As to broader charges of criminality, he said much of what was bandied about the IRA was "so much nonsense."
"They say they are responsible for all the cigarettes stolen in Northern Ireland, all the fuel smuggling, even for driving up property prices. To me, the IRA is not responsible for a lot of the things," he said. The real issue, he said, is the lack of a political accord, which makes proper policing impossible.
Long a political factor in the six counties of British-ruled Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein had been on the rise in the Irish Republic to the south. A 2002 election lifted the party from one seat in the Irish parliament to five, with 6% of the vote, and it nearly doubled that in European parliamentary elections last year. Some think it could win a share of a coalition government some day.
Bew, the historian, who equates Sinn Fein with the IRA, believes the IRA's illegal activities have given Sinn Fein an overwhelming financial advantage over other parties.
"It really is Tony Soprano stuff -- if Tony had political ambitions," Bew said, referring to the television mobster.
Beyond politics, there is another kind of judgment the republican movement faces. Partly inspired by the example of the McCartney sisters, other families are stepping forward with their tales of IRA wrongdoing.
Among them is Eileen McGinley, 42, who said her family was warned not to make a scene at the trial of the man who was convicted of stabbing her son Jimmy to death in 2003.
Speaking in the living room of her row house in Derry, its window sills lined with statues of baby angels, she recounted how the family was ordered not to harm the defendant, convicted of manslaughter, when he got out of prison because he was an IRA member. Her son was a loyal Sinn Fein voter and the father of a 2-year-old. She fears the child will be scarred for life.
"He'll always know what happened to Jimmy, that a member of the IRA killed his father," she said. "He'll always have the hatred inside him, and it will never go away, no matter what we do."
Times special correspondent Ron DePasquale in Derry and Navan, Ireland, contributed to this report.
