LOOKING BACK, SOME MIGHT SEE THE EVENT as simple and uncomplicated - just another visa to be adjudicated. Yet it was not, and it sparked one of the most public and controversial FSO dissent cases in recent times.

The appearance of Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, in the consular waiting room of U.S. Embassy Dublin in January 1994 was an epochal moment in the recent history of "the troubles" in Northern Ireland, one that would lead to a major shift in U.S. foreign policy and invigorate, at least temporarily, the Anglo-Irish peace process.

It was also an event that would thrust two FSOs into the maelstrom of Irish-American politics and generate retribution against them by their ambassador, a member of America's most prominent Irish-American family. Finally, the episode prompted an investigation and report by the State Department's Inspector General's Office that was scathingly critical of Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith, a political appointee, and her second-in-command, Deputy Chief of Mission Dennis Sandberg, a career diplomat.

Curiously, FSOs John Treacy and James Callahan say their dissent cable wasn't challenging an aspect of U.S. foreign policy, as has usually been the case with past dissenters, but was defending U.S. policy and laws against what they believe was a conscious cabal by Smith to reshape U.S. policy in Ireland.

The FSOs' case also spurred the State Department to strengthen language that regulates the disciplining of those who retaliate against Dissent Channel users.

Adams' presence in the U.S. Embassy Dublin that day, visa application in hand, was not haphazard, but part of a calculated plan to breathe new life into the stalled Northern Ireland peace process. Adams' request for a U.S. visa was the culmination of an intense two-year campaign on both sides of the Atlantic that involved some of the most important names in Irish and American politics.

Key players in the effort included former Irish Prime Minister Albert Reynolds and John Hume, a member of the British Parliament and the well-connected head of Northern Ireland's nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party. But there were others. In his 1995 book, The Troubles: Ireland's Ordeal 1966-1995 and the Search for Peace, Irish historian and political insider Tim Pat Coogan says, "The other pivotal figure [was] Jean Kennedy Smith, whose nomination as American Ambassador to Ireland was announced by President Clinton on St. Patrick's Day 1993. Behind her stood her brother, Sen. Ted Kennedy, the man who, after President Clinton himself, had most influence over Irish policy in America. The alignment of forces on the side of Irish nationalism had suddenly achieved a coherence and an influence which was unparalleled in historical terms."

Advocates of a visa for Adams had been seriously dismayed when his applications for U.S. travel, submitted at U.S. Consulate Belfast shortly after President Clinton's inauguration in 1993, were twice denied under U.S. legal provisions barring those suspected of having ties to terrorist organizations. An outlawed paramilitary organization, the IRA has been waging war since 1969 to end British rule in Northern Ireland and reunite the province with the Republic of Ireland. Thus far, Adams had been refused admittance to the United States eight times over two decades. All those seeking to breathe new life into the search for peace believed that a U.S. visa for Adams, which would boost his credibility both in Ireland and in the United States, was a key element in the effort.

To some Irish nationalists and their American supporters, the refusals were not surprising. The State Department was regarded, as Coogan points out, "as being so Anglophile" that some Irish-Americans described the personnel there as "Brits with American accents." Similar sentiments were often directed against U.S. embassy staff in Dublin. Many of the players involved in Irish-American relations reportedly preferred to deal directly with the National Security Council where Nancy Soderberg, former aide to Sen. Kennedy for Irish issues and Clinton liaison with Irish-American voters during the 1992 campaign, had landed as the No. 3 official.

As 1993 drew to a close, two events altered the political atmosphere surrounding a visa for Gerry Adams. The first was the Downing Street Declaration, a dramatic but vague declaration by which Ireland and Britain agreed to certain fundamental principles in their approaches to uniting Ireland democratically and to ending the political stalemate.

The second event was a visit to Dublin by the senior senator from Massachusetts, best described in Coogan's book: "Ted Kennedy took a hand. He came to Dublin with his wife Vicky to see in the New Year with Jean, and to make his own soundings on the visa question. ... After landing, he drove first to the U.S. residency for a shower, and then straight out to my house for lunch with Jean. ... We had a Homeric interlude. In dark moments later, when the peace process appeared to be floundering, I used to comfort myself with the thought that if the visa question could survive that lunch, it could survive anything."

Two weeks later, Gerry Adams arrived at the U.S. embassy on Dublin's Elgin Road where, away from U.S. Consulate Belfast, he had every reason to anticipate a newly favorable response to his latest request for a U.S. visa. This time, he requested permission to participate in a New York City conference on Northern Ireland on Feb. 1, barely two weeks away.

The embassy staff had been forewarned. Already there had been discussions in meetings about the appropriate action to take on an Adams application. For many FSOs, there was little to discuss. Adams was in the department's computerized worldwide "lookout system" and was automatically ineligible under Section 212 of the Immigration and Nationality Act. It was clear to all that Ambassador Smith, in a policy departure apparently designed to jump-start the peace process, favored issuing a visa to Adams and would so recommend to the department. Country team members who opposed the move, but had no opportunity to meet with the ambassador to present their views, asked DCM Dennis Sandberg to ensure that their opposition and reasons be noted in any cable recommending the visa be granted.

However, the ambassador's cable recommending the Adams visa contained only a cursory mention about "dissent within my country team over this issue," according to the OIG report. Treacy and Callahan, who read the cable after it was sent, were unable to confront Sandberg, who had just left for a 10-day trip abroad. At that point, four officials from U.S. Embassy Dublin - including Treacy and Callahan - acting under State dissent regulations, drafted and signed a formal dissent cable explaining why they believed Adams should not be issued a visa. In the Jan. 14, 1994, cable, the four noted that a visa for Adams would impair U.S. global credibility in the struggle against international terrorism, would strengthen the IRA politically and would compromise U.S. dialogue with Ireland's Protestant population. In particular, they believed no visa should be issued to Adams until he renounced violence unambiguously. Anything else, one participant noted, was "putting the cart before the horse."

It would be the beginning of the end for Treacy and Callahan. John Treacy clearly recalls the signers' motivations: "We felt we had a duty, a duty to give the president and the secretary of State our best opinion," he said in a recent interview. "We believed we had a unique perspective to give that opinion. The fact that we gave it is not remarkable; what's remarkable is the response that it inspired."

In Washington, where the health care debate was raging, the question of a visa for Gerry Adams suddenly became highly charged politics. Some 40 members of Congress, including senators Kennedy, Daniel Moynihan (D-N.Y.) John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) publicly urged President Clinton to grant the visa. The New York Times editorialized in support of Adams' application. In this politically charged environment, the department equivocated and announced that a visa for Adams would be issued only if he renounced violence, though officials did not specify whether it should be a public announcement. To many, this sounded like yet another bureaucratic death knell for an Adams visa. On Jan. 28, Adams met in Belfast with Consul General Val Martinez, who posed carefully worded questions. Two days later, stretching to find "newly conciliatory comments" about renouncing violence in what Adams said in the Belfast meeting, the White House announced that a visa waiver would be granted to allow Adams a two-day visit to the United States as of Jan. 31.

In a Feb. 2 article, The Times' R.W. Apple provided fresh insight into the government's decision to issue the visa, noting, "British and American officials familiar with the results of the meeting hotly dispute [the White House version of the Belfast meeting], asserting that Mr. Adams merely repeated ambiguous formulations in answer to precise questions. ... Discussing the process by which Mr. Adams was granted a waiver ... a top State Department official said that, after the Friday meeting, the Department concluded that what Mr. Adams had said 'did not clear the bar, as far as we were concerned,' and Secretary of State Warren Christopher so informed Mr. Clinton. But after a lengthy discussion between the two, he was overruled and told to recommend the issuance of the visa to Attorney General Janet Reno."

Meanwhile, at U.S. Embassy Dublin, the impact of the dissent cable, which had had no apparent effect on White House policymakers, was beginning to be felt by its signers, particularly Treacy and Callahan, who had been pegged by the front office as the cable's instigators. What would later be described by State Department investigators as "a clear pattern of retaliation" had begun against the two.

US. Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith presented her diplomatic credentials to Irish President Mary Robinson on June 25, 1993. The ceremony took place 30 years - almost to the day - after Smith had accompanied her brother, President John F. Kennedy, on a visit to Ireland, the ancestral home of the Kennedy family. She would later remember the trip as "one of the most moving experiences of my life." Almost immediately after presenting her credentials, she set out to travel to County Wexford and the city of Cork, tracing her brother's footsteps of 30 years earlier, a powerfully symbolic reminder of who she was and a deliberate stoking of still-strong Irish memories. It was a homecoming and widely viewed as such by the Irish.

In the United States, Smith is best known as the founder of Very Special Arts, an arts learning program for people with disabilities. The organization is active throughout the United States and in 86 countries abroad, including Ireland. In 1993 Ambassador-designate Smith was involved in bringing a well-received play, written under the Young Playwrights program of Very Special Arts in Ireland and originally produced at Dublin's Abbey Theater, to New York's off-Broadway.

It is impossible to underestimate the Irish people's affection and respect for the Kennedys. Few ambassadors arrive at post as well-connected or as familiar with the political ground as did Jean Kennedy Smith. Few envoys enjoy the kind of political access extended to a Kennedy in Ireland. More importantly, few ambassadors can command the kind of key Americans' support for pet issues or projects available to a Kennedy, especially one who is the sister of a powerful senator and aunt to two U.S. representatives.

It quickly became apparent to the Dublin embassy staff that Ambassador Smith practiced the kind of hectic, high profile, highly personal "action diplomacy" associated with the Kennedy family. She had little patience with the forms and norms of conventional diplomacy and certainly did not need the services of the career embassy staff to introduce her to the Irish political or cultural scene or to open all the right doors. As ambassador, she was determined to avoid policy confrontations with the Irish government and to eliminate "irritants" from the U.S.-Irish relationship. She was also determined to bring fresh initiatives to help solve the agonizing problem of Northern Ireland.

Not long after presenting her credentials, she planned her first trip to Northern Ireland, travel that did not sit well with U.S. Embassy London and which appeared to go beyond the bounds of her job. On the eve of that visit, it fell to Callahan, as acting DCM, and Treacy to advise the ambassador of the long-standing U.S. no-contact policy with Sinn Fein, guidance that she reportedly received with stony silence. As a consequence, a lunch with the Derry City Council, organized for the ambassador by her old friend John Hume, had to be hastily rearranged to keep a correct diplomatic distance between the American ambassador and Derry's Sinn Fein counsilors, at least while TV cameras were present.

By the beginning of 1994, Embassy Dublin was a changed place, tense and troubled. Ambassador Smith chaired few meetings, and carried on her activities with little input or participation from the career staff. The result of her "perceived management style," the OIG would later report, "was a sense by staff of a distant, aloof and uncaring Chief of Mission."

The department's dissent channel was established in 1971, prompted by widespread dissent in the Foreign Service toward U.S. policy during the Vietnam War. "Department principals want to hear significant views and recommendations including those not sent forward through regular channels," notes the relevant section of the Foreign Affairs Manuel. Regulations state that any foreign affairs agency employee "may use the dissent channel without fear of pressure or penalty."

But what happened in Dublin was quite different, according to the OIG report and to several of the principals involved. Neither Ambassador Smith nor DCM Sandberg responded to repeated oral and written requests for interviews. And, as the Journal went to press, the department had not responded yet to a Freedom of Information Act request for a copy of the Dublin dissent cable.

The cable dissenting from the ambassador's recommendation on Adams was sent as U.S. Embassy Dublin and Washington closed for a three-day holiday weekend. On the next business day, a clearly troubled Smith met with the dissent cable's four signers, including Treacy and Callahan. The names of the other two dissenters have not been made public.

During the meeting, the four repeated their arguments against the visa and emphasized the important role of responsible dissent in the policymaking process. As the meeting ended, it appeared to Treacy and Callahan that the ambassador had "grudgingly accepted" their role in drafting the dissent message. Several days later, however, matters took a more ominous turn.

Treacy was told by an aide to the ambassador that Smith had raised the issue of the dissent channel message in a telephone conversation with Sen. Dodd. Treacy, mindful of Dodd's role in the blocking of FSO promotions in 1988 because of disagreements over U.S. policy in Central America, took this information very seriously and considered it an attempt to intimidate him and the other cable signers.

Two days later, concerned about the raising of Dodd's name, Treacy asked to meet with the ambassador. The OIG report contains Treacy's version of the meeting, in which Smith mentioned "a lack of support at post for her decisions" and told Treacy that she considered the dissent cable "an unhelpful attempt to undercut her with the department." She termed Treacy and Callahan "the instigators" of the dissent and said she believed they had "pressured the other signers to go along." She couldn't run an embassy, she said, "if her employees were to contradict her policy decisions, and she made it clear that she expected her officers to support her decisions," according to the OIG report. After the meeting, Treacy said, his relationship with the ambassador began deteriorating rapidly.

Meanwhile, DCM Sandberg - absent from post when the dissent cable was sent - had returned. He advised Treacy that the ambassador, still angry over the dissent cable, had ordered the DCM to arrange Treacy's immediate transfer. Sandberg also told Treacy that he had erred when, as acting DCM, he authorized transmission of the dissent cable without first showing it to the ambassador. The FAM encourages, but does not require, senders of dissent cables to share them with supervisors.

Based on conversations with Treacy and Callahan, the OIG's report would later find that "Sandberg's ill-advised and improper criticism of Callahan and Treacy for their use of the dissent channel violated both the letter and the spirit of the FAM."

The broad issue of visas for Irish applicants, outside of waiver cases like that of Gerry Adams, represents an important context in which to view the operations of U.S. Embassy Dublin during this period. Visas to the United States, specifically the refusal of visas, have long been a flash point in the U.S.-Irish relationship. Visas are a constant irritant between American and Irish diplomats; U.S. officials have long noted the large number of Irish travelers overstaying their visas and the relatively high visa refusal rate at U.S. Embassy Dublin. Irish parliamentarians send a steady stream of letters to the U.S. embassy, endorsing the applications of their constituents or protesting their denials.

In Washington, Congress had been generous in attempting to resolve the status of Irish illegal aliens and to make larger numbers of U.S. immigrant visas available to Irish applicants. Legislation passed in 1986 and 1991 that helped ease restrictions on Irish immigration to the United States was warmly welcomed in Ireland.

For her part, Ambassador Smith was especially concerned with the troublesome question of visas. Compounding the problem in 1994 was that the United States was hosting the World Cup, and thousands of Irish soccer fans were expected to travel overseas to watch the Irish matches. Unfortunately, the "nuances of U.S. immigration law" were reportedly not topics that engaged her for long, according to her staff. The ambassador strongly believed that U.S. law should be changed to include Ireland in the Visa Waiver Pilot Program, which exempts tourists and business travelers from applying for U.S. visas. According to the OIG report, she had made such views clear to the department, the government of Ireland and the Irish public. The result was enormous pressure on embassy consular officers to bend the rules, to give visa applicants "the benefit of the doubt" and to reduce the refusal rate.

The OIG later found that "the Ambassador viewed the consular section, and clearly Consul General Callahan, as obstacles to one of her priority policies - to reduce visa friction and bring Ireland under the visa waiver program."

In the weeks and months that followed, both Callahan and Treacy say they were subjected to various forms of retribution that effectively ended their effectiveness at U.S. Embassy Dublin. Both were virtually excluded from guest lists for the ambassador's representational events. Access to restricted cable traffic was withdrawn. By March, Smith was actively seeking Callahan's transfer, according to the OIG report. In the embassy, officials were bypassing him for sensitive consular cases in favor of a subordinate, and the front office was reversing his management decisions. Callahan meanwhile stood tenaciously by his belief that the elimination of the visa requirement for Irish visitors would eventually increase illegal U.S. immigration. Both officers were having serious difficulties as the DCM prepared their annual efficiency evaluations (EERs). The DCM told Callahan, as early as Jan. 31, according to the OIG report, that he would be receiving a negative report and suggested he request to have his three-year assignment curtailed. Later, the OIG inquiry team would determine that "Callahan's highly negative EER represents retaliation by rater Sandberg and reviewer Smith as a result of Callahan's participation in the dissent cable."

Meanwhile, the State Department was finishing up its annual publication, Patterns of Global Terrorism. In the report, issued April 1, 1994, the department called the IRA "the most active and lethal terrorist group in Western Europe."

Treacy was allowed to finish his tour in Dublin, and left in June 1994. In the words of an embassy colleague, Treacy's last months were "a professional hell." In mid-June, exercising his rights under the FAM, he notified the department in writing of the reprisals following the dissent cable in January. His annual evaluation report, for the period that ended May 15, 1994, arrived in Washington four months late, after the USIA promotion panels had completed their work, which delayed his chances for promotion in a highly competitive "up or out" personnel system. Callahan finally requested that his Dublin tour be cut short a year and, in August 1994, he transferred to London. In November, he contacted the State Department's OIG with an account of retaliatory actions against him in Dublin.

The letters of Treacy and Callahan led to a two-month OIG investigation in early 1995. The report, highly critical of Ambassador Smith and DCM Sandberg, was completed in December 1995. And last spring, more than two years after Treacy and Callahan had signed the dissent cable, Smith was "formally reprimanded" in a letter from Secretary of State Warren Christopher, according to press reports.

A few days after the reprimand became public, Ambassador Smith and her brother attended a New York City dinner. Smith and Sen. Kennedy escorted President Clinton to the dais where, before an audience of 500 Irish-American leaders, he accepted an award as "Irish-American of the Year."

Both Callahan and Treacy were successful in having the irregular evaluation reports withdrawn from their performance files. In recognition of the resulting gap in Callahan's file, the department extended by a year his allowed "time-in-class," the period during which he must be promoted or take early retirement. To date, USIA has not extended a similar benefit to Treacy.

In an interview in his Washington office, Treacy admits he has no regrets about sending the cable, which he says he signed because he was "worried about the effects on ... morale" of other young consular officers at U.S. Embassy Dublin. "Careerism is the end of integrity. When we enter the Service, all we have is our honor and our integrity and we shouldn't have to compromise it just because we're in the Foreign Service."

Would he do it again? "I think there would be no choice if I felt strongly about something," he says. "But you know you also have to have a sense of perspective. I was a soldier in Vietnam and, in the broad spectrum of sacrifices one can be called upon to make for one's country, having a gap in your performance file is not that significant. After all, I have my arms, my legs. Let's keep this in proportion."

Meanwhile, on Aug. 31, 1994, the IRA announced an "open-ended" ceasefire in its armed struggle against Irish Unionists and the British. In a statement, President Clinton called the IRA's decision to join the political process a "beginning of a new era." A few weeks later, Gerry Adams received his second U.S. visa, this time for two weeks and, building on the media blitz that marked his first visit, traveled across the United States from Hollywood to the State Department for public and private meetings widely covered in the media. In Washington, President Clinton announced an end to the U.S. ban on contacts with Sinn Fein, and on Oct. 3, Vice President Al Gore telephoned Adams with the latest good news. It was a local call: Adams was staying with Ethel Kennedy at her home in McLean, Va. In November, Adams received his third U.S. visa, this one a 90-day multiple entry visa that allowed him to enter and leave the United States at will.

St. Patrick's Day 1995 in Washington was an Irish-American revel, even louder than usual. Trying to generate momentum in the stalled Anglo-Irish talks on the weapons issue, President Clinton used the occasion to lift the ban that had prevented Sinn Fein from raising funds in the United States. Gerry Adams was invited to the annual White House St. Patrick's Day reception and, at a luncheon on Capitol Hill, stole the limelight by shaking hands with Clinton. In a statement at the White House Shamrock Ceremony, Irish Prime Minister John Burton applauded Clinton for "the willingness that you have shown, Mr. President, to take risks, to do things that many of us might have thought were foolhardy at the time - like granting a visa to Gerry Adams. You have been proven right. You made the right decision." According to Irish author and politician Coogan, "St. Patrick's Day at the White House was a night to remember." In his version, one guest at the raucous affair asked another: "Do you think the State Department will get the message now?"

Almost unnoticed in the hoopla was President Clinton's announcement that, beginning April 1, 1995, Irish business and vacation travelers would no longer require visas to visit the United States, thanks to legislation sponsored by Sen. Kennedy. "This step is another demonstration of our confidence in the future of Ireland and the strong ties between our nations," the president said. On Nov. 30, President Clinton became the first U.S. president to visit Northern Ireland. The following day, with U.S. Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith at his side, Clinton made a triumphant visit to Dublin.

Two months later, on Feb. 9, the "hooded ones" of the IRA announced plans to resume their armed struggle against the British after the 17-month ceasefire. Within hours, a 1000-pound bomb ripped through London's Docklands section, killing two and injuring 43. Days later, in the middle of London's crowded theater district, another bomb was found but successfully dismantled. Two days later, a third bomb exploded aboard a London bus near Covent Garden, killing the presumed bomber; a fourth bomb exploded at a Manchester shopping center on June 15, injuring 200. The IRA claimed responsibility for all four.
On March 17, the White House pointedly excluded Gerry Adams from St. Patrick's Day ceremonies, proving that American support could be a two-edged sword.

John Treacy was recently named co-winner of the Christian A. Herter Award, given annually to a senior FSO by the American Foreign Service Association for constructive dissent. James P. Callahan was awarded the William R. Rivkin Award, given annually to a mid-level FSO by AFSA for constructive dissent.