The Negotiator

by George Mitchell

  That dream is to return to Northern Ireland in a few years, with my young son, Andrew. We will roam the countryside, taking in the sights and smells and sounds of one of the most beautiful landscapes on earth. Then, on a rainy afternoon (there are many in Northern Ireland) we will drive to Stormont and sit quietly in the visitors gallery of the Northern Ireland Assembly. There we will watch and listen as the members of the Assembly debate the ordinary issues of life in a peaceful democratic society: education, health care, agriculture, tourism, fisheries, trade. There will be no talk of war, for the war will have long been over. There will be no talk of peace, for peace will by then be taken for granted. On that day, the day on which peace is taken for granted in Northern Ireland, I will be fulfilled.1

  Over the following decade I visited Northern Ireland often and occasionally made reference to that passage in my book. But I had not considered, in a serious and sustained way, making the trip I had dreamed of. Now, in response to Trevor’s call, I did so. I talked with several friends in Northern Ireland and the United States to obtain a current and in-depth picture of the situation there; most of the comments were positive. I asked some directly if they thought it an appropriate time for the trip. All answered in the affirmative. I talked about it at length with Heather and with Andrew, who was then fourteen, and our daughter Claire, three years younger than Andrew. Heather and Claire were positive, but Andrew was reticent. Unlike his father, who like most politicians enjoys the spotlight of publicity, Andrew prefers privacy; he neither seeks nor enjoys being the focus of attention. But he is also thoughtful of others, so when I told him it would mean a lot to me, he agreed to go.

  It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life. After two days of filming in New York, we traveled to Northern Ireland. It was in March, spring break at the schools Andrew and Claire attended, so I warned them to bring sweaters, raincoats, and umbrellas; I knew from experience that the weather would be cold and windy and wet. To my amazement, and to our children’s delight, the weather was clear and sunny for the entire week, with not a drop of rain. Although it was occasionally cool and windy, we thoroughly enjoyed the crisp and clear days. By coincidence, school vacation coincided with St. Patrick’s Day. As a result most of Northern Ireland’s political leaders were in the United States. Over the past few decades American presidents have hosted receptions on St. Patrick’s Day to which the prime minister of Ireland and a host of other politicians, north and south, regularly flock. It is one of the peculiar ways in which, on occasion, “being Irish” means more in the United States than in Ireland.

  But that had no effect on our visit. We were there primarily to meet with the families of children born on October 16, 1997, and to visit the Northern Ireland Assembly. Trevor and his producer, Michael Fanning, arranged visits to four families; they were as diverse as Northern Ireland itself. The Robinson Family is Catholic; they live on a farm in the rural western county of Fermanagh. The parents, Martin and Mary, welcomed us into their home as though we’d known each other all our lives. Their son Conor graciously showed Andrew around the farm. The Robinsons welcomed and supported the Good Friday Agreement; they believed it ended years of discrimination and created a new sense of community. From Fermanagh we traveled to a suburb east of Belfast, to meet the Best family. Peter is an architect, Heather a teacher. Their son, Alexander, took Andrew to visit his school, which in many ways is similar to St. Bernard’s, the school Andrew then attended. The Bests are Protestants who supported the Agreement, believing that it would help to move Northern Ireland away from the violence of its past. We then traveled to County Down, where we met the Stephenson family. They were warm and gracious in their welcome. As a police officer, Ian is in constant danger; understandably that has affected their view of the Agreement. They believe that it inappropriately rewarded bad behavior and has not resulted in a durable peace. Their daughter Lucy, born on the same day as Andrew, and their other children took Andrew to a local recreation center, where he participated in archery lessons. The children had a good time, as did their parents.

  In the twenty-two months of negotiations at the Stormont Estate, site of the Northern Ireland Assembly, I had grown indifferent to its beauty and majesty. As the iron gate swings open you drive in and start up a slowly rising hill, exactly one mile long, to the impressive granite Parliament building, set at the top of the hill. Now, for the first and only time in my life, I took that drive with my wife and children. My indifference vanished. I asked the driver to slow down so we could take in the scene for a few seconds longer. The sky was blue, with a few clumps of heavy white clouds, but it was windy, so we didn’t pause long when we got out of the car at the foot of the broad stairway leading to the front entrance. After a brief welcoming ceremony Heather and Claire were whisked off on a tour of the building while Andrew and I were ushered into the visitors’ gallery of the Northern Ireland Assembly, the democratically elected body that governs the people of Northern Ireland. The impressive exterior of the building is surpassed by the inspiration of its interior, especially the Assembly Chamber, in the beauty of the royal blue leather benches and the dark wood paneling. We were conspicuous as we took our seats; there was no one else in the gallery, and several well-intentioned attendants made a fuss over my return. We listened as a government minister reported to the members on a conference he had attended in Brussels. It was as dry as dust and as boring as only a government report can be. I recalled the words I had spoken to the delegates at the peace negotiations fourteen years earlier: “We will watch and listen as the members of the Assembly debate the ordinary issues of life in a democratic society.” This, finally, was happening. And my son was there to share the moment with me. I was silent but very emotional.

  A half hour passed; to me it seemed an instant, but not to Andrew. He leaned toward me and whispered, “Dad, this is really boring. Can we go now?” I smiled, hugged him, and said, “Of course.” As we stood I said to him, “I know it’s boring to you, but that’s the point. To me, it was soothing, like music to my ears.”

  Our last visit was the most emotional. We traveled to Omagh to meet with Claire Gallagher and her family. The fifteen-year-old girl has become a tall woman of thirty. Her hair was short, and she no longer had large patches covering her empty eye sockets. Her face still bore the scars of that terrible day of the car bombing in 1998, but her spirit was as strong as ever. She was accompanied by her father and mother, her loving husband, Ryan Bowes, and two beautiful small children, Oran, four years old, and Connor, two. As much as anyone could, given what she had lived through, Claire led a normal and happy life. It took time for her to accept the reality that she would never see again, but she adjusted and graduated from the Northern Ireland equivalent of high school. Although she had several college scholarship offers from institutions outside of Northern Ireland, she chose to stay closer to home, so she attended and graduated from Queen’s University in Belfast. She then married Ryan and had two children, all the while improving her skills in serving others who are blind. She now works as an eye care liaison officer at the Royal Institute of Blind People. As she had when we first met, on that sweltering night in Omagh fifteen years earlier, she reached out for my hand and held it as we talked. As calm and methodical as she had been then, she told me about her fifteen-year journey to her current life. It is a tale of power and emotion, of how a person deals with the most unexpected and terrible of tragedies. Surely she had periods of sadness, regret, even depression over the misfortune of timing and the severity and awful nature of her injuries, but in our meetings she never let those emotions show. Calm, steady, consistent, Claire is a shining exemplar of the strength of the human spirit, an inspiration to me and to many others, in Northern Ireland and the world. My admiration for her was one of the factors that led Heather and me to name our daughter Claire on her birth in 2001.

  HENRY KISSINGER’S POSTER

  After I returned from Northern Ireland I wrote a book about my experience there. When it was published I atten
ded many promotional events, among them several sponsored by Irish-American groups. I received so many such invitations I concluded that in the United States there are more Irish-American organizations than there are Irish-Americans. I accepted as many as I could and enjoyed every one of them. As I traveled among them, there developed an informal competition as to who could give me the longest, most favorable introduction; most were exaggerated and some included incidents that I myself had previously not been aware of. The proper reaction, of course, would have been to show humility and to ask them to keep the introductions short and factual. But I had an improper reaction. I encouraged them, even scolded those who left out any relevant part of my personal history. Dangerously, I began to believe what was said about me and developed an inflated sense of my importance. By the time I got to the last group, the Irish-American Society of Stamford, Connecticut, I could barely squeeze my swollen head through the front door. The first person I encountered was an elderly woman who rushed up to me and vigorously shook my hand. She was excited and told me in emotional and gushing terms how she had driven three and a half hours just to meet me because I was such a great man who had done so much good around the world. She then handed me a pen and a large poster and asked if I would sign it. I looked at the poster and told her I’d be happy to sign it, but first I thought there was something I should tell her.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “I’m not Henry Kissinger,” I replied. The picture on the poster was of Kissinger.

  “You’re not?” she shouted. “Well, who are you anyway?”

  When I told her, she was visibly disappointed. “That’s terrible,” she said, “I drove three and a half hours to meet a great man and all I’ve got is a nobody like you.”

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you,” I said. “I wish there was something I could do to ease your pain.”

  She thought for a moment, then said, “Well, there is.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  She leaned toward me. In reaction I leaned toward her and she said, in a low, conspiratorial voice, “Nobody will ever know the difference.” I must have looked puzzled, so she then said, “Would you mind signing Henry Kissinger’s name on my poster?”

  “Of course,” I said, and I did.

  So today, somewhere in eastern Connecticut, that poster is hanging, a constant reminder to me not to take seriously the introductions I receive.

  No Time for Retirement

  9/11

  On the evening of September 10, 2001, I spoke at a forum sponsored by St. Bartholomew’s Church on Park Avenue in Manhattan. The large crowd listened politely as I talked about some of the foreign policy challenges facing our nation. Following my remarks there was a lively discussion on many topics, including the use or threat of acts of terrorism to achieve political goals. We all were unaware, of course, of the tragedy that would strike the following morning.

  Heather and I thought it would be a memorable day as we left home in the morning to take Andrew to his first day of preschool. We were among several excited parents who watched with smiles and tears as our three- and four-year-olds marched into a classroom for the first time. Then I left for the airport and the day became tragically memorable.

  It was unusually warm for mid-September. From the backseat of the taxi I couldn’t hear the radio over the hum of the air-conditioning. As we approached the Triborough Bridge on the way to LaGuardia Airport, the driver’s eyes locked on mine in his rearview mirror. “There’s been an accident. They’re saying a plane hit the World Trade Tower. Can that be?” I asked him to turn off the air conditioner so I could hear the radio. We listened in silence for the few minutes it took to get to the airport.

  I was headed for Washington, where I was to deliver a speech on my experience in Northern Ireland at the Meridian Center, a respected nonprofit organization with which I had been involved during my earlier service in the Middle East. In the few seconds it took to step from the car to the terminal it became clear that something was wrong; large numbers of people were surging out of the terminal. I pushed past them to find even more people headed for the exits. Among them I spotted a police officer and asked him what was happening. “All flights have been canceled,” he replied. “The airport is being closed.” Outside again, I joined the crowd trying to find a way back into Manhattan. After several attempts I found a limo that looked available, but when I jumped into the backseat I discovered a young woman sitting there. She and the driver agreed that I could join them.

  As the car moved slowly in dense traffic, she told me that she was scheduled to be married that week but might now have to postpone the wedding. That was a far more serious problem than my having to cancel a speech. Neither of us could get a signal on our cell phones, but I tried to reassure her that her fiancé would figure out why he couldn’t reach her once he heard the news. As we drove onto the Triborough Bridge that news became more ominous. The first tower was burning, and the second had been struck. Just before our car reached the peak of the bridge the traffic came to a complete stop. Minutes later a radio newscaster explained why: the entrance to Manhattan from the bridge was closed, and all traffic was being routed north, away from Manhattan. We sat in silence and listened to the radio. I looked out the back left window and, incredibly, saw the towers clearly across the several miles that separated us from them. We watched the first tower collapse as we listened on the radio to eyewitnesses describing that collapse.

  Between the Triborough Bridge and the Hudson River there are eight bridges that cross the Harlem River into Manhattan. We joined thousands of other cars and drivers trying to find one open to traffic into Manhattan, but we were not successful. As we moved west, along the north shore of the Harlem River, we encountered one closed bridge after another: Willis Avenue, Third Avenue, Madison Avenue, 145th Street, Macombs Dam, Washington, University Heights, and finally Broadway. In each case there was an agonizingly slow approach through bumper-to-bumper traffic moving inches at a time, only to get close enough to learn that the bridge was closed, then head to the next one. Our anxiety mounted, especially the driver’s, who became visibly nervous. As we stopped at the Broadway Bridge and learned that it too was closed, we knew we were out of options. The driver turned to us and said, politely but firmly, “I’m sorry, but I have to go home. I’m a Palestinian and I’ve got a wife and child in New Jersey. I’m going to go upriver to the Tappan Zee Bridge and go home. You’re welcome to come to New Jersey or you can get out here. But I’m not going to keep trying to get to Manhattan.” The woman said she would go to New Jersey and try to reach her fiancé from there. I decided to get out. The bridge is at Broadway and 220th Street. At that time my wife and I lived in an apartment at Broadway and 66th Street. “I’m on the street where I live,” I told them, “about a hundred fifty blocks away. The bridge has got to open at some point, so I’ll walk home if I have to.” I paid the driver, shook hands with both, and wished them well on their onward journey. I took my suitcase and walked onto the bridge.

  There I joined a crowd of several hundred men and women who stood on the north end of the bridge, unable to cross. Their path was blocked by a single uniformed police officer who stood in the middle of the bridge. The crowd was anxious but orderly; nobody tried to dash across, although it was obvious that the lone officer could not have prevented large numbers from making it across. By now the sun was high in the sky, the temperature and humidity had risen, and I was very hot and uncomfortable. I tried repeatedly to reach Heather by phone but was not able to do so. She had our four-year-old son and eight-month-old daughter to care for. Andrew was in prekindergarten on the east side of New York; I wondered whether Heather had managed to get him and bring him home while caring for baby Claire. I had confidence in her judgment and resourcefulness, and I felt sure they would be home by the time I got there.

  After about forty minutes the police officer suddenly, and without explanation, walked off the bridge. The buzz of the crowd stopped. It was so quiet that I heard
the noise of a fire engine on the Manhattan side. Suddenly one man ran across, then another, then the whole crowd, all running as if afraid the officer would return. Within minutes we were all in Manhattan, racing down Broadway.

  I sprinted a few blocks to make certain I was clear of the bridge. I was sweating and breathing heavily, so I stopped and sat on the curb to rest and figure out what to do. I estimated that I was about seven or eight miles from my apartment. It would be difficult and tiring, given the heat and my suitcase, but I was confident that if all else failed I could walk home.

  I decided to go down Broadway on the street, as close to the curb as I could get, and try to simultaneously walk and flag down a taxi or empty limousine. Several blocks and twenty minutes later a limousine driver kindly stopped to pick me up. His car wasn’t empty; there were three women in the backseat, also trying to get down Broadway. Traffic was light, so we proceeded quickly until we reached the intersection with 168th Street. There we encountered a roadblock manned by several police officers. One of them flagged the car to a stop. “I can’t go no further,” the driver said, so we all paid and thanked him and got out. I took my suitcase out of the trunk and stepped onto the sidewalk. As I did so a police officer standing there called to me: “Senator Mitchell?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m trying to get to my apartment. It’s at Broadway and 66th Street, near Lincoln Center.”

  “The subway has just reopened. The C line is running. Go in there, get on, and that’ll take you down Central Park West.”

  As he spoke he pointed to an entrance to the subway, just a few feet away. I thanked him, went down the steps, and in a few minutes boarded a C train, which took me to Central Park West and 72nd Street, about eight blocks from my apartment. The subway car was not full, so I easily found a seat. As I sat down the man next to me asked, “Aren’t you Senator Mitchell?” He introduced himself as David Barstow, a reporter for the New York Times. He said he was covering the reaction to the attacks on the towers and proceeded to interview me. I recounted my experience, a summary of which appeared in the Times the next day.