US attorney general wanted to stop Gerry Adams fundraising trip
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The United States attorney general attempted to block Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams from fundraising there in 1995, newly released records show. Papers contained in the annual release of documents from the National Archives in Dublin show that Janet Reno, the attorney general at the time, wanted to stop Mr Adams from fundraising because of a belief the IRA was still trying to source weapons.
Ms Reno had previously opposed then-US president Bill Clinton’s decision to grant visas to Mr Adams and the former IRA chief of staff Joe Cahill in January 1994, but her continuing opposition is revealed in the records. At the time, Mr Adams was president of Sinn Fein which was regarded as the political wing of the IRA paramilitary group. Mr Adams has always denied being a member of the IRA.
Months after the IRA declared a ceasefire in 1994, the chief legal adviser to the US president still did not want to grant the Sinn Fein leader a visa. Mr Clinton overruled her by giving Mr Adams a three-month visa that included permission to raise funds for the party – provoking anger from UK prime minister John Major.
In a letter dated February 1995 to Mr Clinton’s national security adviser Tony Lake, Ms Reno expressed frustration “by the latest effort” to modify restrictions that stopped Mr Adams raising money from Irish-American donors. She said she had looked at the matter “barely six weeks” earlier in January and had then decided that the fundraising restriction should stay because conditions had not changed sufficiently.
