British officials in Washington were last night urged to tighten their guard after a former US ambassador to London accused the Clinton White House of leaking British secrets to the IRA.
Laying bare the full scale of the Anglo-American row which followed the granting of Mr Gerry Adams's first US visa in February 1994, Mr Ray Seitz - who was ambassador from 1991 to 1994 - says relations between the two governments became so "fractious" that "London even stopped passing sensitive intelligence to the White House because it often seemed to find its way to the IRA".
In his forthcoming memoirs - an extract from which was published in yesterday's Sunday Telegraph - Mr Seitz describes Mrs Jean Kennedy Smith, the US ambassador to Ireland, as "wilful and skittish" and "an ardent IRA apologist".
The Foreign Office and former Conservative ministers declined to comment on Mr Seitz's allegations, which were seized upon by Tory MP Mr David Wilshire and the Ulster Unionist security spokesman, Mr Ken Maginnis, as confirmation that key White House officials had been supportive of Sinn Fein.
Mr Seitz refused to elaborate on the main charge that London withheld sensitive intelligence information. However, a senior unionist source said privately he doubted if the White House had knowingly leaked "high-grade" intelligence. And it was observed last night that within a year of the celebrated row over the Adams visit, Anglo-American relations had been restored to the point where former Senator George Mitchell was asked to draft his report on the decommissioning of paramilitary weapons, an engagement which led to his appointment as chairman of the multiparty talks process.
Mr Seitz, who "made an enemy" of Mrs Kennedy Smith in his efforts to prevent her interfering in Northern Ireland affairs, says her appointment was "a curious selection, not because of Mrs Smith's inexperience but because she was both wilful and skittish, a dangerous mix". But for President Clinton, he says: ". . . a Kennedy was a Kennedy. The new President, whose election victory seemed almost accidental, needed all the help he could get."
Of the low point in Anglo-American relationships, Mr Seitz confirms the opposition of the State and Justice Departments, the FBI and CIA, to Mr Adams's admission to the US: "Adams had done nothing and said nothing to change his record, and the United States had a well-rehearsed position on dealing with anyone who sanctioned terrorism. But unlike previous occasions when Adams had applied for a visa, there were now sympathetic ears inside the administration to listen to the arguments of Irish-Americans on the outside."
He continues: "Jean Kennedy Smith, who distrusted her own staff and penalised them for their dissent, became a promotion agent for Adams. Too shallow to understand the past and too naive to anticipate the future, she was an ardent IRA apologist. But her influence by itself would not have made much difference. Her brother was another matter. For Clinton's political staff, a visa for Adams seemed a relatively trivial give-away for the powerful Senator's support. Moreover, Senator Kennedy faced a serious re-election challenge in Massachusetts, and he was an anxious man in the market for favours."
Mr Maginnis said he had long been aware of the danger of key information being leaked and that urgent action should be taken to prevent future breaches.