The Minister for Justice has said he was protecting the security of the State by claiming in the Dáil that journalist Frank Connolly travelled to Colombia on a false passport.
Mr Connolly, who has strenuously denied the allegation, is executive director of the Centre for Public Inquiry (CPI), whose US funder pulled its support last week. Atlantic Philanthropies said it could no longer financially support the controversial watchdog, which has published so far reports on Trim Castle and the Corrib Gas project.
Last week, Mr McDowell claimed in a written reply to a Dáil question that Mr Connolly was linked to an IRA plot to provide Farc terrorists in Colombia with bomb-making information in return for cash.
The journalist has denied he ever visited the Latin American country and accused the Minister of joining a witch hunt against him and the CPI.
But Mr McDowell said in a statement today that people who criticised his actions on the issue misunderstood his role as Minister for Justice. He said it was the clear duty of government ministers to act - sometimes pre-emptively - to protect the authority of the state.
He explained: "In protecting the state's security and preventing subversion of democracy, which sometimes involves making the public aware of underlying facts and allegations, it would be very wrong of a Minister for Justice to fail to take action or to speak out on the sole basis that the subject matter was incapable or unlikely to be established beyond reasonable doubt in the criminal justice process."
"When there are substantial reasons to believe that a threat to the State's democracy and authority exists, it is the right and duty of a Minister for Justice to act in the interests of the State.
"The rights of a citizen to his or her good name must always be carefully balanced against the public's right to be protected from subversion."
Paraphrasing the Constitution, he said the the fundamental duty of loyalty to the state involved ministers as well as private citizens.
"I, and other members of the Government have spoken clearly about the dangers of subversive activity and, on occasion, about subversive criminality. We have done so because it is vitally important in a democracy that every aspect of public affairs should be open to scrutiny, not just those aspects which are governmental," he said.
"The public should expect nothing less from its government."
PA