by Thomas Maier
At another dinner arranged by Jean, Prime Minister Reynolds argued to Ted that getting the Adams visa could reinvigorate the stagnant peace talks in Northern Ireland. Reynolds knew the senator possessed enough clout with Clinton to end his nation’s ban on Adams and Sinn Fein. Earlier that month, Reynolds had persuaded Clinton to call the British prime minister, John Major, to ask him to agree to what became known as the Downing Street Declaration—a significant agreement in which the English conceded they had no economic or strategic interest in Ulster and would only seek peace. Reynolds had been present in the White House when Clinton announced Jean Kennedy Smith as the new ambassador. That day,Reynolds said warmly to Smith,“Welcome home.” He admired the Kennedys’mythic status in Ireland, and he knew this chieftain-like quality could extend to women members of the clan. “The Kennedy men were regarded as the politicians,” Reynolds later said. “She has shown herself to be as strong a leader, if not more so.” Though the Irish leader was limited in what he could say publicly, Reynolds became an ally in the ambassador’s sub-rosa peace efforts.“He was very instrumental, and he was always in touch,” Jean said of Reynolds.“He encouraged me and encouraged the process.”
Everyone knew that Ted Kennedy’s endorsement mattered the most. Before he returned to Washington, the senator listened carefully to Hume and the experts his sister had assembled to argue Adams’s case. In the end, though, he looked to the opinion of his older sister, just as other Kennedy siblings had relied on each other with earlier political questions. Even as children, the two youngest children of Rose and Joe Kennedy were always close—“they were a pair,” their mother later wrote. Ted knew that Jean was not one to be bowled over by sentiment or naïveté. “What impressed me was Jean’s observation of the strong commitment that Adams had to ending violence,” the senator later told the Boston Globe. Now that his thinking about Gerry Adams was substantially different,Ted returned to Washington in early 1994 determined to do what he could.
BILL CLINTON savored his own favorite image of JFK.The 1963 photograph of young Clinton—then an Arkansas high school student visiting the White House with his service group, Boy’s Nation, beaming as he shook hands with President Kennedy—was reprinted ubiquitously during his 1992 presidential campaign. For years, Clinton had pointed with pride to his JFK handshake. Clinton biographer David Maraniss later suggested the photo symbolized “a transference of politics” for the future president. Another Irish journalist quipped that it appeared “like a laying on of hands by JFK”—from one American chieftain to another. On Inauguration Day in 1993, Clinton visited President Kennedy’s grave and stood in the cold before the eternal flame to pay homage to his hero.
During his White House years, Clinton and his wife, Hillary, became friendly with several Kennedy family members, including Jackie Kennedy, with whom they went on a leisurely sailboat ride along Martha’s Vineyard the first summer Clinton was in office. “We may have had [Democratic] nominees who talked about him, but none who acknowledged as directly and as almost emotionally his kinship with President Kennedy,” noted Frank Mankiewicz, Bobby Kennedy’s former press spokesman. Clinton relied on Ted steadily for advice. In leaving office years later, Clinton said, “Whatever I have accomplished as President, so much of it would never have been possible if Ted Kennedy wasn’t there every single step of the way.”
Though Clinton’s political kinship with the Kennedys seemed natural, his affinity with the Irish Catholic community was more of an acquired taste. A Baptist comfortable with his own religion, Clinton had attended Georgetown University, the renowned Jesuit-run school in Washington, D.C., where the young undergraduate student was introduced to various aspects of Catholic cultural life. At Oxford, as a Rhodes scholar in the late 1960s, he followed the initial civil rights disputes in Northern Ireland. Several friends say Clinton, as governor of Arkansas, possessed an impressive knowledge of Irish politics.“I saw the (beginning) of a lot of what the people there had lived through for the last twenty-five years,” Clinton explained as president,“and I thought if there was anything we could do to make a positive difference we ought to try.”
Clinton didn’t give much mind to Irish-Americans as a political force until the bruising 1992 New York primary, when he courted them as an important swing vote. During a forum in New York set up by prominent Irish-Americans, candidate Clinton promised that if he got elected he would appoint a special envoy to help broker a peace in Northern Ireland. After his election, genealogists traced a small portion of Clinton’s lineage to Ulster Protestants, through the Cassidy family on his mother’s side. Clinton embraced this finding with a bit of his own blarney.“I’ve always been conscious of being Irish,” he said.“I mean, I’m sort of—I look Irish; I am Irish . . . it means a lot to me.” Events would suggest that Clinton’s statement might be true, at least figuratively speaking.
Upon returning in January 1994 from his trip to see his sister, Senator Kennedy urged the White House to grant a visa to Gerry Adams, who’d been invited the following month to a forum hosted in New York by many of Clinton’s top 1992 supporters in the Irish-American community. For much of the post–World War II era, while the “special relationship” between the United States and Great Britain prospered, the Irish government appeared to do little effective lobbying with the American government, or with the many Irish-Americans who could affect U.S. foreign policy. This New York–based group wanted the American government to pay more attention to the troubles in Northern Ireland. At first, Clinton demurred on the Adams visa because he wanted to consult other Irish experts. Speaker of the House Tom Foley and others in Washington advised against the idea. But Nancy Soderberg, a former aide on Ted Kennedy’s staff who was now overseeing Irish strategy for Clinton’s National Security Council, counseled the president to go forward cautiously.
Within a short time, at the urging of both Kennedys, the White House signaled the State Department to approve a two-day visa for Adams. Instead of applying in Belfast for a visa through the U.S. embassy in London—as he had previously in his failed attempts—Adams asked for his visiting pass through Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith’s office in Dublin. “There was huge protestation, there was hysteria from the British about the possibility of me getting a visa,”Adams recalled “There was advice from the FBI, the State Department and Justice Departments that I should not be given the visa. So President Clinton had a decision to make which meant effectively going against his own system.” Ultimately, Clinton decided the political risks were worth the chance for peace.
GRANTING A VISA to Gerry Adams stunned and angered the British. Prime Minister John Major visibly cooled toward the White House. Only months before, Major and several top advisers had nearly been killed by an IRA bomber. In this post–Cold War atmosphere, though, Clinton realized he could be more flexible than past presidents—certainly more so than John Kennedy during the early 1960s nuclear stare down with the Soviet Union, when a British alliance with America was crucial. During the Reagan and Bush years, U.S. policy had remained decidedly tilted in the British favor, particularly while Margaret Thatcher was prime minister. Clinton realized that America didn’t have to keep blinders on regarding Northern Ireland any longer. The voices of Irish Catholics in America could now be heeded by a friendly American president.
During spring 1994, the visa for Adams set in motion a series of negotiations, including some carried out privately and unofficially by Clinton’s Irish-American supporters. In August, Niall O’Dowd, an energetic, Irish-born founder of the Irish Voice in New York, and former Congressman Bruce Morrison, a classmate of Clinton’s, flew to Belfast to meet with Adams and other Sinn Fein leaders. They hoped to work out a potential cease-fire agreement. But there remained one sticking point. Sinn Fein insisted that an American visa first be granted to Joe Cahill, an elderly IRA member with a notorious history. In return, Cahill would talk with his Irish-American friends in Irish Northern Aid Committee (NORAID) about the benefits of such a settlement. Adams knew that hard-liner
s in America would be nearly as important to success as those in Ulster. After years of conflict in Ireland, peace could easily be undermined by political feuds and breakaway splinter groups unwilling to compromise. But under a long-standing U.S-British agreement on terror aimed specifically at the IRA, Cahill could not be granted a visa to New York. His past appeared to doom his chances. Years earlier, Cahill had barely escaped the hangman’s noose for the killing of a Royal Ulster police official, for which another IRA member, Tom Williams, was executed. British authorities urged Clinton to refuse Cahill a visa and make no further accommodations to a terrorist organization responsible for so many killings. Meanwhile, Dublin urged the president to go ahead with a visa for Cahill. When Reynolds called, Clinton referred to the rather extensive government dossier on Cahill’s alleged IRA terrorism connections.
“Have you seen this man’s record?” the president asked.
“Well, we didn’t suggest for a moment he was a saint or a parish priest,” replied Reynolds.
Perhaps the most persuasive calls and cables came from Jean Kennedy Smith, who urged the president to take one more step. Finally, in a telephone call at five in the morning, she learned that Cahill’s visa would be granted. In America, Ted Kennedy’s behind-the-scenes efforts pushed toward a cease-fire. “He eventually became the single most important U.S. politician on this issue, the one that the American presidents would consult,” said Niall O’Dowd. “It [Ireland] is one of the dearest things to him—I know from talking with him.”
Shortly after Cahill’s entry to the United States, the IRA declared a cease-fire. The stunning announcement was hailed by many Irish and condemned by some diehards. Perhaps most important, it opened the way for further contacts with the United States. In September, Gerry Adams received another visa for a two-week visit that turned into a cross-country celebration and fundraiser around the possibilities of peace. The American media interviewed him extensively and gave a great public airing to Sinn Fein’s side of the Northern Ireland dispute. Editorialists and policymakers discovered that Adams did not fit their stereotype about this organization. Though he’d never visited the United States before 1994, Adams emphasized that his views on the Northern Ireland struggle were affected greatly by two transcending American movements of the 1960s—civil rights and the tradition of church and state separation, an ideal that had played such a prominent role in John F. Kennedy’s election. “I think that [separation of church and state] is an important dimension in the U.S.A. that could usefully be duplicated here in Ireland, with the need to protect civil and religious liberties, but at the same time to ensure that politics and religion are not mixed,” Adams explained.
At Boston’s airport, Ted Kennedy met Adams for the first time and assured him of Clinton’s commitment for lasting peace. During a press conference, Kennedy praised Adams as “a voice for setting aside the violence.” The senator stressed to reporters that he wouldn’t have met Adams unless Sinn Fein had renounced political violence, and then not until there were signs the cease-fire was holding. “We’re interested in the future,” said Kennedy. “The violence has halted. It’s difficult for many of us to understand why people are carping on the past.”
In the middle of his own tight Senate reelection campaign, Ted Kennedy’s involvement in Irish affairs abroad appeared to some Massachusetts Republicans as a ploy.“With the polls showing Irish Catholics are deserting Kennedy in droves, it’s obvious why he did this,” complained Ron Kaufman, state representative for the Republican National Committee. The same day of his arrival,Adams was escorted by Kennedy to a private reception hosted by prominent Irish-Americans in Boston; among the guests were the senator’s niece, Courtney Kennedy Hill, and her husband, Paul. Adams was grateful to his Kennedy patrons. “I know that Teddy Kennedy talked to President Clinton about my visa, and I know at other times,Teddy Kennedy had intervened directly with the president,” he said. “The Kennedys were there to say [that] the right thing to do was to give me the visa.” The October 1994 trip’s most significant moment—his telephone conversation at Hickory Hill with Vice President Gore, which opened the door to diplomacy with Sinn Fein—was one more contribution by the Kennedys to the cause of peace.
IN IRELAND, Jean Kennedy Smith stirred controversy beyond her attempts at peacemaking. She received criticism from Dublin’s archbishop when she and the Irish Republic’s president, in an ecumenical gesture, received Communion at a Protestant service. A curate in County Cork declared that Smith had committed a mortal sin, infuriating his congregates enough for many to storm out of their church. Smith refused to recant.“Religion, after all, is about bringing people together,” she replied.“We all have our own way of going to God.”
As part of her job, Smith kept up contacts with many sides in the north. She made a concerted effort to reach out to the Unionist community, where she made many Protestant friends. Nevertheless, she was branded a “nationalist” by her British critics, who claimed that her only intent was unifying Northern Ireland into one country with the south. State Department detractors sneered privately that Smith had overstepped her authority as ambassador. They accused her of “clientitis”—the diplomatic jargon for letting oneself become too identified with the host nation and forgetting American interests.
Within the Dublin embassy, some objected to the ambassador’s personal, action-oriented style that often ignored or trampled diplomatic niceties. Two embassy staffers disagreed with her Sinn Fein efforts and filed angry protests with the U.S. State Department. Months later, the department’s inspector general reprimanded Smith formally for punishing the two staffers who had voiced objections. British newspapers floated stories of Smith’s being recalled or blamed for setbacks in the peace efforts, only to be denied firmly by Clinton officials. But her most severe critic was Raymond Seitz, the U.S. ambassador to Great Britain. He objected to Smith’s initiatives and wrote a memoir after leaving office that sharply attacked her actions. Seitz called her shallow, naïve and “an ardent IRA apologist.” Seitz claimed she routinely leaked American and British intelligence to Adams, which then wound up in IRA hands.“America, which had suffered so often at the hands of terrorists around the world, should have been the last place to offer a platform to Gerry Adams,” Seitz contended.
When the book appeared, the ambassador’s nephew, Congressman Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island and Ted’s youngest son, rebuked Seitz, warning that his comments were “destructive” to the ongoing peace process. Young Patrick defended his aunt’s work by underlining its impact. And the White House denied all the allegations and expressed “full confidence in Ambassador Smith.” When the London correspondent for the New York Times called for comment, Smith replied, “History will be the judge.”
BY 1995, THE CLINTON administration had committed fully to achieving a lasting peace settlement. British officials and Ulster Protestants continued to raise skepticism about the IRA, especially as sporadic acts of violence occurred. In November, Clinton went to Ireland; he invited seven Irish-Americans along for the trip, including Maryland’s lieutenant governor, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, and Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago. “I think he (Clinton) was influenced a great deal both by her work and by what Senator Kennedy has been pushing for over many, many years,” Townsend said of her aunt. “He appointed her ambassador which was his tribute to my family; and the fact that he stood up for her when it was not popular with the State Department, that he supported her when many others criticized the peace process, is a real tribute to him.”
In a style reminiscent of JFK’s 1963 visit, the Irish energized Clinton, who later called his visit “the best days of my presidency.” In Dublin, Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith appeared delighted as she rubbed her hands with sheer nervous energy and watched the large crowds pour out their good wishes for the president. The Clintons visited Derry and stayed in the Europa Hotel in Belfast, the target of repeated IRA bombings in the past. The president appointed former U.S. Senator George Mitchell to act as an international me
diator and seek a method by which the IRA and its Orange counterparts in Ulster could surrender their arms in a permanent peace. Ian Paisley complained that Mitchell could not be an honest broker because he was “an Irish Catholic from the Kennedy stable.”
Prime Minister John Major, realizing the fundamental change in America’s position, worked with the Clinton administration begrudgingly. A few months later in New York, O’Dowd’s magazine, Irish America, bestowed its annual award to Clinton at a February 1996 reception attended by dozens of Irish-American politicians and business people, including Ted Kennedy and his sister, Jean, the ambassador. During the ceremony, Ted Kennedy, wearing a green tie that nearly glowed, lionized Clinton’s bold and courageous efforts. As the senator recalled his brother’s promise to return to Ireland, his voice choked. Clinton could be seen with tears in his eyes. In his own remarks, President Clinton said that Northern Ireland’s people “do not deserve to have a small group choose bloodshed and violence, shattering their dreams. We must not allow those who have been hardened by the past to hijack the future.”
Despite these intentions, the peace efforts in Northern Ireland stumbled and nearly fell apart. In 1996, not long after Clinton’s visit, an IRA bombing broke apart the first cease-fire. White House officials blamed Adams and Sinn Fein and didn’t return to the bargaining table until 1997. During this time, Mitchell expanded his role as special envoy, mending fences and negotiating toward a compromise package that everyone could live by. While still dealing openly with Hume and Adams, Mitchell carefully avoided alienating the British government of newly elected Prime Minister Tony Blair of the Labour Party, nor David Trimble of the Ulster Unionists. Blair, far more liberal-minded than John Major, aided the American peace negotiations considerably; indeed, he increasingly put his own political capital at stake in seeking a peace agreement.