Declan Ganley, Snakeoil Salesman by Kevin Barrington

GANLEY DROPS ACTION AGAINST VILLAGE MAGAZINE CASE

DUBLIN WEDS, 1130 AM.BREAKING NEWS.

Libertas leader Declan Ganley has just dropped his libel case against Ireland's Village Magazine.

"I am thrilled," author of the contentious article, Kevin Barrington told a blogger from the Barricade site.

"Even with our atrocious libel laws I thought we would win but at great expense," he added.

Barrington, however, admitted, his real fear was that Ganley would drag it out for months and drop it at the last minute.

"I never thought he would risk open court but I thought he would try and bully us with his millions."

Barrington said he was in touch with the relevant witnesses in the US, who were smeared by former Bush big hitter Jack Shaw and Ganley, and they had told him they were prepared to come and testify to back up the contentious comment that Ganley had "covertly" inserted a clause into a telecommunications contract.

"The only problem was this was all going to have to paid by us," he journalist said.

The other controversial comment was a quote describing Ganley as a "liar, self-mythologiser and snake oil salesman."

That was not a problem in the slightest to the lawyers, Barrington said.

"We sat with the lawyers and rang Dick Roche and together we made this lengthy list of blatant lies."

"Liar? We could prove that in spades," he added.

Ganley first sought unsucessfully

DUBLIN WEDS, 1130 AM.BREAKING NEWS.

Libertas leader Declan Ganley has just dropped his libel case against Ireland's Village Magazine.

"I am thrilled," author of the contentious article, Kevin Barrington told a blogger from the Barricade site.

"Even with our atrocious libel laws I thought we would win but at great expense," he added.

Barrington, however, admitted, his real fear was that Ganley would drag it out for months and drop it at the last minute.

"I never thought he would risk open court but I thought he would try and bully us with his millions."

Barrington said he was in touch with the relevant witnesses in the US, who were smeared by former Bush big hitter Jack Shaw and Ganley, and they had told him they were prepared to come and testify to back up the contentious comment that Ganley had "covertly" inserted a clause into a telecommunications contract.

"The only problem was this was all going to have to paid by us," he journalist said.

The other controversial comment was a quote describing Ganley as a "liar, self-mythologiser and snake oil salesman."

That was not a problem in the slightest to the lawyers, Barrington said.

"We sat with the lawyers and rang Dick Roche and together we made this lengthy list of blatant lies."

"Liar? We could prove that in spades," he added.

Ganley first sought unsucessfully

Declan Ganley, Snakeoil Salesman (Feb Village by Kevin Barrington)
Did everyone at the back get their snakeoil?

The honeymoon is over for Declan Ganley and brand “Libertas”. And the brand ‘s keeper, having being carried grinning over the publicity threshold by the positive if not sycophantic initial media coverage, is none too happy about it. In fact he seems to verging on paranoia as one of the latest “successful applicants” to join “team Libertas”demonstrates. Kevin O’Connell, a former deputy director of Europol, has been taken on board to represent Libertas in the UK. O’Connell was employed by Declan Ganley’s group last year as a “security advisor” whose role included “vetting staff and potential candidates”, as well as monitoring the press coverage that was becoming of mounting concern to Ganley. Ganley was troubled by what he labelled “conspiracy theories” surrounding his American business contracts and the funding of his Lisbon treaty campaign. O’Connell, obviously unperturbed by any possible conflict of interest, concluded that Ganley “has been the subject of a sustained and co-ordinated information campaign intended to destroy his political credibility”. “I looked into the matter and was concerned at what I found - and decided that if Libertas would have me as a candidate, I would run”, he added. O’Connell obviously passed his own vetting and was taken on board. This, however, was not the first time O’Connell had been involved with Ganley. As Deputy Director of Europol, O’Connell spoke at Ganley’s First Annual Forum On Public Safety In Europe and North America. The conference, which Ganley has hosted several times, along with the University of Limerick, generally lures big names, Al Gore being the most glittering catch so far. And in between the talks on general defence-related issue by such luminaries, Ganley and a host of senior ex-US-military Rivada Network employees, plug their own security-related communications products., O’Connell’s 2007 talk centred on how “the requirements of law enforcement and public safety professionals are falling behind the potential of the technology” – a theme very much music to the ears of Rivada’s marketing department., All a happy coincidence? Perhaps. The motivation, however, behind the conferences is not humanitarian but is the real-life actualisation of Ganley’s Entrepreneurial Rules [see previous article]. The rules are appropriate, or at least normal, in internatonal commerce. However, Ganley was entering a different battlefield with his new brand “Libertas “, a battlefield where Transparency and Accountability - the toxic Unique Selling Points (USPs), were required. We are now well used to the plummy voice of Declan Ganley railing against the “unaccountable elites” in Brussels and calling for greater transparency.

Time and time again Ganley responded to interviewers’ questions as to what he and Libertas stood for: Transparency and accountability, now wrapped in a right wing social agenda, became an integral part of the brand. The problem with such a USP is that it presupposes a standard of behaviour – in its proponents. And therein lay the start of Declan Ganley’s major problem, the potential seeds of his own destruction. Little did he realise he was now setting himself up for the scrutiny that he had avoided. And as the Celtic Tiger died so too did blind adulation for the buccaneer entrepreneur. The positive became the probing, mystery was seen as murk.

A few postings on the web had alluded to Ganley’s role in Iraq around the time of the launch of Libertas. But it was after the referendum that the unsightly picture got a fuller, more public unveiling. Ganley was part of a consortium chasing the untapped and hugely lucrative Iraqi mobile-phone market. Having failed, he picked himself up and went after a police network. Assisting him was the now-disgraced Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens who had slipped his Eskimo loophole into the Iraqi reconstruction effort. Stevens had introduced positive discrimination legislation to boost the Eskimo economy by allowing them non-competitive tenders for government contracts: get an eskimo front going and you have a one-way ticket to boomtown. But Declan Ganley wanted a bigger boom for his buck, so he covertly inserted a new clause into the police contract stating it would be the first step in a move to roll out a nationwide civilian network, the very network he had just been refused. Like those he now criticises, Ganley wasn’t taking No for an answer. His covert clause, however, was spotted by vigilant officials. And the contract was rescinded. But the officials, later completely vindicated, were accused by Ganley of corruption and fell foul of his Washington big-hitter allies - forcing their resignation. But Ganley and his partners’ scheming for more money led to a two-year delay in the police network at a very critical time. “During that time thousands of American soldiers and Iraqi police officers were killed, at least some of whom could have been saved had they been able to pick up a phone and call for help”, author T Christian Miller states in his book “Blood Money. Wasted Billions, Lost Lives and Corporate Greed In Iraq”.And in a scathing indictment of unaccountable elites, Miller continues: “The whole episode was a shameful victory of narrow business interests over a vital strategic policy”. Ganley, for his part, denies the contract was revoked and says he walked away due to murky affairs he is unable to elaborate on. Stevens’ Eskimo loophole has continued to pay Ganley dividends through “sweetheart” contracts with the US National Guard and other federal bodies. Not illegal. But the exploitation of positive discrimination legislation is hardly the foundation for his transparency and accountability platform. Further erosion to the platform is provided by the fact that Ganley’s wife Delia , operating under her maiden name, contributes to Senator Stevens. As she does to Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, where Rivada got lucratives communications contracts with the National Guard. Nothing wrong there either. Delia Ganley is entitled to use her maiden name and contribute to these two Senators. But what have both senators got in common? They both chart this year in the Citizens for Good Governance Top Twenty Most Corrupt politicians. Transparency/Accountability?

It seems someone out there is calling the elites to account but it’s sure not Declan Ganley. As such stories circulate, Ganley’s personal bog to mansion story comes under closer scrutiny by the day. “He’s a liar, a self-mythologiser, a snake-oil salesman”, Minister for European Affairs Dick Roche told Village Magazine. The truth was slowly emerging. There is no way Ganley can keep the lid on such a catalogue of lies and dirty deeds, Minister Roche added.