Somewhat belatedly and unexpectedly, Boston College has filed an appeal against a court decision in the case involving files from its Northern Ireland Troubles archive and an effort by the U.S. Justice Department to wrest them from the cloak of academic and journalistic confidentiality.
Said the college in a statement announcing the move: "Boston College today filed an appeal of the District Court's most recent decision (issued January 20, 2012) requiring the University to turn over all or parts of the interviews of seven individuals who took part in The Belfast Project, an oral history project on the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
"The University is seeking further review of the court's order to ensure that the value of the interviews to the underlying criminal investigation by the Police Service of Northern Ireland outweighs the interests in protecting the confidentiality of academic research materials.
"Boston College did not appeal the District Court's first decision in this case (issued December 16, 2011) because the court both accepted Boston College's argument that government subpoenas for confidential academic materials requires heightened scrutiny, and agreed to review the materials in camera to help protect the significant interests at stake.
"In its appeal, Boston College will argue that the District Court incorrectly applied its own review standard when it demanded the production of the interviews of these seven individuals."
The statement was released by BC spokesman, Jack Dunn.
The appeal was welcomed, but only in part, by the compilers of the archive, Ed Moloney, Anthony McIntyre and Wilson McArthur.
Stated the three: "We would like to welcome Boston College's decision to lodge an appeal against the subpoenas served against seven of our interviewees but regret and deplore that for reasons that defy common sense the college omitted the interviews with Dolours Price.
"With respect to the standard of review of the materials we can see absolutely no difference between the seven cases now to be appealed by BC and that of Dolours Price. For our part we will continue our fight to protect all our interviewees, Republican and Loyalist, including Dolours Price."
The statement was signed by Moloney as "former Project Director, Belfast Project," McIntyre as "lead researcher, republican interviews," and McArthur as "lead researcher, loyalist interviews."
Moloney and McIntyre are separately battling the release of any archive material and are asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit to completely block the request by the U.S. Justice Department on behalf of the PSNI. A hearing is set for the coming weeks. (See Inside File, Page 5).
