Trouble, as in the Troubles, the sordid history of violence that has racked Northern Ireland for the past 75 years and spilled across the Irish Sea to British cities, where IRA bombs have claimed at least 120 lives. An hour after Adams called Lake with his warning, the Troubles began again. A massive bomb ripped through a building in London’s Docklands, a stretch of industrial wasteland that has been transformed into glass-and-steel office buildings. Shards of glass rained down, injuring more than 100, 6 seriously, and killing at least 2 Londoners. The blast shattered a 17-month ceasefire by the IRA that had given enormous hope to the British Isles that peace was at last possible. And in Washington, the bomb blew a hole through the image of Bill Clinton, peacemaker.
The Clinton administration has taken considerable risks to make peace in some desperate places – Haiti, Bosnia, the Middle East, Northern Ireland. This November, Clinton was hoping to receive some credit for his statesmanship from voters. But the White House has always been anxious about the fragility of its various peace projects, dreading new outbreaks of violence. Now it appears that the peace process between the IRA and the Protestant Unionists in Northern Ireland, so carefully nurtured by London, Dublin and Washington, is in ruins before real negotiations over the future of Northern Ireland ever began. An hour before the bombing – at just about the time Adams called Lake – RTE, the Irish broadcasting system, received a statement that the ceasefire was over. A day later, the IRA claimed responsibility.
As the White House later reconstructed events, it appeared that Adams probably knew that the ceasefire was about to break down. But, NEWSWEEK has learned, White House officials do not believe that Adams knew anything about the timing or location of the bomb. At least they hope not. The Clinton administration has invested a great deal in the transformation of Gerry Adams, thug, to Gerry Adams, statesman.
It was Bill Clinton’s decision to grant a visa to Adams to visit America in early 1994 that helped convince the IRA that tangible benefits could come from peace. At first, Adams was shunted off to midlevel State Department officials. But after the IRA declared a ceasefire in 1994, Adams’s stature rose. He struck up a relationship with national-security adviser Lake, and just two weeks ago was granted a photo op with President Clinton. In Ireland and America, Adams came to be seen as something of a visionary, a man who realized that progress toward the goals of the Irish nationalist community in the North could be made only by peaceful means. Even the British have come to a version of that view. ““Gerry’s generation has had it with violence,’’ one British official told NEWSWEEK recently. ““Now they’re fascinated by the political possibilities. Middle age has come over them.''
But now what? ““Trusting Gerry’’ only made sense as a strategy if Adams really did speak for the IRA; if he could control the ““hard men’’ who have always preferred to let explosives do their talking. Sources in Belfast maintain that the IRA’s army council voted for the ceasefire in 1994 by the narrowest of margins – said to be 5 votes to 4. Since then, as the peace process has made its jerky way forward, Adams has become more isolated from the hard-liners, who have been increasingly impatient. Senior Republicans, says Paul Bew of Belfast’s Queen’s University, have been saying, ““Well, a big bomb in London would shake them up.’’ Adams must have known of the possibility of a bombing; that he was unable to prevent it is a severe blow to his credibility.
Why did the hard men authorize the London attack? At one level, because they are enraged by the slow pace of the peace process. The bombing, says Bew, is ““the politics of fuck-you rage and resentment rather than political calculation.’’ The main sticking point in the peace talks was the British government’s demand that the IRA lay down some of its arms. Sinn Fein and the IRA, for their part, have always said that such a move would be tantamount to surrender – not a word that gets out of their throats.
In Washington, Tony Lake tried to find a fig leaf. At Lake’s suggestion, former Senate majority leader George Mitchell headed up an international commission to look for a compromise. Mitchell’s plan was to split the difference; to begin the disarming only after the talks had already begun. British Prime Minister John Major accepted the plan – but he introduced a difficult wrinkle. He insisted that elections be held in Northern Ireland to provide a mandate for the peace process. The IRA and Sinn Fein feared their tiny electoral support in the north would be exposed, while the Protestant Unionists would just take a harder line.
For the British government and the Unionists, the next step is clear – if Adams is to stay in the game, he must dissociate himself from the attack. At the White House, Lake has urgently tried to convince Adams that he must distance himself from the bomb. But that is unlikely. Adams, so far, has said only that he is ““saddened’’ and will not indulge in the politics of ““selective condemnation’’ of atrocities – Irish code for saying that he won’t kowtow to British demands to blame his own people.
Adams is, above all, determined to avoid a split in the Republican movement, because such a divide could easily surrender the leadership to more extreme elements, with the prospect of widespread violence. And if Ireland’s history is a template, such violence would not be limited to bombs against British or Unionist targets, but could easily lead to internecine bloodletting strife within Republican ranks. That means the target could be Adams himself. For Adams, the stakes here are far greater than they are for Clinton and Lake, who are concerned about the election and their reputations as peacemakers. Adams has to worry about his own survival.
Nonetheless, Clinton and Lake are not about to wash their hands of Adams or the Irish situation. Lake has worked nearly every day on Northern Ireland for months. It is his personal crusade. While Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke handled Bosnia and Secretary of State Warren Christopher shuttled to the Middle East, Lake immersed himself in the ancient hatreds of Northern Ireland. Clinton himself has taken a deep personal interest. Ever the politician, he is mindful of the millions of Irish voters in Boston, New York and Chicago who care deeply about their old sod. Clinton was profoundly moved by cheering crowds when he toured Belfast and Londonderry last November. It was the sort of outpouring of adoration and hope that he rarely sees from a crowd at home. Clinton likes to be needed, and Northern Ireland surely needs him now.
