LONDON, England (CNN) – It was like picking at a painful scab; the analogy rings true both literally and figuratively.

As the ‘Consultative Group on the Past' prepared to announce its proposals for dealing with the legacy of Northern Ireland, the emotion was raw, the language blunt.

One woman in the crowd bellowed, "Everybody has the same hurt!" And it is this concept that the report's authors tried to capture with their 30 recommendations.

Instead, the most contentious of their recommendations enraged many. It calls for paying the closest relative of everyone who died in the conflict £12,000 ($17,000 dollars) as a so-called "recognition of their loss." So that would mean not just the families' of the victims, but the families of paramilitaries that fired the bullet or planted the bomb would also be eligible.

"This is an absolute disgrace, any right minded person would say this is wrong, you cannot reward a perpetrator for their evil sins," said one woman whose parents were killed by the IRA.

Even before the press conference could get off the ground, protesters outside held up signs that read: ‘£12,000 can't buy justice' and ‘Terrorists are not victims.'

One protestor put it this way: "They have brought more tears to innocent victims. Because they have brought huge pain with this monstrous proposal that everyone, including murders, families of murderers, should be rewarded for their murder."

Inside, emotions spilled over temporarily preventing the authors of the proposals from announcing them. All the language and rage was so familiar, too familiar.

For decades, 'The Troubles,' as they became known, fed a vicious circle of violence between the mainly-Protestant Unionist and Catholic Nationalist communities in Northern Ireland. This latest commission was tasked with trying to figure out how best to deal with the legacy of the violence.

The co-authors, both respected religious figures from both sides of the divide, tried to explain the recognition payment would be a way to achieve justice – a bold gesture to acknowledge the moral position of the other side, without diluting your own.

"We're still fighting about who was right or righter. Who had moral justification and who had god on their side," said Lord Eames, one of the report's authors.

But the more he spoke, the more enraged people in the room became. It's clear that as far as they are concerned, this was one step too far on the path of reconciliation.

Just as all of this was unfolding in Belfast, George Mitchell, President Barack Obama's Middle East peace envoy, was arriving in Jerusalem. He is intimately familiar with the bitter emotions now flowing again in Northern Ireland after being a key architect of the Good Friday Peace Agreement that in 1998 finally brought a formal end to The Troubles.

Mitchell's peace agreement proved that a plan for peace can certainly be capable of stopping the bullets and bombs even when reconciliation remains elusive. Building a cohesive community with a future though, one that is not burdened by the blood wars of the past, is key.

The legacy proposals were supposed to be a soothing balm for the pain of the Northern Ireland conflict. Instead, the equivalence such reconciliation necessarily needs to apply seemed still a step too far for many.

Those following Mitchell's progress in the Middle East, take note.

LONDON, England – The orange jumpsuits, the barbed wire, the "redacted" files. President Obama may be able to make it all history by closing Guantanamo Bay, but their effect on American justice will be profound.

Former Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg

Moazzam Begg, a former British inmate who was released in 2005, has always stressed to me that during torture and detention he would have confessed to anything.  And that is the heart of the legal problem now facing the administration.

"Guantanamo Bay is the most notorious prison on earth," says Begg. He believes Guantanamo is a radicalizing force for militants around the world.

Former inmates like Begg have joined a chorus of U.S. officials saying the prison - which is in effect "above the law" - could now cripple the chances of bringing those who are truly dangerous to justice.

"What procedure can you use on people who have been systematically tortured including water-boarding, including being stripped naked and beaten?" asks Begg.  "What sort of evidence can be admitted into a court of law that has been extracted under that process?"

President Obama ordered the U.S. government to suspend prosecutions of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay for 120 days, military officials said Tuesday.

As if to punctuate his actions, Obama stressed during his inaugural speech that he would cling to the moral high ground.

"As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals," he said. "Our founding fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake."

But the fact remains that even when closed, the enduring legacy of Guantanamo may be that a place designed to keep us safe from terror may actually make us less so.

Legal issues complicate the cases against even the most important terror suspects like Mohammed Al-Qahtani, the so-called 20th hijacker. Earlier this month, a Guantanamo judge admitted that Al-Qahtani was tortured and could not therefore be put forward for prosecution. But can the United States really set him free?

And beyond high profile suspects, human rights campaigners say there is little evidence to prosecute dozens of Guantanamo inmates still being held. They argue keeping those detainees locked up will not help keep al Qaeda at bay.

"I think it's actually one of the most harmful myths about it, that we can't let people go because we've got the tiger by the tail," says Cori Crider of the human rights organization Reprieve. "I've met over 20 people and in my experience it's just not true."

For the new administration, closing Guantanamo could just be the beginning of a real headache: How do you prosecute terror suspects within the American legal system? And if you can't, how do you create a whole new legal framework to keep them locked up without a conviction?

LONDON,  England – I was not lucky enough to be in the room as Jonathan Evans, the head of MI5, Britain's domestic spy agency, gave his historic interview. It has only been about 15 years since the government has even officially acknowledged the existence of the agency. So MI5's first newspaper interview in a century of existence is a big deal, even if the news Evans divulged was less than ground breaking. Still for those of us covering security, it is reassuring to be able to hang all those intelligence tips and accumulated research on cold, hard facts uttered by Britain's chief spook. 

What is the single most important thing he said? His intelligence tells him the threat level can stay right where it is, at situation ‘severe' but not crucially, a notch above at ‘critical.'

Why? Al Qaeda has not given birth to a British franchise. And, significantly, Evans says they have monitored fewer and fewer plots in "late-stage" attack mode.

The rest is all a bit academic, but let's go through it anyway.

Evans describes the financial crisis as a "watershed moment" for security reasons, not economic ones. He points out that the power paradigm is shifting in meaningful ways; Western nations will lose financial leverage and that will have security implications. Bankrolling the bust will affect more than our financial wellbeing, you can count on it.

Evans also catalogues the latest chapter in what is known as ‘blowback'. The theory contends that violence in Muslim countries will eventually ‘blowback' to countries like Britain, motivating attackers to seek revenge. Evans says there is no doubt the latest crisis in Gaza will be used as a new selling point to radicalize and recruit future attackers.

In terms of future attacks, Evans has shared some concrete insights. In terms of the likelihood of another al Qaeda inspired terror attack on Britain he says: "There is enough intelligence to show they have the intention to mount an attack here."

Secondly he confirms what other authorities in Britain have asserted for years, far too many British young men are leaving for Pakistan, Afghanistan and even Somalia in search of terrorist training and indoctrination.

There is still plenty in what Evans said that you can lose sleep over, including the fact that MI5 will double its staff in the decade after 9/11. Still, although Britain's spook-in-chief can't and won't say so bluntly, reading between his lines you can arguably conclude we are safer today than were the day after 9/11.

Am I wrong? We want to hear from you.