Boston College Touts

The Boston College Tapes were recordings of oral histories fro individuals directly involved in paramilitary groups during The Troubles between 1969 and 1994. Individuals from Republican and Loyalist communities participated in the project. Participants were promised the contents of the tapes would only be released after the participants were dead as a means of protecting them from potential harm. 
The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) used the United States court system to subpoena that tapes to investigate the murder of Jean McConville in 1972. The move was labelled by some as a “fishing expedition” aimed at Sinn Féin leader, Gerry Adams. 

Adams was arrested in April of 2014 and questioned for 4 days. The prosecution eventually called any content on the tapes regarding Adams as hearsay. Adams faced no charges. 
Adams was arrested just a few weeks prior to local elections and elections for European Parliament. Sinn Féin was expected to perform well in these elections. Sinn Féin held the position that the investigation had clear political motivations in regards to the timing of Adams’s arrest. 

In April of 2014 around the same time as Adams’s arrest, Theresa Villiers, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, rejected appeals for an independent panel to investigate the 1971 Ballymurphy Massacre where British soldiers left 10 civilians dead, with another dying from a heart attack after the incident. Villiers stated that an inquiry into the Ballymurphy killings would not suit the public interest. For the Irish republican community, it appeared that the state was rejecting investigations of their own crimes while opening an investigation of a prominent republican leader right before important elections. 

The Boston College Tapes incidents caused significant damage that could have jeopardised peace. Old wounds were reopened and trust was violated. The broken promises and lack of protection for vulnerable participants damaged academia as a whole. Had the tapes been protected, the information on them could have been invaluable to understanding the conflict since the participants could speak honestly without fear of repercussions. Now there is an understandable distrust of academics conducting research into The Troubles.