POLICE warned Gerry Adams of a “credible” death threat just hours after he was released from custody.
Mr Adams said PSNI officers visited his home late on Sunday night to warn him of a “serious” threat from people police described as “criminals”.
The Louth TD added that the warning was passed onto his wife because he was not home at the time.
"That's the risk that I and others have to take, and are prepared to take, because the peace process is bigger than us,” he said of the threat.
"This is why we have to be very steadfast and resolute and patient as well."
The PSNI released Mr Adams without charge on Sunday evening. They had questioned him for 94 hours about the abduction, murder and secret burial of Jean McConville, as well as his alleged IRA links.
A file has been passed to prosecutors for the final decision to be made about whether the Sinn Fein President should be charged with an offence.
Mr Adams has always denied involvement in the McConville killing and IRA membership, speaking of a “malicious, untruthful and sinister campaign” against him after his release.
The death threat was first revealed by Sinn Fein justice spokesperson Raymond McCartney, who said the PSNI had passed on information about a “serious threat from criminals”,
Mr McCartney further described their warning as “credible”.
He added that the PSNI also visited the home of senior republican Bobby Storey to deliver the same warning.
A police spokesman said the force did not discuss the security of any individual.
It is not known whether the threats came from loyalists or dissident republicans, some of whom view Mr Adams as a traitor for renouncing the IRA’s armed struggle for a united Ireland.
Mr Adams claimed most of the evidence presented against him by police was based on allegations made by former paramilitaries who took part in an oral history project about the Troubles.
He denounced the Boston College project as “flawed from the beginning”, suggesting it had ignored the views of republicans who backed the peace process.
Last year, the PSNI won a legal battle to force the college to hand over sections of its archive relating to the McConville murder.
Boston College has now indicated that it is willing to return taped interviews to all those who participated in the project.
"Obviously we'd have to verify that they were the individuals that took part in the process,” said its spokesperson, Jack Dunn.
“If they wanted those documents returned, we'd be prepared to return those documents."
Mr Adams said he would welcome the return of the tapes and the end of the project “before the securocrats who cannot live with the peace seek to seize the rest of the archive and do mischief”.
Former IRA members Brendan Hughes and Dolours Price, both of whom are now dead, claimed in their interviews that Mr Adams had a role in ordering the murder of Mrs McConville in 1972.
An IRA gang dragged the mother-of-10 from her children at her west Belfast home in 1972 after she was accused of being a British informant – allegations later repudiated by the North’s police ombudsman, Baroness Nuala O’Loan.
Mrs McConville was interrogated and executed before being buried in secret. Her body was not recovered until 2003, when it was found on a beach in Co. Louth.
Criticising the Boston College project, Mr Adams said he did not know of any republican or Sinn Fein member supportive of the peace process who was included in it.
He further accused the project’s co-ordinators, Ed Moloney and Anthony McIntyre, of being “extremely hostile to myself, Sinn Fein, the peace process and the political process”.
