Adams 'Hid Peace Plan From IRA'

[Danielle Ni Dhighe <nidhighe@xxxxxxxx>]

London Times
11 August 2002

Adams 'Hid Peace Plan From IRA'
By Emily O'Reilly

The Sinn Féin leader, Gerry Adams, ran a covert operation to
undermine the IRA's campaign of violence throughout the 1980s and to
encourage the movement towards a political settlement, a book which
is due to be published this autumn will suggest.

A Secret History of the IRA, by Ed Moloney, a journalist, is expected
to claim that the Sinn Féin leader began to plot the end of the
IRA campaign shortly after the hunger strikes in 1981, even though
republican volunteers and supporters were told that the war would
continue until the British withdrew from the North.

A top secret diplomatic channel was opened up between Adams and
Margaret Thatcher, the then British prime minister, several years
before the official peace process began in the early 1990s.

Anthony McIntyre, a hardline republican critic of the Sinn Féin
leader and also of the peace process, said: "I'm coming to the
conclusion that the demise of the Provisionals (IRA) was planned and
choreographed and that the Brits had their hand on the tiller."

Moloney, who has covered Northern Ireland for Irish and British
newspapers since the early 1980s, is known to have strong contacts
within the IRA. He recently claimed that Adams's covert diplomacy may
have been responsible for a number of deliberately botched terrorist
operations during the late 1980s.

The journalist speculated that a high-level informer within the IRA,
codenamed Stakeknife, helped to sabotage the attacks under
instructions from British intelligence agents who were aware of
Adams's secret moves towards a peace settlement.

Commenting on a number of "bungled" IRA operations at that time,
Moloney wrote: "Is it possible that Stakeknife had a hand in any of
these bungled operations, one effect of which was to make a political
path more acceptable to the IRA rank and file? The Irish government
for one is privately terrified that any probe of Stakeknife will
highlight precisely that sort of allegation."

There is no suggestion that Adams had any role in the terrorist
operations, but in a recent interview in America, Moloney claimed
that Adams "has untrammelled control over the IRA and Sinn Féin".

The book's publisher claims that the most extraordinary part is that
concerning the peace process "which demonstrates that Gerry Adams, as
far back as the early 1980s, was its leading catalyst, secretively
and furtively, guiding his organisation into a political settlement
of which his membership were only dimly aware".

That would indicate he allowed the "war" to continue, with consequent
loss of life, even as he acknowledged the campaign had failed and
sought a political settlement.

The publishers also claim the book will include revelations about
Margaret Thatcher's "secret diplomacy" with Gerry Adams.

The author recently claimed that a Panorama programme about collusion
between security forces and loyalists in the murder of
Catholics "missed the point".

He noted that prominent republican figures, including Stakeknife and
Adams, had had their lives saved by British intelligence agents in
the late 1980s. This, he suggested, was because they knew of
Stakeknife's role, and of Adams's secret moves towards a compromise
peace settlement.

Sinn Féin and the IRA say they are bracing themselves for the
publication of the book which is expected to fuel tensions between
peaceniks and hardliners in the movement.

Sinn Féin claims the author has been "hostile" towards Adams's
leadership since the 1994 IRA ceasefire. They claim that they
were "berated" by Moloney for selling out. "It will be an attempt to
undermine him (Adams) within the republican movement," said one Sinn
Féin source.

Another said: "He's just a bitter wee man. He called it wrong and
he's never forgiven us."

Adams's spokesman refused to comment. 


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