Dec. 12, 2005
St. Petersburg Times
Americans’ responses to violent groups are hardly uniform. Take the Irish Republican Army and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
By Susan Taylor Martin
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By March 1999, federal agents were hot on the case of Sami Al-Arian, the University of South Florida professor suspected of supporting Palestinian terrorist groups. His Islamic institute had been shut down and the FBI was tapping his phone.

The same month, Tampa toasted another man often accused of terrorist ties – Gerry Adams, head of the political wing of the notorious Irish Republican Army. On March 14, he gave a speech at the University of Tampa that raised $50,000 for his Sinn Fein organization.

He also was guest of honor at a fundraiser in a Tampa pub co-owned by a federal prosecutor – the same prosecutor whose division would later try Al-Arian on terrorism charges.

There was nothing illegal or improper about Adams’ Tampa appearances. The State Department had given him a visa so he could tour America in support of the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement, aimed at ending 30 years of conflict between the IRA and British forces in Northern Ireland.

Yet the contrasting attitudes toward Adams and Al-Arian illustrate the adage that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. They also show that the United States doesn’t treat all terrorist groups alike – especially when domestic politics come into play.

“Since the Northern Ireland story has been relatively successful, and Sinn Fein has been central to that, it’s been a good news story with which politicians have wanted to be associated,” says Richard English, author of Armed Struggle: The history of the IRA.

“In contrast, the Jewish lobby has been more powerful in the U.S. than the Palestinians. And since the IRA has effectively stopped its violence, while the Palestinians have not, it’s been easier to treat Irish Republican politicians in a more indulgent way than it has been to treat Palestinians.”

The IRA’s longtime goal has been to drive British forces from Northern Ireland and reunite the province with the predominantly Catholic Irish Republic. During the “troubles,” the IRA killed an estimated 1,800 people in attacks on pubs, fish markets and other public places.

English says there are “many similarities” between the kinds of violence used by the IRA and Palestinian groups like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Yet even at its bloodiest, the IRA was tolerated, even openly supported, by many in the United States.

Jonathan Turley, now a professor at the George Washington University Law School, recalls meeting a known IRA member while serving as young page in Congress in the mid ’70s.

“He would openly discuss his connection with the IRA and actively sought to raise money,” Turley says. “I remember him sitting with members of Congress and drinking coffee and Drambuie.

“I often think back to that – can you imagine members of Congress introducing pages to members of Hamas who have access to the House floor?”

The IRA used a political party – Sinn Fein – as a mouthpiece for its views. Since the 1980s, Sinn Fein has been led by the tall, charismatic Adams and the shorter, less polished Martin McGuinness.

Adams, 57, has always denied direct links to the IRA; McGuinness, 55, acknowledges he was in the group but says he no longer has ties. However, “both are widely believed to have served on and still effectively control the secret seven-member Army Council that governs the IRA,” according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

In 1994, the IRA agreed to a cease-fire and President Clinton lifted a 20-year ban on official contact between the U.S. government and Sinn Fein. That allowed Adams to visit the United States.

“I know the British government was exasperated when Clinton granted Adams a visa,” says Anthony Richards, an expert on terrorism at Scotland’s St. Andrews University. “Of course, the whole idea was that Clinton wanted to persuade the British government that Sinn Fein had peaceful credentials and wanted to make the peace agreement work.”

In May 1995, the organization’s U.S. arm – Friends of Sinn Fein – held a $100-a-plate lunch at Tampa’s Hyatt Hotel with Adams as speaker. The purpose was to raise money to further Sinn Fein’s “legitimate political ends” – among them self-determination for the people of Northern Ireland.

Adams’ visit came just a week before the Tampa Tribune broke its sensational story that Al-Arian had “Ties to Terrorists.”

Like Adams, the USF professor denied any links to a radical group responsible for hundreds of deaths. Like Adams, he portrayed himself as engaged in a legitimate political cause – in his case, creation of a Palestinian state.

Within less than a year of Adams’ visit, the IRA ended its cease-fire with a series of bombings in Britain that killed one and injured scores of others. It was not until 1998 that warring factions in Northern Ireland reached the historic peace agreement that called for Catholics and Protestants to share power in a new provincial government.

In 1999, Adams made another U.S. visit. After speaking at the University of Tampa, he went to a fundraiser at Four Green Fields, a popular Irish pub co-owned by restaurateur Colin Breen and assistant U.S. attorney Robert O’Neill.

Documents filed with the Justice Department show Breen was a registered agent of Friends of Sinn Fein from 1995 to 1999. He also contributed $500 to the group, and in a 2001 story in the St. Petersburg Times proclaimed his support for the IRA and decried British “oppression” in Ireland.

“Am I pro-IRA? Absolutely,” he said then.

Last week, Breen said he did not condone violence, and only meant he “supported the ideals that the British government should not be running things the way they were.”

O’Neill, the federal prosecutor and co-owner of the pub, said he did not attend the 1999 fundraiser at which Gerry Adams appeared. He said he had little knowledge of Adams or his activities beyond the fact he “is a well-known person in Irish government.”

“Do I study this stuff? No. It’s not my bailiwick.” Nor, both O’Neill and Breen said, had they ever discussed Breen’s involvement with Friends of Sinn Fein.

As head of the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney’s office in Tampa, O’Neill supervises attorneys who prosecuted Al-Arian on charges that included raising money for a terrorist organization.

O’Neill, though, was not involved in the trial, in which jurors last week acquitted Al-Arian of eight charges and deadlocked on nine others. The Justice Department has not decided whether to retry Al-Arian, who remains in custody. “It’s a pretty ironic connection,” Turley, the law professor, said of O’Neill’s business partnership.

“While there is nothing legally wrong about this association,” Turley said, “there are some people who would view Sinn Fein as clearly connected to a terrorist organization and yet no one would imagine an allegation of material support alleged against a (Irish-American) bar owner. But when it comes to Muslim organizations, the U.S. government has adopted an extremely broad notion of guilt by association.”

Daniel Byman, a terrorism expert at the Brookings Institution, said such a business relationship could be viewed as “problematic.”

“Your hope is that federal prosecutors are people who are very careful about appearing in the sort of thing that would raise eyebrows,” he said.

O’Neill said he didn’t see any problems co-owning a pub with Breen. He noted that Breen had registered as an agent of Friends of Sinn Fein and had informed the Justice Department about the 1999 fundraiser.

“Do I see a conflict of interest for owning part of a pub where another owner did something that was authorized by the United States Department of Justice?” O’Neill said. “No.”

Steve Cole, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Tampa, said he was “astonished” the St. Petersburg Times would ask if the office had any comment about O’Neill’s stake in a pub where Sinn Fein’s leader appeared at a fundraiser. Cole said “all of the media” had long known of O’Neill’s part ownership and that many reporters, including some from the Times, have patronized the pub.

“All of a sudden we have a trial and all of a sudden this becomes a big issue with you. Why was it not important in 1999?

“I think it’s a shame that a legitimate newspaper like yourself would take a swipe at one of finest assistant United States attorneys in the country. To make any kind of allegation that he is anything less than an outstanding, hardworking, dedicated attorney is an outrage.”

Although most of Al-Arian’s contacts with Islamic Jihad occurred before it was designated a terrorist organization in 1995, evidence at the trial showed he was closely involved with the group’s leadership and direction.

In some eyes, Adams also is a terrorist. Although Northern Ireland has been relatively peaceful, authorities say the organization continues to be involved in criminality, including a $51-million bank heist in Belfast last December.

Even more damaging was the IRA’s alleged involvement in January’s fatal stabbing outside a Belfast bar. The victim’s sisters, who have drawn international attention, claim the IRA has intimidated them and witnesses though Adams urged Sinn Fein members to cooperate in the investigation.

Britain has the IRA on its list of terrorist groups; the United States does not. Both countries, though, have long maintained the “fiction” that Adams’ Sinn Fein is distinct from the IRA, Byman says.

“It was useful to have Sinn Fein on the political side of things because at times there are some groups you want to talk to and others you don’t. There was a sense that not all terrorists are identical – that you could talk to the IRA as compared to Islamic Jihad, which is seen as a more vicious group.”