The Troubles: Ireland's Ordeal 1966–1995 and the Search for Peace

by Tim Pat Coogan

Actually, Clinton did more than that. He also set a precedent, for which he was heavily criticised in some quarters, by allowing the Sinn Fein leader into the US without first being subjected to the so-called Arafat test – a renunciation of violence. Adams actually only got a forty-eight-hour visa, but he reckons that the impact his visit made and the events it set in train moved the peace process forward by about a year. His visit to New York (beginning on 31 January 1994) produced one of the largest, if not the largest, harvests of media attention ever recorded in a two-day spell. Emerging from a wilderness of obscurity and broadcasting bans into a blaze of mainstream publicity Adams dominated every major media outlet, from the front page of the New York Times to The Larry King Show. Hitherto, and not without reason, publicity had tended to be evaluated on the basis of the equation: one horse dead in London equals ten Paddys in Ireland. Even the dullest IRA volunteer could see the benefit of this new development.