Peacerunner

by Penn Rhodeen

  In time the possibility of that moment would be realized, but at this point, it stood only as a beginning—a fine beginning, but soon to give way to the very down-to-earth demands of fitting everything Adams wanted to do into the allotted forty-eight hours.

  It was early evening when they arrived at the Waldorf Astoria and Adams registered under the assumed name Schwab had given him: Shlomo Breznitz, a prominent Israeli psychologist. As Schwab and Adams parted company, the Irishman solemnly told his host: “George, I promise we won’t go back to the old ways.” It was clear to Schwab that for Adams, “coming to New York was an eye-opener. He had always looked through the lens of Northern Ireland, and now he was amazed at the wider view from New York City, where you could speak to anybody about anything.”

  Adams was exhausted after the long day of travel, but his visa clock was running fast and his schedule was packed. Before the evening was out, he would go to a small reception at the Waldorf, a secret meeting with a senior member of Ted Kennedy’s staff, and over to the CNN studios to do the Larry King Live show, live for the entire hour. This would be America’s first opportunity to see and hear Adams on live television.

  During the show, King labored mightily to get Adams to give a blanket renunciation of IRA violence, but the Belfast man, who came across as thoughtful, charming, and more than a bit funny, would go no further than saying he “wanted to get the gun out of Irish politics.” King continued to prod him, but Adams knew he’d reached the limit of what he could say and still retain his credibility with the IRA fighters.

  The hour concluded pleasantly with a discussion of the feasibility and safety of King doing the show from Belfast. When it was over Adams had charmed King—and America. It made the British furious, but it was obvious that their policy of banning him from television and radio had only increased the impact of his appearance. Nevertheless, policy was policy: When the show aired in Europe, an actor read Adams’s words. (Not long after, the British rescinded the policy that made them look so foolish.)

  Although it had been Bill Flynn’s conviction that the peace conference would be much more than merely a vehicle to get Adams his US visa—that its proceedings would make a substantive contribution to the peace process—the facts suggested otherwise. The hoped-for broad cross-section of speakers from the Northern Ireland political parties never materialized, because, of course, leaders of the unionist and loyalist parties refused to participate if Adams would be there.

  So when the conference opened the following morning, the audience got to hear only from Adams, Hume, and John Alderdice of the Alliance Party, which tried to appeal to both populations of Northern Ireland. By then, Adams was tired and off his game, and it is generally agreed that the best speech came from Hume. Morrison, who knew the goal had been achieved the moment Adams walked into the terminal at JFK, was sure that nothing new would be said or done at the conference, so he went back to work in New Haven.

  With only three speakers covering familiar ground, the conference itself was over quickly. For Adams, the rest of the day was a blur of sightseeing, as many TV appearances as he could squeeze into the time remaining on his visa, and a huge gathering with supporters at the same Sheraton Hotel where, nearly two years earlier at the Irish American forum on the eve of the New York presidential primary, Clinton had promised that he would give Adams a US visa.

  The Sheraton blowout was the event Morrison wanted to go to:

  This was the fulfillment of one of the promises made to these activists, many of whom had been in the room in April of 1992. It was a demonstration that politics had its place and could work. They had stood up and asked Clinton to give them an answer before he was president, and now they were there to see he’d kept his promise, that he’d done this deed and could be counted on to do more to advance the prospects for peace in Northern Ireland. It was an affirmation of what these folks had set out to be part of. It was also a demonstration to them that there was a reason to have supported Clinton and a reason to stay the course and continue to support the process.

  In virtually no time after Adams’s arrival, the visa clock had run out, and then it was back to Ireland. But everything had changed. Today Adams speaks of the drama of it all with understatement that can only be called . . . British: “I was a bit surprised by the whole furore,” he allows mildly.

  It was clear that the visa plan had succeeded. Adams got heard and seen in the United States, he abided by the restrictions, and he would be allowed to return and continue to make his case. The door was also now open for leaders of the unionist and newly developing loyalist parties to come and make their case as well. Adams was now in the mainstream, and the United States was a full partner in the peace process.

  Years later, Morrison took stock of how the long-view political strategy he and the others had done so much to develop, implement, and support had played out:

  Clinton did not know the plan. He did not sign up to be leveraged. He played his role, as some of us believed he would, given the chance. It’s not like we, marionette style, moved Clinton around. But we did create a political environment in which somebody with Clinton’s skills and political inclinations was more likely than not to do what we hoped would get done. Our goal was to create a political environment where the right things would happen. He had to choose, but we had to make the choices attractive, and I think we did that. We were overjoyed at the level of success. No one would have predicted the enormous amount of energy he poured into the process or the enormous satisfaction he felt at being involved in it. So it was much better than anyone could have bet on.

  Now the question was: What next and when? Although it hadn’t been an articulated quid pro quo, it was now clearly up to Adams to deliver an IRA ceasefire. If he did so, the peace process would continue full force. If he failed, his influence would wane, and many who had welcomed him would wonder if they had been tricked. Nancy Soderberg, at once pragmatic and philosophical, figured it was win-win regardless, since Adams would either deliver a ceasefire or he would be seen as ineffectual, which would leave him without influence in the United States.

  Adams knew full well what he had to do, but neither he nor Morrison nor Clinton knew how much time he had to deliver it before the president, whether from discouragement, frustration, or second thoughts—or because a new crisis grabbed center stage—turned his attention to different matters and the precious moment was lost.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Road to Ceasefire: It Took Forever and Happened in a Flash

  The mood at the 1994 White House St. Patrick’s Day party was celebratory. Adams had come and gone, the world had survived, and the United States had carved out a major independent role in the peace process. Movie and television stars like Paul Newman, Michael Keaton, Conan O’Brien, and Roma Downey were there, as was the renowned classical flautist James Galway, a Belfast native. There was plenty of Washington star power too, including Senate majority leader George Mitchell, House Speaker Thomas Foley, and Ted Kennedy. The great chieftain of Irish American activists, Paul O’Dwyer, now eighty-seven and in a wheelchair, was thoroughly enjoying his first visit to the White House. He’d been invited back in 1933 but couldn’t come; he was invited again during the Carter administration but, in vintage Paul O’Dwyer style, refused to enter when some members of his group were turned away at the door because of their Noraid ties. But now he, like everyone else, was filled with hope about Clinton’s new policy.

  Morrison, O’Dowd, Flynn, and Feeney mingled with the stars and top administration officials like Tony Lake and Nancy Soderberg, looking terrific in a long, emerald green dress. Irish prime minister Albert Reynolds was a happy partier, and SDLP leader John Hume probably was, too, though his characteristic dour mien made it difficult to be sure until he joined Clinton and Reynolds in singing “When Irish Eyes are Smiling” at the end of the evening.

  For Morrison and his wife, it was a wonderful occasion. “I’d been at parties at the White House when I was in Congress,” he recalls
, “but I had never had a friend like Bill Clinton to go visit there.” There was also a moment of comedy when a flustered military officer in formal dress shooed them out of chairs on which they had briefly perched, exclaiming, “Sir, sir, you’re in the Newman seats!” When Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward arrived just as the Morrisons stood up quickly, they greeted each other warmly as longtime Connecticut political activists.

  But there was also a dark undercurrent to the occasion. There had been a series of IRA mortar attacks—all with dud shells—on London’s Heathrow airport earlier that month: three of them, at two-day intervals, each targeting a different part of the airport. The message was clear: Even as the peace process seemed to be advancing, the IRA hadn’t gone away. It was ready, willing, and able to bring the fight— with live ammunition—to Britain’s front porch at any time.

  When New York senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who had been a somewhat reluctant supporter of the Adams visa, learned of the attacks, he sent a note to Ted Kennedy, who had pressed him to support the visa, saying simply: “Have we been had?” His question revealed a deep well of anxiety and dread to which many of those who had set aside their doubts about Adams were still vulnerable. Clinton was plainly angry and perplexed about the IRA action as well. When he said in his formal remarks that it was “difficult to know what to make of the latest attacks at Heathrow,” Niall O’Dowd was convinced that Clinton was glaring straight at him.

  But despite the reminders that there was still a war on, this St. Patrick’s Day was a cause for celebration. When Clinton began his remarks in Gaelic with the traditional Irish greeting Céad míle fáilte— a hundred-thousand welcomes—the crowd answered with thunderous applause and raucous cheers. These sons and daughters of Ireland felt their time had come, and they were going to enjoy every minute of it.

  As spring made its welcome appearance, even those who understood that Adams couldn’t snap his fingers and produce a ceasefire were becoming increasingly restive, needing to see something from him. The question of Sinn Féin’s response to the Downing Street Declaration became an interim focal point since Adams hadn’t yet embraced the accords, although he’d offered general statements that the declaration held promise for a way forward. But he wasn’t prepared to commit to it, particularly the requirement that any political party that wanted to participate in the negotiations had to renounce the use of violence. The problem for Adams was fundamental: If he was going to bring the men of the IRA to politics instead of war, it was essential that he maintain his credibility with them. They had to believe that he understood and respected the reasons for the armed struggle and that he wouldn’t ask them to give it up unless he was confident that the politics was a viable way to achieve their long-term goals. And they had to believe he understood that, as an army that hadn’t been defeated, they could accept no resolution that looked like surrender. If Adams lost them on any of these points, he would lose them altogether, and his ability to lead them to a peaceful path would be destroyed. Although he understood the frustration many of his American friends felt, Adams held steady to the reality of the circumstances and his obligations as the leader of Sinn Féin. He also never lost sight of the human dimension involved when ordinary people find themselves in circumstances so desperate that they turn to violence. As he saw it, those deploring the violence should offer a better way:

  There was no point in condemning the IRA. It’s a waste of time. Whatever you think about it, there was not in the mind of the IRA a peaceful and democratic way to go forward which has the same efficacy as what it was doing. So if we want to persuade them to stop doing that, then let’s bring forward another and better way, or at least another way which has the same potential. These weren’t career soldiers—there is no Sandhurst, there’s no military aristocracy. These were ordinary citizens, ordinary folks who got involved in armed actions.

  Morrison was no stranger to Irish republicans’ endless talking and splitting of hairs, the mysterious deliberations behind closed doors, the complex qualifications and sub-qualifications of almost anything that managed to get put in writing. For him, the way Adams held steadily to his bearings and responsibilities in the face of his newly acquired international celebrity was a true measure of his greatness. Adams never allowed himself to believe he held such power over the IRA that all he had to do was demand a ceasefire—as so many of his international supporters were urging him to do—and the IRA would declare one without hesitation, yielding to the overwhelming force of his celebrity.

  Morrison holds a distinctly unsentimental view of Adamsas-celebrity:

  People over here had sort of fallen in love with Gerry Adams, because he is charismatic and so much not the image of the terrorist. So there was all this stuff about how he should denounce the IRA and separate himself from them—which is ridiculous, because the only reason Gerry was important was that he could bring the IRA into the peace process, he could end the war. This is the great confusion of celebrity politics.

  Despite recognizing the constraints under which Adams operated, Morrison and the unofficial peacemakers were determined to do everything they could to help get to the ceasefire. They went to Northern Ireland later in the spring as Sinn Féin prepared to gather at Letterkenny for its annual party conference. There was rampant speculation that this was the time—that the IRA would announce a ceasefire during or right after the conference. Morrison and his group shared those hopes: They met with Sinn Féin members to help formulate a list of what the United States government and Irish America could do to create conditions that would support a ceasefire.

  Expectations were high, but expectations were wrong. In the spring of 1994, nothing about the IRA’s ways of doing business had changed. They worked behind closed doors in their own way and in their own time; any effort to rush them only slowed things down.

  For Morrison, who had an especially good grasp of how important it was to be steadfast and patient in these matters, the sliding of spring into the summer with no ceasefire—no sign of when it would come, no certainty it ever would—was a maddening time. Many in the administration and in Congress who had supported the Adams visa experienced increasing doubt and discouragement. Nancy Soderberg candidly acknowledges that her confidence in what Morrison and the others were telling her was getting shaky:

  They would always say, “It’s about to happen, it’s about to happen,” and in retrospect I think they really were trying, but I was increasingly skeptical. I put the president’s political credibility on the line, saying, “Okay, if Adams gets the ceasefire, we’ll win. If he doesn’t get the ceasefire, it will show that they weren’t sincere and we can further isolate them.” So I was on the start-further-isolating-them track and had basically given up.

  But in truth, there was nothing for anyone on the outside to do but to be at the ready, help when called on, not lose hope, and wait (at least until Clinton himself lost patience and decided to walk away from the whole business).

  Looking back on that time of exasperating silence, the rising and falling and rising and falling again of hope, when the fear that it might all turn to ashes was no longer manageable by distraction and denial, Morrison marveled at how, when the waiting was over, a process that felt as if it was taking forever seemed to have happened in a flash. Sinn Féin hadn’t been dragging its feet: It was clear to the Americans at Letterkenny that Sinn Féin had been working hard for a ceasefire, but the IRA just wasn’t ready. Morrison described Sinn Féin as “getting to yes with a process that was respectful of their constituency,” but acknowledged that “living it was excruciating. But what’s seven months when you’re changing the whole world?”

  The first sign that the long wait might be over came in early August when a Sinn Féin contact told O’Dowd that they needed a detailed statement in writing of what support the American group felt the United States would be willing to give in response to a ceasefire. The Americans were able to provide that quickly because the document had already been largely prepared during their vis
it to Letterkenny. Finishing touches were quickly applied and off it went to an intermediary in Dublin for hand-delivery to Sinn Féin by whatever cloak-and-dagger method they would devise.

  So when an attractive woman appeared out of the mists of a mid-August Dublin night and asked the man standing outside the offices of the Irish Independent whether he thought Dublin would win on Sunday, the detailed written summary of what the Americans could offer in support of the ceasefire was handed over and on its way to the IRA. The list included regular access to the United States for Adams and other Sinn Féin members, the opening of a Sinn Féin office in Washington with considerable financial support from Chuck Feeney, curbs on deportation from the United States of those with ties to the IRA, direct government support for the peace process, and promotion of American business and investment in Northern Ireland.

  The message delivered, there was, once again, nothing to do but wait.

  This time, blessedly, the wait was short. In a matter of days, O’Dowd was told by his contact that he should take his holiday in the last week of August. That was code for: “Get the group over here right away.”

  “The group” now numbered six—Morrison, O’Dowd, Flynn, Feeney, and top labor leaders Joe Jamison and Bill Lenahan—and they arrived in Dublin on August 25, 1994. Ceasefire rumors were flying all over the city: Would the IRA really do it? Would it be long-term or short?

  Before heading north to Belfast, the Americans met with Albert Reynolds and Foreign Affairs Minister Dick Spring. Reynolds was unusually agitated and intense; he told the Americans, with a vehemence that took them aback, that as far as he was concerned, only a complete ceasefire would be acceptable. He said that if they came back from Belfast with a limited ceasefire, whether three months or six, he would not be with them. Morrison didn’t agree: