Veteran reporter say Gerry Adams 'in denial' over IRA role

Gerry Adams has ‘spectacularly deluded himself’ by continuing to deny he ever held a leading role in the IRA, a veteran BBC journalist told the High Court today.

John Ware, who worked for the BBC’s flagship investigative series Panorama and has made documentaries for other channels, said it would be a ‘travesty if history recorded’ that Adams was never a member of the paramilitary group.

The former Sinn Fein president, 77, is being sued for ‘vindicatory damages’ of just £1 by three survivors of IRA bombings on the British mainland between 1973 and 1996.

He has always denied being a member of the IRA. 

The claimants in the civil trial allege that, due to his leading role in the terror group, Adams was ‘directly responsible’ for the attacks.

The trial has heard evidence from former soldiers and police officers involved in intelligence-gathering in Northern Ireland during The Troubles, a former IRA member and the family of an IRA murder victim who met with Adams, who all claim he was a senior IRA figure and even the group’s ‘de facto leader.’

In a written witness statement, Mr Ware, who has reported on The Troubles for 50 years and interviewed Adams on at least two occasions, said he wasn’t sure whether Adams has ‘persuaded himself that he wasn’t in the PIRA [Provisional IRA] by virtue of his strategic and leadership role, as opposed to being the person who pulled the trigger or planted the bombs.’

Of his continued denials, he added: ‘The rest of us are metaphorically open-mouthed at his chutzpah, given the sheer weight of evidence from his colleagues, comrades and other sources.’

The court heard Mr Ware, 78, made a 1983 ITV documentary about Adams entitled ‘The Honourable Member for West Belfast’.

At the time, Adams had just been elected as the abstentionist Sinn Fein MP for the constituency.

He said that he interviewed IRA figures who had known Adams from when he allegedly joined the IRA at the age of 16 and they wanted to speak because of his ‘constant denialism.’

‘The principal motivation for many PIRA interviewees was their complete and utter astonishment at Adams’ brazen, unequivocal, and unambiguous denial of his role in the PIRA,’ he said.

‘It clearly grated with many of them that when Adams said that he strongly supported the armed struggle, his denial of actual PIRA membership allowed him to avoid taking personal responsibility for their actions.’

He added: ‘Adams seemingly elevated himself to a higher moral plane than the PIRA, when it was they who were sacrificing life and limb – as they would see it - for a cause Adams was leading.

‘In short, they saw Adams’ denial of PIRA membership as insufferably hypocritical.’

When it was suggested by Adams’ barrister, Edward Craven KC, that his client was never in the IRA, Mr Ware, who left the BBC in 2012, said: ‘It would be a travesty if that is how history recorded Mr Adams’ role in the conflict.’

He added: ‘As I have said and said to Gerry himself, there is no question he played a seminal role in bringing [the conflict] to an end, but he also played a seminal role in starting it.’

Mr Ware also claimed that sources had told him that the 1979 IRA murder of Lord Mountbatten – a second cousin of Queen Elizabeth II – could not have been carried out without his approval.

He added: ‘Gerry Adams has been a significant figure in the conflict and helped end it but he also misses out the case he also started it.

‘That is the missing bit and I think its important history should record that as the objective truth.’

The court also heard yesterday from retired British Army Brigadier Ian Liles, who served numerous tours of Northern Ireland from the 1970s.

He said he had been privy to ‘high-grade intelligence’ which suggested former Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness was involved in the ‘day-to-day operations’ of the IRA while sitting on the Army Council, whereas Adams ‘was the director who ordered others to do the dirty work.’

He added: ‘I don’t know if Adams has started to believe his own story that he wasn’t in the PIRA, but to me it looks like the only person who thinks that Adams wasn’t in the PIRA is Adams.’

Adams is being sued by John Clark, a victim of the IRA’s Old Bailey attack in 1973; Jonathan Ganesh, who was injured in the 1996 attack at London’s Docklands and Barry Laycock, who was injured in the attack at Manchester's Arndale Shopping Centre in the same year.

Adams denies any involvement in the bombings and membership of the IRA.

The trial continues.