A report in The Scotsman reports on the humiliation of Gerry Adams:
There is a peculiarly Irish-American tradition around this time of year of eating corned beef and cabbage. But when Gerry Adams went to Washington for St Patrick’s Day he was forced to eat some humble pie.
Never mind that he was overshadowed by the McCartney sisters, there to continue their campaign for justice for their dead brother, Robert, and who were accorded the kind of rock star treatment in which Adams himself used to revel.
Never mind that Teddy Kennedy – old friend of Ireland Ted Kennedy, of all people – refused to even meet him.
No, Gerry Adams had to endure much more than that as he sat at his table at the American Ireland Fund dinner on Wednesday and took a verbal beating from John McCain, the Republican senator and presidential hopeful from Arizona. The Sinn Fein president sat stoney-faced as McCain lambasted the IRA and Adams’ own political party.
If the Shinners, as Sinn Fein’s remaining friends like to call them, thought that former prisoner of war McCain might be even remotely sympathetic to the cause of Bobby Sands and the H Block veterans, they were sadly mistaken.
“No one,” McCain proclaimed, with Adams sitting just a few yards away, “can honestly claim the IRA is anything better than an organised crime syndicate that steals and murders to serve its members’ personal interests. There’s nothing republican about the Irish Republican Army.”
But back in Northern Ireland, a vicious whispering campaign has begun against the McCartneys:
Scotland on Sunday can reveal that the women returned from Washington at the end of last week to an increasingly hostile atmosphere as republicans mounted a campaign of misinformation and vilification.
According to residents in Belfast, the onslaught is being led by Sinn Fein members who have suggested the sisters are being used by the British government or the SDLP to damage Sinn Fein and the IRA. This includes unfounded claims that the family’s trip to the United States was funded by either government or party sources.
In fact, the family paid for the trip themselves and were short of cash throughout their stay in Washington, even having to ask for lifts from television crews in order to save money on taxis. […]
Meanwhile, police say the investigation into the McCartney murder is no nearer the point of bringing charges.
Two of the key suspects in the brutal slaying were last week seen casually walking into bookmakers in south Belfast to place bets on the Cheltenham races.
According to sources, the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s (PSNI) investigation is being hampered at many levels, from witnesses being intimidated into not giving statements, to the IRA pressurising others to make admissions. Such admissions, made under threat of death by the terror group, would be inadmissible in court, police sources said.
One crucial witness, whose honest testimony would almost certainly lead to the jailing of several suspects, is known to be seriously in debt to an IRA money lender in Belfast who is a close friend of the key suspects. People in the Markets and Short Strand areas said last week they believe the witness has been told his debt will be cleared so long as he refuses to comply with the PSNI. It is believed he borrowed £15,000 from the loan shark who heads the IRA in the Ardoyne area.
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