The Sinn Fein leader answered a series of questions on the recent bank robbery at a press conference in Belfast yesterday. Northern Editor Gerry Moriarty reports.
Q Would you expect the IRA to tell you the truth about the Northern Bank robbery considering that they at first denied killing Det Garda Jerry McCabe in Adare in 1996? Can we believe their denials?
Mr Adams: Well, it's a matter for you whether you believe it or not. The IRA has said it did not do it. In my opinion the IRA is telling the truth. Hugh Orde said "in my opinion"(the IRA did it).
He has his opinion. I have my opinion. He may be putting forward his opinion based on intelligence, maybe based on whatever information he has.
Is this the same intelligence which started the war in Iraq in search of weapons of mass destruction? Is this the same intelligence that put the Guildford Four or the Birmingham Six [ in prison] or refused to co-operate with the Barron Commission?
He may in good faith be saying that. But he may be wrong. I believe what the IRA is saying.
Q There is a fundamental [ political] implication about who is believed?
Mr Adams: I don't care whether you believe me. I don't care whether anybody listening to me believes me. Of course, I would like people to. I don't care. The reason I don't care is this: this incident is being used to kill this peace process.
This incident is being used to have a gang-up on Sinn Féin.
This incident is being used to try and impinge upon the integrity of the Sinn Féin leadership.
So all we can do is give our opinion. And you are entitled to believe or not . . .
But there are other questions. What happens if and when it emerges the IRA weren't involved? Do you all apologise to me? Does Hugh Orde come out and say, 'I am sorry, I got it wrong?' I have as much right to be believed as Hugh Orde.
You remember that. I have as much right for people to give me the benefit of the doubt as for any other . . . I have as much right to be believed in stating honestly my opinion on this issue.
Q You believe the IRA did not do it. Why has P. O'Neill not issued a similar statement?
Mr Adams: No, I can't give an answer to that.
Q Do formal IRA statements not normally require the P. O'Neill "imprimatur"?
Mr Adams: Just take my advice on this, the next time I read in your paper of record [addressed to The Irish Times] that 'government sources say', I would like you to take the same forensic approach as this. It is quite clear that the IRA deny involvement, that's quite clear.
[ Leaving] that to one side it is also quite clear that we in the Sinn Féin leadership believe what the IRA tell us.
Q Is there any possibility that this was an unsanctioned or unofficial act?
Mr Adams: If they didn't do it, they didn't do it.
Q Have you any idea who did it?
Mr Adams: I don't want this to run as a line or as a suggestion, but out of the sort-of-credit being given that the IRA might have done it was that no one else could have done it . . . Well, there are lots of disgruntled former RUC officers who could have done it.
You have for people of my generation the memory of the Littlejohns [self-proclaimed British agents Kenneth and Keith Littlejohn, who were convicted in 1973 of the biggest bank robbery until then in Irish history - £67,000 in October 1972 from a Dublin bank. They said the purpose of the robbery was to have the IRA blamed].
We have the unresolved issue of operations which were blamed on the IRA but were later found out to be by loyalists or MI5. So I can't tell you who I think did it, but I don't think that the IRA is the only group of people who have the capacity to do it.
Q Are you hearing anything on the ground that other republican activists did it?
Mr Adams: No, I am not, but all I am hearing is that people don't know who did it.
Q If somebody is properly convicted of this crime are you happy that you won't be campaigning for their early release?
Mr Adams: I am not going to go up that road with you, because it is a totally hypothetical situation - from the Chief Constable saying that it's his opinion, that you are going take this through the due process, through all of that, and then you are going to ask me am I going to campaign for the release of the people involved. Get real.
Q How do you convince [ Hugh Orde] the IRA did not do it?
Mr Adams: How do I do that? You know, when did I stop beating my wife - let's get real about all of this, and let's deal with the realities of all of this.
You have an opinion from the senior police officer that the IRA was involved. You have the IRA telling senior Sinn Féin people, 'We were not involved'.
You have us saying: 'In our opinion the IRA was not involved.'
Now, we could go over that and over that and over that, and we are not going to change unless something shattering, or new evidence, or something else comes in to make us change our mind.