When Bill Clinton testifies later this week at a congressional investigation into Jeffrey Epstein there is unlikely to be any reference to his most precious foreign policy achievement – helping to bring peace to Northern Ireland.
Whether Clinton is linked to Epstein’s predations or turns the tables on his inquisitors, his legacy in Northern Ireland might appear to stand apart, a jewel of his presidency that is immutable, enshrined in history.
It is not. The fallout from proximity to Epstein threatens to cast radioactive dust over the former president’s role in ending the Troubles and has already contaminated his Northern Ireland point man, the former Democratic senator George Mitchell, who brokered the Good Friday agreement.
With each release of Epstein files, Mitchell and, to a lesser extent, Clinton have lost admirers in a part of the world that rained honours on them for three decades.
“How should we react when we discover that someone, once accorded almost god-like status, turns out to have feet of clay?” the commentator Alex Kane asked in the Irish News, a Belfast daily. For the institutions and public figures that once feted Clinton and his envoy, it is an agonising question.
Good people can do bad things and bad people can do good things. You can be reviled that Bill was cozy with a pedo while also being thankful for however he helped bring about an end to the Troubles.
Hell, for all we know, Bill might have used his ties with Epstein to “force” leaders to accept the Good Friday Accords. Or Epstein might have used his knowledge of Bill’s proclivities to force Bill into a situation that helped one of his other powerful ties.