Edmund "Ed" Moloney (born 1948–9) is an Irish journalist and author best known for his coverage of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and the activities of the Provisional IRA, in particular. He worked for the Hibernia magazine and Magill before going on to serve as Northern Ireland editor for The Irish Times and subsequently for the Sunday Tribune. He is currently living and working in New York. His first book, Paisley, was a biography of Unionist leader Ian Paisley, co-authored by Andy Pollak, and published in 1986. In 2002, he published a best selling history of the Provisional IRA, A Secret History of the IRA.[1] A second edition of the book was published in July 2007. This was followed, in 2008, by a new edition of Paisley: From Demagogue to Democrat?, of which Moloney is the single author.[2] In 1999, he was voted Irish Journalist of the Year.[3] In March 2010, the book Voices from the Grave was published, which featured interviews with Brendan Hughes and David Ervine, compiled by researchers for Boston College. He based the book on the interviews given by Hughes and Ervine. Excerpts from the book published by The Sunday Times relate to Hughes discussing his role and that of Gerry Adams in the PIRA. Events recorded in the book include both men's actions in regards to the disappearance of Jean McConville and others, Bloody Friday, and the sourcing of IRA weapons, among other details of Hughes' IRA career.[4] In October 2010, Irish broadcaster RTÉ aired an 83-minute television documentary co-produced by Moloney based on Voices from the Grave. In February 2011, Voices From the Grave won the best television documentary prize at the annual Irish Film and Television Awards (IFTAs). On 27 June 1999, Moloney published a story based on his 1990 interviews he had with UDA quartermaster Billy Stobie. Stobie claimed that, in a separate incident, the Special Branch had framed him by planting guns at his home. He related his version of the circumstances of Pat Finucane's death to be published as assurance should anything untoward happen to him. The account was published when, as part of the Stevens Enquiry Stobie was arrested and charged with Finucane's murder.[5] Moloney refused to comply with a court order that he should give to the police notes he had made during the interviews.[6] He faced jail or heavy fines but, in October 1999, Lord Chief Justice Sir Robert Carswell ruled at the High Court in Belfast that the judge had been mistaken in ordering Moloney to turn over his notes to the police. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Moloney Reviewers responded favorably. In The Blanket, an online journal, reviewer Liam O Ruairc described the book as potentially "the standard if not the definitive work on the history of the Provisional IRA".[1] Eamonn McCann, in The Nation, commented that it was "the best book yet" written on the Provisional IRA as it traced the rise of the Provos from the burning out of Catholic neighborhoods in Belfast in August 1969 to "the enclosure of the movement's leadership within conventional bourgeois politics through the Good Friday Agreement of 1998" (Belfast Agreement).[2] A central theme in the book is the role that Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams has played in the Irish Republican Movement. In his review, O Ruairc noted that the book could have been "better titled A Secret History of Gerry Adams".[1] In The Sunday Business Post Online, reviewer Tom McGurk, in a reference to the strategy articulated by Danny Morrison at the 1981 Sinn Féin Ard-Fheis, wrote that the book "grippingly" detailed Adams's struggle to move from the Armalite to the ballot box "without a split and without bodies in ditches".[3] The book was met with controversy because of some of the revelations it contains. And those revelations reveal both a strength and weakness, in that some of Moloney's sources were willing to speak in great detail but with the caveat that they remain confidential. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Secret_History_of_the_IRA

• published: 17 Feb 2016
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