Lunch With the FT: 52 Classic Interviews (23 page)

McGuinness looks around: he was born and bred in the nearby Bog-side area. Everyone knows him. There are nods and handshakes.

‘Your face is familiar,’ McGuinness says to me. Indeed, we had met before. The last occasion was on a miserable March afternoon in 1988 at a cemetery in West Belfast. Three IRA terrorists shot dead by SAS soldiers in Gibraltar were being buried and I was there to cover the story.

As the first coffin was being lowered into the ground a loyalist terrorist threw hand grenades and started shooting. Lying on the ground, I saw the face of Gerry Adams a few feet away, his glasses askew.

McGuinness was up on his feet, directing operations.

Adams is considered to be the brains behind Sinn Féin. McGuinness has always had the reputation of a man of action – he is said to be regarded as good officer material by some in the British Army.

The food arrives. Dominic has ordered roast beef, McGuinness chicken casserole and I have the fish. People in Northern Ireland are not known for a healthy diet. McGuinness upends the salt cellar on his chicken. The conversation becomes serious.

He says the British government is now putting forward very different proposals on the peace process. ‘If it had done that 18 months ago then so many deaths could have been avoided.’ He lists each recent incident, from Canary Wharf to the murders last month by the IRA of two Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) men.

‘You seem always to blame someone else for the murders and bombings,’ I say. ‘Don’t you ever take responsibility?’

‘We are all part of the problem,’ says McGuinness. ‘At least the IRA admitted responsibility for the deaths of those two policemen. It’s something the British Army and RUC never do.’

So does that make it all right? I ask. People can be murdered but, as long as you admit it, everything is fine? I find my voice has risen. My fish is getting cold.

McGuinness is totally calm. ‘I’m not justifying what happened to those policemen or other tragic events but you’ve got to understand the feelings of neglect and exclusion of people in the nationalist community. It’s to do with levels of hurt and anger.’

McGuinness claims reporting of events in Northern Ireland is often selective. The deaths of the two policemen last month were met with a lot of media hysteria, he says.

A wafer-thin man comes up to shake the hand of the chief Sinn Féin negotiator. ‘This here is a player of the uilleann pipes,’ says McGuinness. The man looks embarrassed. ‘I taught him to play the tin whistle when we were in Crumlin Road jail together in 1976.’

But I want to get back to talking about the man from the Bogside. Why has so little been written about him?

‘The two greatest influences on my life have been the British Army and the RUC,’ says McGuinness. There is a slight smile. The eyes twinkle.

I bring up the question of credibility. Who am I talking to? The IRA or Sinn Féin? Surely they are one and the same thing.

McGuinness is unruffled. ‘You might never trust me,’ he says. ‘I might never trust you. But we have to find a way forward. We have to break the cycle. And I vehemently refute your allegation that the leadership of the IRA and Sinn Féin are interconnected.

‘I don’t speak for the IRA. People try to demonize Gerry Adams and me, to marginalize us. That’s the road to nowhere and to more confrontation. Look at the election results. Look at how many people voted for Sinn Féin. They voted for our analysis of what’s happening. You can’t turn them into second-class citizens by denying them a voice.’

We have finished eating. I look over McGuinness’s shoulder. Who is watching us? Is he concerned for his safety?

‘It’s something I don’t get up in the morning worrying about. I’m careful, not foolish. I can still go off trout fishing alone.’

I ask if he ever regrets becoming so involved in events. ‘Sometimes I want to grab my fly rod and just go away but I’m a republican first and foremost. What motivates me now is that I can help bring about a settlement.’

He talks of taking risks for peace. I wonder where the threats come from – the loyalists or his own side.

Is the reason he does not condemn the IRA that, if he did so, he would be killed by an IRA bullet in the morning?

There is a slight pause. ‘Ritualistic condemnations are pointless,’ he says. ‘I go beyond condemning by the work I’m doing. Look at the way the unionist politicians condemn the killing of nationalists. I can’t believe they are sincere. Their condemnations are not worth tuppence to me or to most people in the nationalist community.’

We have coffee. I say I can’t understand what Sinn Féin and the IRA are about. To most people in both the north and south of Ireland the idea of unity is irrelevant. They just want to get on with their lives in peace. ‘The southerners don’t want you. You are trouble,’ I venture.

McGuinness points to recent Sinn Féin election successes on both sides of the border. People in the south have shown their support. Even in Britain he finds many people agree with him. ‘What is going on has caught the world’s imagination.’

I say we must live on different planets. Most people I meet, in Ireland or Britain, just wish Northern Ireland and its problems would go away.

The photographer arrives. Dominic tells me McGuinness hates photos. The waitress jokes with him. No doubt about it: the Sinn Féin man is a charmer. His answers are as practised as those of an old-style politburo official.

But after two hours’ conversation I can’t say I feel any more optimistic about the future of Northern Ireland.

The day this article was published, the IRA declared a ceasefire.

4 DECEMBER 1999

The
FT
is invited to the office of the world’s best policeman but finds that success has its price

By Adam Thomson

Would lunch at police headquarters be all right? It’s for security reasons, you understand.’ Oh dear. Over-cooked vegetables and indigestible carbohydrates sprang to mind. I felt queasy.

But what were the options? Insisting on a civilian venue for a meeting with General Rosso José Serrano, Colombia’s top cop, recently selected as the world’s best policeman by US attorney-general Janet Reno and a panel of international judges, would have meant lunch for 17: the two of us plus 15 heavily armed, moustachioed, barrel-chested bodyguards. I doubted my credit card could keep up with their appetites.

‘Yes, OK, the headquarters,’ I conceded. The headquarters are in an uninteresting administrative district of Bogotá, close to the centre.

Serrano, having led one of the largest raids on drug lords in Colombia just a few days before, looked sprightly and focused. So how did it go? I asked.

‘It was perfect, right down to the last detail. We captured all the 31 drug traffickers we had set out to get. Before we struck, I told myself that even if we had got half of them, it would have been a resounding success,’ he says.

The operation, dubbed ‘Millennium’, was indeed a marvel of preparation and timing. More than a year of meticulous planning with local and international authorities, including the CIA and FBI, had dismantled
the country’s largest drug syndicate, responsible for exporting 30 tons of pure cocaine to the US every month.

‘The ringleaders are as important as any drug traffickers Colombia has produced,’ he said, ushering me into his office.

Operation Millennium was the latest in a series of arrests that Serrano, director of the national police force, has led against organized crime – particularly against drug trafficking – which has turned him into a national folk hero.

In the early 1990s, he masterminded an operation which toppled the infamous Medellín drugs cartel. And in 1996, he captured all the leaders of the Cali Cartel, responsible for exporting an estimated 80 per cent of Colombia’s cocaine production, the largest in the world.

But Serrano’s fame as the world’s most successful hunter of drugs barons was secured in 1993 when, as head of Colombia’s anti-narcotics police, he helped corner Pablo Escobar, the most famous and ruthless of the country’s traffickers. Escobar never made it to prison: after Serrano’s men found him by intercepting a telephone conversation, he died in a hail of bullets as he tried to flee across tiled roof tops.

‘More than joy, I felt immense relief that day,’ he said. ‘Escobar was one of the most wanted criminals in the world at that time. He ordered the assassination of the three leading candidates for the 1990 presidential elections, two bombing campaigns which killed hundreds of innocent people, and the blowing up of a passenger flight in which 107 people died.’

We were sitting at a round table in Serrano’s office that had been covered for the occasion with a white linen cloth. A glass of water and a small plate garnished with a napkin lay on the table. It looked improvised.

Did Serrano feel he was fighting a losing battle in the war against drugs, given the constant emergence of new cartels?

‘New cartels do spring up, but if we didn’t do anything there would be at least five Pablo Escobars today. It is the same with our crop-spraying campaigns. Illicit crops have more than quadrupled in the last few years, but if we didn’t spray at all we would now have 500,000 hectares of coca instead of 100,000.

‘Having said that, you have to admit that Colombian ingenuity knows no limits. The other day, we discovered a shipment of cocaine hidden in the stems of roses which had been hollowed out.

‘The problem is that we are the ones who have volunteered the lives and the money to fight drugs so far. Until the international community begins to collaborate more, it is difficult to see the end of production in Colombia.’

We had been talking for more than 45 minutes, and there was no sign of waiter or food. I broached the subject by asking whether he always ate at this table.

‘Never. This is where I chat with the people I arrest. All of the biggest drug traffickers have sat in that chair where you are sitting now. I take their handcuffs off, give them a glass of water and talk with them. It is something I started doing during the arrests of the Cali cartel.’

I looked over at the glass of water before me and began to feel my shirt collar tighten. Still no sign of lunch.

‘I always post some of my men by the window to stop them from jumping. You can never tell what they’ll do.’ He had not taken the same precaution with me.

‘The idea of talking to them on a one-to-one basis is to get into their minds. The thing is that they are all very shallow. They are uneducated, drink too much and spend their time with different women. There is never any desire for self-improvement.

‘Take Pablo Escobar. He had all the money in the world, and he died rich. What for?’

Serrano’s strong, earthy values were showing through: peasant values rooted in the era before the drugs economy eroded large chunks of the country’s social fabric. He is – as a local phrase goes – a man who calls things by their true name.

Surely, though, the Rodríguez Orejuela brothers – leaders of the Cali cartel and considered more shrewd and calculating than the confrontational Escobar – were more philosophical about life. After all, Miguel Rodríguez was known as The Chessplayer.

‘No, they’re all the same. They just throw away their money on stupidities.’

He was right. I had visited Escobar’s country residence several years before – a 7,000–hectare playground filled with life-sized models of dinosaurs, a private zoo complete with rhinos, elephants and a Tibetan yak, and solid gold fittings in the bathrooms.

Finally, a waiter appeared with a silver tray. It was another bad sign.
Too much pomp in Colombia invariably means the food will be disappointing. He delivered a salad of diced vegetables and a small metal vessel containing a typical broth made with rice. It was surprisingly good.

Serrano’s uniform, an unfortunate palette of institutional greens, was moulded to his body like a second skin. Did he ever wear anything else?

‘I don’t even have any civilian clothes,’ he admitted. ‘I went to London recently and had to buy some shirts and trousers specially for the trip.’

The waiter returned almost immediately, armed with a tall glass of fresh passion-fruit juice and yet another silver platter, this time prawns in a creamy garlic sauce on a bed of iceberg lettuce. On the side, there were some fried and salted Creole potatoes, cherry-sized, round and yellow. The portly Serrano was struggling with the main course.

I asked whether hunting the world’s most dangerous criminals made him fear for his life.

‘Both my family and I are heavily protected. But being a policeman here is dangerous.’

Serrano talked of the days when Escobar placed a $2,000 price tag on every policeman’s head. As a result, the city of Medellín lost 500 officers in 1989 alone.

‘I’ve been to more funerals than anyone else on Earth. One day there were 15 coffins lined up in the chapel. They hardly fitted in. It’s uncomfortable having so much security, but ultimately you either get used to it or you get killed.’

So just how many bodyguards did he need to ensure his own safety? I asked.

‘About 50, including the ones at the house.’

I tried to look unfazed. It would have been quite an escort to be accommodated by any restaurant. Yes, the police headquarters had definitely been the sensible choice.

31 AUGUST 2012

The TV host who has transformed herself from Russia’s Kim Kardashian to an activist tells the
FT
about Putin, politics and her part in the country’s protest movement

By Courtney Weaver

We are nearing the end of our two-course supper at Moscow’s swanky Tverbul restaurant when my guest, socialite and TV host Ksenia Sobchak, has an urgent request: she needs to borrow my phone.

This is strange for two reasons. The first is that Sobchak’s iPhone is lying right in front of us on the table. The second is that it is working. I know this because for the past hour she has been on it constantly, using it to send half a dozen tweets, to answer three phone calls and to take a photograph of me, the interviewer, for posterity.