Hart claimed he personally interviewed two anonymous ambush veterans in 1988-89 and listened to recorded interviews with three further unnamed Kilmichael veterans. The recordings (known as 'the Chisholm tapes') were made in 1970 by Father John Chisholm as research for Liam Deasy's "Toward Ireland Free" (1973). Meda Ryan, author of "Tom Barry, IRA Freedom Fighter" (2003), questioned Hart's claim to have interviewed two Kilmichael veterans in 1988 and 1989, claiming only one, Edward "Ned" Young, was still alive from 1987-89. Ryan reported him too ill to have contributed to Hart's research. This assertion was supported in an affidavit published in 2008 by Ned Young's son, John. Ned Young died aged 97 on 13 November 1989. According to Ryan (and 1980s newspaper accounts) The second last surviving Kilmichael veteran, Jack O'Sullivan, died in December 1986. However, Hart dated an additional interview with his second anonymous Kilmichael veteran on 19 November 1989, six days after Ned Young died. Hart claimed his interviewee was an unarmed ambush scout, although the last ambush scout, Dan O'Driscoll, reportedly died in 1967. The last dispatch scout, Seán Falvey, died in 1971. Hart's earlier 1992 PhD thesis, on which his book is based, did not describe this 19 November 1989 interviewee as an unarmed scout. In his thesis, Hart described touring around the Kilmichael ambush site with this interviewee, a claim withdrawn from the book.