It would have been fascinating, if unsettling, to be a fly on the wall wherever the IRA deliberations took place last weekend about what its response should be to the statement by Northern Ireland's police ombudsman, Nuala O'Loan, that an investigation by her office had established no evidence that Jean McConville had acted as an informer for the British army.
Mrs McConville, a Belfast mother of 10, was murdered by the IRA in 1972 and was then buried in a clandestine grave.
For 27 years the IRA denied knowing anything about her death, or the whereabouts of her remains. It accepted responsibility for her murder in 1999 and her body was found near a beach in Co Louth in 2003.
Given this history, one would have thought that the IRA would have realised that any statement it issued in response to the police ombudsman's findings could only be counterproductive. Silence would have been the better part of valour - or at least of decency - but those directly involved in, or close to, Mrs McConville's murder obviously really need to have it believed among their own community that she was an informer.
These people must also have sufficient power and influence within the republican movement to insist that this statement was issued and that Mrs O'Loan's finding not stand unchallenged. Gerry Adams said this week that the IRA remained committed to "delivering closure" to the families of the disappeared. Closure on this aspect of the history of the Troubles, however, like many others, is available only on the IRA's terms.
The main effect of the IRA statement was a series of media stories which only served to remind people of the brutality of Jean McConville's murder and the callousness with which the IRA has treated her family since, all of which caused political damage to Sinn Féin.
If one had any doubt about the extent of that damage one only has to look at the sequence of the republican movement's responses to Mrs O'Loan's findings. Shortly after her press briefing the Sinn Féin leader issued a statement which did not directly address what the police ombudsman had said, but instead restated in a general way the IRA desire to work with the families of the disappeared.
The next day, Saturday, the IRA issued its blunt statement saying it had carried out its own internal investigation and reiterating that Mrs McConville was an informer.
By Tuesday, Gerry Adams felt it necessary to take to the microphones directly in a damage limitation exercise. He gave details, not public until now, that some of those IRA members involved in the murders and/or burials of the "disappeared" had met on seven occasions with a forensic expert appointed by the Irish Government. These contacts, he said, included visits to those places where the IRA believes some of the bodies may have been buried.
This has not been the only occasion in the last couple of years when Sinn Féin's and the IRA's usually sophisticated communications operation has looked unsteady. This week's events have chilling echoes of the IRA's offer to the sisters of Robert McCartney in spring 2005 to have the killers of their brother shot.
Like those previous instances, this week's lapse may also arise from frustration.
Sinn Féin has a lot to be frustrated about these days. The peace process has always exerted a significant influence on Sinn Féin's political fortunes, both North and South of the Border, not least because of the extensive and disproportionate media exposure which the party garners for its role in it.
Notwithstanding the visit of the Taoiseach and the prime minister at the end of June, things have stagnated politically in Northern Ireland now for months and, as a result, Sinn Féin has been deprived of this crucial political and media oxygen.
Even though the two governments have threatened an intensification of Anglo-Irish partnership unless a cross-party administration is established before the November 24th deadline, the Democratic Unionist Party is in no rush to go into government with Sinn Féin. Ian Paisley's and Peter Robinson's assessment of when to make that move will have some regard to the time constraints operating on the two prime ministers.
The odds on Tony Blair being around much longer have narrowed considerably this week, while Bertie Ahern will soon be completely focused on securing re-election.
Ultimately, however, the Democratic Unionist Party will sign up for government with Sinn Féin only when it is sure its community can wear it.
Having delayed in delivering IRA decommissioning and disbandment, and undermining David Trimble in the process, the republican movement has only itself to blame now that it finds itself stuck in a process which is moving at the Democratic Unionist Party's slower pace.
It must also be frustrating for Sinn Féin that in the Republic it is not getting the electoral gratitude it expected for last summer's historic IRA announcements. After surging in the polls from 2002 to 2004, Sinn Féin's vote share now appears to have topped out at 8 per cent or 9 per cent. There has been no decommissioning "bounce".
There could, of course, be another factor which helps to explain Sinn Féin's lack of sure-footedness and the relatively low profile of its leadership of late.
It may be that internal paranoia arising from the spate of allegations about informers at the highest levels of the republican movement is having a disorientating effect. Coming as they did after the outing of Freddie Scappaticci and the revelation last December that Denis Donaldson was an informer, these allegations shook both the IRA and Sinn Féin to their core.
While the scale and basis of some of the rumours about informers which have surfaced in recent months are clearly absurd, they must also be destabilising. They inevitably have an impact on the political project on which the republican movement now says it is exclusively focused. It should also, mind you, have given the republican leadership some perspective on how potent and hurtful allegations of being an informer can be.