more on the "strategy of isolation", a stasi tactic possibly used in ireland.

national | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis

Sunday March 20, 2005 01:31

by Brian Nugent

The O'Hara family and Adrienne McGlinchey

These cases have got a lot of publicity recently , to the credit of the irish media,
so I guess everybody can see the implications in them but in case there is anybody interested but without access to the irish media I thought I would write them up here.

As everybody knows the O'Hara family from Meath were astonished to be greeted by the gardai at their door recently and accompanied by a court order to take their children into care very much against their wishes. They feel , it is clear from the media reports, that this step was taken because they had begun to speak out in condemnation of the bad public services available for their autistic children. Mr and Mrs O'Hara will now have to undergo a psychological examination if they hope to keep custody of their children. It is not known what criteria was given by the state that could explain what causes it to insist on this step apart from the fact that the couple had gone public with their frustrations about the health and education service. This has caused some disquiet as Dolores O'Riordan , a grandmother of an autistic child , has written in a letter to the Irish Independent "To add insult to injury , I read that in order to regain custody of their children, the parents have had to agree to a psychological assessment. Are we now living in a totalitarien state ?"(18 March 2005, p35). There is also many references to other families in the same situation that seem to have been silenced by these means.While it is pure speculation, one wonders if that will prove to be an intrusive and far reaching examination and whether or not any negative results of it might get leaked to other departments or to the media. Of course a totally in depth analysis like this would be something few people would survive without some sticking points. I guess most people are also aware of the serious allegations that autism is caused by the MMR vaccine including genetic tests in TCD that link the strain of measles used in the vaccine to the strain of measles found in autism sufferers. (http://www.autismconnect.org/news.asp?itemtype=news§ion=000100010001&page=30&id=4849 ).

The other case I thought I'd mention was the interview of Adreinne McGlinchy on the Late Late Show (RTE1,March 18 2005). Her story is that she was arrested one night on false terrorist charges and held by the Gardai in Donegal. When she got out and spoke to her family she found out that they had already been given a lurid story by the gardai claiming that she was in the IRA and unfortunately they believed the gardai. So in a huff she left the house and sustained herself for a time elsewhere cashing some cheques from a family chequebook to tide her over. Then she was arrested on a charge of stealing the money from her family. Her family had agreed to sign a document alledging this theft on the basis that the gardai had told them that the money was going to the IRA. She didnt know that that was the only reason her family were making the claim about the cheques and and the gardai were constantly telling her how her family were out to get her and prosecute her over the money. So now she was isolated from them and also from the law because the law , in the form of the powerfull garda special branch, were pressing false charges on her related to her non existent membership of the IRA.Hence she was unable to resist preassure put on her to become a kind of fake IRA informer. I didnt see it stated in the interview but I take it that as a result of this also her sole source of income would also be her garda 'handler'. Her garda handlers meanwhile were acquiring a great reputation as being experts on terrorism in Donegal. This isnt so surprising when you consider that they were basically creating it .They were manufacturing the explosives, purchasing all the materials , supplying all the weapons and ammunition, fake arms finds, it has been alledged even explosive attacks across the border etc. Incidentally she of course was not a terrorist now were her family or anything like that but it is a political family , Adrienne's father was a Senator for a while. When the story began to emerge and get some publicity she describes how she was then accused of being a 'walter mitty' kind of person who just made the whole thing up. One reason as well why she felt she couldnt get out of this trap was simply that whenever she complained about anything she got a punch in the face from her Garda handler.
(see also http://www.emigrant.ie/article.asp?iCategoryID=177&iArticleID=9831)
http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2003/06/01/story344592683.asp )

When I was writing up this 'strategy of isolation' tactic that seems to be used by intelligence agencies east and west I left out references to that kind of physical intimidation not knowing how common it was. But in fact threatening phone calls particularily is something you come across quite often when reading up on the experiences of dissidents. What makes me wonder now that it must be a common thing is the reference recently to Dana's experience in politics in Ireland. Her last Presidential run clearly showed that she was very disliked by the powers that be in Ireland and was blatently frozen out by the system with only a tiny number of voices like Michael Ring prepared to stand up for the idea of a presidential election with her in the race. Apparently she is now stating that behind the scenes of her life in irish politics she was receiving death threats against her and her family.
(Irish Independent,18 March 2005, p3)

One irish person who has to cope with this kind of thing all the time apparently is Kathy O'Beirne who is trying to highlight the case of the former Magdalen victims being incarcerated in Irish mental institutions. She "has received constant threats after she decided to go public with her allegations."
The threats are to "not rock the boat" and "not to talk to anybody about what happened to Elizabeth". This last is a reference to the recent death of Elizabeth Keegan.
"Rita Nolan, Elizabeth Keegan and several other Magdalen victims have died in circumstances , which to this layman [the journalist] at least, seem disturbing."
Kathy is quite certain that Rita Nolan was not insane although she suffered panic attacks, as Kathy says: "Wouldn't you if you were locked up all your life simply because you were raped or abused by someone in authority ?" She says also that "there are many beautifull young laundry girls in that unit [in grangegorman] who dont even know their own names because they are so heavily drugged. They are not even allowed to speak to each other."
Its the state that imprisons these people not the church and you cannot help thinking that its hardly the religious orders who are really threatening Kathy .Anyhow she "says she was obstructed all the way by the church authorities and Health Board officials. Their attitude was, she says, to leave the past alone."
"Despite changing her phone numbers four times and complaining to the police, the threats continued in a more serious and frightening way."
(Irish Crime Vol1.issue 7,Dec-Jan 2004/5,"What happened to Rita Nolan ?/ Another victim locked away in Grangegorman dies in strange circumstances."by Aodhan Madden,p8-11)
I know I shouldnt generalise but I only know of only one case where the perpratators of this kind of ongoing threatening phone call harassment were unmasked. One of the Donegal families who were getting this treatment employed a private investigator and he managed to trace the source of the calls from phone records. It turned out that they came from the home phone number of a garda who has admitted that an informer of his made the calls while he was there.
(http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2003/10/19/story629480993.asp)

There must a pattern in all this somewhere !!lol Here is the article where I was describing the isolation tactic and other stuff.( http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=68750 )
BTW I would like to acknowledge an earlier article that Eoin Dubsky mentioned, it shows that suspicion about what these agencies are doing in ireland is pretty widespread.(http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=62498 ).

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Comments (10 of 10)

Adrienne Mc Glinchey & strategy of isolation

by Karen Mc Glinchey - Author: Charades - Adrienne Mc Glinchey & the Donegal Gardai

Sun May 22, 2005 02:25

porthostel at eircom dot net

Brian,
Your grasp of what happened to Adrienne & our family is well described in your article. Without doubt and for a long time, Adrienne was one of the most vilified people in Ireland, simply because there were those with agendas here in Donegal, particularly in the Garda Siochana, to discredit my sister as a walter mitty and unstable person who would not be able to give clear and concise evidence either to a court of law or to a Tribunal. You raised one matter and that was the question of finances. Adrienne never received money from the Garda Siochana with the exception of one occasion in 1994, when the 'bomb factory' was discovered in her flat by her landlord. Kevin Lennon ( now sacked and disgraced) reimbursed her loss of deposit because the home made explosives were in fact the property of members of the Garda Siochana. After only some weeks in Buncrana in 1991, Adrienne got a job in a local factory in Carndonagh in an effort to repay the money from the cheques. She worked there for the next four years from 8.30am until 5pm and those were the only hours that she had peace from her tormentors in the Garda Siochana, although Mc Mahon insisted she call him every day and if she failed to do so he would call her place of work being extremely abusive. All 'raw materials' eg. fertiliser, coffee grinders, sugar, bullets, balaclavas etc., and all other paraphelia that Adrienne was told to purchase were paid for by the members of the Garda Siochana (Lennon & Mc Mahon). For those interested, BBC N.I Spotlight are showing a documentary this coming Tuesday (24th May '05) night at 10.30pm. Thanks for allowing me to comment. Karen.

FBI anti-dissident tactics

Mon Mar 28, 2005 09:31

The Phoenix states that many senior gardai have been trained by the FBI, for example the Garda Commissioner Conroy is a graduate of the FBI Academy and the FBI National Executive Institute .It maybe noteworthy that at the time of his press conference on the Northern Bank Raid he was described on RTE's Prime Time by reporter Jim Cusack as being a strong believer in "intelligence driven policing". Of course this is considered a good thing but I thought it might be worthwhile to look at some extracts from a book on FBI tactics that was endorsed by Phillip Agee, the most important whistleblower in CIA history, as a "must handbook" for all activists.
It was written by Brian Glick a lawyer to many activists and now an associate professor of law at Fordham University in New York. It states that these practises continue today but most of the official information relates to the 60s because it was released in the general anti-intelligence agency atmosphere in The US in the mid 70s:

"While much FBI and police harassment was blatant during the 1960s, and surveillance and infiltration was suspected, talk of CIA-style covert action against domestic dissidents was generally dismissed as "paranoia." It was not until the 1970s, after the damage had been done, that the sordid history of COINTELPRO began to emerge."

Supposedly a counter intelligence programme it was found in later Senate Hearings that it was "adopted for use against perceived domestic threats to the established political and social order."

"When congressional investigations, political trials, and other traditional legal modes of repression failed to counter the growing movements, and even helped to fuel them, the FBI and police moved outside the law. They resorted to the secret and systematic use of fraud and force to sabotage constitutionally protected political activity. Their methods ranged far beyond surveillance, amounting to a home front version of the covert action for which the CIA has become infamous throughout the world.

FBI Headquarters secretly instructed its field offices to propose schemes to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" specific individuals and groups. Close coordination with local police and prosecutors was strongly encouraged. Other recommended collaborators included friendly news media, business and foundation executives, and university, church, and trade union officials, as well as such "patriotic" organizations as the American Legion.

1. Infiltration: Agents and informers did not merely spy on political activists. Their main purpose was to discredit and disrupt. Their very presence served to undermine trust and scare off potential supporters. The FBI and police exploited this fear to smear genuine activists as agents.
2. Psychological Warfare From the Outside: The FBI and police used myriad other "dirty tricks" to undermine progressive movements. They planted false media stories and published bogus leaflets and other publications in the name of targeted groups. They forged correspondence, sent anonymous letters, and made anonymous telephone calls. They spread misinformation about meetings and events, set up pseudo movement groups run by government agents, and manipulated or strong-armed parents, employers, landlords, school officials and others to cause trouble for activists.
3. Harassment through the Legal System The FBI and police abused the legal system to harass dissidents and make them appear to be criminals. Officers of the law gave perjured testimony and presented fabricated evidence as a pretext for false arrests and wrongful imprisonment. They discriminatorily enforced tax laws and other government regulations and used conspicuous surveillance, "investigative" inter views, and grand jury subpoenas in an effort to intimidate activists and silence their supporters."
4. Extralegal Force and Violence: The FBI and police threatened, instigated, and themselves conducted break-ins, vandalism, assaults, and beatings. The object was to frighten dissidents and disrupt their movements....."

(http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Third_World_US/COINTELPRO60s_WAH.html)
(http://www.justice.ie/80256E01003A02CF/vWeb/pcJUSQ5Y2F6U-en)
(http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0896083497/ref=sib_dp_pop_ex/104-0477615-2294306?%5Fencoding=UTF8&p=S00D#reader-link

heres an interesting one

by Barry

Fri Mar 25, 2005 12:44

just type the words "david rupert" and "Omagh" into your searh engine. Some truly wonderful stuff emerges.

A Dublin Kincora?

by Brian

Fri Mar 25, 2005 08:10

In the Irish Independent May17 2004 (http://www.paddydoyle.com/girlsincare.html) it is claimed that
"prominent lay people" were involved in the abuse in the Magdalen lauderies and other institutions , presumably politicians ,which sounds a lot like Kincora. This might go a long way to explain the grangegorman thing where some victims have been held for 27 years. So yes Jeff if this is as it seems to be then INHO we definitely are living in a celtic east germany.

Dangerous times

Tue Mar 22, 2005 07:27

I thought maybe I should be fair to "pound of flesh" and respond in more depth to that comment and the interesting web link on the other article page . So I thought I might see can I better that!!
I found this link to be very thought provoking :
http://www.mosquito-verlag.de/weblog.php?id=9&p=1
Of course its an anonymous leak and the attack speculated upon never occurred but the Russian General, Leonid Ivashov, who teaches at Moscow State Institute of International Relations is saying much the same thing:
http://oag.ru/views/ivashov_who.html .This it seems is it at least partly based on his experiences of dealing with NATO and NATO countries.
Interesting times and all that...:-)

What is it?

by jeff

Mon Mar 21, 2005 13:03

Adrienne McGlinchy believe that what happened to them will happen again to someone else. ( Sunday Times, March 20th, 2005)

None of the filth involved in faking evidenceetc have even been prosecuted. It is a joke and if you piss someone off enough in power in this country you go down, one way or another. So much for transparancy.

When it is or isnt East Germany....

Mon Mar 21, 2005 04:17

I take your point 'being very careful' and you are absolutely right it does not serve any useful purpose bandying around terms of abuse or whatever. But that wasnt why I used the word at all, I was only linking back to the original article which as i said was partly inspired by reading the book stastiland and particularly in the case of the radiation thing was intended as a kind of academic analysis of stasi tactics and to see if any of that could possibly be going on here. If I had read a book on peruvian intelligence i would have used the name for them as the head of the article. I guess there are many though who didnt read the original thing and dont see where i was comming from. To be fair I did use the word 'possibly' above.Of course there are decent people working with the gardai and no doubt in all the intelligence agencies foreign and domestic and I dont mean to indicate otherwise. Adreinne McGlinchy even went out of her way to say there are many decent gardai in donegal and I have no doubt that is perfectly true.

But on the otherhand lets not minimise the problem either. Pat Kenny in the part of the interview I saw was making great play of blaming the events on some two gardai but some 17 gardai were found wanting in the Morris report according to the Sunday Times yesterday., many of those 'named and shamed' still serving. As regards the judicial system apparently the judge was saying that virtually all the garda witnesses operated some kind of trigger system whereby they always withheld details unless they were asked a very precise question which Karen McGlinchy simply regards as lying by another name. Dont forget that Adreinne also says she heard that the deceased cattle dealer in donegal was murdered by 2 gardai using an iron bar. This is not the two gardai that pat kenny was referring to , Adrienne comes into the story only as regards the coverup on that one. Apparently the 2 sisters reckon this kind of thing could happen anywhere in ireland today :
" ' Somebody that makes some small mistake in their lives that leaves them open to be blackmailed by the guards," she says "Its that simple, it could happen to anyone.' "So I dunno it dosent seem to me to be that far off the experiences in east germany.

pound of flesh
Many thanks for your compliments and yes I am glad to see you noticed how they are linked !! :-) I was really struck by that when I was watching the late late.

Of course you are also right about irish history , there is a lot of intrigue there alright. And dont forget that the guy in abbeylara had earlier being admitted to hospital where the doctors admit that he had injuries consistent with his story about being beaten up in a garda station.
There is no doubt that through history there are wheels within wheels in political activities and there is no good being naive and thinking one knows how it all works or that it works according to some theoretical position. What I mean is that in the mid 17th cent the people of britain and ireland thought they were governed by charles stuart but only a long time later did they find out that charles 2nd was secretly in the pay of louis the 14th.

Inevitably there is a lot going on behind the scenes that are kept secret from the ordinary citizen , there always is, and all we can hope to do is guess and also read widely on leaks in other countries to see can it explain how some things work. On that score you are making some good points.

many thanks for all your comments anyhow and belated happy st patricks day!

PS "hmmmm" you know the newspapers are right about one thing people do drink too much at this time!!lol I dont think i said that MI6 were playing irish nationalists against MI5? No matter anyhow. Just go easy on the Powers will ye?.lol

yes but...

by hmmmmmmmm

Sun Mar 20, 2005 23:56

Brian has last week given us evidence that "MI6" were playing Irish nationalists against "MI5" and that "MI5" blocked some poor man's career as a security guard in a supermarket in rhodesia or somewhere by faxing his employers telling them he was a "MI6" agent spying on them. so with today's mainstream british & irish media coverage given to the unspecified "irish dissident" threat to london, are we to suppose that really what MI5 are saying is -
"MI6 are threatening to manipulate the elections?
and thus want to wreck the united kingdom"
It seems very strange if this is the case.
You'd think they'd be on the same side wouldn't you?
If the "MI" are this bad, god knows what the 15 agencies in the USA are like, and remember they're the ones who monitor the brits, and its the brits "MI6" who monitor the yanks (so that your government doesnt spy on you constitutional sort of stuff)
It might be time to write a letter to John Negreponte.
it's his fault. he carries responsiblity, but for some nefarious reaons, (probably something to do with the duplicitious secret "play them off" supply secrets and data to both sides,
every time his name is mentioned one the indymedia ireland editors _:*_ a well known Opus Dei / Priory of Zion freemason_:*_ infiltrator edits it.

with this much editing, and the 100 year rules, and the difficulties of understanding secrets considering there aren't any to begin with, jayzhus I dunno, what will we do? is bush a monkey? did Casement keep a diary?
did you really like Collins?
did you really like Wolfe Tone?
did you really think strongbow was the bad'un? how's your take on Amun-her-Khepeshefk, was he a pleasant pheasant phucker as well?
how many fingers had Anne Bolyn?
did you believe everything your parents told you?
did you really believe everything your grandparents told you?
did you meet your great grand parents?
how long you been alive?

what do you know really?
is there life on mars?

bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt.

don't despair.
you know that people are the same.
they want the same things.

to live happily with peace and justice.
and just have the cash to eat enough to get obese,
make babies, and have really good orgasms, and not worry about petrol or rent or life on mars.

thing is tippy toppy scientists and theologists have proven they don't like either revolutions or...
life on mars.

Re. your articles are very well thought and sourced

by the pound of flesh

Sun Mar 20, 2005 17:33

Far too well thought and sourced ... :-)
But I agree with the previous commentator about the undesirability of bandying around terms like "stasi" etc.

A common thread in various schools of critical thought (generally labelled "conspiracy theory" to discredit or otherwise marginalise them) is that at a global level and beyond the pale of public visibility there are networks of power and influence bridging various organisations which at first glance seem to represent rival ideologies or interests ... a good example can be found in the research of Antony Sutton who presented some plausible evidence (at least of a circumstantial nature) that Wall Street interests had a hand in financing both the Bolsheviks and Nazis thereby preparing the ground for WWII (from which of course these interests profited enormously).

According to such theories these powerful global power structures operate on a dialectical principle which allows them to support and thus manipulate apparently contradictory "movements" which to the uninformed observer appear to be implacably in contradiction to each other.
(Like the arms manufacturer who supplies weapons to both sides in a conflict).

Surveillance of citizens and harrassment and manipulation tactics are not the monopoly of any one political faction or any one intelligence service. They have been practiced under regimes of all colours. Think of eighteenth and nineteenth century Ireland and the machinations and intrigues of British intelligence. Against this background, there is nothing too surprising about the Baldonnel Protocols. No coincidence that Michael Collins understood that the first step towards success of any native resistance movement would require dealing with the likes of the Cairo Gang.

In the present day and age the political establishments in most "western countries" and their satellites are so much in thrall to global financial interests and have become so divorced from the interests electorate that they allegedly represent that they must be seriously worried about a popular backlash. The rise of various "populist demagogues" in continental Europe is a symptom of this situation, e.g. Le Pen, Haider, Pim Fortuyn etc.

In the light of these circumstances it is not entirely implausible to postulate that at a global level behind the closed doors of Bilderberg, Davos and similar conferences, various solutions to keep the "masses" pacified are being planned by the political elites and it would be naive in the extreme to assume that the isle of Saints and Scholars is likely to remain untouched by such developments.

Consider as an illustrative example the formation of the ERU. The rationale for such developments will be given as the rise in organised crime etc. - all for the public good, don't you know. However, this elite force first made the headlines in connection with Abbeylara where it was used in an exceedingly heavy handed manner to "pacify" one unruly though by all accounts rather harmless individual.
For those affected a tragic outcome on a personal level but from the cynical point of view of the forces of the political elite an interesting and useful elementary training exercise in dealing with popular resistance to the forces of the State.

At the level of "normal" political consciousness "gestapo", "stasi", "cia", "kgb", "MI5/6", "mossad" all ostensibly represent or have represented different political systems and interests. However, at a higher level of abstraction they are all playing more or less the same game and all enjoy a similar level of unaccountability for their actions.

Very difficult for the normal citizen to get an accurate picture of what is going on behind the scenes. But then again that is the whole point of the exercise. He or she is not supposed to know .... I think that they call it "democracy" ....

Brian you're articles are very well thought and sourced

by being very careful with words of power

Sun Mar 20, 2005 10:11

and all are linked to each other. But I wonder as to the long term wisdom of using the term "stasi" all the time.
If you use such "extreme" terminology you water down people's understanding of the word, so that if you ever properly need it, it means nothing. The same goes for "nazi". Too many people use these words too easily, to describe behaviour or ideological slant or effects in order to convey the gravity of their opinion, but in so doing so blatently under-estimate the gravity of what either the "stasi" or "nazis" were really about.
Like "pleasant pheasant plucker" when said too often interminably gets tongue tied in lost meaning, and then some day if anything genuinely comparable to either "stasi" or nazi" comes, no one hears the words any longer.

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more on the "strategy of isolation", a stasi tactic possibly used in ireland.

Comments (10 of 10)