As I said, that's fair enough CA. I recall you saying before that there was bad on both sides and I agreed, but in the case of Nairac, it seems people are quick to blame him for every unsolved murder in NI as if he was some sort of bogeyman. I was merely playing "Devil's Advocate" and saying that the evidence for his involvement is scant. It's merely another conspiracy theory in my opinion, and as you rightly say we will never know so i'm happy to leave it at that. No harm no foul.
It's a collection of source material from people involved, who knew him or were linked to the incident If one of your arguments gets put on Wiki does that make it invalid?
No but when your "only" source is wiki then it's pointless debating a subject on which you clearly know nothing. I suspect you know nothing about a lot of things.
You were the one too lazy to look for sources....I provide many, linked through Wiki but independent of each other And for my lack of knowledge, it was enough to have you going on and on without posting any of your own "sources" There are allegations made by different sources who are not linked to each other and may consider each other enemies who claim it was Nairac But no It makes more sense for them all to be telling the same lie It must be true It isn't on Wiki
And what about the bits from Wiki that you left out? The bits that did not fit in with the conspiracy? Hmm? and I gave links to ALL my sources (the original ones) as I always do.
Sorry Step, you obviously know better than Martin Dillon who says Nairac was not involved. The Irish Times has described Martin Dillon as ‘standing alone as one of the most creative writers of our time’. Born in Belfast, he wrote his first book Political Murder in Northern Ireland, a Penguin Special Edition, while he was a newspaper reporter. He distinguished himself in print journalism before joining the British Broadcasting Corporation as a news reporter and later program editor. While with the BBC for eighteen years, he created award-winning programs and also wrote plays for radio and television. His unique, investigative reporting won him international acclaim and he is considered one of the foremost experts on global terrorism and organized crime. His bestselling trilogy, The Shankill Butchers, The Dirty War and God and the Gun from his non-fiction works, is regarded as the definitive account of the Ireland conflict. After leaving the BBC’s history department Timewatch, he became a terrorism expert for news outlets on Sky Television and Channel Four a role he subsequently went on to fill with US and Canadian radio and television news networks. He has also been featured on CNN and NBC. His contacts within US and Eastern European intelligence services make him one of the best informed writers on the subject. The writer and historian, Conor Cruise O’Brien made the following observations about him: ‘As a writer, Martin Dillon possesses a quality which was commended by Albert Camus: “the reserve that befits a good witness”. He has no axe to grind; he follows the evidence as far as it takes him and he acknowledges that, the evidence does not permit of more than an open verdict. Those who know Martin Dillon know well he will never distort what anyone says to him in order to build up some kind of case to support a theory or assumption. This well-established reputation has greatly assisted him in the pursuit of his enquiries. He is our Virgil to that inferno in all the varieties of its torments.” In 1992, after threats to his life from terrorists, Martin Dillon moved to England and then to France where he spent six years writing books and contributing articles on terrorism to news outlets. In January 1998, he settled in New York where he now lives with his wife, Violeta Kumurdjieva, a Bulgarian journalist.
All you have quoted is me Where are your links to crazy army officers or peoples agendas for instance The Wiki pages are huge....you want to read it all do as I suggested originally Google it
When you suggest I "do something" that in itself is enough to make me waste no more time talking to you about matters where your bias and ignorance is clear, now go and bore someone else or write a book on the subject after doing exhaustive research.
I'm afraid - as I have said (and everyone knows apart from you apparently) that Wiki is not reliable in any way because anyone can add to it or edit it to say anything. Maybe you should read the "discussion" pages on Wiki to see how reliable they are, as a source of information and facts they are about as reliable as you are.
The article says Nairac was promoted to captain in September 1975. What was his rank in July 1975? Was he indeed an officer at the time of the Miami Showband massacre? It's strange that Travers was shown just a photo of Nairac after the attack. It could have been done to trap Travers into saying he was the man at the attack when police knew he was out of Ireland at the time. That would make his claim that a British Army officer having been present fall apart. Another thing, we must remember that the IRA have a very good propaganda machine. It's likely that all of this "Nairac having done this and that" is created to justify their brutal killing of him. Even the Pat Finucane Centre says one has to be careful assigning killings to Nairac simply because of his reputation.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 14:34, 24 April 2011 (UTC) Thanks. So he was an officer then. Of course that proves nothing. As Dillon says linking a British Army officer with a "clipped English accent" to Robert Nairac is absurd, and had a case been brought against Nairac it would have been laughed out of court. I'm saying this with all due respect to the two Miami Showband survivors, yet the evidence just isn't there. I think that's why Travers went to meet the UVF man known as "The Craftsman" in the hopes he would say Nairac had been involved just to add this to his book. There were numerous officers in the North at the time with educated English accents!! I personally recall once at a party in Belfast having met several English people who spoke with perfect Oxford accents!--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 14:55, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
I am Jeanne Boleyn, the editor who wrote most of the Wikipedia article on the Miami Showband killings. It was I who changed the article from a "Nairac-did-it" POV to an actual account of the massacre based on reliable sources. Some of these sources name Nairac, but for the most part they offer no evidence placing Robert Nairac at Buskhill in the early hours of 31 July 1975. Indeed, he might not have even been physically present on the island of Ireland at all. The main perp was Robin Jackson, the commander of the UVF's Mid-Ulster Brigade having taking over from Billy Hanna who was allegedly shot by Jackson four days prior to the massacre. That British officer Travers and McAlea saw could have been Tony Ball, Bunny Dearsley, or any of the many British officers in Northern Ireland at the time. It's the fault of the journalists for failing to ask the surviving band members other, far more pertinent questions rather than the old hat "Was Nairac at the scene"? For instance, why not ask them whether or not they recognise Jackson as one of the uniformed men and question the premise that the attack was carried out to suggest the band was smuggling bombs for the IRA!!!! Now would anyone have seriously bought this? Especially with Ray Millar being able to claim otherwise?! That the IRA would use a popular cabaret band to transport bombs down south ( and to what purpose?!) ; especially a band whose trumpet player Brian McCoy was the son of the Orange Grand Master of Caledon with a brother-in-law a member of the UDR? These are just some of the many questions that need answering.
