Who knows, but it seems the Americans know enough about Minister for Finance, Michael Noonan to compose a personal profile (see above) of the veteran Fine Gael politician. This is revealed in briefing notes which RTE claims to have obtained – remember none of this is authenticated, and is apparently based on documents leaked to RTE. The eight pages of documents leaked to RTE and published this evening on RTE’s website relate to three separate interactions involving the US – the first is in December 2010 when the US was concerned about Ireland receiving an IMF bailout to which the US is contributing (document 1 and document 2), the second appears to be a briefing in advance of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s meeting with Minister Noonan in Washington in June 2011 (document 3 and document 4 and document 5 and document 6) – remember that’s where Minister Noonan announced that he would be pursuing the burning of senior bondholders with the ECB – and the third interaction relates to a meeting between An Taoiseach Enda Kenny in March 2011 and Timothy Geithner (document 7 and document 8).
What do we learn from the documents?
Practically nothing except the mandarin who drafted the briefing notes for the June 2011 meeting between Minister Noonan and Secretary Geithner has an aggressive spell-checker on his or her wordprocessor which changed “Noonan” to “Noon”.
There is an asterisk against one sentence, inserted by who knows, the sentence being that the bailout “precludes any support for the domestic sector”
We learn that the “Priorities on the Participants’ Minds” was (only one priority is shown) Enda Kenny facing “sharp domestic criticism” when he didn’t ask President Obama about Geithner’s “reported opposition” to Ireland burning bondholders. Remember it was Morgan Kelly who made that claim in May 2011, and indeed there appear to be wikileaks which support that claim. The paragraph after the reference is redacted.
All in all, the leaking is a non-event, it’s EIGHT documents, one set of which appears incomplete. The documents have been nicely security cleansed so tracing their origin from the hidden PDF details is not feasible. Do they advance the debate about our debt sustainability or the wisdom of continuing down the austerity road? Probably not but I would love to know why someone asterisked the fact that there was no domestic stimulus. And of course it would be satisfying to know what the “personal profiles” said – perhaps the Michael Noonan profile pointed out that this finance minister from a bankrupt country in receipt of an IMF bailout was earning €169,000 per annum compared to Timothy’s measly €137,000. Finally it is intriguing that there are circa 26-characters of redacted text after Enda Kenny’s name and title.
NAMA Wine Lake 
A tasteless unnecessary headline besmirches an otherwise worthy blog. Very poor form and deeply unfunny
I don’t think you really understood the joke.
This is not a “leak” — it is redacted copies of documents released under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act to RTE who requested the documents. If the documents were obtained under FOIA — then they are “authentic.” Any briefing paper to any senior official (Minister/Cabinet Secretary), etc. will have a brief bio on who is being met with. These are standard in the USG as well as in Ireland — your salacious title notwithstanding. The asterix appears to have been inserted by the person clearing the document for release to the public — see the same hand explanations for why the sections are redacted — not by any expert. There is no deeper meaning here — just a basic briefing document for a high-level meeting. Move on.
And the blacked-out section after the Taioseach’s name is probably a phonetic spelling of Taioseach to help those non-Irish speakers figure out how to pronounce the title. (Pronounced: TEE-Shuck) or something would fit. This would also be standard. Again….this is not a conspiracy, just a briefing paper.
“Confidential documents released to RTÉ News by the US Government…”
The really interesting question is why RTE requested these documents and why they released them at this particular time.
How is that nobody asked Noonan or Kenny for a comment on this today?
To embarrass/humiliate the ECB for not releasing an old letter to a dead-man.
They should ask the Yanks for a copy of that letter to B Lenahan the ECB are refusing to part with. What’s the betting there’s one sitting in Washington.
Ouch! fairly amateurish and ham-fisted conspiracy language. Am inclined to agree with Rob O’F. Nonsense like this will undermine the blog.
Lets leave the hysterical dramatizations to David McWilliams. Otherwise a fine blog. Keep up the good work.