"Probing Media" ignore major story.

national | anti-war / imperialism | news report Friday January 20, 2006 14:39 by Davros - The Daleks The Planet Skaro

Defence Dept. bill U.S. for torture flights.

On RTE’s Prime Time programme, broadcast on the 19th January 2006, former U.S. government legal advisor, David Rifkin dismissed the proposition that the U.S. government are blatantly lying when they state that torture detainees are not being transported through Shannon airport. The lawyer claimed that such a lie would not be possible when one takes into account the “probing media”.

Is this the same “probing media” that ignored the emergency landing of a U.S. military aircraft at Shannon airport on December the 1st of 2005? An emergency landing that, due to the “hazardous materials” on board the aircraft, resulted in the evacuation of the entire airport and surrounding properties. More interesting is the lack of media interest in the recent revelations by Phoenix magazine that the Irish Department of Defence are billing U.S. Defence Attaché Office for the facilitation of Gulfstream, Beechcraft, and McDonald DC9 jets (all linked to the special renditions programme) at Baldonnel.

As reported in the Phoenix, the Department of Defence are billing the U.S. via a Post Office Box rented by the U.S. Embassy in Accra Ghana and also another obscure address, one of a criminal defence law firm in San Francisco. The Phoenix points out the possibility that the ‘DAO’ the Defence Department are billing at the San Francisco address are in fact the U.S. Defence Accounting Office, and not the Defence Attaché. For more details see the issue of the Phoenix, dated December 16th – January 12th, 2006.

This is big news indeed but, similarly to the emergency landing of December, a uniformly bizarre editorial approach by the Irish media has resulted in the story being ignored. Also, the Defence Forces Directorate of Intelligence, a.k.a. G2, have taken an interest in the story only to the extent that they are keenly pursuing the individual(s) who leaked it to the Phoenix, rather than investigating the content of the aircraft associated with the special renditions programme. For more details see the issue of the Phoenix, dated January 13th – January 26th, 2006 (current issue).