Former US president Mr Richard Nixon considered sending a celebrity self-help guru to Northern Ireland to heal divisions after Bloody Sunday, new White House tapes released to The Irish Times have revealed.
As well as sending Norman Vincent Peale, a TV celebrity and bestselling author of The Power of Positive Thinking, president Nixon also considered sending fundamentalist Protestant preacher Mr Billy Graham and the Catholic Cardinal of New York, Terence Cooke.
The tapes show how the Nixon administration strongly sided with the British government after Bloody Sunday but wanted to show that they were listening to the concerns of the then Taoiseach, Mr Jack Lynch.
In a conversation with US Secretary of State, Mr William Rogers, Mr Nixon twice said he did not want to embarrass the British and agreed not to support the Irish government's demands that troops be withdrawn from Catholic areas of Northern Ireland.
In another part of the tape, Mr Rogers told Mr Nixon that Mr Lynch wanted a meeting to discuss the aftermath of Bloody Sunday. Mr Nixon told him to tell Mr Lynch that he was busy with a trip to China.
During the conversation, on the day 11 Bloody Sunday victims were buried and the British embassy in Dublin was burnt down by protesters, Mr Rogers remarks that he will use the Irish crisis as "an excuse" to hold a press conference, during which he would attack the Democratic presidential candidate, Mr Edmund Muskie, for his stand on the Vietnam war.
The transcript forms part of the National Archive's gradual release of more than 2,000 hours of White House tapes secretly recorded by president Nixon.
It was given to The Irish Times by James C. Warren, a journalist and Nixon expert who is transcribing and interpreting hundreds of hours of Nixon tapes.
Last month, The Irish Times published the first half of the conversation, which originally took place between 8 p.m. and 8.09 p.m. on February 2nd, 1972. In the remaining excerpt, the president and Mr Rogers discuss what to do about the Irish crisis.
Nixon: What are they going to say?
Rogers: Well, in the first place, [Irish Taoiseach Jack] Lynch wants to come to visit you. And I don't think you should do that.
Nixon: Well, not now. We should say: "Look, we're totally committed until after we get through the China trip. We'll be glad to have him come then."