On January 27^th of this year, Kevin White, the man often credited with helping turn Boston into the modern city it is, died after a long illness. Since then, there have been a number of news reports and editorial commentaries discussing White’s sixteen year run as mayor, his subsequent career as a Boston University professor, and even the final years of his political life—capped as it was by seemingly endless federal corruption investigations that nailed a few underlings, but despite then-US Attorney (later governor) Bill Weld’s best efforts, never landed the “Great White.”

But missing from most of the coverage has been a description of how the press played handmaiden to Bill Weld’s prosecutorial apparatus and prevented Mayor White from pursuing a fifth term in office. In my post to ThePhoenix.com, I relate a number of stories of prosecutorial targeting and abuse that were largely ignored—and even aided—by the mainstream media at the time. It seems to me that these stories cry out to be told, uncomfortable as they may be for so many participants, myself included.

Often the most precipitous modes of inquiry are the most vital. Certainly, that was how Anthony McIntyre and Ed Maloney felt when they founded the Belfast Project, a Boston College-based oral history project that would solicit candid narratives of “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland. The wound in Ireland is still raw, and it is therefore unsurprising that Belfast Project interviewees were promised that their stories would be kept secret until their deaths.

But last month, a federal judge in Massachusetts ordered Boston College to turn over many of the transcripts in order to aid with the police investigation into a forty year old unsolved murder in Ireland. In our piece this week on Forbes.com, Daniel Schwartz and I discuss the judge’s decision and argue that, while it pays lip service to the importance of academic freedom, it does not go nearly far enough to protect society’s interests and could end up setting a very unfortunate precedent for scholars engaged in sensitive research. 

Take a look at an excerpt of our piece after the jump, or read it in its entirety by clicking here. 

If Moritz Otto Bergmeyer—an architect and building renovator living in a refurbished former warehouse at 107 Fulton Street on the boundary between Boston’s Waterfront and North End neighborhoods—did not have to take his English sheep dog Sacha out to relieve herself early one Saturday morning in the spring of 1972, one of the premier historic neighborhoods of the City of Boston would no longer exist.

In  1970 the so-called “counter-cultural” movement was at its height, and the law firm of Flym, Zalkind & Silverglate was in the eye of the storm. During the prior year, city and court officials in both Boston (Suffolk County) and Cambridge (Middlesex County) took aim at the Avatar, a new, upstart “alternative” newspaper that had thundered onto the local scene. The Avatarwas published by the fledgling Fort Hill Community, a family of folks living together in several buildings located at the top of the Fort Hill section of Boston, the second highest point in the city. At the time the group was led by Mel Lyman, a charismatic and talented harmonica player who had previously played in the famous Jim Kweskin’s Jug Band.

Avatar was a spirited, audacious, and in-your-face newspaper. It belonged squarely in the avant-garde tradition, and was not terribly respectful of established authority. During the course of several issues, it carried news and opinion columns criticizing the powers-that-be, including the Boston and Cambridge municipal councils and police departments, and even some of the district court judges who, in those days, operated like lords of the manor, unquestioned dictators in their own local fiefdoms, in courts where there were neither stenographers nor tape recorders. None of those in power appreciated the jabs directed at them by the writers of the Avatar.

WBUR-90.9-FM, one of Boston’s NPR-affiliated stations, this week ran a three-part report, by reporter David Boeri, on a remarkable case that has arisen in the federal court in Boston, in which evidence of alleged serious misconduct on the part of a federal prosecutor has been uncovered. Boeri interviewed me in parts 2 and 3 of his report, because – I assume – of my long-standing concern with Department of Justice tactics that pose a serious risk of convicting the innocent.