Jean Kennedy Smith has now been ambassador to Ireland for two years, during which time she has played a leading role in the peace process. Niall O’Dowd interviews and profiles the 1995 “Irish American of the Year.”
“Next to President of the United States, Ambassador to Ireland is surely one of the best jobs an Irish American can hold,” says Jean Kennedy Smith who was appointed in March 1992.
It had an added bonus for her too. Her father, Joseph Kennedy Sr., was Ambassador to Britain, so her new role made them the first father/daughter combination to serve as ambassadors in U.S. diplomatic history. In addition, there was her mother’s lifelong regard for the land of her ancestors — a love she made clear in her book Times to Remember.
Both parents would be proud of the job their daughter has done. By any objective definition she is the most effective Ambassador to the Republic of Ireland from the United States since the countries began diplomatic relations in 1949.
There were fears when she took the job that she would become “a lady who lunched,” another evanescent social butterfly on the Dublin scene with her own list of worthy charities to champion. However, she has rarely appeared in the gossip pages, and when she does appear in the newspaper it is usually in connection with the Northern peace process to which her name is now indelibly linked.
Her friend Arthur Schlesinger, the historian and Pulitzer Prize winning author, for one, is not surprised. “Jean may well be the best politician of all the Kennedys,” he says, “but she needed this position in Ireland to really show that.”
Her pivotal role in the peace process alone has won her a place, not only in the history books, but also in the hearts and minds of millions of Irish and Irish Americans, many of whom, ironically, questioned her fitness for the post in the first instance.
But even outside the peace process, she has brought a Kennedy style and verve back to a job that many Irish had begun to despair about in the latter stages of the Bush presidency when the intent was clearly to keep rewarding some old Republican war-horses with the choice plum of an Irish posting.
Her most recent predecessor, William FitzGerald, for instance, 84 when he was appointed, had embarrassed Irish Americans during his confirmation hearings when he was clearly unable to tell the difference between Northern Unionists and Nationalists.
Kennedy has revitalized the American presence in Dublin. Once more invitations to the white mansion in Phoenix Park, the Ambassador’s residence, are eagerly sought, and a steady stream of poets, philosophers, politicians and just plain folk have flocked there. According to Irish Independent columnist Angela Phelan “Jean Kennedy Smith has transformed the image of the American ambassador in the past two years. It has really been a remarkable turn-around.”
At first glance, there were those who thought Jean Kennedy Smith would be little better than her immediate predecessors. It was clear that her brother, Senator Edward Kennedy, had worked hard for her appointment, and that President Clinton had acquiesced because the senator wanted it.
It was not an easy choice. There were at least two other major contenders, both from the Boston area, former Congressman Brian Donnelly and Elizabeth Shannon, wife of former Ambassador William Shannon. Donnelly was the choice of then House Speaker Tom Foley.
“I knew a lot of people didn’t approve,” says Kennedy Smith; “that there would be a lot of questions about whether I was up to the job.” She signaled early on that she was very serious about her responsibilities. A key staffer who was prepping her for the new job and the Senate confirmation hearing was amazed to find briefing books returned almost overnight, and a constant stream of inquiries about aspects of the briefings following.
“She was ferocious about learning everything she could about Ireland, always asking probing questions,” says the staffer. “And she has an amazing capacity for quickly grasping very complex issues.”
She would need all her new-won knowledge and then some. The time and the tide that had brought the Irish peace process to a full flood in 1994 after 25 years of violence deemed that the occupant of the Ambassador’s post in Dublin would be called on to play a crucial role. There were key moments in that historic process which culminated in last year’s IRA ceasefire followed by the Loyalist paramilitary cessation. One was undoubtedly the granting of a U.S. visa to Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams, which essentially broke down the 25-year international wall of silence that had been erected around him and his party.
Adams will credit many people with helping to gain that visa, which by some estimates moved up the peace process by almost a year. Top of his list, however, is U.S. Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith who risked her own diplomatic reputation by helping smash the cozy consensus that Northern Ireland was no part of America’s business.
For 25 years the U.S. government had refused to countenance any American visa for the Sinn Féin leader, whom they dismissed as a terrorist. That policy began unwinding, however, one day in early January 1994 when Adams presented himself at the U.S. Embassy in Dublin for a visa. The fact that he did so in Dublin and not at the U.S. Consulate in Belfast, where he was domiciled, was significant in itself.
It would be his organization’s umpteenth attempt to win the precious travel document. Since the late ’80s a policy of gradual rapprochement with the other nationalist parties in Ireland had gathered pace. This new process set out to put together a nationalist consensus on the island of Ireland and among the powerful Irish American lobby aimed at forging an agreed platform on the Northern Ireland question.
This move away from the gun by the republican movement was still in an embryonic stage, however, and there were widespread doubts as to its chances of success.
The shift in Ireland was mirrored in the U.S. when President Clinton at last replaced the overwhelmingly pro-British Reagan/Bush administrations. Clinton had made several campaign promises on Ireland, including a visa for Adams, and had won widespread Irish American support as a result.
Meanwhile in Dublin, Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Albert Reynolds was paying closer attention to developments in the North than any Irish leader in history, and the developing consensus led by Reynolds, Adams and nationalist leader John Hume made it clear that the permafrost that had frozen political movement in Northern Ireland was beginning to thaw.
But for anyone embracing this new game, especially an American ambassador who had barely got her feet wet in the new job, the stakes were very high. Failure would have revealed her as hopelessly naive, and there were more than enough people in Ireland and Britain who would have lined up to chorus “I told you so.”
But Kennedy Smith was already convinced that the step was real and that Adams and others had to be supported if peace was to ever come to Ireland. She had spent her first year in Ireland very well, absorbing and analyzing the flow of events from Northern Ireland, a process which included several visits to the North.
Amazingly, she could read the situation better than many of those closer to it for a quarter century. “She was very brave, almost outspoken,” remembers one senior Irish diplomat. “She was convinced there was an opportunity for peace and she grabbed it. It would have been an awful lot easier to do nothing.”
When the issue of the Adams visa first came up she had sought the counsel of Taoiseach Reynolds, a visionary on the peace issue who had pushed the process so far and so fast that serious doubts were being expressed, especially in sections of the Dublin media, that he had moved too quickly in order to accommodate the IRA.
Reynolds had given her a considered nod in favor of a visa. He, like Kennedy Smith, was convinced that a key component in the peace framework was the Irish American card and a level playing field for Sinn Féin whether in West Belfast or Washington, D.C. Now, there were only the British government, the U.S. State Department, Justice Department, FBI, CIA and leading members of Congress to convince.
A key player, of course, would be her brother Teddy. Like her he had a visceral reaction to “terrorism” in all its forms because of the fate of his two brothers. Like her, too, though, he felt that the burgeoning peace process in Ireland deserved close attention, and if necessary a leap in the dark to bring about a new dawn.
After the nod from Reynolds and consultation with his sister during a visit to Ireland, he too was on board. Northern nationalist leader John Hume, another key sounding board for the Kennedys, also approved.
After the Adams visa request, Kennedy Smith cabled Washington with a positive recommendation–a first for a Sinn Féin visa and a crucial factor in having the U.S. government consider carefully the new request. All previous recommendations, routed through the U.S. consul’s office in Belfast, had received a negative from the ambassador in Britain.
In the glacial world of international diplomacy where changes in policy are delivered in minute steps, the Kennedy Smith move was a bombshell forcing a major debate within the upper echelons of the State Department for the first time on the Irish issue.
In Washington, Senator Kennedy and the Irish American lobby began a concerted effort to win the visa. At the outset the chances were stated as “ten per cent or less” by one old Capitol Hill hand. After all, the U.S./British special relationship loomed like the Hand of God over any Irish nationalist initiative. Any president would disturb it at his peril.
But this was no ordinary issue. Clinton had made a campaign promise to deliver a visa to Adams, and now as the weeks passed and the clamor from the Irish American lobby grew, the President and members of his National Security Council headed by ex-Kennedy staffer Nancy Soderberg began seriously examining the option.
Events moved fast. The British reacted slowly at first and then with a lumbering intensity to block the visa at all costs. The final weekend before Adams was due to leave for New York was the battleground.
Clinton finally gave the go-ahead, ironically shortly after attending a function where he was flanked by Secretary of State Warren Christopher and House Speaker Thomas Foley, both opponents of the visa.
Finally, on February 1, 1994, Adams was allowed into the U.S. and appeared on Larry King Live. A hundred TV interviews and a complete and utter smashing of the worldwide censorship of Sinn Féin followed.
Six months later came the eve of the IRA ceasefire and another crucial moment for Kennedy Smith when Sinn Féin, anxious that their Irish American supporters not desert them during their toughest hour, needed to send Joe Cahill, a “hardened terrorist” to use the British tabloid description, to America to brief their rank-and-file supporters in the U.S.
Cahill had fought the British all his long life of 74 years and had a rap sheet to prove it, once avoiding the gallows by inches. Once more the fate of the peace process hung in the balance as the IRA had clearly made a visa for Cahill one of their conditions, and it fell mainly to Kennedy Smith and Albert Reynolds to convince the U.S. government that he should be allowed in. The odds were long, but the need desperate. Again, Clinton came through and Cahill was allowed in the U.S. Twenty-four hours later the IRA declared their cessation.
But the role of Ambassador to Ireland is not only about the high drama of the peace process. Many of the ordinary people who have touched Jean Kennedy Smith’s life, from mothers of handicapped children to voluntary workers to just good friends that she has made in her almost two years on the job, are as important to her as the grand designs of the peace process.
Her work for the mentally disabled has also been a huge part of her mission. One of her best memories is of hosting a group of mothers of mentally disabled children from all over Ireland, on her own mother’s birthday last year. As a result of her interest, many disabled personnel have found work on embassy projects.
She has also organized a major American film festival for Dublin and brought many leading American political, cultural and entertainment figures to Ireland on speaking engagements. In addition, she organized a highly successful “Christmas Cards for Peace” drive last year and has traveled the length and breadth of Ireland encouraging local self-help groups.
She has also organized one of the first women’s conferences which brought together groups from both sides of the border and both traditions. She has involved cross-community groups in the North in many common activities and she has reached out, in particular, to the Unionist community where she has won many friends.
Social events at her residence are friendly and relaxed. That is the way Kennedy Smith likes it. She is more comfortable in informal surroundings than in the trappings of her office. Evenings often end with a singalong at the piano, and she understands, more than most Americans, the Irish love of good fun, music and jokes.
Insiders say Jean Kennedy Smith is her own woman, and that while she enjoys an excellent relationship with her senior advisor, the astute career diplomat Dennis Sandberg, on the job she calls all the shots.
Given her background as a Kennedy, it is not surprising she has a “can do” approach to life. After graduation from Manhattanville College in New York (where her thesis was on the Gaelic renaissance), she founded the Very Special Arts program for the disabled in conjunction with the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts where she had been Chair of the Education Committee. Very Special Arts is now in all 50 states and in 55 countries, including Ireland.
As it is for her sister Eunice and other members of her extended family, care for the handicapped has become a constant feature of her life. Her motivation was her sister Rosemary who was handicapped from birth. “Rosemary has been a wonderful person all her life, and her impact on our family proves that every life is worth it; just look at the influence for good she has had on all of us,” she says now.
The success of Very Special Arts points to Jean Kennedy Smith’s ability to innovate, something she has certainly accomplished in Ireland. But as evidenced by her choice of thesis subject in college, her interest in her Irish roots also ran deep.
She accompanied her brother Jack on that historic visit to Ireland in 1963 and fondly recalls that he was likely at a moment’s notice to haul out the projector and video of the trip and play it at the White House for whoever happened to be around. “I think he was overwhelmed by his reception in Ireland. He never expected such an incredible outpouring of love and respect. It affected him very deeply,” she says.
That same year, 1963, during Jackie Kennedy’s pregnancy Jean hosted a St. Patrick’s Day reception for then Taoiseach Sean Lemass at the White House.
In 1974, she made her first contacts in Northern Ireland, traveling there with her son William and staying with John and Pat Hume in Derry. She remembers the depressing streets full of bombed-out buildings and shattered dreams as the violence reached its zenith. But she remembered also how impressed she was by the spirit and courage shown by the two women, Mairead Corrigan and Betty Williams, one Catholic and one Protestant, who were later to win the Nobel Peace Prize for their work to stop the violence.
Less than two decades later she would be back on those streets herself, this time as Ambassador from the U.S. But even her extensive preparations could hardly have prepared her for the job she faced when she went there, particularly on the matter of Northern Ireland. Most of the advice in the State Department briefings had been to maintain a hands-off approach. That, however, was never a Kennedy trait.
On her first ambassadorial visit North she attended a reception in her honor hosted by the Belfast consul Val Martinez. There a woman approached her and asked her to attend her son’s court hearing the next day. Her son was one of the Ballymurphy Seven, a group of young men from Nationalist areas who had been held on remand and without trial for several years on flimsy charges. “I saw the suffering this woman was experiencing for her son and as a mother I responded,” says Kennedy Smith now. She attended, drawing media attention, but also showing that she was not going to walk a narrow line in her contacts in Northern Ireland.
While lacking the training of a career diplomat, Kennedy Smith may have something far better, a gut feeling for and an instinctive grasp of a situation, not to mention an unrestrained optimism and belief in people’s ability to want to do good — an interesting trait from someone with so much tragedy in her background. It was that optimism that helped her to take the risks she did, and her close understanding with former Taoiseach Albert Reynolds also propelled her on the path to becoming a major player in the peace process.
A personal highlight was her own first trip as Ambassador back to her New Ross County Wexford roots where she received a huge reception similar to the one her brother got in 1963. A poignant moment was seeing the name of her great-grandfather Patrick Kennedy on the emigrant ship’s manifest and the notation “literacy–none” beside it. It made her realize just how far her family had come in such a relatively short time.
But it also reminded her of what Albert Reynolds had said on St. Patrick’s Day 1993 when he congratulated her on winning the post. “You’re coming home now, Jean,” he said. And that day in County Wexford she really felt she was home.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in the March/April 1995 issue of Irish America. ⬥
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