Peacerunner

by Penn Rhodeen

  She promptly got down to business. As Morrison described it, she “jumped right into the middle of what was on her mind,” and what was on her mind was Gerry Adams. She was clearly aware that Morrison had met with Adams in Northern Ireland just days before, and this was her chance to pick the brain of someone who had been in the cage with the lion.

  She really wanted to know if she could trust Adams. Could she do business with him? Would he stab her in the back if she reached out to him? These were clearly the questions of someone who wanted to get more directly involved in efforts to stop the warfare.

  Morrison knew she could have a major impact on the peace process, so he told her everything he knew about the Sinn Féin leader from his personal experience. He said that Adams was an intellectual and a theoretician, a writer and speaker, striving to articulate big ideas and aspirations. He added that Adams, whatever his history may have been, now functioned as a politician, not a soldier, and that he thought and dealt only in political terms. Morrison said he was confident that Adams, like most people, gravitated to what he did well, which in his case was politics. He added that when he’d met Adams, he hadn’t thought “hard man” the way one so often did with Sinn Féin members, and that in the six years they had been in communication with each other, Adams had never misled him.

  As Smith listened to Morrison’s assessment, he could see that she wanted to find an opening—that she felt that this was the real reason she had been sent to Ireland. She wanted to believe that Clinton’s plans offered real possibility, but she really didn’t know. Morrison understood fully: “This was fact finding, but I was honored that she cared what I thought and that she wanted to take time and hear what I had to say. I was one of the few people who had actually seen the ‘monster,’ so she was taking advantage of it.”

  Morrison made the point that by seeking American support in advancing his political role, Adams was submitting to certain useful constraints: He knew the United States opposed terrorism, and that by engaging the administration, he would be subjecting himself to constant pressure from Washington to do all he could to end the IRA violence.

  Morrison didn’t shrink from offering Smith the big picture, stressing the opportunity that Adams’s initiatives presented: “This is something that has lots of potential, so it’s well worth the risk. The payoff is huge and the signs are pointing in the right direction. This man is asking the United States to get involved politically. If you are willing to engage, I don’t think you’re going to be sorry.” Smith gave no answer, but the intensity of her attentiveness was palpable.

  So it was no surprise to Morrison that in the coming weeks and months, Smith charted her own bold course on Northern Ireland, which caused mighty consternation in her embassy and at the State Department, but had an immensely positive impact on the developing peace process.

  Reflecting years later on the difference between Smith-in-Cambridge and Smith-in-Dublin, Morrison thought there was more to it than “official versus private or one-on-one versus part of a group.” He realized that in Dublin his group had approached her as “Teddy’s sister” and held her to an activist standard that she probably didn’t yet possess. He understood that what had seemed in Dublin like a lack of interest in getting involved in Northern Ireland was more of an uncertainty about what should be done. He also knew that in all likelihood she had been told before his group’s arrival at the embassy that they were a dangerous bunch—or at least pushing dangerous ideas.

  During the proceedings of the British Irish Association, Inez McCormack’s fierce commitment to social and economic justice was on full display. It was a bone-deep proposition with her that real and lasting peace required an equality of economic opportunity, freedom from discrimination in all realms of Northern Ireland society, and respect for basic human rights.

  I didn’t like the bombs, but I understood you had to change the conditions that caused it. It was far beyond fair employment—it was the conditions that brought that about. Everybody had to accept responsibility for a role in the conflict. If you just stopped the gun, you weren’t going to change the way things were done before. As I articulated this principle, I was constantly attacked for being an apologist for violence. The British even argued in the US that I was a member of the IRA Army Council, or close to it.

  McCormack’s pro-labor and pro–social justice orientation wasn’t characteristic of the participants in the proceedings at Cambridge. With the way she saw things—“This is a world in which there were insiders and outsiders, and the insiders demonized the outsiders”— she knew her mere presence provoked a big question: “Who was I to mix in their world?”

  McCormack regarded Morrison, who had attained such stature throughout Ireland with his immigration bill and his visas, as a kindred spirit. “Bruce has always shown me that when you get to the table, the question is ‘Who ought to be at the table but isn’t here yet?’ His approach was, ‘Is there a democratic approach to the problem?’”

  For the skill and constancy with which Morrison supported and advanced her positions with well-crafted arguments of his own, McCormack felt a deep gratitude. With such wholehearted support from the man who had so recently and impressively made the case in Belfast for American involvement in the peace process, she didn’t feel like a woman alone among uncomprehending establishment males. And she understood the significance of how the Americans had profoundly altered the terms of the debate on Northern Ireland: “The whole argument was about dominance, but Bruce and Clinton changed it to dialogue and deal.”

  For his part, Morrison cherished his acquaintance and working relationship with the fearless woman from Belfast. He enjoyed the irony of finding himself introducing McCormack, a Belfast resident, to the Reverend John Dunlop, who lived in a Belfast suburb and had just finished his term as moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. “She was a Northern Ireland Protestant labor leader, and he was a Northern Ireland Protestant religious leader. They were introduced by me, an American, in Cambridge. That’s Northern Ireland. It’s not a big place, but there’s a big separation.”

  In a breakaway session attended by a dozen participants, Morrison said that he thought Sinn Féin would get a chance to make its case in the United States—in other words, that Clinton would make good on his promise to give Gerry Adams a US visa. The American foreign service man, confidently—smugly, really—sought to soothe those troubled by such a notion: “I can assure you that will never happen,” he said. But Morrison came right back with: “There’s a new president elected, and I expect him to keep his promise.” He said that, based on their long personal relationship, he believed that Clinton “intended to make a different way forward on this.” Morrison knew he wasn’t making the diplomat happy: “He didn’t like being contradicted by this smart-ass former congressman in the midst of this meeting of British and Irish elite.”

  The group, apart from McCormack, responded to this exchange with a bit of a gasp, a sense of disapproval at Morrison responding so firmly. This was simply not the style to which the British Irish Association was accustomed.

  McCormack, of course, heartily approved: As she recalled shortly before her death in 2013, “Bruce made it clear to the State Department that it wasn’t a matter of handling the Clinton pledges—the expectation was that he would carry them out. He was very cool and yet not offensive in telling the State Department official: ‘You’re here for the State Department. I’m describing the wishes and pleasure of the president of the United States, who is your president too.’”

  Toward the end of the proceedings, it came time for Morrison to give his own speech, and he laid out Clinton’s promised new policy on Northern Ireland. Coming fresh off his week in Northern Ireland and thoroughly energized by the sense of possibility he’d found there, he spoke without hesitation or trimming of sails. As in the north, he focused on the peace envoy. He told them it had the potential to be useful and argued that it would be a mistake for any party to the conflict to disdain such an initiative by t
he leader of the free world. He added that each side should try to co-opt the peace envoy idea for their own purposes, later calling this the essence of politics: “Take somebody else’s idea and see whether you can make it work for you.”

  Morrison recognized that what he was advocating was not in tune with the kind of conversation generally heard at the British Irish Association. “That was very crassly political, talking to people as if they were politicians with political objectives. That’s not the British conversation.” But for Morrison, it was all politics: The underlying conflict was fundamentally a political one that had been created in large part by politicians, so the solution had to be a political one developed not by academics, diplomats, or think-tank wizards, but by politicians on the ground, listening to their constituents but unafraid to lead. “What’s important,” he said, “is for political leaders to create a set of circumstances in which doing a deal is the expectation of their constituents—where people want to do a deal instead of planting the flag and standing firm.” Morrison concluded his talk by stressing that change would only be achieved with the big tent that Bill Clinton was committed to bringing to the peace process.

  His parting sense of the British Irish Association gathering was that it was “a little tent filled with people who didn’t blow people up or work openly with those who do”—representatives of what were termed “constitutional parties,” along with others trying to devise what he called “magical structures” to fix the problem. Those in the little tent were talking about people who “really did blow each other up, people who felt so disenfranchised that they took up arms.” But neither those people nor their political friends and associates were in the room.

  One participant from Belfast who was very impressed by Morrison was distinguished journalist David McKittrick.

  I had heard and read various things about Bruce Morrison, but I didn’t know what to make of him and his campaign because he didn’t fit into any of the usual categories. He wasn’t a deep green republican, he wasn’t US administration.

  We had seen coming from Irish America series of congressmen and lobbyists and so on, who may or may not have been politically motivated and careerist in their interventions. They would present their way of thinking, but then when you started to question them in detail, they had no detail; it was kind of a couple of paragraphs off a campaign platform. That gave the sense that they were saying things for political effect rather than out of any deep political or personal commitment. Morrison had detail, he had it thought through; he was clearly a very intelligent person. He basically knew what he was talking about, which was not always the way with Irish America.

  Bruce was a different kind of animal. We wanted to know, “What’s his angle?” It didn’t seem to be for self-benefit—he was just doing something he figured was right. That was a completely new experience for us. After all the years of guys in pubs in America collecting for the IRA, everything softened—even Paisley accepted White House involvement. That wouldn’t have happened if Morrison’s altruism hadn’t appeared on scene. It made people more open to seeing Clinton that way—a president who was taking big risks on something of no strategic value. It was a new era.

  Once Morrison’s Cambridge sojourn had drawn to a close, John Bruton, the Irish politician and future Taoiseach, offered him a ride to the airport. There was no hefty exchange of ideas; Bruton’s objective was not to pick Morrison’s brain but to have his company as he shopped for a present for his wife. Connecting in that simple human way, completely outside the formalities that can so easily restrict a leader’s freedom of movement, helped give Morrison valuable access to Bruton when he became Taoiseach (although, as things developed, Bruton would prove to be no match in the peace effort for either his predecessor Albert Reynolds or his successor Bertie Ahern.) The informality perfectly suited what Morrison was striving to create in all of his interactions throughout the peace process: “The real contribution of this project was getting beyond all the formalities and urging people to step out of their role and take a risk and do something because it’s the right thing to do.”

  After Bruton found the right gift for his wife, there was still a little time left before they had to get to the airport. So he and Morrison did what tourists do and went to Great St. Mary’s, the university church in the center of Cambridge, to take in the view from the top of its centuries-old tower. The tower was dark and the climb was steep—123 high stone steps, just narrow wedges, rising and twisting tightly, around and around. It was a disorienting place, like Yeats’s tower, where “Rough men-at-arms, cross-gartered to the knees / Or shod in iron, climbed the narrow stairs . . .”

  The Irish politician and the American peacemaker climbed past looped bell ropes that at first glimpse suggested the gallows, up past the bells, coming at last into bright daylight high above the city streets, and beheld the panoramic view of Cambridge—magnificent buildings of England’s great ages, with King’s College Chapel, a cherished jewel of late gothic architecture, right there, and Blake’s green and pleasant land encircling in the distance. It was well worth the climb.

  Then for Morrison it was back to America, to rejoin his Northern Ireland–traveling companions and take the next steps toward peace. The long flight home gave him time to take stock of the Northern Ireland journey and to think about where it could lead. Years later he spoke of how it all looked:

  This trip, this delegation, was only one step along the long journey, but it was a very important step in changing the terms of debate. It was the introduction into Northern Ireland of the Clinton difference, the idea that there was an active American leader who could take actions that would matter on the ground. That was the idea of an envoy, of people coming and talking to everyone, and this trip embodied a demonstration of what that would mean.

  The temporary cessation by the IRA in its campaign of violence was another indication that there was a crack in the door, that there could be a way through. The meeting with the UUP that came so close to not happening and the secret meeting with Protestant paramilitaries demonstrated that something important was happening. That got them thinking that maybe the American role would be something different from a one-sided intervention—actually a friend to all, working on behalf of peace.

  Before the visit, people had a lot less hope than they had after. I think the message back to Washington was that this was the fruitful path: Something could be done, people can be talked to. It wasn’t as hopeless as people had said in the past. We could take risks on the road and maybe win the prize.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Helping the President Go First for Peace

  By the fall of 1993, after so many failed attempts to kill the flamboy-ant loyalist assassin Johnny “Mad Dog” Adair, head of the West Belfast Brigade of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), the IRA was desperate. They knew that Adair often met with other paramilitaries in a room above Frizzell’s Fish Shop on Shankill Road in the heart of loyalist Belfast. They did surveillance, put together their plan, and got it approved up the line. Then they waited until word came through that Adair was there. This was their chance, and it had to be seized right away, carried out fast, no hesitation, no hand-wringing about endangering noncombatants who would be crowding the shop and the busy street early in the afternoon on a bright, crisp October Saturday.

  The IRA gave the job to two younger operatives, Thomas Begley and Sean Kelly. Here was the plan: First they would steal a car and go to the fish shop disguised as delivery men bringing in fresh cod. Begley would carry the big plastic fish tray to the counter, with a layer of fish hiding a five-pound bomb underneath, while Kelly waited at the doorway to call out a warning and get everybody in the fish shop out before Mad Dog and his pals, who wouldn’t have time to get down the stairs before the bomb went off, were blown to eternity.

  They figured an eleven-second fuse would do it. The bomb itself was designed to drive the force of the explosion upward toward the second story where they were sure Mad Dog would be.

&nb
sp; But as is so often the case with bombs, things just didn’t work out as planned. Before Begley was able to put the fish tray down on the counter, before Kelly had any chance to call out a warning, the bomb went off, instantly killing Begley and nine other people, two of them on the sidewalk outside. The fish shop owner and two young children were among the dead, and dozens more were injured, including Kelly, who lost an eye and the use of his left arm. The deafening roar of the explosion was followed by another terrible sound: the collapse of the building’s second story onto the first, burying the poor souls lying there, the living sprawled alongside the dead under heaps of debris. Then the sirens and the racket of rescuers digging through the mess, rescuing survivors, and bringing out the dead. It took hours. Jackie Redpath later called it “our 9/11.”

  The reporters and the cameras got there right away. There were conflicting accounts about the whereabouts of Mad Dog. All agreed that he’d left the building long before the bombing. Some had him sauntering back from a nearby pub to what was left of the building; others said he was long gone from the scene.

  Then came the reprisals, which began swiftly and lasted for the rest of October. The first to die were two Catholics, a deliveryman lured to an ambush and an elderly pensioner. Then two more in a single attack. The big payback operation came just before Halloween. Three UDA/UFF gunmen, one in a mask, two in balaclavas, burst into a Halloween party at the Rising Sun bar in Greysteel, outside Derry. The lead gunman shouted “Trick or treat!” as he opened fire with an AK-47, killing everybody—Catholic, Protestant, who cared?—who happened to be in the path of a bullet. Eight people, ranging in age from twenty to eighty-one, died (six Catholics and two Protestants), and thirteen were injured, one of whom later died. The killers were said to be laughing as they made their escape.