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Periscope by Niall O'Dowd

Boston College Irish tapes - the truth about Ed Moloney’s book and letting the cat out of the bag

Posted on Thursday, October 25, 2012 at 08:41 AM

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Ed Moloney

Journalist Ed Moloney has been busy convincing everyone he is the victim in the Boston College tapes fiasco. The reality is different.

Put frankly, if he hadn’t decided to make some money for himself from his book on the tapes, Voices from the Grave, none of the issues that have now arisen around the tapes would have happened. The tapes by now would have quietly become the preserve of academics and historians.

Moloney’s intent was clear from the beginning. He hired anti-Gerry Adams researcher and dissident spokesman Anthony McIntyre and only interviewed IRA figures who hated Adams for various reasons -- hardly the mark of a dispassionate researcher/historian.

I have long maintained that Moloney was out to get Adams when he decided to do the tapes, and persuaded Boston College to underwrite the project and give it academic recognition – something the college now deeply regrets.

Moloney has denied all of this, but in a recent reply to a Unionist writer, Water Ellis, on his own blog site, he seems to admit it.

Here is the exchange in which Ellis congratulates Moloney for getting an extension from the Supreme Court on the tapes issue.

(Moloney erroneously presents this as a great victory. It is not, and merely a procedural issue. I do not believe there is a hope in hell the Supreme Court will hear the case.)

MOLONEY: “Ah Walter! I had thought you dead and gone. Never a losing cause, just keeping my promise to people. If I do have an obsession it is with outing liars, which is why I write about Lance Armstrong! There is another outrageous liar with whom we are both familiar, me perhaps more than you. Wears a beard and used to puff on a pipe a lot. Write about him too.”

ELLIS: “I hope you’re not suggesting that a certain one-time barkeep, for whom power was the ultimate performance-enhancing drug, will one day soon be stripped of his many titles.”

MOLONEY: “A former barkeep with a power complex? Whom could you possibly be talking about?”

It is an interesting exchange, revealing as Belfast Republican writer Danny Morrison says, Moloney’s true mindset on this issue. It has been a “Get Adams” undertaking all the time.

Morrison writes, “Moloney, unthinkingly, in an email to Walter Ellis... reveals the whole purpose of his sham historic project!”

I have to agree with Morrison. Irish America has been taken for a ride by an individual whose main objective is to destroy Adams.

"Outing liars" by his very own words, meaning Adams, was Moloney’s main intent all along. He hid it well under a cloak of academic respectability unwittingly given to him by Boston College.

Now Irish America needs to make clear that it is against the handing over of the tapes to the British government, but also that they are not blinkered by what was actually being attempted here – nothing less than setting up Adams and endangering the peace process. Irish America should not be fooled to believe anything else.

Moloney is a strange character. He recently recounted two utterly fictional conversations he had with me from the 1990s on his blog in which I was allegedly taken to task for using his columns without attribution.

It never happened, I can say with every ounce of conviction I have. But like the Boston tapes saga, Moloney appears to ignore inconvenient truths when it suits him.

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45 Comments

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seamus60 | Oct 31, 2012, 08:23 AM EDT

Seano. Its difficult to get confused when in an earlier post you stated that Gerry Adams would sully his name by admitting to being a soldier in the PIRA. You degenerate a lot of good peoples name with that statement. You then go on to acuse me of not dealing with the present, I then point out that the issues i have highlighted are the present and will have considerable bearing on the way forward. you also accuse me of having no vision. Lets deal with the present, with your good self joining an ever growing number of people condemning the party you put your faith in ,for their participation in doing to Nationalists what we thought only the Brits and or Unionist politicians would do. If any thing was wrong then its wrong now regardless of who dish`s it out under any disguise like it being imposed on them by the big bad Brit Gov.

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seamus60 | Oct 31, 2012, 08:07 AM EDT

Mairead. As a marcher on Bloody Sunday I walked behind no specific banner of which there were many. Just as any time I Marched at any civil rights organised marchs for Civil rights in General. As you have explained Internment was just the latest abuse inflicted on Nationalists because of their new found stance against corupt authority. The same coruption we see again ,only with the assistance of our own. If what I have said can be constrewed as rewriting history, hardly anything to get concerned about in comparison to the likes of what we now know about the Hunger strikes etc. As for how much has changed tell that to Marian Price or the Catholic folk in North Belfast who live in housing not much better than we did in 69.

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maireadinmelb | Oct 31, 2012, 03:34 AM EDT

seamus you do not further your argument by changing history! The march on bloody sunday was an anti internment rally. IT was not about other issues. the context of history at that time was the beginings of a human rights movement concerned iwth gerrymandering and housing. given the usual british response that ensued and the over reaction they introduced internment which led to the Bloody SUnday march. YOu cannot say that the current status of those in the occupied terrortories is the same as in '69 - there are now elections held on a one man one vote principle there may only be minimal improvement but there has been some!!

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seanomelb | Oct 30, 2012, 06:23 PM EDT

You seem to miss the point I make Seamus. Is it a lack of understanding what I write or you are in denial?? I never condoned gerrymandering and always supported the bloody sunday march. I think you need to get over yourself.

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seamus60 | Oct 30, 2012, 09:13 AM EDT

Thank you Niall for allowing my posts that had gone astray earlier.

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seamus60 | Oct 30, 2012, 07:57 AM EDT

Seano. If you call my lamblasting such issues like Gerrymandering and Internment( 2 of the key issues why people marched on Bloody Sunday)as norrow minded, then I`m proud to be called it. I have stated many times that the leadership of SF is the problem and their running the party as they ran the army is no way forward for anyone. Because I havent laid out any detailed plan for the future doesn`t mean theirs is the best either. Do we need more fatcat politicians who wish to rule through deceit, we have more than enough of them. What are we to do about the above mentioned issues effecting Nationalists, resurfaced aided by our so called own side ? By not speaking out we are entering into denial of the rights sought by those who protested 40 years ago. what are we to do about this radical welfare reform that is an attack on the people the party have always depended on during war time ?. Issues happening in real time need dealt with in real time. Other wise nothing goes forward. We have conceded over 30 years and thousands of lives to discover we are back as we started.

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seanomelb | Oct 29, 2012, 09:43 PM EDT

Seamus I agreed with you that there is an argument of Sinn Fein selling out to a form of free stateism ( to coin a word). It is you who has a closed mind and fails to deal with the present. You are consumed by your narrow view and you fail to give a case for going forward.

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seamus60 | Oct 29, 2012, 07:59 PM EDT

Seano. If you`re not prepared to educate me on the bleeding obvious, what am I to do ? (thats another question mark). The old SF mentality is engraved in your mindset. Try going into any of their sites without paying and tell me how many bloggs you come accross where the reply section is open. They remain closed in order that people like Adams and Morrison can make grand statements without fear of contridiction. At least Niall who does not answer to posters on the dicection of his articles allows them remain open for debate.

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seanomelb | Oct 29, 2012, 05:58 PM EDT

If "parroting" my last post is the best you can do fair enough.

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seamus60 | Oct 29, 2012, 03:18 PM EDT

Niall will you be replying to Maloneys yesterday in Nuzhound to this one.

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seamus60 | Oct 29, 2012, 03:01 PM EDT

PhlutiePhan. With respect, Adams a radical socialist, radical yes socialist no. His party only 2 weeks ago had the power to stop a radical welfare reform scheme from being imposed on the most vunerable people ( regardless of religion) in the North. They did`nt and now atempt to blame everyone else. Lets not forget either how they are more than happy with donations from multinationals involved in very unsavoury actions against their workers. But hardly surprising, Brendan Hughs exposed that the PRM was actually exploiting republican prisoners on their release from prison.

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seamus60 | Oct 29, 2012, 02:26 PM EDT

Seano. You`ve already made it clear i`m too bitter for you, why would i need you as a mouthpiece when you admit to having next to, or no conscience. Same old SF rebutals have long passed their sell-out date

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PhlutiePhan | Oct 29, 2012, 11:17 AM EDT

The evil of Gerry Adams can stand on its own. Moloney is only the one who is lifitng the mantle of deceit. The father of my grandmother killed a Black and Tan and that is why he left the old sod. Gerry Adams has morphed into a radical socialist in the image of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez. The Brits have wanted to allow the reunification of Ireland for quite some time. However, they reject the radical socialism which would occur. As a Navy vet, I was told this on a Med cruise by two temp duty Brit officers one of whom lost two brothers in "The Troubles". This only reinforces my own beliefs of the plan of estruction of the land of St. Patrick. The snakes have returned.

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seanomelb | Oct 28, 2012, 06:19 PM EDT

Seamus I'm not your mouthpiece and I answer according to my conscience. I'm not here to rubber stamp your bitterness.

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Realist | Oct 28, 2012, 06:04 PM EDT

seamus60: As Brendan Hughes put it, "....it's a British solution to an Irish Republican problem". The arguments re-run on this site, week in, week out were lost years ago. To be honest, it was always going to end like this with Sinn Fein reduced to painting letter boxes green in border towns and "stalking their lost deeds" as Anthony McIntyre put it. All are now just acting out the roles carved out for them....people like Seano do not understand this, but that's as it should be. His thinking is done for him by others and he'll eat up without question whatever they set before him.

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