DUBLIN: Plans to make then US president John F Kennedy an honourary Irish citizen in 1963 were scrapped due to the trouble such a move would have sparked, according to state papers released yesterday. After extensive behind-the-scenes consultations, officials found it was impossible to confer Kennedy with the state’s highest accolade without causing him political and citizenship problems at home. Previously secret files released by Ireland’s National Archives office reveal instructions were given to draw up parliamentary legislation to enable the conferring of the honour.
But too many difficulties emerged and the plan was abandoned.
Awarding the honour was to have been a high point for the Irish-American president’s four-day visit to Ireland in June 1963.
The files show that Ireland’s Washington ambassador T J Kiernan had taken soundings in the White House and reported to Hugh McCann, secretary of the foreign ministry, that he "understood the president was anxious to accept the honour".
The main difficulty was the US constitution which banned the granting of a "title of nobility". It said anyone holding public office had to get the consent of Congress before accepting a "present, emolument, office of title, of any kind whatsoever, from any king, prince or foreign state".
Ireland’s justice ministry pointed out that while the citizenship was granted as a token of honour it carried with it practical implications and consequences.
The citizenship was "real in every sense". It could be passed on to children, included the fundamental duty of fidelity to the nation and conferred rights to vote.
The ministry warned that such "dual citizenship" could cause big problems for Kennedy because of the strict rules in the US.
"It seems (US) citizenship can be lost practically by any act that involves, even implicitly, any acceptances of duties to a foreign state.
"American citizens in Ireland have lost their citizenship, we understand, merely because they joined the Red Cross," a justice ministry memo said.
A 15-page legal opinion from the US attorney general was "full of all kinds of difficulties" and led to the cancelling of the plan.
America’s chief law officer suggested that criticism, however foolish and irresponsible, of honourary citizenship could be an embarrassment to the Irish government and Kennedy himself.
The president’s national security advisor, McGeorge Bundy, told ambassador Kiernan that Kennedy took "very kindly indeed to the offer suggested and the spirit that inspired it".
However, Bundy said, the president hoped that the Irish government would not be "disappointed to know of the difficulties which inclined him to ask us not to proceed with the matter", Kiernan reported. The files also show that a security scare prior to Kennedy’s visit to Ireland resulted in heavily armed Irish police reinforcing the protection detail for his motorcade.
Five days before he was due to arrive, a man had telephoned a newspaper seeking payment for information about a claimed assassination plan involving a sniper using a rifle with a telescopic sight. The man said the sniper would fire from a flat roof along the route of Kennedy’s motorcade between Dublin Airport and the city.
Though the call was suspected to be a hoax, then Irish police commissioner Daniel Costigan reported that all roofs on the route were scanned by police with binoculars travelling in the advance and escort cars with the motorcade.
"A rifle as well as Thompson guns and revolvers were carried for use against a possible sniper," Costigan said in a memo.
Five months after his Irish visit, Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald. He fired on the motorcade from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository on November 22 using a rifle fitted with a telescopic sight.–AFP