*** EXCLUSIVE CAMPAIGN OUTSIDER EXCLUSIVE ***

For the past month the hardworking staff has been following – and trying to determine the identity of – @BCSubpoenaNews, whose Twitter feed and blog promise to “keep you up to date  on the latest news involving Boston College’s fight against the subpoenas seeking the Burns Library’s Belfast Project Oral History of the IRA.”

(So as not to bury the lead, the answer is: The wife of Anthony McIntyre, who did the interviews for the project.)

Here’s the backstory:

Splendid reader Ted Folkman was the first to come forward with a theory:

I am not sure, but I believe the Twitter feed belongs to Ed Moloney. The Broken Elbow blog, appears to belong to him, and it references the Twitter feed.

(That would be Ed Moloney who directed the oral history project at BC.)

But Folkman’s conjecture was soon shot down by the mysterious commenter Digital History:

The Broken Elbow is Ed Moloney’s blog, and Ed Moloney did post about the BC Subpoena News site. But using Ted Folkman’s logic, it could also be said that as you have posted about the site, you are the one behind it. In both cases that would be wrong. Neither you nor Ed Moloney are behind the BCSN blog, although you have both drawn attention to it via your own blogs.

The BCSN is simply a reference site for people who are interested in, or should be interested in because of its impact or ramifications, the case and its outcome. All relevant material is collected at the site so that an informed opinion, rather than off-the-cuff, inaccurate and incorrect supposition, can be made on the subject. Court documents, affidavits, exhibits, news articles and a good deal of background information, is all readily available and updated regularly to help people not familiar with the case’s nuances understand all that is at play in this complex issue. The site is structured so it is easy to navigate and discover all the detail.

Except, of course, who is behind it, as the BCSN prefers to remain anonymous. ʘ‿ʘ

Folkman wasn’t done yet. Yesterday he wrote:

Well, to respond to Digital History, here is the post from Moloney’s Broken Elbow blog that led me to conclude that he’s behind the new blog, too.

In an escalation of the campaign to resist the PSNI/US Department of Justice invasion of the Boston College oral history archives, we have created a website which gathers together all the publicly available documents & articles about the affair, opened a Facebook page and activated a Twitter feed on developments.

This supplements our recent attempt to intervene legally in the case with a strategy devised by our lawyer Eamonn Dornan. You can read about that here.

Here is the website [Links to the new blog].

Which led to this startling revelation from Digital History:

Good catch, Mr Folkman – perhaps I am parsing hairs at this point but my interjection here was that it was not Ed Moloney’s personal blog nor specific to Mr Moloney alone. I built the website originally as my own reference source for easy access to quickly accumulating material and it was made public as the interest in the case has grown. I am Anthony McIntyre’s wife. As such neither the Twitter feed nor the blog belong to Moloney, as had been previously suggested on this blog.

(That would be Anthony McIntyre who interviewed 26 former Irish Republican Army members for the project.)

Last word (for now) to the resourceful Mr. Folkman:

Fair enough! You may or may not be interested in my posts on this case, which deal with it from a purely legal perspective without really asking about the political or policy implications:

Initial post on the motion to quash
Post on the government’s opposition to the motion to quash
Post on the motion to intervene
Post on the government’s opposition to the motion to intervene.

I’m not sure the conclusions will be to your liking, but I do think BC and particularly the intervenors have a very tough row to hoe.

The hardworking staff will do its best to keep up.