In the short run, the State of the Union speech dramatically increased public support for my agenda. Newt Gingrich later said to me that after hearing the speech, he told the House Republicans that if I could persuade the congressional Democrats to deliver on my proposals, our party would be in the majority for a long time. Newt sure didn’t want that, so, like Bob Dole, he would try to keep as much from happening before the midterm elections as possible.
In the last week of January, we had a heated debate with our foreign policy team over whether to grant a visa to Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Fein, the political arm of the Irish Republican Army. America had great significance to both sides in the Irish conflict. For years, ardent American supporters of the IRA had provided funds for its violent activities. Sinn Fein had a larger number of partisans here among Irish Catholics who disowned terrorism but wanted to see an end to discrimination against their coreligionists and more political autonomy, with Catholic participation, in Northern Ireland. The British and the Irish Protestants had their supporters, too, who deplored any dealings with Sinn Fein because of its ties to the IRA, and who believed that we had no business meddling in the affairs of the United Kingdom, our strongest ally. That argument had carried the day with all my predecessors, including those sympathetic to the legitimate grievances of Northern Ireland’s Catholics. Now, with the Declaration of Principles, we had to revisit it.
In the declaration, for the first time ever, the UK pledged that the status of Northern Ireland would be determined by the wishes of its citizens, and Ireland renounced its historic claim to the six counties in the north until a majority of its people voted to change its status. The more moderate Unionist and Irish Nationalist parties were cautiously supportive of the agreement. The Reverend Ian Paisley, leader of the extreme Democratic Unionist Party, was outraged by it. Gerry Adams and Sinn Fein said they were disappointed because the principles lacked specificity as to how the peace process would operate and how Sinn Fein would be able to participate in it. Notwithstanding the ambiguous responses, the British and Irish governments clearly had created pressure on all the parties to work with them for peace. From the time the declaration was issued, Adams’s allies in America had been asking me to grant him a visa to visit the United States. They said it would increase his standing and his ability to get involved in the process and to press the IRA toward giving up violence. John Hume, leader of the moderate Social Democratic and Labour Party, who had built a career on nonviolent action, said he had changed his position on giving Adams a visa; he now thought it would advance the peace process. A number of IrishAmerican activists agreed, including my friend Bruce Morrison, who had organized our outreach to the Irish-American community in 1992, and our ambassador to Ireland, Jean Kennedy Smith. There was support in Congress from her brother, Senator Ted Kennedy; Senators Chris Dodd, Pat Moynihan, and John Kerry; and New York congressmen Peter King and Tom Manton. House Speaker Tom Foley, who had long been active in Irish issues, remained strongly opposed to the visa. In early January, Irish prime minister Albert Reynolds informed us that, like John Hume, he now favored granting the visa because Adams was working for peace, and he felt the visa would give him leverage to move the IRA away from violence and into the peace process. The British government remained vehemently opposed to the visa, because of the long history of IRA terror and because Adams had neither renounced violence nor embraced the Declaration of Principles as the basis for settling the problem.
I told Albert Reynolds I would consider a visa if Adams had a formal invitation to speak in the United States. Shortly afterward, Adams, along with the leaders of Northern Ireland’s other parties, was invited to participate in a peace conference in New York hosted by an American foreign policy group. This put the visa question front and center, where it became the first important issue on which my foreign policy advisors couldn’t reach a consensus.
Warren Christopher and the State Department, including our ambassador to Great Britain, Ray Seitz, were strongly opposed to issuing the visa, arguing that since Adams wouldn’t renounce violence, it would make us look soft on terrorism and that it could do irreparable damage to our vaunted “special relationship” with Great Britain, including our ability to secure British cooperation on Bosnia and other important matters. The Justice Department, the FBI, and the CIA agreed with State. Their unanimous opinion was entitled to great weight.
Three people were working the Irish issue at the National Security Counciclass="underline" Tony Lake, NSC staff director Nancy Soderberg, and our European affairs person, Army Major Jane Holl. With my support, they were taking an independent look at the visa question, while trying to reach a consensus position with the State Department, working through Undersecretary Peter Tarnoff. The NSC team became convinced that Adams favored an end to IRA violence, full participation by Sinn Fein in the peace process, and a democratic future for Northern Ireland. Their analysis made sense. The Irish were beginning to prosper economically, Europe as a whole was moving toward greater economic and political integration, and tolerance for terrorism among the Irish had dropped. On the other hand, the IRA was a tough nut to crack, full of hard men who had built a life on hatred of the British and the Ulster Unionists, and for whom the idea of peaceful coexistence and continuing to be a part of the UK
was anathema. Since the population of the northern counties was about 10 percent more Protestant than Catholic, and the Declaration of Principles committed both Ireland and the UK to a democratic future based on majority rule, Northern Ireland was likely to remain a part of the UK for some time to come. Adams understood that, but he also knew that terror wouldn’t bring victory and he seemed genuine when he said he wanted the IRA to give it up in return for an end to discrimination against and isolation of Catholics.
Based on this analysis, the NSC determined that we should grant the visa, because it would boost Adams’s leverage within Sinn Fein and the IRA, while increasing American influence with him. That was important, because unless the IRA renounced violence and Sinn Fein became a part of the peace process, the Irish problem could not be resolved.
The debate raged on until a few days before the conference was scheduled to open, with both the British government and Adams’s allies in the Congress and the Irish-American community turning up the heat. I listened carefully to both sides, including an impassioned last-minute plea not to do it from Warren Christopher and a message from Adams saying the Irish people were taking risks for peace and I should take a risk, too. Nancy Soderberg said she had come around on the visa because she was convinced that Adams was serious about making peace and that at present he couldn’t say more about his desire to move away from violence than he already had without damaging his position within Sinn Fein and the IRA. Nancy had advised me on foreign policy since the campaign, and I had developed great respect for her judgment. I was also impressed that Tony Lake agreed with her. As my national security advisor, he had to deal with the British on many other issues that could be adversely affected by the visa. He also understood the implications of the decision in terms of our overall efforts to combat terrorism. Vice President Gore also clearly grasped the larger context in which the decision had to be made, and he favored the visa, too. I decided to issue it, but to restrict it so that Adams couldn’t do any fund-raising or travel outside New York during his three-day stay.