by Bill Forry

A federal judge in Boston has told Boston College that it must turn over recordings and other documents that are part of an oral history collection kept at the university’s Burns Library. The ruling is a major setback for BC and its allies who had sought to quash a subpoena triggered by a British request to view the documents as part of a criminal investigation into sectarian murders during the Troubles. The subpoena in question, issued last May and June, sought the records related to two individuals, Brendan Hughes and Dolours Price, both of whom were alleged to be former IRA members. BC has already handed over documents involving Hughes, who died three years ago.

Court documents indicate that the current investigation focuses on the killing of Jean McConville, a Belfast mother who was abducted from her home in Dec. 1972. Her body was discovered on a beach in County Louth in 2003. She had been shot in the head, allegedly because the IRA believed that she was acting as a spy for British forces, although an independent investigation in 2006 found no evidence of that charge.
In a Dec. 16 ruling, Young denied a motion by BC attorneys to quash the subpoena, but agreed to an in camera review of the materials in his courtroom. That review was initially to be held on Dec. 21, allowing the university to seek a stay.
On Dec. 27, according to a Boston Globe report, Young issued a new ruling ordering the university to hand over the Price documents by Dec. 29. Boston College spokesman Jack Dunn told the Globe that the school was disappointed by Judge Young’s ruling, but did not intend to appeal the decision.
Both Hughes and Price were interviewed as part of an oral history initiative called the “Belfast Project,” a BC-led effort launched in 2001 to collect the personal histories of people involved in the Troubles. The tapes and transcripts of the project have been housed at the university’s Burns Library as part of BC’s Irish Studies department.
The project was managed by Edward Moloney, a journalist and writer, who was hired by BC to lead the compilation, which includes interviews with 24 individuals associated with the IRA and 192 people in total.
According to court filings released this month, the Project required interview subjects to sign a confidentiality agreement aimed at protecting both BC and the participants from being identified. It used a coding system to “maintain the anonymity of interviews” that only Burns Library curator Robert O’Neill and Moloney knew how to decipher. Interview subjects were promised that their records would be kept confidential until their death, unless they made a specific written request to make them public, according to court records.
In his Dec. 16 ruling, Young acknowledged that subpoenas seeking confidential academic research deserve “heightened scrutiny.” But, Young writes, “This Court, having reviewed the government’s submissions on the public record and under seal, as well as Boston College’s affidavits and motions, is confident the subpoenae are in good faith, and relevant to a nonfrivolous criminal inquiry. Nor are the materials readily available from a less sensitive source.”
Young added that the “legal commitments that the United States made” in approving a treaty agreement with the British trump any concerns of journalistic or academic freedoms.
Young points out that while forcing BC to surrender tapes that the university promised to keep confidential might have a “chilling” effect in a general sense, it would not impede the specific Belfast Project effort, since the collection of interviews for that ended in 2006. The judge also noted that Moloney had himself published a book in 2010 that was based in part on interviews collected as part of the BC project.
Both Moloney and Anthony McIntrye, who was hired by Moloney to conduct interviews for the Belfast Project, signed onto an appeal to quash the subpoena last June.
A coalition of Irish-American groups— including the Ancient Order of Hibernians, Brehon Law Society, and Irish American Unity Conference— issued a statement criticizing Young’s Dec. 16 order, noting that the jurist had “refused to even listen to the arguments of the Directors of the Oral History project about the fears for themselves and their families if the documents were to be released to the British.”
“Remarkably, the same Judge who had no regard for the fears of Mr. McIntyre and his American wife has apparently ordered Boston College to enlist his aid in sorting out which of the volumes of files might be relevant. In other words, to select the evidence that might be used in British trials against those who gave interviews. Really??”