More tales from a wounded hidden Ireland

national | crime and justice | news report Friday September 01, 2006 03:14 by Brian

This is just a short account, and attempted analysis, of some news stories that have arisen in the last year or so in the general area of justice and intelligence agency activity in Ireland. I have tried particularly to tie some of the stories together in order to attempt to trace some of the major trends in this otherwise miscellaneous data. Unfortunately it isn't a pretty picture!

I might as well begin by pointing out that a number of human rights campaigners who have investigated abuses by the security forces et al in the UK and Northern Ireland are now, shockingly, saying that the security/justice apparatus in the South of Ireland is almost on a par with the worst examples of tyranny in Eastern Europe.(1) They are basing this on the experiences of Michael McKevitt and his family, which have been described in a small book by Marcella Sands. It is a long catalogue of security forces intimidating people, throwing people over the bonnets of cars, shining lights to keep people awake, broadcasting obscenities through loudhailers to disorientate them, and brainwashing the local people with media stories based on no evidence at all.(Michael McKevitt has been long ago branded with the Omagh bombing which he hasn't even been charged with.)Fr. Des Wilson, one of these distinguished campaigners, was at his trial and is lost for words to describe what he saw:
"Some of us who attended the Green St. court any time during the hearing of his trial will always remember the grip of cold fear we felt at how similar this trial was to what we had read about years ago, the show trials of the dictatorships.....In the past however, news media and church and universities and all kinds of people had condemned what was happening in those countries which they described as under dictatorship or communist rule. Now we were witnessing in our own people’s courts the misuse of a system which we believed was so superior, so basically just, so presided over by people of such integrity that it would always be found better to set the guilty free than to convict even one innocent. This trial has been one of the most frightening and revealing of the past forty years in Ireland’s courts north and south....We who are already shocked need not feel helpless. Michael McKevitt and his family need our help and that help should be given for the sake of justice for all of us."(2)
The book also details how the lead party in McKevitt's prosecution appears to be in fact MI5, so much so that at one point Bernadette Sands McKevitt personally challenged the Taoiseach to explain on what basis MI5 were now operating openly in the south of Ireland. For example some documents given to the defence appear to show Garda Assistant Commissioner Dermot Jennings, in practice the head of Irish Intelligence, helping MI5 in their preparation of the case, rather than the other way around:
"The MI5 document further states that Jennings was worried about the mistakes in Rupert’s statement and that he proposed to send the MI5 agent a copy of the statement but the agent said not to send it."(3) Remember this is the prosecution in an Irish court, of an Irish person living in Ireland, for offences committed in Ireland - again he wasn't charged with the Omagh bombing. This idea that the Irish intelligence agencies are growing in influence in Ireland as part of mysterious relationships with other foreign agencies is confirmed by this from the Phoenix which states that the Crime and Security Branch :
"has in fact increased its influence....mainly the result of globalisation and a great expansion in international intelligence cooperation, through the European Schengen agreement and joint links with British and American agencies. These working bilateral alliances have remained largely secret, only occasionally being glimpsed - as in the Real IRA McKevitt trial, where the Special Criminal Court was packed with British and American intelligence operatives from MI5, the FBI and the CIA involved in the Rupert sting operation."(4)

There is also a growing awareness that the four people convicted on long sentences for offences surrounding the murder of Veronica Guerin might also be victims of a massive miscarriage of justice. You can see this in a number of Village articles for example which have used headlines like "Veronica's murder investigation a fiasco"(5) and "Charles Bowden: The Lying Supergrass"(6). But the implications of this are huge because a number of powerful entities seemed to quickly decide on their guilt in a way that, if they are in fact innocent, comes across as a deliberate coverup. If you break it down into three areas:
(a) The Department of Justice and the Justice system. The Department created a whole new witness protection programme to protect a supergrass, and former top Irish army marksman, Charles Bowden. They also gave him a secret lucrative deal in return for his testimony. Yet now judges are describing him as a serial 'self-serving liar'(7) and serious questions are being asked about the true nature of the secret arrangements that were made with the Department of Justice.(8) It is even felt by observers like Jimmy Guerin that it was Bowden himself who killed his sister.(9)This four have also received massive sentences for crimes that sometimes don't attract such draconian punishments. This includes an initial - somewhat reduced on appeal - 28 year sentence for cannabis smuggling handed down to Gilligan as well as a large sentence for allegedly saying he would harm a prison officer. Holland's lawyer, the colourful Giovanni Di Stefano, even claims that there is a conspiracy involving "the judiciary, members of the Irish legal profession, Irish senior counsel, and possibly even politicians" to stop him defending his client.
"He said that both counsels and solicitors who had taken up cases for his clients subsequently withdrew from the cases under "strange circumstances", having cited new edicts from the Bar Council.
He even suggested that three solicitors his company had asked to act for Limerick criminals Wayne Dundon, Desmond Dundon and Anthony McCarthy all withdrew from the cases the day after agreeing to act."(10)Btw the government at the time of the murder then introduced the Criminal Assets Bureau and at least one solicitor, John Devane from Limerick, is now saying that this body is also being used to intimidate solicitors who cross swords with the gardai.(11)
(b) The media, were clearly very quick to finger the Gilligan gang as being responsible for the murder. In fact on the same day as the murder the Evening Herald was already pointing to John Gilligan as being the culprit (12), and the Sunday Independent followed that up a few days later with a picture of him.(13)How could they have discovered all this so quickly? if John Gilligan is innocent then doesn't it look like somebody was trying to set him up? Obviously then throughout the whole trial process elements in the media kept up the pressure as this anecdote related by Brenda Power indicates:
"As [Dutchy Holland] stood for what seemed an eternity to await his sentence, a well-known crime reporter sitting next to me barracked him with abusive comments," she wrote.

"Even though his remarks could be heard clearly ('You're going to get yours, Dutchy, you're going down for a long time; you'll never shoot anybody else'), neither the judges nor the gardaí seemed to notice...

"When the sentence of 20 years was passed, Holland looked shocked. My vocal colleague went into overdrive and his taunting grew louder. As Holland was being led away he looked down at the media benches and made a remark that another reporter and I heard clearly.

"The ranter on my other side didn't quite catch what Holland said, which didn't stop him repeating what he thought he heard. 'Did you hear what he said?' he asked everybody excitedly. 'He said it was just another job!'

"Those words have since become part of journalistic and crimeland legend. Whenever they are repeated they are used as evidence of Holland's callousness...

"But that's not what Holland said. 'Youse done your job,' are the actual words he used." (14)
John Byrne in Village magazine has described this as "a telling insight into the workings of Irish crime journalism" because I guess those words by Holland then were repeated ad infinitum across the media, possibly to reinforce public support for his conviction. Brenda Power didn't name the journalist but Holland in his Sky News interview named him as Paul Williams.

(c) The Gardai, also went the extra mile to secure these convictions which included resorting to tactics like arresting Holland's solicitor simultaneously with his arrest which ensured that he didn't have legal representation during a crucial moment in his dealings with the gardai. The Phoenix has described this as "a blatant abuse of the legal rights of both men".(15)

So the pattern is that these three entities seemed to have coincidentally come together to bring about the prosecution of what some claim now to be four innocent men, in a way that surely must cause some disquiet. Incidentally to be fair to the judges it should be pointed out that there is only one judicial decision now on record that links any of these four to the killing of Veronica Guerin, which is the recent lost Appeal by Brian Meehan. John Gilligan was actually acquitted of the crime, Patrick Holland was never even charged with it, and Paul Ward had his conviction overturned.(16)
Then of course the question is who did kill Veronica Guerin and why? She certainly must have ruffled feathers among those who run the Irish drug trade and I think also that it was in the months before her death that she was assisting Councillor Gary O'Halloran in his attempts to unearth a paedophile ring in the south east.(17)

As it happens many of the gardai involved in the Veronica Guerin inquiry were also the subject of some of the very serious allegations that arose out of Donegal, so much so that Patrick Holland tried to get his case added to those which are being examined by the Morris Tribunal.(18)This tribunal, which has just issued another of its reports is now facing some very serious criticism from the various Donegal families who had originally called for it to be set up. It appears that there is almost a consensus among them that the tribunal is not genuine in its attempts to unearth the corruption in Donegal. A member of the Divers family, for example, called the tribunal something of a sham(19);
Karen McGlinchey notes with frustration that the public reports seem to be some kind of subsection of a wider secret report that the families and the public are not permitted to see (20); Mark McConnell and Michael Peoples ("we've been obstructed at every stage. I won't be going back through the door of that tribunal again. I've had my fill") (21) are now I think joining the boycott of the tribunal which was started by the; McBreartys, whose opinion that the tribunal is only interested in covering up abuses is obviously well known.

There is also then the Barr Tribunal which reported recently on the death of John Carthy. In it Justice Barr is very critical of the senior Gardai at the scene, regarding them as ultimately 'responsible' for the death of John Carthy. The report is also notable for the unbroken record that Superintendent Joe Shelly has maintained by being mentioned in, I think, all the tribunals that have examined the gardai since the beginning of the state. He played a starring role in the Kerry babies affair where he was accused of assaulting Joanne Hayes's brother, at the Morris Tribunal he was a senior garda in Donegal at that time and is regularly criticised there, and now in the Barr Tribunal he has been castigated for his role as intelligence coordinator at the scene at Abbeylara. Mind you I think all these reports throw up more questions than answers, after all even in Kerry there is still the unsolved murder of a baby stabbed to death on a lonely beach in Dingle Bay.(22) The Barr Tribunal also throws up its fair share of questions rather than conclusions. There is one section called simply "A cover-up?"(23)which raises the prospect of the senior gardai organising a systematic coverup to disguise an earlier shot fired at John Carthy when he was leaving the house (and while his gun was probably still in the broken position). There is another interesting part to his report which is where he investigated a newspaper article that seemed designed to discredit and divide the Carthy family and possibly derail the tribunal. After much sleuthing he forms the opinion that it was in fact elements in the gardai, allied to the Sunday Independent journalist, and some party within the workings of the tribunal which was responsible for the article. He is pretty openly accusing some in the gardai of this, he is very critical of the Independent group, and he actually leaves a very broad hint that it was John Rogers, the former Labour Party Attorney General, who was the mole within the Tribunal structure. (John Rogers was appearing as counsel for some of the gardai.)(24)

One person who is also no great fan of some in the Labour Party is Peter Preston who has obviously accused a former Justice spokesman for the Labour party of being involved in covering up corruption in the legal profession. His experiences of tangling with the powers that be in Ireland has left him saying that:
"I never thought for one moment that I would have to tell my children to be wary of the gardai, solicitors, barristers, judges and politicians. I believed that the Garda Siochana were there to uphold the law.

There is nobody from an ordinary family that has destroyed my family, but only the so called 'cream' of society has.....This is of major public interest because it could happen to any person."(25)
Peter Preston received serious criticism here on indymedia because some felt that the idea that such independent bodies as the judiciary and an opposition politician would conspire against a person seeking justice was considered to be too outlandish.
(26) But if you read the experiences of community activists across Ireland you can see that they too emerge unimpressed by the independence of many of these bodies. The Rossport 5, for example, I don't think have too many kind words to say about the President of the High Court, a leading judicial figure who effectively threatened them with losing their houses, or now about Peter Cassels, a leading Labour party and trade union official who Rossport supporters are saying now is just a government (and Shell) lackey (27). They seem just as depressed about the state of Ireland as you can read in one of their statements:
"Initially we were jubilant and excited for Mayo and the country when we heard of the Corrib gas find. When we learned that the route would traverse Rossport we became concerned and as we looked closer and sought advice we became alarmed. As Irish citizens and mainly traditional second and third generation Fine Gael and Fianna Fail voters we instinctively sought reassurance and support from state agencies and our local politicians and as farmers from the IFA. We were initially fobbed off, then ignored and finally marginalized. As our awareness of the lethal danger to our families grew our concerns turned into resistance.
...
We have been betrayed by our government, marginalized by sections of the media and ignored by the “alternative” government. Instead it has been the people of Ireland who have sustained us during this time of crisis and personal trauma and who have rallied and continue to rally to our aid – thank you."(28)
As you can see this criticism does extent to questioning the sincerity of opposition parties as Martin Collins from Derrybrien, a small community in Galway fighting against a wind farm developer, indicates:
"Our experience in this case has been that politicians from all parties .... turned their back and walked away" with the exception of some MEPs particularly Patricia McKenna.(29) He had further serious criticism to make of the many 'independent' - his quotation marks - bodies designed to deal with complaints and planning in Ireland as you can see from this summary of a speech he made in solidarity with the Rossport families:
"The politicians are losing the run of themselves and putting profit before people. Businesses, planners, State companies and politicians are acting against the people. They have no respect for the dignity of communities and their areas.

Many so-called ''independent'' arms of the state – which pretend to be separate – work as one going forward with regard to unsustainable developments. The politicians and public servants, our employees, feed in to this when they should be doing the bidding of the people."(30)
William Finnerty, an activist from Kilconnell also in Galway, has come away with much the same impression based on his many dealings with these various bodies:
"...it is becoming more and more clear to me that organisations such as the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, the several Ombudsmen's' Offices, the Human Rights Commissioners, The European Court of Human Rights, The Law Societies and so on, are, it seems, just "window dressing" - which are actually designed to slyly support all of very worst of the political, legal and corporate corruption that I am battling with: while fraudulently pretending to be providing a sound defence against it. In other words, and all taken together, they are nothing more (at the present time) than a very shoddy and very mean confidence trick - in so far as I can judge from my direct dealings with them.

"Go here, go there, go somewhere else; but, wherever you go we will always make sure the very serious problems you raise will NEVER be addressed in a way which threatens the core of the political, legal and corporate corruption we wish to hold on to, and to keep control over."" (31).

It is interesting that he would include one of the European bodies that others, like Michael McKevitt, are pinning their faith in. Maybe W. Finnerty is right if this speech by the English MEP Ashley Mote is anything to go by:
"Mr President, I wish to draw your attention to the Global Security Fund, set up in the early 1990s under the auspices of Jacob Rothschild. This is a Brussels-based fund and it is no ordinary fund: it does not trade, it is not listed and it has a totally different purpose. It is being used for geopolitical engineering purposes, apparently under the guidance of the intelligence services. I have previously asked about the alleged involvement of the European Union’s own intelligence resources in the management of slush funds in offshore accounts, and I still await a reply.
To that question I now add another: what are the European Union’s connections to the Global Security Fund and what relationship does it have with European Union institutions?"(32)
Apparently its a huge EU slush fund used to bribe politicians and others within the member states in order to get the various EU treaties passed.(33)Three dissident MEPs from the EU's Budget Control Committee, Mote alongwith Hans Peter Martin MEP from Austria (34) and Paul van Buitenen from the Netherlands (35), are now trying to investigate the relationship between the EU and this fund and another shady fund/clearing bank called Clearstream which was said to have been involved in handling bribes to the French Justice Minister among many others.(36)The sums of money involved are quoted in trillions.

Back in Ireland we have found out more details about the somewhat lower scale of corruption in Dublin County Council. Bill O'Herlihy, the RTE soccer presenter, has given details to the Mahon tribunal of a conversation he had with an employee of one of the land developers in Dublin in 1992. Over coffee while they were waiting for a vote of Dublin County Council, as Bill innocently expressed the hope that the councillors could see the merit in the development his companion, a former Dundalk Town clerk, guffawed at his incredible naivety! and replied:
"the councillors never recognise quality and merit, it has nothing whatever to do with it, he said if you want to get a planning change or a material contravention through, you have to buy it and he said that planning changes and material contraventions were worth, in his judgement, about 50,000 a year into the back pocket of the councillors, if they cooperated with the developers."(37)
He went on to explain how this was done, to a shocked O'Herlihy, by getting a lead councillor, possibly one in each of the political parties, to handle the bribery arrangements among the councillors until they had the required majority for the developments. Doesn't this highlight one of the unfortunate aspects of Irish corruption in that it is much more hidden than it is in modern day eastern europe for example. The fact is that at that time anyway the general public had no idea that it was all corrupt like this. Hence they would have spent a huge amount of time and energy debating these planning issues thinking that at least the councillors would consider the issues on their merits. For example many people on both sides of the debate on Carrickmines Castle must be feeling like proper mugs when it was later revealed that the road was diverted to go through Carrickmines in order to enrich some corrupt people who owned the land around the castle.(38) So picture the scene among the dining tables of the well heeled citizens of south Dublin as some argued that the historic castle should be saved (the good guys INMO) and others talked about the traffic gridlock etc. In retrospect both were completely wasting their breath even debating the subject which had already being decided for them by the big power and money brokers in Ireland, and they had decided on a route which was not the best from a traffic point of view nor for the conservations of course. The merits of both arguments were just irrelevant to the real - corrupt - decision making process. Maybe the lesson is that people should insist on having genuinely uncorrupt and democratic institutions before they get bogged down in the minutiae of political debate in Ireland. It maybe worth bearing in mind as well that the leaders of three political parties, which represent two thirds of the current Dail, were all members of Dublin County Council at this time and some would say were undistinguished in stamping out this corruption.(39)

If anything the atmosphere surrounding planning, and allegations of corruption, seem to have worsened since the 90s if this account by Colum McCann in the Village is anything to go by:
"For five short days I travelled the length of the Galway and Mayo coasts and talked to a good few locals who felt outraged by what had happened to their countryside. They had tried to rescue old ruins but could not. They had tried to fit houses into the landscape but planning permission had been denied. They tried to block certain developments but they were threatened with being burned out. A peculiar resignation had settled in on some of them, like ash. They shrugged and said how terrible it was but that nothing could be done, the politicians, developers and the planners were in it together, covered in the steamy bedsheets of the euro."(40)

Why so much apathy in the face of these kind of threats and practises? Maybe what is happening is that the vast majority of people trust implicitly the headline news they receive and yet those news bulletins seem frequently to play down some stories and blunt the edge of a maybe justifiable outrage. This is what I think Barry McConville is saying with respect to some police shootings in the North for example:
"After his [Neil McConville's] death, as in the case of Pearse Jordan, the media quickly regurgitated the PSNI press releases. Checkpoints were being rammed, guns were being brandished, drugs were being ferried and finally dissident republican links were being investigated, all false and - as in the case of Pearse Jordan - these events were later accepted by the police as being false. There was no checkpoint in Neil McConville's killing, his car was rammed from behind and then he was shot by PSNI personnel at point blank range while his car was stationary. The Police Ombudsman was slow to attend the scene that night but they were quick to recount the PSNI version of events on live TV, giving credence to a story which they later embarrassingly discovered had no resemblance to actual events that night.

Last week another young man, Steven Colwell, was killed because he drove through an alleged roadblock, only he didn't, he turned the car he was driving before the roadblock and was shot at point blank range by PSNI personnel....
They [the PSNI in these cases] close ranks, intimidate witnesses, concoct a story and use black propaganda in the media to blacken the name of the person they unlawfully killed."(41)

But is it really true that if you cross the powers that be that you will be "threatened with being burned out" as described above? Surely that is going too far? That certainly didn't get mentioned on any news bulletin but I'm afraid that doesn't make it untrue, here is a startling story like that from Limerick highlighted on indymedia:
"News from Tournafulla Today is that the remote Home of a Dutch Lady was the subject of a arson attack. It has [been] noted over the recent Weeks that this may occur ,as a few individuals in the area have shown interest in the Property. This Lady has been the victim of much harassment over a long period of time by a variety of People. One of the interested Parties in the Property was in fact a Solicitor 'acting' for this Lady in a Land dispute. A few Days ago ,on leaving 'her' Solicitor's Office, 'her' Solicitor remarked,' I will give you 30,000 euros for your House and 3 acres ,less of course 5000euros for my Fee to date. When she declined this 'offer', he remarked,' you know your House is not insured'. 'It could burn down you know.'"(42)

And yet even this story is depressingly believable because it matches so many other sagas that are tumbling out of the woodwork from the hidden Ireland, another account on indymedia:
"Exactly the same happened to us in Limerick after a local garda wanted to purchase our family home for near to nothing and told me a woman without man would be vulnerable and I should expect getting robbed and awful things could happen to me. They did and the gardai were always at the house shining lights in and pissing on the windows and everywhere else in a later stage. I was beaten up so badly on one occasion that 70% of my body was black and blue. If they were outside I would be in a corner hiding and waiting for them gain access to the house and beat me up. I would call the womans refuge and they heard them laugh and talk and they would not even care to be silent as they knew the womens refuge would not back me up. I moved but am a poor person now in every way. I still cannot sleep at night." (43)
As Jason pointed out at that site, it is reported to be quite a common complaint against some in the legal profession and gardai in Ireland as you can read:
(a) in the testimony of Tom Gilmartin to the Mahon tribunal where he states that an alliance between, inter alios, his land agent, a solicitor and a judge attempted to steal his land near Virginia in Co.Cavan;(44)."
(b)in a fully documented case from Belfast where it is claimed that a group including Belfast's largest firm of solicitors, allied to powerful people in the RUC, and Official Solicitors, conspired to rob the family of a mentally handicapped man of many valuable properties in downtown Belfast;(45)
(c)and in another detailed account of a property 'stolen' by a number of solicitor firms that were supposed to be acting for the Bland family in Laois.(46)
Other people like Eugene in Castlerea have reported the kind of pressure they are under to 'sell' lands to this kind of corrupt clique.(47)

One organisation that a lot of these families, which face injustice and corruption, pinned their hopes on was the Centre for Public Inquiry. This was obviously set up in Ireland by the distinguished journalist Frank Connolly, with funding from Atlantic Philanthropies and headed by a blue ribbon board of directors, with a goal of tackling corruption in Ireland. As everybody knows it was crushed by the Minister for Justice who leaked a passport application which he said proved that Frank Connolly had gone to Columbia where his brother was arrested for alleged paramilitary activities. This allegedly inaccurate passport application, the only evidence proffered against Connolly, was not even the subject of a prosecution by the DPP, which obviously works closely with the Minister's office, some would say in order to prevent the documents from being discussed in open court. Feargus Flood, a former High Court judge, has called attention to this anomaly saying that "despite the DPP’s decision in March 2003 not to prosecute Mr Connolly, a private and public blackening of his character has been unleashed by the Minister."(48)In fact a constant wave of slander seems to have dogged Frank Connolly throughout his career as he attempted to unearth some of the corruption in the planning process in Dublin and in the gardai in Donegal. In 2002 "he was not fired by the Sunday Business Post but management made him aware he should seek alternative employment", as a result of this same will o the wisp Columbia story printed against him in some Irish newspapers.(49)This campaign of slander apparently dates from as long ago as 1997 when Dermot Ahern was reported to have claimed he was linked to the INLA, again giving no evidence but fuelling whispering campaigns that have now twice cost him his job.(50)

I wonder if even his brother has been misrepresented with respect to Columbia. According to the official story three people linked to the IRA, James Monaghan, Martin McCauley, and Neil Connolly are supposed to have been instrumental in rearming and retraining the FARC, a left wing paramilitary group, in preparation for a fresh offensive in Columbia. They in fact have been acquitted of the charge in the lower courts in Columbia and very little hard evidence has emerged as to how they could have done this in the light of the huge surveillance that was clearly focused on them. But one wonders if it suited some intelligence agencies to disguise their own hand in arming the FARC by putting forward these three as patsies. There is, in contrast to the other story, compelling evidence that the CIA has supplied the FARC with a huge arms shipment in order to assist them in their campaign against the Columbian government. The allegation is that they are doing this in order to keep pressure on that government which in turn leads to the Colombians seeking US military assistance (a 'Plan Columbia') which has effectively allowed the US to take over that country. There is a lot of data out there in the public domain about all this although of course not a whisper has been allowed on it in the Irish media. The story revolves around Vladimir Montesinos, the former Peruvian intelligence chief, who effectively ran a nominally democratic Peru throughout the 90s - on behalf of the CIA in the opinion of most observers.(51) He is now on trial in Lima and there they are discussing an operation he organised where he purchased 10,000 assault rifles in Jordan and, using Ukrainian mercenaries, dropped them by air to the FARC in Columbia. The fact that this was all authorised by the CIA is even confirmed by the Jordanian government:
"According to Atef Halasa, the head of protocol at the Jordanian Foreign Ministry, his country would not have released the weapons without informing US authorities. Halasa was reported as saying that the American government not only knew of the deal, but that it was authorised by the CIA."(52)

One concept that emerged from the CPI drama was that the government seemed annoyed that any independent group had the right to set up a body to tackle corruption.(53) It appears they are only happy with government funded official entities and it is no wonder when you consider the difficulties they put in the way of whistleblowers in the state apparatus. As an example of that atmosphere one commentator, writing about a homeless charity that receives funding from the state, described in detail how a FF councillor and a Minister tried to hunt down members of the charity that were accused of aiding a homeless protest. This was felt to be part of determined government policy "to silence all opposition to it's policies."(54)It seems that anybody who tries to speak out while within any part, even a nominally independent part, of the state apparatus is sure to be bullied into silence. I will give three examples:
(a) Dr Joan Power, the Munster regional director of the Blood Transfusion Service, was the main whistleblower to highlight the use of contaminated blood products in the health system for which a senior official in the Department of Health threatened to "bury her" professionally. And in due course her professional life did indeed become "an absolute nightmare".(55)
(b) In 2004 The same department was accused by three orthodontists of organising "a fairly strong bullying campaign against us...We are paralysed in our lives. I have been in bad health and people attribute that to the stresses imposed upon us by what has happened. It is political bullying." They tried to get some help in their plight from a Dail Committee but all they got was advise to use 'honey' rather than vinegar in their dealings with the department. That is except for Michael Ring TD who condemned this intimidation : "They should not be intimidated, but should be protected....This country is turning into a dictatorship."(56)
(c) Justice Dermot Kinlen, the Inspector of Prisons, is supposed to head an independent office to visit and report on the state of the prisons but he has found that the Department of Justice have successfully stopped any attempt he has made to highlight the terrible state of the prison system. When he tried to say this in his second annual report it was held up by the Dept. of Justice for a year "claiming it was libelous (of them), and the AG agreed." He even offered to publish it himself, where he would carry the liability for any court proceedings, but that wasn't accepted. Eventually they just sent a copy of the report to him by car and told him that was the finished report whether he liked it or not. Before that in trying to setup his office he had to face Department of Justice officials (as he wrote in his first report) whose "smarminess was replaced by ignorant arrogance". Having been through all that he is now taken to referring to the Department of Justice and the Minister as "frightening and fascist".(57)

One person who has had many dealings with the Minister for Justice, and who is also now questioning his integrity, is Billy Flynn, a Private Investigator from Enfield who has helped many of the families in Donegal. He has been through the usual experiences, harassed by the gardai, false charges laid against him and he now states that he was slandered by a Circuit Court judge, I think with the 'mad' (he had a nervous breakdown as a result of all the harassment) as opposed to the 'bad' slander although he is getting that too. In particular he was accused of all sorts of shady dealings in the way that he helped expose, via phone logs, one of the tormentors of the Donegal families. The present Commissioner, it states in an account of his story in Village magazine, was more interested in investigating how he got the phone data than he was in the fact that the threatening phonecalls came from the home of a garda. Much the same happened when he tried to expose "massive corruption" in the Navan area. The powers that be responded by, unsuccessfully, trying to prosecute him (in a 'premeditated' manner) over the alleged theft of a file rather than addressing the corruption. It all started for him when he tried to survive as a small business person:
"I put a lot of money into the central heating business and it was a con. I couldn't get anyone to do anything about it and I started looking. It lifted from there. I was telling a couple of other people (of what happened and of the investigation) who had also suffered injustice. I sorted out their cases, although I couldn't sort out my own, and just went on from there." Incidentally he is very clear on the fact that Minister McDowell knew everything about what was going on in Donegal from the very beginning, when he was still Attorney General, but did nothing about it.(58)

Billy Flynn in describing what happened in Raphoe has also described, briefly, a kind of mysterious vigilante group that was involved in harassing the Donegal families in cooperation with certain gardai. Maybe it might be similar to what Dr Les Dove describes in his account of what dissidents go through in the UK and the US:
"The police and intelligence agencies in many countries often use goon-squads. Their job is to harass and try to intimidate their ‘targets’ at every possible opportunity. They also try to provoke their targets into fights and other bad situations so that they will incriminate themselves. Goon-squads are also used to denigrate victims and damage their character through spreading lies and false rumours about them and their families. This character assassination inevitably causes many targets to loose their jobs and quickly become alienated from their friends and families."(59)
There are other accounts of such groups in Ireland e.g. in Schull "Local vigilantes ... have also been busy following, framing and spreading rumours about myself"(60), which I guess sums up what the same type of group were up to in Raphoe. Rose Doherty in Roscommon has also given an account of a group like that harassing her in Roscommon in exactly the same manner and which has been linked to senior local gardai. (61)

One other person who has stated that he is under "McBrearty style" harassment is Jerry Beade, a Dublin building contractor, who won a High Court action that proves at least some kind of conspiracy against him within the planning offices of Dublin City Council. Despite this judgement they have taken 15 prosecutions against him which he feels is similar to what has happened in Donegal.(62) One other interesting aspect about his case is that simultaneously with this harassment his bank, ACC, managed to 'lose' the title deeds to a €14 million property of his which needless to say threatened him with bankruptcy. ACC, wondrously, managed to find the deeds only after he picketed their parent head offices in the Netherlands. I wonder if he is suspicious that he may be under harassment from a wider group than just DCC. After all Tom Gilmartin is on record as saying he was harassed, in a coordinated fashion, by AIB, a Dublin County Council and Councillors, and of course senior politicians.

Another person who feels he is being targeted by an organ of the state is Det. Sgt. John White, the Garda Special Branch whistleblower. He is the only garda that the state has been trying to prosecute over the events in Donegal and this is hardly a coincidence considering that he is so outspoken about abuses in the gardai. He says himself that he was targeted for prosecution, twice unsuccessfully, because
(a) he questioned the validity of McBrearty's confession,
(b) because he complained of the bugging of Letterkenny garda station,
(c) "because of his persistent claim that 'top class intelligence'" was ignored by the gardai with respect to the Omagh bombing.
Michael Gallagher, whose son died at Omagh, supports the view that that might be behind the prosecution, saying after the verdict that: "They [the garda authorities] hoped to bury him [White], but the people of Donegal have vindicated John White not for the first time." ( 63)

Sgt. White has also revealed a lot about the kind of widespread surveillance that is practised in secret by Garda Special Branch. He has said that on a massive nationwide scale the state has been bugging "Garda stations...houses, cars and apartments and phones, and it was done totally illegally and the senior Garda authorities know."(64) That of course refers to the bugs and hidden cameras that we don't know about, while Damien Corless has written in the Irish Independent about the blanket surveillance that we do - kinda - know about in Ireland now. This includes Dublin Bus where each bus is now fitted with up to 8 digital cameras feeding data real time to the Gardai. He described how Michael McDowell has pioneered the storage of phone and internet data in Europe giving rise to a situation where "Irish citizens now live under the most far-reaching regime of state-surveillance in Europe." He also quotes a submission from a US law firm which states that "The Irish law [now in force on data collection] would [create] a regime far more intrusive that anything previously known in the EU or even in comparable democratic societies."(65)

This dovetails with recent leaks from America on the kind of huge surveillance apparatus that the state uses to keep its citizens in line. A member of the NSA has come forward to talk about an enormous programme that watches up to millions of Americans using sources like phone call data directly from the phone companies which has been continuing without any other legal basis than a secret Presidential Order. This whistleblower, Russell Tice, has hinted that all this is only a tiny part of what he found out about NSA activities:
"..what has been disclosed so far is only the tip of the iceberg...
"I think the people I talk to next week [in the US Congress] are going to be shocked when I tell them what I have to tell them. It’s pretty hard to believe..
Tice said his information is different from the Terrorist Surveillance Program that Bush acknowledged in December and from news accounts this week that the NSA has been secretly collecting phone call records of millions of Americans. "It’s an angle that you haven't heard about yet," he said. … He would not discuss with a reporter the details of his allegations, saying doing so would compromise classified information and put him at risk of going to jail. He said he "will not confirm or deny" if his allegations involve the illegal use of space systems and satellites."(66)
So it seems we have a long ways to go to try to figure out what kind of surveillance the NSA really practises. This hint at a much more elaborate surveillance capability is echoed by Margaret Newsham who was also trained by the NSA who said that "it is almost impossible to imagine how all-encompassing the system must be today.....If only I could tell you everything, then you would understand that Echelon is so big, its immensity almost defies comprehension."
She cannot tell us because of the danger she is under, she sleeps with a loaded pistol under her pillow etc.(67) So what is this new concept of surveillance probably using satellites? Believe it or not there are actually persistent allegations out there that it is now possible to even effect a persons health via surveillance by satellite. Whatever is the answer I think we are bound to be surprised by their capability considering the huge sums of money that those organisations like NSA and NRO have to conduct their projects and research.(68)

One curious point, I think, about all this is the way Tice's insights came across in the media. What happened is that just before Tice came forward the whole media and political establishment seemed to do a sudden 'mea culpa' on the use of unauthorised bugging as part of the war on terror. Instead of any coverup there was blanket coverage given to the administration's negligence in 'cutting through red tape' and 'not going through the proper channels' in the war on terror. In a sense they cheerfully admitted in advance all of the stuff that Tice later accused the government of doing. With one difference. They talked endlessly about a 'few thousand' cases of unauthorised bugging of US citizens, while Tice talked about a million! Of course that small 'error' makes all the difference. A lot of Americans are going to accept that these thousand or so 'mistakes' are sometimes necessary to catch the terrorists but of course if we are talking about a million people then we are into the realm of a police state and not just some police action against a few suspects. But because early impressions of an issue are everything when Tice later came out with his story most people didn't catch the difference in what he was actually saying from the impression they had already formed about the surveillance scandal. This I respectfully submit is no accident, it is standard intelligence agency news management.(69)

The US intelligence agencies, for example, invest a lot of time and effort influencing the media not only in the US but also in countries like Ireland. The Phoenix has recently written an article on this describing a big meeting held in Texas where various military heavyweights formulated a policy of using 'Influence Operations' against some target countries. These are basically psychological warfare operations which were explained in the documents discussed at the meeting:"IO offers the use of influence operations (in) capturing and maintaining the support of indigenous subcultures and populations, and keeping targeted governments off-balance and on the defensive." One person who is involved in forwarding this policy has been named as Major Gen. Paul J. Lebras, Commander, Air Intelligence Agency, who also "has the job of monitoring those trying to spy on US military flights at Shannon and Baldonnel." The article then went on to link this operation to an 11 day conference held at the State Department in Washington where a large Irish delegation received training on how to be better "media spokespersons". The Irish delegation (a "bevy of official and party political spokespersons") was lead by Supt. Kevin Donohue of the Garda Press Office and included FG Press officer Mike Miley and PD policy director Seamus Mulconry.(70)

I guess it would be fascinating to see if one could detect that kind of news management in Ireland. One case that I think comes across very strongly was what happened to Peter Preston where he was charicatured as wanting harsher sentencing for the people who assaulted his daughter, entirely different from what he was actually saying.(71) In fact he had been briefly in jail as part of his ongoing case and he thought the conditions in the prisons were terrible so he is unlikely to be so keen on anybody going in there. The cry for harsher sentences, and for more and more gardai, are standard themes pumped out constantly in the Irish media (and by some Opposition politicians) and you would wonder to what extent that is being pushed by elements in some media rather than genuine reporting, as it really wasn't in this case.
When you look at the Irish media right now I think you have to conclude that some issues are given blanket coverage and others none at all. For example I think that before the poster ban came in there were frequent complaints broadcast in the media about the terrible litter problem caused by political postering. Supposedly it was the number one environmental problem plaguing the country. So of course the government responded to widespread public disquiet (in happy media land:-))with some draconian legislation regulating the putting up of posters. Then what happened was that the poster ban was used to squeeze political activists, from outside the main parties, all across the country to the undoubted glee of the powers that be.(72) The disquiet felt among these activists then gets almost no publicity in the media. I know most people don't feel that its possible for a measure like that to be proceeded by a long term orchestrated media campaign but I am suspicious nonetheless !

One issue that has got a lot of publicity about a year ago, which could be part of that pattern (?), is the complaints made about the state of the electoral register. Everybody seemed to agree that there were large numbers of people on the register who shouldn't be on it and so in response a group has been set up within the Department of the Environment which so far has succeeded in eliminating about 200,000 of those.(73) But in fact Mary O'Rourke contends that the main problem with the register is that many people are not on it who should be, she estimates that "out of 500 houses, 200 people were not on the register."(74)
This 'cleaning up' of the register is motivated I think by a similar step that has been taken in the North but there some people are even claiming "120,000 people were disenfranchised". While that is denied by the government, it is admitted that large numbers of "young people, students, people with learning disabilities and those living in poorer areas" have been disenfranchised by the new rules they introduced.(75) At least one commentator is suspicious that the way this is being done now in the South will similarly cause a lot of young voters to be struck off, and he feels that this is "no accident .... For these young voters are the very ones who cannot be trusted to vote for the existing establishment parties."(76) Which gives rise to the suspicion that the strategic and important electoral register could be undergoing some quiet underhand editing and one wonders then if the earlier media stories about the register were somehow orchestrated?

Of course until very recently the media's main punchbag - and still is to a certain extent - was one Charles J Haughey who could probably have walked to the moon and back with the amount of critical newsprint that had built up against him in Ireland over some 40 years. Maybe now that he is gone it might be worth well figuring out how much of this criticism was justified. So to take three of the big issues that were held against him:
(a)The Arms Trial. Obviously the accusation was that he was heavily involved in trying to import arms for the IRA in 1969 and lied about all that during the trial and throughout his career. But of course what happened after he left politics was that the original statement made by Col. Heffernan, the then head of Irish Military Intelligence, turned up in the Irish archives under the 30 year rule.(77) And that document seemed to show that the then Minister for Justice, Des O'Malley, supposedly the white knight at this time as opposed to Haughey's dark prince, had suppressed the real truth of his evidence which would have exonerated Capt James Kelly at least. In response to this new information Justin Keating, who in 1970 was a Labour member of the Dail Committee that investigated the payments made through Haughey, confirmed that in his opinion "Haughey, Blaney, Luukxs and the two Kellys were unjustly accused. Putting them on trial was a dreadful injustice"(78)
(b)Also he was always subject to rumours, and later accusations and tribunal hearings, into the source of his wealth, in particular how he could afford to purchase Kinsealy. But amazingly Vincent Browne, who most people interpret I think as the main authority on this, now claims that Haughey had always answered questions on his wealth perfectly truthfully, and that in fact he had no dark secret to hide on that subject at all.(79) The tribunals meanwhile have trawled exhaustively, and there are allegations aggressively (80), through his finances and found what seems to be very little evidence of corruption.
(c)Then there is the allegation of secretly instructing Sean Doherty to bug certain journalists and of personally reading the transcripts. He obviously denied doing that and now it appears that a third party has come forward to back up his, rather than Doherty's, version of events.(81)
Don't get me wrong I am not denying some of the allegations, particularly the serious statements by Tom Gilmartin, which touch Haughey although not nearly to the same extent as they do certain other FF politicians, but you cannot help wondering if the media has got some issues here spectacularly wrong over a long number of years. Haughey himself seemed to feel that some of his media, and other, troubles could have been orchestrated by some outside party. In fact at one time he accused Garret Fitzgerald of meeting a trained British spy which is probably an indication of who he thought was behind this, especially at the time when he opposed EEC and UK policy over the Falklands War. There is I think some evidence to show that some party, with a lot of money, was pulling a few strings against him.(82) Anyway he had obviously many a colourful phrase to encapsulate these woes one of which he delivered to the editor of the Irish Independent in 1982, as he recounts here:
"After the usual pleasantries from John [Meagher], saying how well the company was and the papers were doing, he turned to Charles Haughey and said: "Now Deputy Haughey have you any questions you would like to ask us?"
I don't know if it was the "deputy" that did it but Haughey's mood visibly darkened.
The hooded eyes swivelled around in my direction and Haughey growled: "Yes, as a matter of fact I do have a question."
"We have just come through a bruising four weeks election campaign and every time myself or the other Fellow were mentioned in the main headline he was always Garret and I was Haughey. Do you consider that fair and reasonable ?"
Lamely I explained that the typography and layout format we were using at the time only allowed us to use seven to eight letters in each line of our four deck headline. The name FitzGerald was impossible to fit, even more so as Garret insisted on spelling his name with a middle G as a capital, whereas Haughey fitted just perfectly.
That, I said, is the explanation.
"Well that," thundered Haughey, "takes the f****** biscuit."
The lunch went downhill from there."(83)

And on the bright side ....eh .........well.......at least the GAA still works!lol

Footnotes
1. e.g. Fr Raymond Murray http://www.indymedia.ie/article/77899 .

2. http://homepage.eircom.net/~michaelmckevitt/index_files...d.htm see further reading for more from this book.

3. See under Further Reading below.

4. The Phoenix 23 Sept 2005 p.16.

5. Village 22 June 2006 p.13.

6. Village 13 April 2006 p.7-11.

7. http://furnacemagazine.com/life/witness_protection_in_a....html and Sunday Business Post 2 January 2005 http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2005/01/02/story127...7.asp .

8. From Sunday Business Post ibid:"While the suspected hitman is now enjoying life under a new identity, questions are being asked about the secret deal he obtained from the Department of Justice....Details of Bowden's immunity deal are still shrouded in secrecy."

9. ibid.

10. Irish Independent 16 March 2006 p.9.

11. http://archives.tcm.ie/irishexaminer/2006/02/18/story95...2.asp .

12. Village 29 June 2006 http://www.villagemagazine.ie/article.asp?aid=2037&iid=...ud=10 .

13. Sunday Independent 30 June 1996 page 4.

14. Village 13 April 2006 p.7-11 by John Byrne quoting Brenda Power in the Sunday Times of 26 March 2006 http://www.villagemagazine.ie/article.asp?aid=1611&iid=...ud=10 .

15. The Phoenix 7 April 2006.

16. Sunday Business Post 2 January 2005 http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2005/01/02/story127...7.asp . There is some more detail on the case available at these links: http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2005/01/02/story127...7.asp and http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2001/05/20/story656...8.asp on Ward's sentence:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1887529.stm ; Gilligan : http://www.rte.ie/news/2002/0627/print/gilligan.html and http://archives.tcm.ie/breakingnews/2002/06/25/story571...6.asp .

17. The Phoenix Oct 21 2005p.3 quoted at http://oireland.tripod.com chapter 5 footnote 34.

18. The Phoenix 13 Sept 2002 p.20.

19. In an RTE Prime Time interview in 2006. I cannot remember the exact words I'm afraid but they certainly were along those lines.

20. Village 13 October 2005 p.27 letter from Karen McGlinchey. She also says that "it beggars belief that one of those officers [involved in the scandal] remains on normal duties in Letterkenny." The Phoenix 17 June 2005 p.8 also mentions a second Morris Report "kept from the public" by the Official Secrets Act.

21. Sunday Times 20 Aug 2006 p.1.

22. http://www.siobhandowd.co.uk/stories/ and for a description of Superintendant Shelley's role during the controversy see Irish Examiner 3 June 2005 by Seán McCárthaigh at http://archives.tcm.ie/irishexaminer/2005/06/03/story57...7.asp .

23. http://www.eire.com/photos/Barr_Tribunal.pdf p.434.

24. See further reading for some quotes from the report which illustrate this.

25. http://www.indymedia.ie/article/76572.

26. Debate on Peter Preston is at http://www.indymedia.ie/article/77433 .

27. http://www.indymedia.ie/article/77806 and http://www.indymedia.ie/article/77621 .

28. http://www.corribsos.com/index.php?id=205 .

29. See further reading.

30. http://www.corribsos.com/index.php?id=32&type=event .

31. http://www.indymedia.ie/article/77437&comment_limit=0&c...61339 .

32. 11 April 2005 http://www.ashleymote.co.uk/news2.php?subaction=showful...ome47 .

33. See further reading under the EU below.

34. http://www.hpmartin.net/The_European_Transparency_Initi....html .

35. http://www.europatransparant.nl/?pag=145&siteid=145 .

36. http://www.ashleymote.co.uk/search.php?misc=search&suba...home5 .

37. See further reading.

38. "The entire Carrickmines Castle controversey could have been avoided, and the castle saved, if the original route of the South Eastern Motorway leg of the M50 had been picked, as it avoided the castle remains. But that route was inexplicably changed, to go through both the castle site and the lands owned by Jackson Way, that became the subject of an investigation by the Mahon (Flood) Planning Tribunal."(http://tarawatch.org/?cat=10)

39. Bertie Aherne FF, Mary Harney PD, and Pat Rabitte Labour.

40. Village 27 April 2006 p.25

41. Village 27 April 2006 p.45. Another letter from the McConville family of Lurgan Co.Armagh whose son was shot dead 2 and half years ago by the PSNI has this to say about "The Ombudsman's office has continually given us and our solicitor Kevin Winters the run around. Their obstinacy is incredible. The psychological mind games the Ombudsman is playing with our family is as cruel and unjust as the shooting dead of innocents."(Village 23 Sept 2005 p.31)

42. http://www.indymedia.ie/article/76927.

43. http://www.indymedia.ie/article/77022.

44. "Yes, in Cavan, I bought a piece of land, four acres -- I was intending to build a house on because at the time we were thinking of returning. I had a sister-in-law living in the area and my wife liked the spot. I'll just tell you the story of it so that Mr. Maguire doesn't go away with any misapprehension of my character. I bought the piece of land. We had it and I was planning to build a house on it. A gentleman from next door wanted to -- sorry, an agent approached me to see if I'd let the meadow on it, so I did. I told him go ahead -- I told him actually I didn't want any money for it, they could have the meadow, so he said "You can't do that because they may get a claim to your land". So I charged some minimal figure. Some time later that same agent rung me to see if I'd sell it, and I says no, I was not selling it. A few days later I got a contract from a solicitor agreeing to the sale of my land. I refused to go along with it because I had not sold it and I had stated categorically, and had witnesses, that I was not selling that piece of land. But I was sued for specific performance on the grounds that if an agent proved that he acted for me, he could sell my land. He sold the land for a pittance, an absolute pittance, to a cousin of his. So I was sued for specific performance. I went to court. That Mr. Judge Sheehy wouldn't hear my evidence or any witness on my behalf. As it happened, I was there sullying the names of decent local people. That's right, I was a shifty person alright [the Anglo Celt 5/5/1978 reprinted comments from the judge very critical of Gilmartin. The last two sentences refer to what the judge said about him.], and he didn't even hear my evidence! He didn't allow me to talk in the box. That is a fact and I will prove it, and Gerald Scallon and O'Brien acted for me in that case. It was an absolute scandal, typical of this country. (Members of the gallery applaud)"
(Thomas Gilmartin at the Mahon tribunal 16 March 2004 http://www.flood-tribunal.ie/images/SITECONTENT_255.pdf).

45. http://www.justbelfast.com/sitemap.html .The site is written by this handicapped person's elderly sister who has found herself on the receiving end of all kinds of slander for attempting to pursue justice in this case:
"I have a copy document, dated 23rd September 1985 written by the then Official Solicitor to senior consultant Dr A Lyons. In this document I am referred to as, quote, "bitter and frustrated". How many more people have been subjected to these diabolical untruths in order to pervert the course of Justice. Every opportunity appears to have been taken to destroy my character." (http://www.justbelfast.com/to.bar.council.18.9.90.html) and :"The Court spent more time trying to undermine my credibility than protecting Freddie's rights."(http://www.justbelfast.com/letter_to_john.html)

46. http://www.indymedia.ie/article/77697 .

47. http://www.indymedia.ie/article/72186 .

48. http://www.publicinquiry.ie/ .

49. Village 15 Dec 2005 p.14.

50. http://wwa.rte.ie/news/1999/0506/flood.html . I wonder if he would relate to this description of the life of dissidents in the west from Dr Les Dove who wrote his Phd thesis on the role of MI5 in the UK:
"Dissidents will in all probability loose their jobs. If they are self-employed they will very quickly find that their customer base rapidly declines. Business "problems" will erupt and increase at every turn. Friends once considered "the best of" might suddenly turn against them as MI5’s smear machine goes into full gear. This "character assassination" by MI5’s psychological warfare department will apply not only to the dissident but also to their families. No one is spared."
(http://www.mindcontrolforums.com/pro-freedom.co.uk/l_do....html he provides links on this subject here: http://www.mindcontrolforums.com/v/dove.doc .)

51. "Any sort of problem Americans had in Peru, the embassy could call Montesinos and the problem would be solved," says Stanford professor McMillan. "He was a fixer."...
U.S. Senators Patrick Leahy and Christopher Dodd had written letters to the head of the CIA in 1996 questioning the agency's connections to Montesinos.

A former U.S. intelligence agent who spoke to FRONTLINE/World on the condition of anonymity, and who interacted with Montesinos on a regular basis, said that during the mid-1990s, the CIA was getting feedback from the State Department that "the U.S. government should not deal with him or meet with him." This intelligence agent still thought that Montesinos was a valuable asset.
..."Maybe Mr. Montesinos didn't need to be influenced," said former French ambassador to Peru Antoine Blanca, who was representing French government interests in the case at the time. "He knew exactly where his interests were … he worked for the CIA." "
(http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/peru404/pmont....html)
"Montgomery: Bruce Goslin is retired CIA field agent. In the mid-1990s, Goslin was assigned to Peru where he worked as an agency liaison to Montesinos. Goslin says for years, U.S. intelligence agencies maintained close ties to Montesinos despite concerns about his possible links to death squads and drug traffickers.

Goslin: We used to call him the dark prince. I think he fancied modeling himself after Machiavelli. He enjoyed being behind the scenes and pulling the strings of power.

Montgomery: Goslin says the relationship with Montesinos was closely controlled by officials in Washington. The CIA declined to comment, but Goslin says the agency passed millions of dollars to Peruvian intelligence units in the 1990s.
...
Some of the videos [the famous 'vladivideos'] reveal not just Montesinos's deals with Peruvians, but his warm relations with the CIA. In one video, Montesinos throws a party for the departing CIA department chief."
(http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/corr....html)

52. http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=182602004 there is also a couple more links at http://oireland.tripod.com in the Appendix under Columbia.

53. http://www.publicinquiry.eu/2005/12/10/victory-for-corr...tion/ .

54. http://www.indymedia.ie/article/73559 .

55. http://archives.tcm.ie/irishexaminer/2002/08/10/story86...9.asp .

56. See further reading.

57. The Phoenix 8 April 2005 p.4 and a number of other Phoenix articles around that time. The 'fascist quote is from http://www.politics.ie/news_index.php?topic_id=13650 .

58. Village 4 May 2006 p.13-19 and The Phoenix 19 May 2006 p.5.

59. http://newswire.indymedia.org/fr/2005/10/825979.shtml . He goes on to say that these groups might deliberately harm the health of their targets, based on his experiences in South Africa, Rhodesia, the UK and the US. I thought this bit from the same author was worth retelling in the light of recent incidents!:
"The 'frame-up' or 'set-up' has long been used to neutralize dissidents and may well be tried along with some of the other drastic measures mentioned earlier. For instance, a targeted dissident may by various means be introduced to 'Agents Provocateurs'(16). These could be male or female. MI-5 uses both sexes in their efforts to 'entrap' and 'criminalise' dissidents. Whatever, these provocateurs will attempt to integrate themselves into the dissidents company and gain their confidence, after which the dissident will then be introduced to other undercover agents who will in their turn invite the dissident to a 'party.' During this 'party' - and unknown to the dissident, drugs will be used and photographs will be taken that shows the dissident 'in the close company of drug dealers.'"
(http://www.mindcontrolforums.com/v/les-dove1.htm)

60. http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=72449 .

61. http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=72186 . There was more details on this given at the McBrearty meeting at the Mansion House where a friend of hers in Roscommon named senior gardai that were involved in this systematic harassment and frameup.

62. Sunday Independent 30 April 2006 p.4 and see also under Further Reading to see some quotes from the High Court Judgement in his favour. Its under Dublin City Council.

63. Irish Independent 28 July 2006 p.16. From an early date Sgt White was trying to help the Donegal families: http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2003/03/30/story567...9.asp , although obviously they had no reason to like him much before that. For the Omagh bombing and White's revelations see http://oireland.tripod.com Chapter 4 between footnotes 23-25.

64. http://www.publicinquiry.eu/2006/04/09/bugging-claims-w...uiry/ quoting Christine Newman in the Irish Times. See also under further reading.

65. Irish Independent 30 July 2005 Review p.6.

66. http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/may2006/130506Whis...r.htm see also Further reading under 'Surveillence and Satellite capabilities available to the US'

67. http://www.mindcontrolforums.com/outting-bigbrother.htm .

68. Paul Baird presents some of the allegations of this kind of use of satellites at his site: http://www.surveillanceissues.com/default.htm . It seems that some of the information he presents was leaked to him by senior police and ex-intelligence agency personnel in Australia: http://www.surveillanceissues.com/case.htm .
Also an article by Dr.Rauni-Leena Luukanen-Kilde, the former Chief Medical Officer of Northern Finland, maybe relevant and is available here: http://houston.craigslist.org/pol/197423613.html , and originally published in the 36th-year edition of the Finnish-language journal SPEKULA (3rd Quarter, 1999). SPEKULA (circulation 6500) is a publication of Northern Finland medical students and doctors of Oulu University OLK (Oulun Laaketieteellinen Kilta). It is mailed to all medical students of Finland and all Northern Finland medical doctors: http://houston.craigslist.org/pol/197423613.html .
Also see John Akwei's article, reportedly an ex-NSA whistleblower: http://www.naicr.org/aps/akwei.html ; an interview with Julianne McKinney a former "Area Intelligence Case Officer " in the DIA http://mp3.rbnlive.com/Greg/0604/20060419_Wed_Greg1.mp3 and her detailed account which is at http://www.mindcontrolforums.com/mck-clsc.htm .

69. For intelligence agencies and the media in general see http://oireland.tripod.com Chapter 3 under the list of agencies.

70. The Phoenix 27 Jan 2006 p.6.

71. http://www.indymedia.ie/article/77294#comment159593 .

72. http://www.indymedia.ie/article/73552#comment133628 .

73. http://talk-ireland.com/article.php?sid=2284 .

74. http://debates.oireachtas.ie/DDebate.aspx?F=SEN20060503...age=3 .

75. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/330...9.stm .

76. Eoin Ó Murchu: "The practise being adopted to change this [electoral register] is even more undemocratic than the problem it is meant to address...What is being done now, however, is that if you're not in when the register checkers call, your name is struck off.
Young people in particular are especially vulnerable to this way of putting the register together....[feels that using PPS numbers would be better ]but it is no accident that this is not being done. For these young voters are the very ones who cannot be trusted to vote for the existing establishment parties."(Village 27 July 2006 p.14)

77. http://wwa.rte.ie/news/2001/0413/arms.html .

78. http://www.coiste.ie/articles/ella/splitnew.htm .

79. Vincent Browne:"With a mutual friend I visited him in his first grand home, Grangemore, in 1968. I remember very little about the visit but he later recalled I asked him then where he got the money to afford such a fine house. I asked him the same question again and again over the years and one time in 1979, a few months before he became Taoiseach, he told me the truth but I didn't believe him. He said he was able to borrow money on the asset of his mansion and estate at Kinsealy and that was precisely what emerged later at the McCracken and Moriarty Tribunals." He elaborated on this in his radio programme where he said that he consulted his old notes some time ago and he feels now that Haughey was all along completely truthfull and honest in his answers about his personal finances. He added that he felt the banks and the revenue commissions were, in the long, not in anyway short changed in their dealings with Haughey.(http://www.villagemagazine.ie/article.asp?sid=1&sud=39&...=1970)

80. Catherine Butler, Haughey's secretary:
"I felt the Tribunal lawyers didn't want to hear anything positive about Mr Haughey, though I answered each and every question regardless of the consequences or how painful or difficult it was. I had two very heated meetings with them. Highly unpleasant. I think I met them four or five times in private.

Even before I had been contacted by the Moriarty Tribunal, a senior Fianna Fáil official telephoned me at my office expressng his great pleasure in informing me that Fianna Fáil had given my name to the Tribunal as "someone of interest". He laughed as he said it. Certain political interests tried to influence what evidence I would give to the Tribunal. At one stage I could not answer my home telephone or mobile phone; in the end I had to obtain an ex-directory telephone number." (Village 29 June 2006 http://www.villagemagazine.ie/article.asp?aid=2041&iid=...ud=10)

81. Catherine Butler at http://www.villagemagazine.ie/article.asp?sid=1&sud=40&...=1959 .

82. See Further Reading under Charles J. Haughey.

83. "Irish Independent / 100 Years in the News 1905-2005" p.9, an article by Dr. Vincent Doyle.