Did he have to renounce violence? They had gone along with the visa without the renunciation of violence. They, we all, would have liked that of course. We all wanted the ceasefire to happen, but it took from February, when Adams came, until August, for there to be a ceasefire. It was the end of January, beginning of February, Adams was at the Waldorf-Astoria. He was coming to give a talk to a foreign policy organization.
It was the first time he was coming to the U. I was to go to a suite to meet Adams to have this conversation. Somebody messed up. I opened the door of the suite and it was all press, and some of them knew me. I returned to my room. So we met in my room in the Waldorf-Astoria. We took a lot of grief over the visa. Janet Reno was on the fence a lot. I remember our trying to get Janet Reno onboard. The one thing I would disagree with—people constantly talk about this issue of taking political risks, that this was a big risk for peace.
Violence had been going on. What was the worst that could happen? We could give him a visa and nothing would have come of it. You wanted something to come of it but nothing was going to get worse, in my opinion, because we got him a visa. Politically we would have looked bad, and Clinton would have looked bad.
But people were dying in Northern Ireland, we had to go for it. Clinton had already backtracked on—was it Haiti?
There were a couple of issues where he was seen to cut and run. He did the first visit to Northern Ireland with Mrs. Prior to deciding to support the visa, Kennedy spent a lot of time on this. There were brief cease-fires and other messages and signs. I think his name was [Thomas] Begley. It was a problem. Jean was already pushing to get Adams a visa. Carey Parker and I talked about it and talked to the Senator and we agreed that it was way too soon, that EMK should just go over there and hear what people have to say.
Jean arranged for him to meet with Albert Reynolds. John Hume was not around at the time, he was traveling. We had to follow up with Hume in January. That was early January. He saw Hume when [Thomas P. The funeral was in Boston and Hume came over for it, so they talked then.
I gathered he was a bit ambivalent about putting Gerry Adams in this position—elevating him so to speak—would this really work?
Hume seemed torn about how good of an idea it was, but he certainly gave Kennedy a yellow light, if not the green light, to go ahead and do this. Immediately, we put together a letter to President Clinton. We wanted to get the letter to the White House, which argued for the visa. We were pushed, actually, because even though Kennedy came back wanting to do it, an organization in New York had sent an invitation to Gerry Adams to give a talk, and it was going to force the Administration to make a decision.
It was slightly sooner than we would have wanted, but we just dealt with it. So we sent the letter to the White House and then over the next three weeks we kept getting more Congressmen and Senators to sign on. In the end I think there were over 50 members of Congress that encouraged Clinton to give Adams a hour visa, believing it could help in the quest for peace. Once EMK decided he wanted to get Adams the visa, we had to make that happen.
I would do things like call Mark Gearan in the White House, I think [George] Stephanopoulos was in the mix, Jack Quinn was in there, and it was my job to figure out everybody that could possibly get the President to agree to this, and try to push, push, push them. So it was constantly pushed, and Kennedy would come in when it was big enough for Kennedy, like talking to [Albert , Jr.
If Clinton was coming up to the Hill for something on healthcare, or if Kennedy had a meeting with him at the White House, we were just constantly bringing it up at all these different levels. Then Adams had to go in for an interview to see if he would get the visa, and I remember he had to choose between whether to go to our embassy in Dublin or the consulate in Belfast.
So he went to Belfast. So I went back to Adams via Niall and told him to, Write up your own version of what happened in that meeting and get it out. He got it out publicly and I got it to the White House so they would have that to compare with what Martinez had to say. If they had had only what Martinez said, they would have probably had to deny him.
Whatever his report was, I think his response to the State Department was that there was—in a nutshell—nothing new in what Gerry Adams had to say. But because Adams publicly explained what he said, the White House thought it was enough that they could go with. Is it fair to say that one of the things that happened was the Clinton White House pulled it away from the State? It was in the White House.
The State Department resisted at all times, although there were certainly friendly forces in the State Department. In a sense, they were out of the loop. At some level, everybody was trying to get Warren Christopher on board. There was a dinner Nancy called me about because she was really worried. I think it was the night before they granted the visa. Clinton was sitting between Warren Christopher and House Speaker Tom Foley, who opposed giving the visa, and she was afraid Clinton was going to hear, in stereo, why he should not give the visa to Gerry Adams.
We held our breath. It was on a weekend night, I believe. Historically, Northern Ireland was just left to the Brits because they were our friends on so many different issues. The Sinn Fein was not talking to them. It was strictly in the White House. Kennedy historically had been anti-IRA, but pro-a democratic process and wanting the violence to end. What was it that got him to the point, and what were the changes on the ground that were going on that got people to believe that there might be an opening here?
Gerry Adams and those guys were middle-aged. For us, it was just the very fact that somebody was coming to us who clearly had a line into them.
We knew that John Hume was talking to them, and you really had a sense that they were tired and they wanted it. Nobody ever came to us before and said, You could end this if you just did this or this or that.
It was always, This will end when the Brits leave Northern Ireland. A lot of it was based on the information that we were getting, and there were minor things along the way. When Major and Reynolds came up with their agreement in December, that was another little step. Did we have any real proof that this effort was going to succeed? What they were able to deliver to us was reasonably questionable.
But it was very clear that they were coming to us because they wanted something to happen. Were you getting the sense that the Brits were ready to engage in a peace process that truly could bring about peace? At that stage they had been talking to the IRA themselves, but Major also had a very thin majority in the House of Commons, which tied his hands as far as what he could do. We actually made a lunch bet—he was convinced up until the last moment that Adams was not going to get the visa, and I was convinced that he was.
He did pay off his bet and bought me lunch. He did it and it was his job, and he fought hard. There were page-one stories in the New York Times about how the British did not want this visa given. But there was this thought that if you got the White House onboard, the State Department would do what the President wants to do, which was just the way it went in the end. It was all those little things happening.
We were told they want to stop and they needed cover. At the end of the day, the IRA gave up their armed struggle. They decided to stop. It was the very fact that these people came, and they kept coming back at us.
Who were the intermediaries between the IRA and Kennedy, who Kennedy trusted enough to believe what they were telling him? Jean was for it, of course, and we were also in constant contact with her and she herself with State and the White House.
He ran this paper in New York and he was a big Sinn Fein supporter, and she had come across him when she handled Ireland. That never happened before. Yes, there was no doubt about that. The day Adams got the visa he called and left a message on my answering machine thanking me for helping get him the visa.
He was close to him. People knew that he was close to him. The Department of Foreign Affairs held back initially, and I think they thought Albert Reynolds was out there far in front of where they wanted him to be at that stage, and so they were hanging back.
Dermot Gallagher was the Ambassador at the time and he wanted to be kept informed, but I always had the sense he wanted sufficient distance so that if it all went south he could say he had nothing to do with it.
Who wanted to take that chance? Why risk it? Reynolds was definitely out in front of his own crowd. But he also had help on his side, because he had Dick Spring in there, who was his Foreign Minister. And just like Kennedy would provide the cover for Adams with Clinton, having Dick Spring backing up Albert Reynolds gave Reynolds the kind of political cover he needed. The interesting thing about Kennedy, historically, and what people should know—The thing that I really admired is he did a lot more than people realize.
I gave him about three memos a day on the issue. He wanted to be constantly informed of the minutiae. The thing that is most amazing is that he never sought credit for it. He wrote this book because he was the Irish Times correspondent in the U. We made a decision not to be overly helpful. Kennedy had given a speech in Britain about the special relationship, and I had lots of information I got from the Library of Congress that would be useful to him. We gave him that, and I remember having one conversation with him, but that was it.
If you talk and just seem to be patting yourself on the back, it only pisses off the unionists. You can get the credit now, or you can just let other people take the credit, because you have a bigger objective at the end of this all, to make it happen, to achieve peace.
A lot of politicians would be, Well, I should get my— Nothing like that. He wanted the peace process to succeed, and if it meant him not out there every ten minutes saying, Look at what I did, then he was happy with that.
It gives Clinton all the credit. And Clinton deserves the credit as it was his decision to make in the end. But Clinton had to be persuaded. We had to work on Clinton, despite the fact that he had promised it when he was running and then he denied once or twice. Mayor [David] Dinkins got involved because Dinkins wanted it, and Clinton said no. I think it was twice he denied it. Clinton needed the cover of Kennedy. I think most people involved would agree with that.
He knew a little bit about Northern Ireland. You always had members of Congress who were for it, but they were just known to be supportive of the IRA. For Clinton to do it, he really had to have Ted Kennedy bless it, because if it all went south he could at least say, Ted Kennedy thought it was okay.
But Clinton definitely was the only person who could make the decision and he deserves full credit for taking it on. You get Clinton coming into office and there are the beginnings of two very critical peace processes going on at the same time that involved talking with terrorists. Both of these groups were anathema to the U.
Government because they were terrorists and they killed people. I remember at the time—we did the research, and we were trying to convince Clinton to do this. One of the things we did in giving the White House the argument of why they could do it was we said, Look at who has been met before. Clinton had already been talking to [Yasser] Arafat, There is precedent, is what we were saying, and this was just for a visa, no one was asking Clinton to meet him.
We were waiting for Adams in a holding room in Logan Airport. Before we went out—I had it in my head about Arafat, and the whole handshake with Rabin. In fairness, Adams did not try to hug him.
But Adams is really good like this. I remember things like when he would come in to the office to meet Kennedy. I was always very conscious that the press were in the hall and the cameras were rolling. Impossible nearly. There are a lot of people enamored with him. He had that whole sort of Che Guevara Republican chic thing going on with some people.
I was never one of those people. I saw women swooning around him at the time he came over. That was the first time Kennedy saw him. That was October. The Clintons started holding White House parties and Kennedy was there for those. It was a great one, the first party after the ceasefire. And then the ceasefire broke down and Moynihan sent Kennedy some one-line note that said something like, Have we been had? Tom Foley was not going to support the visa. So the Brits had gotten Foley on their side to try to block it, and he did try to block it.
For Moynihan to do it—Moynihan felt that the Irish Government and the Department of Foreign Affairs often let people like him and EMK get out in front of them and take the heat for them. On things like big human rights cases like the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four, it was fine for the U. Congress to go out there and say these guys were innocent, and other issues, while they hung back a bit. There was some conversation where Moynihan was ticked off.
He felt that the Irish always pushed us out there to do their dirty work, and then only if it was a success—. He did sign the letter supporting the visa. But as soon as the peace process broke down, it was kind of like, I told you so, when he sent this note to Kennedy.
It was one sentence: Have we been had? Nancy was important because she was in the White House. She and I had worked together for years. I had worked with her on my own time throughout the campaign, doing the memos to the candidate on Irish issues.
So she and I had been in constant contact, and having her in the White House was important. She knew the issue, she knew the players. She knew it well, and so she was important. Jim was great and Tony Lake was great. By the time Steinberg had come in, the worst was over. The hard part was in the beginning.
We had to go out on a limb in the first place to get the visa, we had to get the first ceasefire, and then we had to get the ceasefire back again.
I remember the night just before the April signing of the Belfast Agreement. Everybody was on the phone around the clock. So Jim would have been there at an instrumental time in terms of getting the Good Friday Agreement signed. Oh, absolutely. She was the person I had to talk to there. Jane Holl, who worked on the issue at the NSC, was also instrumental.
Do you think it would have happened if you had been dealing with someone who had come in with a different background? You could say that about every single person in the process. Nancy here, Tony there?
I think it was this amazing perfect storm, where all these people are in the right place at the right time. And more importantly, the IRA was ready to end it. Everything happened to come together at the same time. Would the White House have just rejected the visa?
So it mattered that Clinton was there and that Tony was there and Nancy was there and the Kennedys were there—everybody. It really was a lot of people being in the right place at the right time. He was not happy that JKS trumped him. He was so certain, so against. There were some people who, whenever the ceasefire broke down, loved to say, I told you so.
You see, you were wrong. Some people never got over not being on the right side of the decision. A lot of them did. He actually called me after it was all over and he said, You know what? You were right. One or two people did that. But yes, it was a constellation of a lot of people being in the right place at the right time. What happened was the Joe Cahill visa—. Yes, and that one Nancy handled herself—I was in Ireland at the time and this came up suddenly. Jean had weighed in, saying, This guy needs it, and I was away.
I think she just went straight to Nancy. I remember getting emails and hearing about it as it was happening, but I was over there. I remember being in the airport in Heathrow, and somebody was calling me about this Joe Cahill visa. I knew it was a big issue, because he was meant to be a big-time bad guy. The perception, absolutely, yes.
He did, and they pushed really hard, and it happened really quickly. There was resistance to it. Probably in Justice there would have been resistance to it, and at that stage the Brits were probably still opposing, but I know that I was in Ireland and in Heathrow then. In fact, he drove the Brits crazy because he was always outmaneuvering them. Yes, Dennis Sandberg. They know a little bit and they can get really excited about something, but you always need that person there who knows what the boundaries are.
Dennis probably had a really difficult time. Dennis Sandberg had to take all this flak from everybody. I think he may have retired after he left Dublin. But, you know, he had to manage all of those people. It was hard because Jean was just passionate about what she was passionate about. In the end, though, what I would say was that Jean called it early and she was right about the visa, and she had the guts to get out there and stick her neck out when it would have been really easy to just not step up.
So you know, fair play to her in history. Yes, she was reprimanded. That was a bit unfair, actually. Jean could be very tough, but some people were just unhappy with the way the decision was going, and a lot of that was really unfair to Jean.
Ambassador Smith was not a shrinking violet. You could only be surprised to the extent that she had no background in all this. She started from scratch.
I had to go with her to all of her State Department briefings and prepare her for her Senate confirmation hearing. I was in her back pocket during the period between her being nominated, before she went over there.
She had a lot of personal acquaintances, yes, but she had to cram the way everybody does who is going to be an Ambassador somewhere. And that was way back. And he was always good at reaching out to the other side, figure out what we could get today and then come back for the rest. So there was a sense of urgency if delay served no purpose. If it served a purpose, he could wait.
And in terms of reaching out he made a big effort with the Unionists once they started coming over. To me, Carey is the Senator.
He is his alter ego. They think the same, they are the same, obviously—healthcare, Supreme Court nominations. You have to have somebody who can help on the big picture, who thinks like you do, and that was Carey. I never heard Carey Parker raise his voice, which is astounding given the pressure he had to be under. Really smart, really wise, just always thinking far ahead.
He knew the history. There were things that had happened. He was really important for Kennedy for consistency. Oh, absolutely, like nobody else did. Usually Carey and I were in agreement. It was on Libya and Pan Am But everything went through Carey and that continued after I left. And I remain in touch with Kennedy and Carey and Sharon.
Kennedy again played a really important role after the Northern Ireland bank robbery and the killing of Robert McCartney. If you wanted to get Kennedy to do something, did you always feel that you had to get Carey on board first?
I would say that it would be to your benefit to have Carey on. As I said, I can literally remember one time—because sometimes I would go to Carey with something and he would say, No, not a good idea, and in the end I would just opt not to pick that particular fight.
You pick those battles. Carey had more respect for the office of the Presidency than somebody who came of age post-Nixon. Kennedy himself has a huge amount of respect for the office. That is where Kennedy said, Okay, so what are we going to do if the President calls? He stuck with what I advised the whole way through, to stick with the sanctions. Carey said, If the President asks you to back down, you have to back down. But I would say it would have been really important to have Carey on board 99 percent of the time.
But if you really felt strongly, I felt strongly about the Libya sanctions at the time, you were never blocked from the Senator. We had to have this debate in front of him so he could make the decision. I would have only felt that way if that was necessary. All levels of detail. You know, Kennedy is famous for things like thank-you notes to people, or sending gifts. Carey has that same kind of a mind.
It could be getting me one of those photos pointing to photos signed by Kennedy on office wall —he paid more attention to detail. He and Kennedy are both the same that way. Carey was like that, and Carey cared about Ireland. I remember we were laughing because somebody had a baby or a grandchild, and he had these little baby pants in his office that said Irish Mist across them, and he would send them out to people.
They were a laugh. Yet, Carey would have been more cautious. He would have been much more conscious of the British Government reaction. The family had a lot of contacts in England, too. Carey would just have been more sensitive to the magnitude of what we were actually about to do, more than I may have fully appreciated. I knew what we were doing, but Carey would have been more historically steeped in it all.
He was always more cautious, but he cared about Ireland. He still does. In terms of process, because he was the Legislative Director, did you always have to take things to him? This person called this person and then I called this —the day-to-day. When a decision needed to be made that reasonable people could disagree about. I could put a memo in to Kennedy that said, We just signed you on to this resolution supporting the peace process. But if you have half a brain, you sometimes have to say to yourself, Ooh, if I do this, this could be in the New York Times tomorrow , or, That requires him to actually agree and sign off on in advance.
All speeches went through Carey, because Carey is a masterful editor. He could take every speech and make it better, usually by making it simpler. The problem with people like me, is the [Legislative Assistant] L. Carey could just cut through all of the chaff and get to the wheat of an issue. I disagree and I want you to put X in. When I was in on Saturdays, Carey was working a full day like it was a regular day. Carey worked really, really hard, late into the night.
I think most of the South Africa stuff with [Nelson] Mandela happened before my time, but Nancy would have had, for example, the Middle East. He was long involved with Chile and the man who was killed, again before my time. Yes, Letelier, so there was that going on.
There would have been a lot more sexy issues to deal with than Ireland. Here, you do it. Gare never had anything to do with Ireland. When he came in, he just took different countries. If there was danger, Gare liked that. I had minor danger. They would pick me up and take me somewhere. Somebody picked me up at my hotel and took me there. There were all these head games going on between them and Adams and Sinn Fein. I stayed at the Europa, and the Europa was the most bombed hotel in Europe.
The whole front area that should have been glass was just boarded up because it had been blown out. I went back to sleep and it turned out the next morning on the news, it was a half block away from me. There was an army post and they had set a bomb off. I was mindful at the time. I actually thought I was perfectly safe. There was concern about the Loyalists because it was dicey. Would anybody want to get him? He gave one major public speech at the Guildhall in Derry, so people knew about that in advance.
Kathy came as well, which is kind of unusual on a trip, to take a press person with you. I think she went ahead. I had been demanding a couple of things. There was the whole issue of the bulletproof vests. Kennedy hated wearing them and they weigh like 40 pounds. First, he was doing this speech in the Guildhall and I wanted the magnetometers.
Whatever the expense was, they flew these things in. Chris was out there where they brought everybody in, and apparently the magnetometers were broken and they had to use the handheld wands—he only told us after the fact, because I would have had a heart attack—and everybody that came in would beep, beep, beep , because so many people in Northern Ireland were allowed to carry handguns because of threats to their lives.
The whole audience was armed, as it turns out. Now, these were invitation-only, but there were a couple hundred people. He told us after the fact.
We made sure he had a schedule that was balanced. He had been in the SDLP, in fact, he would have been the leader. I was thinking back to when we had started. But it was a great trip and Kennedy had never been to Northern Ireland before, so that was exciting.
Mo Mowlam, while we were there, went into Maze prison and met with the Loyalists, and there was a lot of upset about that. We loved Mo Mowlam. We went to her place in Hillsborough, and she was great. She was probably the first Secretary of State for Northern Ireland we really liked. The guys before were always very pompous, central casting Foreign Office-types, and they always rubbed Kennedy the wrong way. One former ambassador, Sir Patrick Mayhew, Kennedy just did not like him at all.
He would always come in saying it had to be this way or that way, and Kennedy would be practically rolling his eyes in front of the guy, his disdain was obvious. Would you see it in his face when he was scratching his ankle? Was that his way of keeping it out of his face? It would be interesting to see if other people picked up on that or felt it.
I rarely saw him attack people. I could just tell when he was annoyed, his body language. He was very good at how he played his meetings. I do remember one funny meeting. The State Department had been totally out of the issue, had nothing to do with it, but Holbrooke wanted to be in it. He called me up and said, I want to come in and talk to the Senator about Ireland.
He can come into the office and have a meeting. He was literally making stuff up. This kept going on for a while and then finally, Holbrooke said to Kennedy, I was just to the westernmost point of Ireland, Malin Head, and Kennedy immediately looked at me as if to ask, Is that right? I then knew he was on to him. Holbrooke said, Yes, it is. I knew Kennedy. He looked at me.
We got the maps out and, thank God, Dingle was further west. Kennedy was so pleased with all this. And he sent it over to the State Department. It was the funniest, most memorable— I knew, because he shot me that look. It was the funniest thing. He has a great sense of humor. Once, we went to the National Archives for an event a long time ago, when I first started, and I was probably just not doing my job well enough, because he had a bad back and I made him walk up all the steps of the National Archives and he was grumbling to me, walking up the steps, Trina, the elevator.
He constantly could zing you, he was just funny like that. Another funny thing is, over the length of his career, he made an assumption that every single person—I felt, anyhow, and other people might disagree with me—that we were all sort of interchangeable in that everybody was meant to know every single thing about his life.
At one stage we had this meeting with an Irish delegation and he was trying to recall something and he said, You know, Trina, that place we went to in Los Angeles.
He was talking about a small business incubator. He told them I would get back to them on this stuff. It turns out he actually—this is the kind of memory the guy had…. It must be really hard when you have people who come and go, that many people over an entire career, and some people are with you for this part of it and some people are with you for that part of it. I have to say that, because he delegated a lot. We only brought him in when something needed his attention.
Whatever it was, he delegated a lot. He always would introduce you by saying, This is Trina. She works with me. He was never the Boss in a dictatorial sort of way.
He treated everybody like you were part of a team and he was one of the team. But we all knew who made the call at the end of the day. He was good as a politician because a lot of people—the natural tendency for a lot of politicians is they want to be the smartest person in the room about whatever the issue is.
Stephen Breyer worked for Kennedy. Look at the list of the people who worked for him. He was really good at that. I wrote an opinion piece last year and he put it in the Congressional Record and he sent it to me.
And he did that on Ireland. Was Ireland always one of those special projects? I remember distinctly, when we lost the majority and we had to go from Gare and me to just me doing foreign policy, I was of course complaining to the chief of staff and I said, This is way too much work for one person to do, and he said, We can do a lot less now on Ireland, and I thought, Good luck with that.
The reality was, Kennedy was never going to do less on Ireland, and not a single thing decreased for me in terms of Ireland. Given everything going on in the world, I spent a disproportionate amount of time on Ireland, which was great, and it was a time when it was needed. There was no other issue that I ever did that was remotely close in terms of time spent. We spent a lot of time on Pan Am , but it was over a very specific period of time, on some specific issues, and he cared a lot about it.
I think he picked issues where he thought he could make a difference and he wanted to make a difference. He did it on South Africa; he did it with famine in Ethiopia. I think he picked a couple of things, and Ireland was always one, but he picked a couple of things. Yes, human rights. Instead of trying to do every single issue. The Hill staff do this all the time. Who is the person whose boss knows this issue?
Everybody would always call me to see what Kennedy was doing on Ireland. And he would pick those three or four things, but overwhelmingly, the issue was Ireland.
You could argue that he spent too much time on it. Now Ireland is going through withdrawal symptoms. They got so spoiled in the Clinton Administration, with all the parties, and they would all come into the White House and there would be all these meetings. He asked us and Kennedy went to Moynihan, and from a couple of phone calls, this thing that people will probably never know in history—there might not have been the Celtic Tiger had we passed that finance bill.
It was just because you could call Ted Kennedy and he could sort it out in ten minutes. Those most vocal are often the fringe elements of any ethnic constituency. Once again, he was seeing far ahead, ten or fifteen years. I find the timing interesting. He just fixes it. Samantha Power is in there, and she was actually born in Ireland. I know Samantha.
His last name is Irish. And Greg Craig is there. And Jim Steinberg. So if anything happens, I know that there are people I could go to if it mattered. But everyone has to be honest about what merits their time given all that is going on in the world. There has been. Sinn Fein is right on this. Diplomats will continue to be sent to events organised by men-only Irish-American societies, the Taoiseach has said.
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