and watching it go about and RTÉ just happens to call him and say: Oh, Niall, what do you think about this?
It's just amazing. There is no one else that can speak about this except Niall O'Dowd, who runs Irish Central and The Irish Voice newspaper!
EM: Indeed. And you know he and I have a history which I think is important to know about for people to understand the animosity and the source of the animosity. When Niall O'Dowd started The Irish Voice way back in 1987 it was suggested to him that he should hire me as their Northern Ireland correspondent. I was working for The Sunday Tribune at that point. And he said no.
And the reason I'm told that he said no was because I wrote so much about the Republican Movement, about the IRA - quite rightly – I mean, they're part of the story - big part of the story - to do so would indicate a softness on the part of his paper towards the IRA and he didn't want to do that.
He wanted to get adverts from The Northern Ireland Tourist Board and so on and so forth. He wanted to keep in with the Department of Foreign Affairs, the embassy and consulate and all that sort of stuff.
And to have me there, was acknowledging someone who knew a lot about these people and wrote about them in the less than unsympathetic, and what I mean by “unsympathetic” is understanding way ... If you wrote about the IRA in terms of like just dismissing them as monsters and terrorists, etc then that was fine.
But if you took them seriously as I did, and that's the irony of where we are now, is that there was a point in the history of The Troubles here where I was actually one of the very, very few journalists who would: A) ever talked to the IRA and B) ever covered them in an intelligent way.
And they deserved to be covered intelligently because they were a major player in this story. But that was not acceptable by the powers that be and Niall O'Dowd in those days was interested only in keeping company with the powers that be.
But ... I'm glad to say that the power of my coverage obviously changed his mind. Because as I discovered on a holiday - and people who know me know that I've been coming over here to the US on holiday every Summer for as long as I was married - I discovered that lo and behold - there he was using my pieces from The Sunday Tribune and not paying me, not asking my permission, not telling me. He was stealing my work in an atrocious way and I confronted him about this. I could have taken legal action against him and sued his pants off but if I had done so it would have probably endangered jobs at The Irish Voice and I didn't want to do that. So we made a deal from there on: if he wanted to use my pieces from The Sunday Tribune he would pay for them. And he did.
And ironically when we parted company at the end of the day over again the argument of my coverage being like going into the background of the peace process in a little bit too much depth for his liking. One of his complaints was that - you're just sending over the articles from The Sunday Tribune - which were of course the same articles that he was stealing way, way, way back. So we never liked each other as a result of that as you might understand.
I believe that he's got a bit of a name for doing that with other journalists. It's been bad blood from thereon and that explains to a certain extent this and he has since, of course, realised that there's a lot of kudos and gain to be made by associating with people like the Provos and now he does, more or less does their bidding. And that's what he's been doing in the last few days or so in a very dangerous way for me.
And let me just say - use the opportunity of this interview to say - that if anything happens to myself or my family I will hold him personally responsible for having incited it. Because he's coming very, very close to actually doing that. It's a very dangerous thing.
But also if I can just say this – and I know this is a lengthy answer, John, but I think this is an important point to make - this onslaught which is coming both from the Sinn Féin people in Ireland and also from the Niall O'Dowds over here in America is very interesting because what it tells me is that Gerry Adams is a very worried man.
He's very worried about what's coming down the pike, both in journalistic terms – what new stories could be coming, what new revelations could be coming and he’s also worried about the possibility of facing charges. And I think one of the purposes of this onslaught is in a sense to poison the court room before he enters it so that his defence, which will be: these interviews were arranged by these two hostile characters and they were carried out with people who are political opponents, enemies of myself, therefore they were concocted. Therefore they're untrue. Therefore I'm innocent of these charges.
That will essentially it looks like, is going to be his defence and this is why this is happening now. He's preparing the way. It'll be in front of a single judge. The judge not would be human if he was not affected by all this publicity that's going on. So in that sense it's quite a clever tactic by him.
But it's also being done to intimidate the rest of the media into silence. So that when new material comes they will be silent about it or they will ignore it or they will play it down. Essentially that is happening by an unspoken message that runs through all this attack stuff. And it is this to the other journalists:
See what we're doing to these two guys? That's what happens to anyone who starts delving into our secrets. And if you want to delve into our secrets that's what we'll do to you. Now, you want to do that? If so, let's get it on.
That's essentially what they're saying to the rest of the media and it's based upon the knowledge that the media is effectively suffused with cowardice. Most journalists would run a mile rather than face the sort of attacks that we're having. And that when or if new material comes out the likelihood is that they will probably try to ignore it. But we will see.
So I think that's what's going on. And Niall O'Dowd is part of that essentially, to answer your question, John.
SB: Ed, thank you very much. We've been talking to Ed Moloney, the director of The Belfast Project. Ed, we wish we could go on but we have to get back to try and raise the money that will keep WBAI on the air.
EM: Indeed. Good Luck. Good luck with that, Sandy.
JM: Now anybody who's been reading The New York Times and following the story in the past week or two. If you have been listening to Radio Free Éireann we've been covering this for years - what was going on when this first started with The Belfast Project.
We've had Ed on for many, many years. We're going to have on Anthony McIntyre in about another fifteen – twenty minutes who actually did the interviews. He was On The Media just a couple of weeks ago and we discussed that with him.
He is under a lot of pressure, Anthony McIntyre, and we'll discuss that when we talk to him in about fifteen minutes.
Wall murals are appearing all over Belfast that state: Belfast Boston Tapes Tout Anthony McIntyre.
Now, Anthony McIntyre's not alleging anything against Gerry Adams. All he did was do the interviews but they're zeroing in on him and threatening the lives of him and his family.
And you heard from Ed Moloney what's going on with him – that he would hold Niall O'Dowd responsible for anything that's done. This is very serious what's going on.
I can tell you threats have been made by the Republican Movement against Martin Galvin and myself back in the early '90's and funny enough it had to do with Ed Moloney.
We were having Ed Moloney on talking about that the IRA were going to surrender their weapons.
I had two gentlemen come to Rocky Sullivan's and threaten me and said that was “BS”, that would never happen - Ed Moloney's a liar.
And then one day up in The Bronx we were at a fund raiser - two guys Martin Galvin with an Irish Voice reporter standing right there and said to Martin Galvin: You know what? We know you live off of Katonah Avenue. You could be run over very easily. And they laughed it off. No big deal.
But, as what happened Ed Moloney was right on the money. The IRA did surrender their weapons in order to do the peace process. So these death threats that are going around towards Anthony McIntyre and the wall murals – very serious!
(ends time stamp 19:11)
You know, people like Ruarí Ó Bradaígh, particularly leader figures, and they would never deny it because that would be like St. Peter denying Christ, you'd be denying your comrades, your beliefs, your life. So you never deny it.
ReplyDeleteNot strictly true, Slab Murphy no less went as far as to sue for libel after being accused of being in the IRA.