This is an on-the-media podcast Extra. I'm Brooke Gladstone. This week, another battle in the tug of war between justice and reconciliation in the wake of Ireland's time of troubles, that is, the battles between the Irish Republican Army and the loyalist paramilitaries that

raged from the 70s into the 90s.

The bomb blew apart the horse and groom pub in Guilford, killing five people and injuring 50

more. An hour later, another pub 200 yards up the road was also bombed. Then a month later at Woolwich in South London,

another soldier's pub was bombed and two people were killed.

This latest chapter involves an ongoing legal battle

over the Belfast Project,

an archive of taped testimonies from both sides of the conflict in Northern Ireland.

The recordings are housed inside Boston College Library, unavailable to the public and law enforcement

because the interviewees were promised that their testimonies would not be released until after

their deaths. But since 2011, British officials have been trying to get

at those tapes, using the U.S.-UK. Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty to subpoena Boston College.

This week saw the delivery of yet another subpoena, ordering Boston College to provide

recordings of Anthony McIntyre,

who happens to be the Belfast Project's lead researcher and interviewer,

and who also served 18 years in prison for an IRA-related murder.

We spoke to McIntyre in 2014 when he was in the middle of the last subpoena battle.

That time, the British authorities demanded and ultimately received from the project

archived interviews related to the unsolved murder of Jean McConville,

dragged from her home in front of her kids in 1972. Jean McConville's abduction, torture, murder and secret burial by the IRA nearly 40 years ago

leaves many unanswered questions.

The mother of Tens' body was dumped on a county-Louth beach, and despite extensive searches, was only found in 2003 by a passing Walker.

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