Boston College tapes

The PSNI’s latest move against the Boston archive is unintelligent

Brian Walker on January 25, 2015, 12:14 pm

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Henry McDonald in the Observer has picked up on the PSNI’s latest incursion into Boston tapes morass. There is a blinkered police logic to this that contradicts the stated expectations of the law officers of the low likelihood of future prosecutions. Pursue the Bloody Sunday paras and give Gerry Adams lousy food in Antrim Police station for a couple of days. If the PSNI go after the Army and the Provos they have to go after the loyalists, don’t …

No sign yet of smoking gun in the Adams case

Brian Walker on May 8, 2014, 10:24 am

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Gerry Adams uses a column in the Guardian to describe and comment on his interrogation. I was told that the interrogations were an evidence-gathering process, and that the police would be making the case that I was a member of the IRA; that I had a senior IRA managerial role in Belfast at the time of Jean McConville’s abduction; and that I was therefore bound to know about her killing. I challenged my interrogators to produce the new evidential material. They …

Belfast Project (Boston College tapes): “an invitation to people to engage in deep moral reflection on the consequences of war and political violence”

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on February 4, 2013, 8:30 am

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The topic of the Belfast Project – an oral history of republican and loyalist paramilitaries that is archived in the Burns Library at Boston College – is one that Slugger O’Toole posters have been tracking for some time. Taking a step back from the latest developments to look at the project as a whole, and exploring beyond the normal 2-3 minute media soundbite, I spoke to Anthony McIntyre (who conducted many of the republican interviews) about the original purpose of …

“It was always the grunts… who got forensic evidence placed against them in court”

Mick Fealty on July 16, 2012, 2:04 pm

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Interesting quote from AP’s veteran in the field, Shawn Pogatchnik, about how Gerry Adams handles accusations that he was directly involved in any action the IRA’s: He shrugs it off. He has a wonderful Teflon quality about all these things. And the fact is, that when you have been a senior figure in the provisional IRA, or really any sophisticated paramilitary group in Northern Ireland, nothing can be proven because you never got your hands dirty. It was always the …

Are we seeing Increasing frustration from old securocrats or mounting pressure against the former IRA leadership?

Brian Walker on February 14, 2012, 11:17 am

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Eamonn McCann gives an absorbing analysis in Counterpunch, co- edited by Alexander Cockburn the Independent’s highly critical reporter of “the war on terror,” of the linkages between the Omagh bomb and the Boston College tapes. A key figure is former Chief Superintendent Norman Baxter, who is now one of a number of former RUC and PSNI officers working for Col Tim Collins’ New Century security consultancy in Afghanistan. Others will know much more about Baxter than I. Since his retirement …