EXAMINER -- Two inches of newsprint above the front page fold of the Irish Examiner makes simple reading for people today. Just read the headline: "Last week, Michael McDowell gave the CIA the power to interrogate you in secret and see your bank details--and you may not have even broken Irish law". This front page article is the only public discussion of the bilateral instrument between Ireland and the United States. It raises questions about protections for the rights of individuals.
You might not appreciate the long reach of US law unless you have been held inside a wooden box, given sleeping accommodation that amounts to no more than a horse blanket on concrete, or been flown across the ocean in an unheated windowless plane. These are common ways used by those who transport detainees for the CIA today. Goverments receive transport requests in channels (police-to-police) and may not know they are acting in the interest of intelligence specialists. Little details like joint interrogation and landing rights normally get sorted in channels--that means police-to-police or embassy-to-host government. Those processing the requests don't know the real players who are asking for permissions. I can speak from first-hand experience as a transport co-ordinator and as an aircraft commander who spirited people from the sovereign territory of several nations. These movements fall outside the civilised methods used by the Irish government to repatriate asylum seekers. The Irish government is now complicit in executing these movements. It all happened without debate. Michael McDowell certainly doesn't agree with this, as he explains during an interview with RTE. I don't see things the same way and that's because I was on the inside looking out. Any formal process that lubricates the detention and investigation of citizens is one step removed from judicial restraint. The treaty lacks clarity and transparency. It is endorsed by the minister without debate. It removes restraints and philosophically leads down a path of eroded personal liberties.