George J. Mitchell

August 20, 1933

Waterville, Maine

U.S. Senator from Maine and mediator

"Tonight we can say to the men of violence all across Northern Ireland, those whose tools are bombs and bullets: Your way is not the right way."

G eorge J. Mitchell brought long experience as a negotiator in the U.S. Senate to the thorny problem of terrorist violence in Northern Ireland. The same patience and skill that he used to persuade sharply divided politicians to agree on new legislation proved useful in the entirely different environment of terrorism.

The two diplomatic challenges Mitchell took on—the war between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland and the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians—had both been in progress for generations. Both had seen the use of terrorism as a leading weapon aimed against civilians in order to achieve political objectives. And both included intertwined ethnic and religious divisions that had defied resolution of the conflicts.

In the case of Northern Ireland, George J. Mitchell made a breakthrough. He persuaded both sides to observe a cease-fire and to begin negotiating a peaceful political resolution. In the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where Mitchell's assignment had a more limited scope—he headed an international commission established to write a report with recommendations on ways to create a peaceful settlement—his success also had a much more limited scope. Neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians enacted the recommendations before a new wave of terrorist violence and government crack-downs made peace seem more elusive than ever.

Childhood and youth

For a man who operated at the peak of power in Washington, D.C., as the Senate Majority Leader, George J. Mitchell came from modest circumstances. He was born in 1933, at the depth of the Great Depression, the son of George Mitchell and Mary Saad Mitchell. His father was a laborer; his mother a factory worker. His father's family had come from Ireland; his mother's ancestors were from Lebanon. Mitchell grew up and went to public school in Waterville, a small town in central Maine.

Mitchell graduated from Bowdoin College (1954), served in the Counter Intelligence Corps of the Army for two years, and graduated from Georgetown University's law school in Washington, D.C., in 1960. He remained in Washington, working as a lawyer for the U.S. Justice Department's Anti-trust Division, prosecuting companies that violated federal laws prohibiting monopolies or anti-competitive business practices. After two years, he took another job: executive assistant to Maine's Senator Edmund Muskie. It was a key turning point in Mitchell's career, which up to that point had been remarkable only insofar as the son of working class parents had already achieved success thanks to education.

Political career

Mitchell's job with Senator Muskie took him back to Maine, and put him in touch with leading Democrats throughout the state. In the next few years, Mitchell filled a succession of political posts, including:

• 1966–68, state chairman for the Maine Democratic Party, a part-time position while Mitchell worked for a private law firm.
• 1968, deputy director for Senator Muskie's unsuccessful vice presidential campaign with Senator Hubert Humphrey.
• 1969–77, Democratic national committeeman (representing Maine at the Democratic Party's national committee).
• 1972, Deputy director for Senator Muskie's campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.
• 1977–79, U.S. attorney for the state of Maine, selected by President Jimmy Carter.
• 1979–80, U.S. District Court judge.

In 1980, Senator Muskie became U.S. Secretary of State, and George Mitchell was appointed to fill the last two years of Muskie's term as senator. In 1982, Mitchell was elected to the Senate in his own right, and was twice reelected.

As a senator from Maine, Mitchell was particularly active in environmental and health care legislation—including the first major acid rain bill, reauthorization of the Clean Air Act, and federal funding to help clean up toxic waste, as well as the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Clinton administration's effort to provide universal health care. Mitchell was elected as the leader of the Democratic senators in 1989, and served as the majority leader until his retirement.

Peacemaker

In early spring 1994, Mitchell announced that he would not run for another term in November of that year. Shortly thereafter, Justice Harry Blackmun of the U.S. Supreme Court announced he planned to retire, and President Bill Clinton (1946–) offered to nominate Mitchell to be a judge of the court. Mitchell declined, however, intent on working to pass the President's universal health care initiative, with the goal of providing health insurance to all Americans. The effort ultimately failed.

Mitchell left government service in 1995 to practice law and serve on the board of directors of several leading corporations. But a year after he left the Senate, President Clinton asked him to undertake a daunting task: to help negotiate a peaceful settlement of the decades-long religious and political conflict in Northern Ireland. Mitchell was named a special advisor to Clinton and the Secretary of State, and in this role he wrote a report proposing steps to end conflict in Northern Ireland.

Accomplishments as a Senator

As a senator, and as the leader of the Democrats in the Senate, George Mitchell became closely associated with protecting the environment, among other causes. Highlights of laws that Mitchell championed during fourteen years as a senator include:

• Superfund, establishing a fund that helped pay for damages resulting from factories releasing dangerous chemicals into the environment.
• Campaign Finance Reform, an ongoing effort to reduce the influence of wealthy corporate and private contributors to political campaigns.
• Criminal Law Reforms (1984), a major overhaul of federal criminal law. Mitchell served as a strong liberal voice in the Senate; he particularly worked to bar the government from using evidence obtained illegally in trials.
• Clean Water Act of 1987, which over-rode President Ronald Reagan's veto (rejection) of a law that would require federal action to maintain clean water.
• Minimum Wage Act 1989, raising the minimum legal wage for the poorest workers.
• North American Wetlands Conservation Act of 1989, preserving lakes, ponds, streams, and rivers used by migrating birds.
• Clean Air Act of 1990, aimed at reducing air pollution and at cleaning up environmental damage caused by acid rain, among other sources.
• Child Care and Development Act, in which the federal government would help to pay for day care facilities offered by state governments to working parents.
• Civil Rights Bill of 1991, extending federal civil rights protection to victims of all forms of harassment and discrimination, whether based on race, gender, religion, or physical disability.
• Brady Bill, establishing the first federal waiting period to buy a gun.
• Universal Health Care, an unsuccessful attempt sponsored by President Bill Clinton to obtain federal funding to provide health care to all Americans.

Mitchell's job was to help three warring sides get together: the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and it's political party, Sinn Féin, representing Northern Ireland's minority Roman Catholics who wanted to unite with the Irish Republic in the south and break away from Britian; the British government, which had been trying to maintain peace over more

than two decades of constant terrorist violence; and the Unionists, Protestants in Northern Ireland who insisted on maintaining the province's relationship as a part of Britain, rather than join the Irish Republic.

Mitchell's task was made doubly difficult because the conflict between the two communities in Northern Ireland combined religion with economics and politics. The Catholics in Northern Ireland felt they had long been the victims of job and economic discrimination by Protestants in Northern Ireland. (Northern Ireland, composed of the northern six counties of Ireland, is also known as Ulster.) The Protestants feared that if Ulster were to unite with the Irish Republic, the Protestants would then become a minority, subject to the same discrimination that the Catholics said they had suffered.

Overshadowing these issues were many years of terrorist attacks by both sides that had created strong resentments and a desire on the part of some for revenge. Mitchell began his negotiations in an atmosphere in which mutual trust was nonexistent.

Despite these odds, in January 1996 Mitchell called on both sides to agree to a cease-fire and to disarm gradually. Two years later, in April 1998, the IRA, the Northern Ireland Protestants, and the British government and the Irish Republic (brought into the negotiations as well, since unification of Northern and southern Ireland was long an issue in the conflict) signed an agreement that was put up for a public vote the following month. In that vote, over 70 percent of the voters in Northern Ireland endorsed the Mitchell peace agreement, as did over 90 percent of the voters in the Irish Republic.

Mitchell received the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country's highest honor for a civilian, as well as many awards for his work in Ireland.

On to the Middle East

Having succeeded in bringing closure to a conflict that had lasted for most of the twentieth century, Mitchell was asked by President Clinton in mid-2000 to turn his attention to the conflict in the Middle East, between Israel and the Palestinians.

Israel had been founded in 1948 as a homeland for Jews, who had been targeted by the German military during World War II (1939–45). An estimated six million Jews were killed during that time, known as the Holocaust, and the United Nations, originally formed as an international peace-keeping body, hoped the state would provide a safe haven for Jews. Israel was carved out of Palestinian-claimed land, however, and with the creation of the country and in a series of wars following, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had been driven from their homes and forced to find refuge in other Arab countries. The Israeli-Palestinan conflict has resulted in bloody terrorist attacks for decades.

Mitchell's role in the Middle East was somewhat more limited than his role in Northern Ireland. In the Middle East he was the chairman of a fact-finding committee whose job was to examine the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. The committee released its report in May 2001, calling on Israel and the Palestinians to take concrete steps to restart peace talks.

The report urged the Palestinians to "make clear through concrete action to Palestinians and Israelis alike that terrorism is reprehensible and unacceptable" and asked them to promise to try to prevent terrorist acts and punish terrorists.

On the Israeli side, the report called on Israel to stop new settlements from being built on land won by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War.

Despite the prestige of George Mitchell, there was no immediate move by neither Israel nor the Palestinians to adopt the steps recommended in his committee's report. Instead, violence between the two sides continued to escalate.

After issuing the report, Mitchell left public life and pursued a career as a lawyer and businessman.

For More Information

Books

Mitchell, George J. Making Peace. New York: Knopf, 1999.

Mitchell, George J. Not for America Alone: The Triumph of Democracy and the Fall of Communism. New York: Kodansha International, 1997.

Mitchell, George J. World on Fire: Saving an Endangered Earth. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1991.

Periodicals

"Dinner with George: How a Bit of Personal Diplomacy Helped Get the Good Friday Peace Agreement Back on Track." Time International, November 29, 1999, p. 20.

"Mitchell, George John," Current Biography, April 1989, p. 40.

"Peace Comes Dropping Slow: Hopes for the Deadlocked Negotiations Are Now Focused on Former U.S. Senator George Mitchell." Time International, September 13, 1999, p. 22

"Yes to a Ceasefire, No to a Halt on Settlements: Israel and the Palestinians: Ceasefires and Settlers in the Middle East." The Economist, May 26, 2001, p. 1.