NEWS INTERNATIONAL EDITORIAL DATABASE Print-out for: dwebb Printed: Aug 09, 1996 at 14:49:40 Item number 1 of 4 HEADLINE:

Twins arms of terror that hold up Adams BYLINE: Liam Clarke SOURCE: Sunday Times DATE: Sunday June 23, 1996 PAGE: News Review 2 When Martin McGartland turned on the television to watch the recent Northem Ireland election results, he was greeted by the sight of the two IRA men who had kidnapped him standing, smiUng, beside Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president. As Adams talked about peace and the need for accommodation, both terrorists grinned and applauded. Both men, Paul " Chico .3 "Hamilton" and Jim McCarthy, are now Adams's bodyguards and trusted Sinn Fein election workers. Five years ago they left McGartland for dead when he jumped out of a third-floor window to escape an IRA "court martial" after he had been accused of acting as a police informer within the IRA. , McCarthy and Hamilton are not the only IRA members in Adams's trusted inner circle. Adams trusts few people whose loyalty has not been proved in the IRA. Siobhan O'Hanlon, his secretary, is a convicted terrorist who took part in the planned attack on Gibraltar which led to the killing of three of her colleagues by the SAS in 1988. Richard McAuley, his personal press officer, is a former bomber. Gerry Kelly, his close confidant, escaped from the Maze prison and Martin McGuinness, his main political ally, is like Adams himself a former IRA chief of staff. Joe Cahill, Sinn Fein's head of finance, is a convicted murderer and gun runner. Just as Adams trusts these people because of their IRA membership, they trust him and accept his political judgment because he has proved his dedication by rising through the ranks of the IRA. As Sir Hugh Annesley, the RUC's chief constable, pointed out last week, the IRA and Sinn Fein are "inextricably linked" at leadership level and Adams is the "driving and controUing force" in both organisations. When he was 20, Adams was one of the first people to volunteer to join the Provisional IRA after the organisation was set up in December 1969. By the time he was interned in 1971 he was the head of the IRA unit in the Ballymurphy estate where he lived. The high esteem in which he was held became clear a year later when the IRA insisted on his release from prison to take part in peace negotiations with the British government. Adams agreed a short-lived ceasefire with William Whitelaw but, when the campaign resumed, he was put in charge of the entire Belfast brigade of the IRA. Adams was so active that he was again interned in 1973 and remained in jail until 1976. This period was the most formative of his life. As a senior IRA prisoner, he came into contact with men who were to become IRA legends, including Bobby Sands who died on hunger strike in 1981. In jail Adams began to develop the distinctive political strategy he would spend the rest of his career implementing. Under the pen name Brownie, he set down his thoughts for Republican News. His was an elitist vision in which the IRA would control a network of popular front organisations and alliances. The greatest dangers, he beheved, were that the Provisionals would be either split or isolated before they could achieve victory. He advocated a "complete fusing of political and military strategy" to prevent this.