pp.29-30

Riley

Maybe this is in the book and I missed it, but when did Ireland become an issue for you? When do you first begin to grapple with that and develop an expertise in it?

Soderberg

I didn’t know I had an expertise in it, but everyone kept asking me to do stuff. I’m like, I’m not the Irish expert; go talk to those guys. Actually it turned out I knew a lot more than I thought, which is one of the things I tell students: you know more than you think you do. I absorbed more than I realized in working on Capitol Hill for six years and in other Presidential campaigns.

I did the issue for Kennedy for six years, and the whole country came through our office, because he’s Ted Kennedy. So I knew all the players quite well, had been there a bunch of times. I didn’t have any preconceived impressions of what we should and shouldn’t do. I was open to new possibilities.

It kept landing in my lap for reasons I never quite understood, but I guess everybody figured I knew something about it and knew all the players. Part of it was that we were getting very stale responses from the career foreign service people who were saying, No, no, hell no. Don’t do it. Clinton felt there was more we could do, and he kept pushing us to do more. So I said, All right, let me make some calls.

I called around and talked to people whose views I respected, and initially they said, No, don’t do it. It’s not right. I trusted those people’s judgment. Then all of a sudden they started saying, Actually, you might want to think about it. That got my attention. That was in the fall of ’93. Then the whole visa thing came.

Strong

Adams’ requests were denied the first year.

Soderberg

I think we did it twice, and I was dumb enough—We got caught in the New York primary with [Rudolph] Giuliani, I remember—no, [David] Dinkins. I think it was Mayor Dinkins. I wrote some letter to Dinkins denying it. It never occurred to me that it was going to be part of the campaign, which, of course, was my naïveté. And that blew up—You promised!

Strong

It first happened in ’93, the first year.

Soderberg

It was twice in ’93, I think. I think they did it initially. Adams applied right away. In fact, I don’t even remember any discussion about it. Then it became a political issue in some of these campaigns. I remember specifically. I think it was Dinkins who wanted to push it because he was running for New York Mayor. We said no quite perfunctorily, not realizing that the letter would be denounced by Dinkins as reneging on a campaign promise. But that stuff happens, and you’re not going to change your position just because it’s awkward in the campaign.

But then by the fall, I started saying, Actually, I think we should look at this. You couldn’t get any real conversation going with the State Department. They were apoplectic about it. So we formed a small circle of people who thought it through. We didn’t really tell anybody what we were doing.

Strong

Who was in that circle?

Soderberg

Tony and I pretty much, Kennedy’s office. Niall O’Dowd, from the Irish Voice. I forget the name of the newspaper; he’s a reporter in New York. I didn’t want to talk to reporters either, but he ended up gaining our trust, and that’s how we worked it until we were ready to move. Once there was a real decision, the White House guys got into it. George, the Vice President got into it. The Cabinet got into it, screamingly, saying, Don’t you dare! Clinton always knew he was going to do it. It was more, Find me a way to do it respectably.

Stone

Clinton says there was a bigger fight over that in the Cabinet than anything else early in the administration. Is that fair?

Soderberg

I can’t speak for the other fights, but it was huge. It was huge. Yes, Louis Freeh was apoplectic. Janet Reno was apoplectic. Warren Christopher—

Riley

What was their position?

Soderberg

Opposed to it, both—Louis Freeh was anti-terrorism, and Janet Reno the same thing. You can’t do this; it will send a message to our anti-terrorist allies. Warren Christopher was saying that it would ruin our relationship with Britain; they’d stop cooperating with us on Bosnia and Iraq.

I said, No, they’re not. They’re not doing that as a favor to us. It’s in their interest to cooperate on those two issues. As far as the terrorism message goes, I wasn’t worried about Adams coming here and blowing up anything. I thought, actually, in the long run, if he came here and the President of the United States stuck his neck out for him, and he didn’t deliver a ceasefire, it would enable us to go to the Irish-Americans and say, See? This guy’s a fraud. Quit sending him money, and undermine him further. It was that kind of win-win logic that convinced Clinton to do it.

There were all sorts of antics on the way to that decision. The weirdest one was the night before we were going to do it, some idiot decided to plant fake grenades all over San Diego with little notes attached to them saying, Give Gerry Adams a visa or else. How dumb is that?

Strong

Then you have to get Gerry Adams to denounce the San Diego IRA [Irish Republican Army].

Soderberg

He said, I never heard of these guys before. That’s when I realized Adams had a sense of humor, because our interlocutor, Niall, said he had to wake Adams up at two in the morning, and he said, What is it? Every time an Irish guy punches a British guy in a bar I have to apologize for that, too? But he did it.

Strong

We need help from you in deciding what things we should definitely cover.

Soderberg

If there are things that you want to definitely cover, we should flip through the book. I meant to bring a book on my way out the door, but I forgot.

Riley

I think it’s important to note that the book is there, and for the audiences who will be researching in the future, it’s the point of departure and should be the first place they go. We’ll do the best we can to fill in the gaps.

Soderberg

I hope somebody goes through the files. There’s so much stuff in there. I left three books on the cutting floor when I wrote this book, and most of it’s about the transition, the campaign—all that stuff I wrote up, and it got cut. It’s all there, and somebody should look at it.

Riley

If that’s not at the library, it ought to be. We’d certainly be happy to have it as an appendix to the briefing.

Soderberg

I could send you the unpublished chapters, if you want. That might be the easiest thing. I have them all on the computer. If someone’s interested in this period, they’d be welcome to it.

pp.63-70 Strong

Maybe it’s time to switch to Northern Ireland, something that actually turns out quite well, and a place, again, where you play a larger role. I’m a little stuck about what kinds of questions to ask, partly because books have been written about it, and a Frontline documentary interviewed Clinton and Major and [Albert] Reynolds and [Bertie] Ahern. I think you were interviewed for that also. So there’s a fairly good public account of what transpired and who did various things. Is that your impression? Is the public record on that issue pretty good?

Soderberg

I think the public record on this is very good. The rest of it is on the cutting room floor of my book. The book actually started out as a book on Ireland, so I had all my papers declassified, wrote the book, and then tried to sell it. Everyone said, Too old. It’s all been written, no market. So I have that book on the cutting room floor, and I’ll attach it to the transcript if anyone wants the rest of the story.

Strong

I do have some questions.

Soderberg

My book got cut way back, so there are only about 15 pages of it. I think probably the best account of it is the Conor O’Cleary book that was written almost contemporaneously. He interviewed a lot of people; we all cooperated with him. I interviewed with him extensively. He was watching the whole process very closely. I think it’s been pretty accurately portrayed there.

Clinton’s book goes into it a little bit, as does mine. The only thing I noticed wrong with Clinton’s book was when I mentioned I didn’t have anything to do with the April ’92 statements.

Strong

Why does Clinton care so much about it? He’s not going to lose Massachusetts. This really isn’t about electoral politics, is it?

Soderberg

I think it’s both. Clinton says he was in Oxford when the troubles in Northern Ireland began, and he instinctively thought, We’re close to both sides; we could have a role here. During the Cold War, that wasn’t on anybody’s radar screen, plus I don’t think the IRA had evolved far enough to be able to make a difference. I asked Gerry Adams once whether, if Clinton had been President in the early and mid-’80s, he could have made a difference. He said, No, we weren’t ready. I think that’s probably right.

I’ve always thought one of the reasons the IRA decided to give up violence was that they looked at their children and thought Do we really want them to follow in our footsteps? Isn’t there a better way? The integration of Europe in itself has brought enormous wealth to Ireland. What 18-year-old kid is going to pick life with the IRA versus a great job in a dot com when he can have a house and a car and a wife and children he can support? Not very many.

But if you don’t have a job, that’s a pretty sexy way to go. If you have no prospects of having a decent life anywhere else, that’s pretty attractive, an exciting life, and it makes you feel good because you’re a patriot, not a criminal.

That shift in the IRA and the shift in the economics all happened at the same time. Then you had Clinton. Without Clinton, it probably would have happened, but probably only about now. I think he sped it up by a decade—he provided the confidence. He enabled both sides to talk with each other with a modicum of trust that just was not there without the United States. They trusted what they told us, but not each other. So that enabled them to have a conversation and move things forward in a way that was not possible before.

Clinton instinctively wanted to get it done from day one. He wanted to get involved, see where we could use it. But I wouldn’t underestimate electoral politics. He wouldn’t have done it had it been wrong from a foreign policy perspective. I literally never saw Clinton make a foreign policy decision for anything but policy reasons. But in this case, you get the added benefit of all the electoral votes. It’s not just Massachusetts; it’s all the Catholics around the world. There are 40 million in America, and a lot of them are in the swing states of the Midwest. There are a lot of Irish in this country.

Strong

Yes, but those 40 million include lots of people who have only the vaguest idea who Gerry Adams is or the details of what’s transpiring there. Then it has levels of activity. And again, connected with that, you’re an analyst, a policy advisor. How do you get to the point of believing that there’s a real possibility the IRA is getting ready to make a shift? What convinces you? Is it a single meeting, conversation, piece of evidence? Or is it a gradual process?

Soderberg

A couple of things. One, there’s a split in Irish-America between the pro-IRA crowd and the peaceful crowd who supported John Hume, the SDLP [Social Democratic and Labour Party] leader, the peaceful party. I was definitely in that second camp and wouldn’t have anything to do with the IRA crowd. We had a group of people on Capitol Hill every year who would do a Friends of Ireland statement and talk about it. Then the other competing group would have its own statement. Most of the people pushing for Adams to get a ceasefire and have U.S. support of that process were in the other camp.

We didn’t talk to these guys. I didn’t have any sense of it, and I didn’t have a lot of time or energy for it. I had no intention of spending a whole lot of time on Ireland when I went to the White House. But it just kept coming back, and it ended up on my desk because I had worked for Kennedy and actually knew the players and the issues. Essentially, the career people had no flexible views on it. It was all, No, no, no, don’t do it. Our relationship with Britain is too important; it will upset them.

I started thinking At least I’ll look into it. In the fall, I kept talking to John Hume and a few other people on the Hill. Bruce Morrison was very influential. Jean Kennedy Smith was now the Ambassador, and I knew her through Kennedy. You could tell something was different in the fall. They did a week-long ceasefire, and everyone thought, This is really great. I said, It’s a week-long ceasefire! Give me a break. Come back when you’re serious. Well, they did.

The two governments put forward a framework for the joint declaration that essentially got at the demands of the IRA because it gave them a peaceful way to get what they wanted. The demographics are such that they are, at some point, going to be the majority. So there was no reason for them to say, Well, we have to have violence because there’s no other way. That got my attention.

Within that, John Hume had been having secret contacts with Gerry Adams for almost a decade. It started in ’86. He had kept Kennedy’s office informed of those. So he kept me informed of what was going on. He knew what Adams had better than almost anybody outside the inner IRA circle. He would say: Look at this— I said, Nah, I don’t think so. Then I had lunch with John Hume in the White House, and he changed his mind. He said, I think you should start looking at it. I think there’s something here. That got my attention.

On the Hill, Kennedy was for it. He was never for it before. This was all John Hume going to his friends on the Hill saying, Now I think it’s time. So we had the pressure from the Hill, but it was a different group, not the IRA crowd. It was the other crowd that was all of a sudden for this. That got my attention.

Strong

Some of the accounts say Kennedy spending Christmas with his sister was a turning point for him. Did you hear that?

Soderberg

I don’t know, but it was certainly right about then. Jean did come in. Jean and John Hume were the two who convinced him, and it was a huge leap for Kennedy. This is a man who has lost two brothers to violence, and who always stayed very far away from the violent side of it. So for him to endorse this was a huge personal leap. The fact that he did it got my attention as well. I had grown up in that environment.

Then I started looking into it, and I pushed the FBI and the Justice Department and the State Department for an analysis of what was going on. I told them, Look, this is what I’m hearing. It just came back so harsh: no, no, no, no nuances. We could tell something was happening. It’s how we missed the fall of the Soviet Union. It’s always been this way; they don’t listen to what’s happening in the grass roots. And I did. I had all these friends in the grass roots, and I could just feel it.

It was obvious to me that there was something going on, and the fact that the U.S. government couldn’t see it just made me more determined to do it. I ended up just doing it myself, with Tony’s strong support. Sandy was involved a little bit, because all the Hill people were calling him. But mostly it was Tony and me and Peter Tarnoff, who was number three at the State Department and was a good friend of Tony’s. We kept him informed of everything I was doing. But he wouldn’t send it into the building because it would leak. He would just tell Christopher and, I assume, Strobe.

Strong

You did make the first trip to Northern Ireland with Clinton?

Soderberg

Yes.

Strong

What was that like? Was that his best foreign trip?

Soderberg

He says it is; I think it was. It was a real high on every level. The crowds grew during the day and you could feel it. I talked about the trip in Texas on the campaign bus, how you can just feel it, the crowds. They looked at this man, the first sitting President of the United States to go to Belfast. They couldn’t believe that the President of the United States was taking time out of his busy work to come and see them. You could see that they thought, Wow! This is really cool. They were so appreciative.

Then he had stuck his neck out on the visa for Adams—for the first time in their lives, they could see a better life. Northern Ireland is dirt poor. The people live in tiny little houses and don’t have jobs. The unemployment rate is huge. All of a sudden they thought, Maybe my life is about to get better because the President of the United States is here. And, in fact, it has gotten better because he did it.

The highlight was the night in the square when he lit the Christmas tree. More people came out than we expected, hundreds of thousands. They were all happy and couldn’t believe this man had brought them a chance for a better life. At that point, the people were so much farther ahead than the politicians. The politicians still weren’t even talking to each other. The fact that the people came out and said, Yes, this is where we want to go forced the politicians to think a little bit differently. It was so carefully planned. Every step Clinton took, and every hand he shook, was carefully choreographed. We were up until 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning.

I remember Chris Dodd calling me because we hadn’t worked out Gerry Adams’ handshake right. We had to move it from one place to another. It all worked out beautifully, but it was really difficult to orchestrate it. It was definitely a real high.

Strong

The press orchestration or the security orchestration?

Soderberg

No, no, the politics of it. We had to be even-handed. We didn’t want to be too pro-Sinn Féin because it would upset the Unionists. You couldn’t be too close to the Unionists because it would upset everyone else. We were going to have Adams meet us at the Mackie [metal] plant where Clinton was giving a big speech, but then the owner of Mackie found out about it and said he’d cancel the speech if Gerry Adams came. So we had to move it.

Adams wanted a public handshake, but we didn’t. Finally we ended up orchestrating that Adams would just happen to be at a shop we were just happening to stop by. He came out and shook his hand. [laughter] It worked beautifully. I was petrified something was going to happen. It worked out brilliantly.

Riley

Something politically or something security?

Soderberg

No, I wasn’t worried about the security. That’s not what the IRA does. They’re not going to blow up Bill Clinton. He’s their biggest savior. There was a possibility that some hateful person from the other side could do something, but the minute we got there we realized the whole crowd was so excited about it. Protestant or Catholic, they still love America. They all have cousins here. Brady Williamson was an advance person who came in and did it all. He was just unbelievable. He and I were up to all hours trying to figure out where the President should meet Gerry Adams.

Strong

Then what happened at Canary Wharf and the various setbacks that followed?

Soderberg

I still to this day don’t know exactly what happened at Canary Wharf. I don’t think Adams has ever told the story. In my dealings with Adams, he was honorable and honest and frank about everything he could and couldn’t do. He never once lied to us, never once said he was going to do something and then didn’t do it. He always did it. It was frustrating, because to get him to commit to do something was really difficult. But once he committed, he would do it.

He called us right before that happened and said essentially, I’m hearing really troubling things. I think something bad is about to happen. Then two minutes later we heard about the Canary Wharf bombings. I made a mistake in telling the press about the call. Tony and I talked about it, and we figured they were going to find out, so we should just admit it. But then it blew up in our face, implying that Adams knew about the bombs ahead of time and was in on it, was lying to us. Just by his voice, I could tell he was trying to do the decent thing, to warn us, but it was something that was out of his control. I think he found out. He wasn’t part of the decision to do it, but he found out about it too late to do anything. That’s my guess, if I read his body language right at the time.

The one thing he always wanted to do was prevent a split in the IRA. He wanted to bring the whole thing along. At this point—right after this incredible trip, the end of November, early December—we were so close. Canary Wharf was in January or February. It was so sad. Dick Spring, the Irish Foreign Minister, was on his way. We were just about to get a date for something, but it was the last gasp of the hard-liners. Ultimately, all it did was kill a bunch of people and slow down the process. I think ultimately it began to dawn on the people who were trying to provoke the violence that the violence actually ended up slowing down the progress. I think they ultimately got that.

To Adams’ credit, he ended up pulling it back together again and getting it restored that fall. It’s predictable. There are always bumps in the road on these things. But when you’re so personally invested in it, it’s so depressing.

Riley

Can you tell us a little bit more about your perceptions of Adams personally?

Soderberg

You hear about Adams, and you think, Oh, he’s going to be this firebrand, wild guy, forceful and screaming. But he’s the most gentle, academic, soft-spoken— You think, How does this comport with his background? It’s a real anomaly when you meet him. I got to know him pretty well.

He’s funny, he’s soft spoken, he likes to joke around a lot. He’s very upbeat. He gets despondent and frustrated, but he never loses the big picture. He’s a real leader, a visionary on where this is going. He gets it; he doesn’t get flustered by the little things. He’s an honest, honorable person when you deal with him. I would never have thought I would say this about somebody with his background, but I got to trust him, after a long time. In their minds, the Irish are freedom fighters, patriots, and they have an honor code they live by. They all do; it’s very interesting.

Riley

Was there enough interaction to comment on his chemistry with Clinton?

Soderberg

I don’t know; that’s interesting. They met several times. I think the first time was on the Irish trip. I don’t think he had met him before that. I can’t remember.

Strong

It was after the Irish trip that he came to the White House on St. Patrick’s Day.

Soderberg

Yes, but Clinton may have met him at one of the Capitol Hill luncheons for St. Patrick’s Day—

Strong

The year before.

Soderberg

I think he might have. They may actually have shaken hands there. But they had a handshake on Falls Road in Belfast, and then they had a short meeting while he was there on that trip. That was really the first time they sat down and talked. I’m sure Adams was nervous, but he makes his case very passionately, and Clinton listened with empathy. He’s a likable guy.

You contrast that with Ian Paisley, who comes in and lectures. Adams has the more gentle give-and-take. They always met in fairly structured situations. It wasn’t camaraderie: they didn’t have dinner, like with Yeltsin. But he did come to White House parties and would get to chat with Clinton a little bit there. But again, those are mobbed.

Strong

Then they talked on the phone toward the end of the Easter agreements, where [George] Mitchell was asking Clinton to call Adams and get him to do this, or call others. How big an investment of Presidential time and attention was this? Was this an issue he liked working on?

Soderberg

He loved it, yes. If you look at history, Presidents have more success on foreign policy because they have more control. The President gets to do it. When you have a domestic issue, you have to engage Congress, and it’s a long process. It’s harder to be successful on domestic policy that’s really yours. Whereas on foreign policy it’s one-on-one leaders who are all interesting. Clinton loves life and looking out.

As far as how much time he spent in relation to everything else he was doing? Not that much. But the fact that the President of the United States would spend this amount of time on the Northern Ireland question was so new. He went there, made phone calls.

Certainly in the early periods he was more engaged than any President had ever been, but it wasn’t a huge amount of his time. We were doing all the work. But towards the end of it, to get the Good Friday agreement—I had left by then. I was doing the UN at that point. But he was just nonstop. He was up all night on the phone with these guys.

If you look at the combination of the amount of time Clinton spent on foreign policy versus domestic policy, it would still be more on domestic policy, for sure. But between the travel and the trips and the meetings and things like that, he was pretty focused. It’s fun. Once you get those deals, it’s a pretty big high.

Morrisroe

Your involvement in Northern Ireland gives you a unique opportunity to appreciate the development of Clinton’s relationship with Major and the British. Do you have any observations on that relationship and how it was shaped—in either good or bad ways—by Northern Ireland?

Soderberg

Ultimately it became a very close relationship, not just because of Northern Ireland, but as a part of it. It started out as a huge liability. Clinton loves the British. He was in Britain for some of the most fun times in his life. It started off on a really bad foot, because John Major’s guys had done the whole password scandal and openly supported Bush.

I’ll never forget: we were orchestrating who calls whom right after the election. He wanted to make sure he touched base with the Europeans. As I said, we threw in some nontraditional powers from some of the developing countries. Then, in the middle of this, Margaret Thatcher called and wanted to talk to Clinton. I said, We haven’t even talked to John Major yet; we’re not going to talk to her first. I was on the phone saying, I don’t think it’s going to be possible for a while; he has to talk to some current leaders first (including your own). You can hear her in the background saying, I’m not dead yet.

This woman! You have to be kidding: we’re going to take your phone call before Major’s? I don’t think so. But we did make a point of putting in Major early, precisely to make sure that the press couldn’t say, You’re not talking to the British, you can’t deal with the British. They’re a key ally; we obviously had to deal with them. Some of Clinton’s political people put out some unfortunate quotes about the passport issue, but I never detected any hint of Clinton’s taking it personally with Major. I don’t think he really thought that John Major was personally orchestrating the passport issue. He thought it was awkward too. He has his own political advisors who go off and do things that he might not be aware of. He understood instinctively that he had to talk to the British.

So we did our early call with him right after the election, and it was all very cordial. Again, these transcripts all are in my files in Little Rock. I think they might have joked about it. It clearly wasn’t going to be an issue. I think Major or somebody said something about it on that phone call, and Clinton gracefully dismissed it, a no problem kind of thing. Major was a very gracious person. They got along very well initially on Bosnia and Iraq. They worked very closely.

We had talked to the Irish throughout this process through their National Security Advisor, who at the time was Rod [Roderick] Lyne. Tony had kept him pretty informed of what we were doing. When Tony wasn’t available, I would talk to him.

They never in a million years thought we were going to actually give a visa to Gerry Adams, and they made it clear that this was a big issue for them. They did not want it; they said, Do not do it. It never really occurred to them that the U.S. would go against something they felt so strongly about, because we never had in all of history.

The morning that Clinton was deciding to do it, he got a long letter from Rod Lyne, the National Security Advisor for Major, about all the women and children the IRA had killed. He was asking, How could you do this? There was something about the Christmas spirit. I don’t remember whether Major called Clinton beforehand, but I don’t think he did; I think it was all through his National Security Advisor. Then when we did it, it leaked that afternoon—in fact, it leaked before we had time to tell them we had done it.

I found out later Niall O’Dowd, the journalist I’d used to get to Adams, told me that they had called and somehow talked to me, and something I said had given them confirmation that we had done it. I don’t even remember what I said or how it was, but somehow it leaked out. Of course, that didn’t help either, that they heard about it from the press. Major didn’t talk to us for days. We kept trying to call him; he just wouldn’t take the phone call.

I’m assuming if there had been an Iraq or Bosnia crisis he would have taken it, but he was absolutely furious, couldn’t believe we did it. The whole British Empire shook, really; they just couldn’t believe that we’d done it. Over time, though, Clinton made a point of taking Major to Pittsburgh, where he had spent time as a boy. We flew them up on Air Force One, and they were so excited because their plane was a crummy little thing [laughter]. We were joking about that. Clinton really did a major charm offensive on him. Tony and I were on that trip as well. We were joking on the way back; Major is just a gracious person all around.

I ran into Major on a plane—probably in 1998, 1999, maybe a little bit later. It was before 2000, because I was still at the UN. He was up in the first class cabin, and I wrote him a little note saying, I think you did a great job on the Irish question. He called me up, and we had tea. He said, You’re right, you did the right thing. Most of the British involved at the time and the State Department people have since come to me and said, You did the right thing. They recognize that now.

After that Pittsburgh trip, Major got over his huff, but then, more than that, they started working closely on the issue, and they recognized that we did actually listen to what they had to say, and we would push Adams in a way they couldn’t. Major saw the potential end to this conflict and threw himself wholeheartedly into it. They worked quite well with him after that. But that was a rough week.

Strong

I have one final question. Did you read Chelsea’s [Clinton’s] honors thesis on Northern Ireland?

Soderberg

No, and I was really surprised she didn’t send it to me. I would have read it. Do you have it? She never talked to me. I would have loved to talk to her about it. It’s interesting that she did it on that. It shows how important it was to her father. Have you seen it?

Strong

Yes.

N. Soderberg, May 10-11, 2007 © 2014 The Miller Center Foundation and The Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History