Declan Ganley

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Declan Ganley is a businessman and founder of the Irish anti-Lisbon Treaty pressure group Libertas. Ganley first mooted the idea for Libertas in Watch on the West, a journal of the Foreign Policy Research Institute's Centre for the Study of America and the West.[1] Ganley's neoconservative connections have become something of a target for pro-Lisbon politicians in Ireland and Brussels.[2]

Iraq

In 2003, Ganley headed the Qualcomm-backed Liberty Mobile consortium in Iraq. In October7 that year the consortium failed to win any of the licenses awarded by Iraqi Minister of Communications Haider al Abadi.[3] However,in April or early May that year, Ganley had been introduced by Don DeMarino to Jack Shaw, a Deputy Under-secretary in the Department of Defense.[4]By January 2004, Ganley had formed a new company called Guardian Net with himself, DeMarino and Paul Fiskness of Qualcomm on the board. Shaw arranged for the new company to bid for an Iraqi police communications contract that could "morph into a commercial service with our having total control over it."[5] In March 2004, Guardian Net's partner NANA sent a contract proposal that stipulated that the operators of the police network "shall be able to offer nationwide commercial cellular service on a nationwide basis throughout Iraq." When Coalition officials Daniel Sudnick and Bonnie Carroll learned that this language had been suggested by Ganley, they pieced together the nature of Shaw's scheme, and ordered NANA removed from the contract.[6] Carroll subsquently received a visit from Sami Majoun, a Sunni tribal sheikh who was also a director of Liberty Mobile. Both she and Sudnick resigned shortly afterwards, under strong pressure over their decision from Jack Shaw and from Paul Wolfowitz's office.[7]

US Defence industry links

Ganley is a director of Rivada Industries.

At the time of the 2006 magazine article, Ganley told The Sunday Business Post that Rivada had contracts with the US Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security and individual American states. I don't want to disclose any more than that," he said, refusing to comment on his investment in the firm, or its financial performance.
The board of Rivada includes figures with strong US military links, including former Homeland Security secretary Admiral James Loy, former Marine Forces Lieutenant General Dennis McCarthy, and John Kelly, who was president of defence firm Bell Textron.[8]

Lisbon Treaty

Connections

External Resources

References

  1. Europe’s Constitutional Treaty: A Threat to Democracy and How to Avoid It, by Declan J. Ganley, Watch on the West: A Newsletter of FPRI’s Center for the Study of America and the West, Volume 4, Number 5, December 2003 .
  2. Get Ganley!, by Mark Mardell, BBC News, 10 October 2008.
  3. Blood Money, by T. Christian Miller, Black Bay Books, 2007, pp.55-56.
  4. Blood Money, by T. Christian Miller, Black Bay Books, 2007, pp.57.
  5. Blood Money, by T. Christian Miller, Black Bay Books, 2007, p.61.
  6. Blood Money, by T. Christian Miller, Black Bay Books, 2007, p.66.
  7. Blood Money, by T. Christian Miller, Black Bay Books, 2007, pp.67-68.
  8. Ganley business interests stretch far and wide, Sunday Business Post, 15 June 2008.
  9. Declan Ganley and the Prague Spring, by Tony Baber, Brussels Blog, FT.com, 23 September 2008.