White House officials were reluctant for then US president Bill Clinton to be photographed shaking hands with Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams during a key cross-party event in Belfast when he visited in winter 1995.
New files released as part of the annual State Papers show that US officials were keen to avoid the situation at the event in honour of the US president at Queen's University Belfast on 30 November - with the handshake instead taking place on the side of the Falls Road during a separate event.
A letter from the Irish joint secretary of the Anglo-Irish Secretariat, David Donoghue, sent to Seán Ó hUiginn at the Anglo-Irish Division, said that "the Americans" originally wanted to hold the reception and "confine" it to 120 people.
He said the British side "insisted" that Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Patrick Mayhew should host it, which was agreed, and the guest list was expanded to 300 people.
"The ostensible intention is to enable the president to meet a wider range of people in Northern Ireland", he wrote on 28 November 1995.
"The real purpose, of course, is to de-emphasise the political nature of the occasion and to create a broader 'community' event which, the British calculate, will make it easier for unionists to attend alongside Sinn Féin."
Mr Donoghue said that the representatives would form "pods" at the reception - "a UUP pod, an Alliance pod, etc" determined on a "pro rata basis in light of respective electoral strengths".
"In other words, each will form a distinct cluster of people to whom the president will be introduced in turn (on the lines of Buckingham Palace receptions)."
He also said that Peter Bell from the Northern Ireland Office had indicated "the Americans would prefer to avoid a handshake photograph between the president and Adams".
He also said that while one-on-one meetings had been planned with John Hume in Derry and David Trimble in a car journey after the reception at Queens, there was a "general US reluctance" to meet one-on-one with Adams, Ian Paisley or John Alderdice.
"The general assumption, however, is that the president will take relevant individuals aside for separate private conversations on the margins of the reception."
President Clinton's Irish heritage 'a fantasy'
Meanwhile, related files also show other diplomatic difficulties during the visit, including a view from a genealogist in communication with the Irish government that claims of Mr Clinton's Irish heritage were "a fantasy".
Since Mr Clinton's rise to prominence, there have been repeated connections made between his ancestors and Co Fermanagh, mainly related to the family of his mother Virginia Cassidy.
However, files show genealogist Sean Murphy from Bray in Co Wicklow, undertook the task of tracing Bill Clinton's ancestry after "media dissemination of claims concerning the president's Irish ancestry which proved to be baseless yet were left uncontradicted by any authoritative source".
He told the Taoiseach’s office that the earliest trace of the president's maternal ancestors of this line is "probably" Zachariah Cassidy, born c1750-60 in South Carolina, and his son Levi.
"The Cassidy 'Clan' claim that the earliest ancestor was a Luke or Lucas Cassidy of Roslea, Co Fermanagh, appears to be based largely on fantasy," he wrote on 16 October, 1995, before going further:
"The biblical forenames Zachariah and Levi suggest a Protestant, and probably Presbyterian or Dissenter, as opposed to Catholic origin, and it is reasonable to speculate that the Cassidys would have been most likely to have emigrated to America from an Ulster county."
In notes of a meeting with the US embassy held three days later, Irish officials said that a planned stop off in Lismore in Co Fermanagh, was being dropped, but the White House was "still interested in using the Cassidy connection in a low-key way".
They said this could mean "casually passing a Cassidy premises", including a golf course and a pub.
Separate files also show Department of Foreign Affairs and White House officials discussed a number of specific questions relating to then first lady Hillary Clinton during the same visit, including "what length of dress she should wear at a government dinner" and a somewhat unexpected clash between the White House and The Late Late Show's timing.
In a file dated 21 November, 1995, Department of Foreign Affairs officials raised questions about the timing of events planned for Friday, 1 December, as Mr Clinton was due to make a public address in College Green, Dublin, that afternoon ahead of a State dinner at Dublin Castle that night.
The file noted: "The American side was fairly insistent that the 'downtime' in the evening should last until 7.45pm."
However, a DFA official "pointed out that, in order to have the speeches at the dinner covered live on the 9pm news on RTÉ", Mr Clinton and others would need to arrive at Dublin Castle by 7.30pm.
"The problem is that RTÉ will not put back The Late Late Show beyond 9.30pm," the document stated.
"The American side will get back to the White House to see if there is any flexibility on this point."
[Story based on documents 2025/166/11; 2025/124/3; 2025/124/5; 2025/124/391]
