Boston College fights release of secret IRA tapes

BOSTON (AP) -- Boston College is challenging a federal judge's order to release oral history project interviews with seven ex-Irish Republican Army members.

Under terms of a treaty, U.S. officials plan to share those interviews with Northern Ireland police investigating a 1972 homicide.

Boston College recorded combatants from both sides of the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland, a conflict between the British Protestant majority and Irish Catholic minority.

Spokesman Jack Dunn says the school wants a higher court to decide if the using the interviews in a criminal probe outweighs the protection of academic research.

Interview transcripts were supposed to stay confidential, to the extent U.S. law allows, until participants died.

The 1972 case involves allegations Sinn Fein political leader Gerry Adams led the unit of the now-outlawed IRA that ordered the execution.

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