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Libertas & Rivada
Read more about: Lisbon Treaty
(Wagger has decided to return from self-imposed retirement due to having so much fun reading Colm Keena in today’s Irish Times)
Lots of discussion about Libertas and its links, overlapping memberships and possible influence from Rivada Networks today. As the most vocal of the groups opposing the Lisbon Treaty, Libertas can’t really feel it unreasonable for the media to do a little poking around to see what’s going on behind the scenes.
What’s emerged from Colm Keena’s report this morning is that Libertas apparently has only one staff member, John McGuirk. However, that’s not what the organisation’s website says. It lists four members of staff, including Declan Ganley; Naoise Nunn (executive director); David Cochrane (campaign director – and yes, he of politics.ie fame); and McGuirk himself (communications director).
Further to that, and after extensive investigative blogger-ism, Wagger can exclusively reveal that Libertas and Rivada share telephone and fax numbers at the same office in Galway. Both organisations’ websites give 093 43900 as their principle contact numbers. More that’s below the fold.
A bit more poking around shows that Nunn was on the Rivada Networks staff last July, when he was listed as contact person for the Rivada sponsored Forum on Public Safety, with an @rivada.com email address. That’s the same forum Mr Ganley drew some negative attention in the USA for paying for two US Defence Department officials to attend.
David Cochrane’s personal email address is listed as the ‘Technical Contact’ and ‘Administrative Contact’ for the Libertas.org domain name – last updated 10th December 2007. This doesn’t have any particular relevance right now, Wagger is just putting it forward before someone claims that Cochrane only joined the staff yesterday or some similar rubbish.
In fact, it’s well known (and stated by him on his website at the time) that Cochrane went to live in Galway (where Rivada has its Irish HQ) for some time last year, before returning to establish Libertas’ Dublin office in Baggot Street earlier this year. Cochrane states on his own website that he, as at 27th March 2007, is “working full time in the political arena” there. So who was paying for him to work “full time” on politics a year ago?
Mr McGuirk also claimed to the Irish Times that Rivada has “absolutely not” funded Libertas in any way. So is Rivada still paying salaries to those working full time on the Libertas campaign but not employed by Libertas (Nunn and Cochrane, at least)? Are they on some form of administrative leave from their Rivada posts, if they were ever employed there?
Stranger still were McGuirk’s apparently contradictory statements about Libertas’ running costs in 2007. First, he stated that expenses had been paid for by personal cheques from Libertas directors; then, when challenged by Colm Keena as to why these hadn’t appeared in the accounts, that there had been no such costs at all.
Five of the seven directors of Libertas are employees of Rivada. One of them, Norrie Keane, worked with Naoise Nunn on the abovementioned Forum on Public Safety. The other two are Ulick McEvaddy and Chris Coughlan (incoming Chambers Ireland president, and a senior manager in HP Ireland).
Wagger expects that Colm Keena hasn’t written his last article on this subject yet. And, he’s got some form in chasing apparent dead ends to find juicy news.
For More Fun: Chekov Feeney did some other background work on this topic, some of which Wagger believes is stretching the evidence (Wagger doesn’t remember Cochrane being a member of the Freedom Institute, for example), but much of which appears to Wagger to be strange at the least.
It’s good stuff but the one thing I still don’t quite get is the incentive. How do links to the US defence industry translate into an anti-Lisbon position? Is it a correlation with libertarian politics, links between Irish, UK, and US right-wingers who adopt each other’s causes, Pentagon puppet-masters concerned about a more powerful EU entity? Speaking of the Pentagon, they’ve had a final old time running people and stuff through Shannon under current arrangements so I again I don’t see what would be so threatening about Lisbon per se from the American side.
This is just the yes campaign playing the man instead of the ball. They can’t and won’t discuss the Treaty’s contents, so they have to come out with a smear campaign instead. Unless there is evidence of illegality – which there isn’t – the electorate are unlikely to care. They showed last year that smears by the press don’t work on their voting intentions.
Ganley was just on the news a few minutes ago explaining that it was the Northern Command and the National Guard (each US state has a militia called the National Guard for internal American duties) that his company had been involved with and that Rivada have played a role in helping deal with the consequences of Hurricane Katrina. Hardly warmongering. Typical of the bullyboy tactics of the yes side who have to rely on smears to make up for their lack of arguments on the treaty’s contents.
FT, with all due respect that’s not a very coherent argument. Throwing the word ’smear’ is really just doing what you accuse other of.
It is interesting – and entirely valid – to hear of these linkages, particularly because Libertas is an exotic creature in an Irish context being a critique of Lisbon/EU from the right. It’s neither bullyboy tactics or playing the man instead of the ball. Nor is it a smear campaign. And I think you’re wrong, I think the electorate are interested in issues above and beyond illegality, including motivation, ideological direction and so on (in exactly the same way as learning about the links of Coir is valid – or indeed campaigning groups on the pro-Lisbon side). That the National Guard is linked directly into the US Army, through recruitment etc sort of puts things in a slightly different complexio – indeed the figure of 20% of US forces in Afghanistan and Iraq are made up of National Guard members and.. their equipment in some instances.
Here is the Irish Times report on Ganley’s response:
“Libertas chairman Declan Ganley has said it is “absolutely ridiculous” to suggest that his company, Rivada Networks, has war-related contracts with the US military.
He was responding to this morning’s Irish Times report which highlighted the fact that several Libertas founders were employees of Rivada Networks which had links with the US military.
“Let me be very clear. Rivada Networks is a public safety communications company,” Mr Ganley said. “We have a contract with the US northern command which is a branch of the US military and the national guard bureau in their role in public safety disaster response,” he said.
“We supply emergency disaster response communications systems.”
Mr Ganley said he was awarded the Louisiana Distinguished Service Medal for leading Rivada Network’s response in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
“Trying to somehow suggest that we have some sort of contracts with the military for wars and stuff like that is absolutely ridiculous,” he said.
“Now I know nobody has specifically said that but by not being clear there’s deliberate fog being put out there, and, of course, all of that distracts from…the issue we are talking about, what’s in the treaty.”
Mr Ganley was speaking at a Libertas press conference on the World Trade Organisation talks. He claimed that the Government was “wilfully misleading and telling outright lies” on the issue of Ireland’s right to veto any future World Trade Organisation (WTO) agreements.
And he called on the Government to point to the specific area in the Lisbon Treaty which would allow the Government to invoke a veto against a world trade deal.”
So Rivada was just helping the US govt deal with the Katrina disaster. What’s wrong with that?
Wagger doesn’t remember Cochrane being a member of the Freedom Institute, for example
Founding member, actually. Departed before the Waghorne-McGuirk Golden Age (for unintended satire value, that was). Nunn, by the way, appropriately enough lists his prior work experience as being in comedy management(!).
And let’s not forget some of the other names which spring to mind when thinking of Libertas: such as McDowell, Gurdgiev and that young Waghorne chappie in the Daily OIRISH Mail…
One further point which bears spelling-out, particularly for anyone tempted to answer “FutureTaoiseach” with anything along the line I must admit I myself immediately thought of; the IT piece appears to have been carefully lawyered line by line, and possibly not by IT employees alone.
(The libel laws in this jurisdiction are a disgrace, serving only to protect the rich and powerful. A battle for another day, though.)
military contracts are military contracts and our like golddust
“Wagger believes is stretching the evidence (Wagger doesn’t remember Cochrane being a member of the Freedom Institute, for example)”
EWI has answered that one. I’ve a long memory for such stuff. Any other evidence stretching?
I’ve been investigating Libertas since the beginning, I’m highly suspicious of the whole thing and there is a lot more to it than meets the eye.
- You’re right about Cochrane. He has been working for Ganley since at least last September, when he had just moved to Oranmore. He was then describing himself as a “political adviser” to Ganley. Perhaps Ganley is paying him privately, not Libertas, although he is listed as a Director.
- No exclusivity about Rivada and Libertas sharing details, I’m afraid! Most of the founder members of Libertas are Ganley employees, most of whom are based in his Tuam HQ, which is where that phone number is answered.
- On Libertas’ founding document, most of the other signatories were Ganley employees. Other notables were Roger Downer, former president of UL, who was well-known only for his US fundraising abilities, and his sidekick in the college, who still works there. Very strange – no idea how or why he became involved, except that there was a hullabaloo in the college last year over Aeronautical Engineering projects being used for US warcraft…
- Bringing us back to the link between Ganley, McEvaddy and the rest of the crew. US military is the link.
- Chekhov Feeney’s excellent article on Indymedia has raised eyebrows among the Galway business community, who are determined to fight Ganley’s campaign very vocally on a local platform. Chris Coughlan was one of theirs, and an incoming President of Chambers Ireland (which is currently advocating a yes vote), before he signed up to Libertas. Let’s not forget HP, Coughlan’s employer, is a US company.
More on this on my blog… http://www.celticdonkey.blogspot.com
Whoever ran the Yes campaign should get their arses in a sling. They used the same tactics as last time – thinking that papering lamp-posts with photos of baldy oul’ bollixes saying ‘Vote Yes’ would carry the day. They had no strategy in place to respond to the very slick campaign run by Libertas. And no-one will ever persuade me that that Libertas campaign wasn’t the product of very very very expensive experts, mocked up to look like it was an amateur undertaking. They pressed all the right psychological buttons to make people feel that they were being bullied into voting Yes, when in fact they were being manipulated into voting No.
I don’t believe that Future Taoiseach is so naive that he doesn’t know exactly why the US want to wreck the EU. They already have the UK in there as their cat’s paw. The EU is a big threat to the US, and they don’t want it to succeed. Why do you think they’re pressing for Turkey’s application to join the EU to be fast-tracked?
My favourite Libertas poster had to be the “Don’t vote for another Turkey” one. An unfortunate choice of word? Hardly.