White House had concerns over photo of Clinton shaking Gerry Adams’ hand

White House had concerns over photo of Clinton shaking Gerry Adams’ hand

Grinne N. Aodha

Sun, December 28, 2025 at 12:52 PM UTC

5 min read

Former US president Bill Clinton (centre)

Newly declassified documents have revealed the White House’s concern over a potential photograph of Bill Clinton shaking Gerry Adams’ hand during his landmark 1995 visit to Belfast.

The papers, released annually by the National Archives in Dublin, detail extensive diplomatic efforts between Irish and US officials to meticulously plan the Clintons’ trip to the island of Ireland.

Among the discussions were considerations regarding whether the presidential couple should stay overnight in Northern Ireland. Furthermore, a genealogy expert’s research, commissioned as part of the preparations, dismissed suggestions of Mr Clinton’s Co Fermanagh ancestry as "fantasy," though acknowledging possible roots elsewhere in Ulster.

The Clintons’ itinerary saw them visit Northern Ireland before travelling to Dublin, with a reception scheduled for November 30 at Whitla Hall, Queen's University in Belfast.

Bill Clinton shook hands with the public on the Shankhill Road during his 1995 visit (Adam Butler/PA)

A letter from the Irish joint secretary of the Anglo-Irish Secretariat, David Donoghue, sent to Sean O hUiginn at the Anglo-Irish Division, said that “the Americans” originally wanted to hold the reception and “confine” it to 120 people.

He said the British side “insisted” that the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Patrick Mayhew, should host it, which was agreed, and the guest list was expanded to 300 people.

“The ostensible intention is to enable the president to meet a wider range of people in Northern Ireland” he wrote on November 28 1995.

“The real purpose, of course, is to de-emphasise the political nature of the occasion and to create a broader ‘community’ event which, the British calculate, will make it easier for unionists to attend alongside Sinn Fein.”

Mr Donoghue said that the representatives would form “pods” at the reception – “a UUP pod, an Alliance pod etc” – determined on a “pro rata basis in light of respective electoral strengths”.

“In other words, each will form a distinct cluster of people to whom the president will be introduced in turn (on the lines of Buckingham Palace receptions).”

He also said that Peter Bell, from the Northern Ireland Office, had indicated “the Americans would prefer to avoid a handshake photograph between the president and Adams”.

Bill Clinton made a speech in Dublin during the trip (John Giles/PA)

He also said that while one-on-one meetings had been planned with John Hume in Derry and David Trimble in a car journey after the reception at Queens, there was a “general US reluctance” to meet one-on-one with Adams, Ian Paisley, or John Alderdice.

“The general assumption, however, is that the president will take relevant individuals aside for separate private conversations on the margins of the reception.”

The two men shook hands for the first time in March of that year at the White House, as part of events held to mark St Patrick’s Day – but after photographers had left the room.

Mr Clinton was reportedly put under pressure at the time from then British prime minister John Major not to give Mr Adams a warm embrace at the luncheon, according to the New York Times.

On the morning of November 30, before the reception in Belfast that evening, Mr Clinton met Mr Adams on the Falls Road in Belfast.

As he left his car he paused to shake Mr Adams’s hand – a moment captured by an official White House photographer.

Mr Clinton would later say of the handshake that it was a “big deal” and it felt at the time as though “the pavement was about to crack open”.

Plans for the Clintons visit to Dublin, from December 1-2 1995, show that a US embassy official estimated that there was a “50/50” chance the visit would go ahead.

An Irish genealogy expert also said claims that Clinton had Cassidy ancestors, who were from Co Fermanagh, were “based largely on fantasy” – but the White House still wanted Cassidy aspects added to the visit.

It had been claimed that Mr Clinton had Irish ancestry through his mother, Virginia Cassidy.

Genealogist Sean Murphy, from Bray, Co Wicklow, undertook the task of tracing Bill Clinton’s Irish ancestry after “media dissemination of claims concerning the president’s Irish ancestry which proved to be baseless, yet were left un-contradicted by any authoritative source”.

He told the taoiseach’s office that the earliest trace of the president’s maternal ancestors of this line is “probably” Zachariah Cassidy, born in about 1750-60 in South Carolina, and his son Levi.

“The Cassidy ‘clan’ claim that the earliest ancestor was a Luke or Lucas Cassidy of Roslea, Co Fermanagh, appears to be based largely on fantasy,” he wrote on October 16.

“The biblical forenames Zachariah and Levi suggest a Protestant, and probably Presbyterian or Dissenter, as opposed to Catholic origin, and it is reasonable to speculate that the Cassidys would have been most likely to have emigrated to America from an Ulster county.”

In notes of a meeting with the US embassy held three days later, Irish officials said that a planned stop off in Lismore, Co Fermanagh, was being dropped, but the White House was “still interested in using the Cassidy connection in a low-key way”.

They said this could mean “‘casually’ passing a Cassidy premises”.

Mr Clinton would go on to visit Cassidy’s Bar in Dublin for an hour during the 1995 trip.

This article is based on documents contained in the file labelled 2025/115/827 in the National Archives of Ireland.

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