Wife of Boston Tapes researcher calls on gardaí to probe surveillance claims
THE WIFE of the former IRA member behind the Boston Tapes project has told gardaí that she believes she is being spied on.
Carrie Twomey, who is married to Anthony McIntyre, the key researcher of the controversial oral history of The Troubles, made the claim after communications between her and the American embassy in Dublin ended up in a Sunday newspaper.
McIntyre conducted and recorded the interviews of dozens of former IRA activists, which led to the arrest earlier this month of Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams in relation to the 1972 murder of Jean McConville.
Twomey, who lives in Adams’ constituency of Co. Louth with McIntyre and their two children, claims the alleged spying is linked to the PSNI’s announcement that it wants to seize all tapes from the project.
Last weekend it was reported that Twomey, a US citizen, asked the embassy to grant asylum to her husband after he received death threats following Adams’ arrest.
She claims the reports, which said she feared for McIntyre’s life, prove that she has been subject to ‘illegal privacy violations’ but she is unsure who is spying on her.
‘I haven’t a clue who precisely is carrying out the surveillance – it might be the NSA in the States, (British intelligence agency) GCHQ in Britain or even the Provisional IRA’s spying department. But whoever is doing it this is an offence in Irish law and I want the Garda to take it seriously,’ she was quoted as saying in The Guardian newspaper yesterday.
Twomey says the reports are a direct result of a private phone call she had with the embassy on May 14 and an email sent the following day.
She says the publication of that information ‘is a matter of serious concern’ because of privacy violations and the ‘increased risk it indicates’.
McIntyre and co-founder of the Boston Tapes project Ed Moloney have been subjected to verbal attacks since Adams’ arrest.
Mr Moloney has asked the US government to resist the PSNI’s demands to release the remaining tapes to Belfast.