He inspired anger, sympathy, a hunger strike and threats of libel.
On March 3, Adamsons, a member of the Latvian Social Democratic Workers Party and a chairman of Parliament's investigation commission, appeared to receive his come-uppance when Riga's Zemgale District Court ruled he had served as a KGB border guard.
Adamsons, who has prodded and provoked fellow politicians in his quest for suspects and truth in an alleged pedophile ring, suddenly became a tainted politician, according to Latvian law.
Yet he has not stepped down as a politician, nor as chair of the investigation commission and he has no intentions to do so.
"I have never hidden that I was one of the border guards. In 1993-94, Parliament already made a decision that soldiers from the border guards are not the same as KGB officials. For these kind of soldiers and for me as well, there are no restrictions," said Adamsons.
He will not be appealing the court's ruling: In fact, he canceled the appeal two or three days after the decision was announced, according to Zemgale District Court Judge Janis Utans.
Instead, Adamsons sent the ruling directly to Parliament's Mandate and Submissions commission, which deals with matters of sitting MPs.
On March 21, the commission decided to ask the court for all its materials to get more information about Adamsons.
The deputies on the commission have not made a decision about Adamsons yet, said Edite Alksne, a commission consultant, but they can make a motion for expulsion or retention and send it to Parliament to be voted on.
She said at least 10 MPs outside the commission can also make a motion to expel or keep Adamsons, which will be considered by the commission.
Alksne said the process for Adamsons' removal could take anywhere from two to three weeks, once it began.
In one of just several ironies about the alleged pedophilia ring, Latvia's subsequent legal turmoil, a case with all questions and no answers, a politician determined to uphold the law may, in fact, be breaking it.
Janis Adamsons: Lawbreaker?
By 2000, Adamsons should have been intimately familiar with Parliament's Election Law as he was first elected as MP in 1995 as a member of Latvia's Way.
He left Latvia's Way for the Latvian Social Democrat Workers Party (LSDWP) in 1998 and was subsequently re-elected by the voters later that year.
If Adamsons could not have learned the law as a deputy, he certainly had a better chance for study as the Minister of Interior, a position which he held for more than a year in Latvia's sixth Parliament.
At least two provisions against an individual with KGB involvement becoming a candidate are clearly laid out in Parliament's Election Law.
For someone to even stand as a candidate for political office, their party must submit a list of documents including: "information whether the person has or has not collaborated with the USSR, the Latvian SSR or a foreign state security services (sic), intelligence or counter-intelligence services on a contractual basis or as an agent, resident or whether he/she has offered his/her apartment for clandestine activities."
Indeed, today or in the future, Adamsons' name would be struck from a party's list of candidates because of the recent judgment which ruled he was a KGB border guard.
The election law states that a court or another institution may strip a person of his candidacy if it proves the "candidate belongs or has belonged to the salaried staff of the USSR, the Latvian SSR, or a foreign state security, intelligence or counter-intelligence services."
Adamsons may have claimed the border guards were not part of the KGB, thus making him exempt, but others disagree.
"The court decision, in my opinion, is right," said Juris Dalbins, deputy chair of Parliament's Defense and Internal Affairs Commission. "We know how the KGB is: There were four main departments and one of them was the border guard."
Inese Voika, head of the Latvian branch of Transparency International, an organization that monitors government corruption, said Adamsons should now step down as MP: "He didn't appeal. He has to go."
She remembered that during the 1995 elections Adamsons was one of the central players in Latvia's Way, and nobody appeared to care about his links to the KGB back then.
"I'm not going to do anything," said Adamsons. "This case is political so it's up to politicians to decide whether the border guards are KGB officials or not."
But Voika said the court ruling on Adamsons presented a challenge for the rule of law in Latvia because all parties have claimed the country's laws apply to each person equally.
"Now the elite is in trouble because they translate (the law) one way five years ago, but they want to translate it differently today," said Voika. "These 100 people (the Parliament) should be the first ones to follow the law in Latvia."
She said there are two wrong sides here: the leadership of Latvia's Way who allowed Adamsons to run for Parliament in 1995 and Adamsons himself.
Who's KGB? Not me!
While acknowledging Adamsons should step down, Voika satvia for politicians to admit their past involvement with the KGB.
A draft law from the People's Party, which party leaders hoped would allow people to "come clean," was turned down by Parliament's Defense and Internal Affairs Commission at the beginning of March.
In fact, Adamsons suggested the court ruling was used as a weapon against him.
"From the beginning, this case was a political order, and it came from when I was working on the investigation commission on the Latvenergo case," he said about his work trying to track what happened to millions of lats that disappeared from the company in 1998.
"Already then, the investigation commission was warned that if we would work actively on this, action would be taken against us."
Adamsons said a similar campaign to allege KGB connections was used against his commission co-chair Latvia's Way MP Andrejs Pantelejevs.
So far there are only two former politicians who have admitted or are known to have KGB links: Georgs Andrejevs, the Latvian Ambassador to the European Council, formerly to Canada, and Juris Bojars, the chair of the Social Democratic party.
Andrejevs was a former Minister of Foreign Affairs, who, according to Voika, worked as a scientist writing reports after returning from conferences and admitted to knowing where his reports went.
Andrejevs was only a scientist, said Gunars Meierovics, a former member of Latvia's Way and currently with the World Free Latvians Federation, who alleged the current Parliament is full of former KGB informers.
Bojars is a former KGB officer who no longer sits in Parliament; he was elected to the Supreme Council, which declared independence and preceded Parliament.
He said he printed his involvement with the agency on his election placards during that election some years ago, speaking out about his involvement.
"It was well-known and announced without special legislation," said Bojars, referring to Parliament's Election Law.
But Bojars did not run for office in the 1993 election; Adamsons remains in Parliament, continuing to unfurl details about Minister of Justice Valdis Birkavs' connection to the alleged pedophile ring.
Dalbins said given the court ruling on March 3 and Latvia's law on elections, the public needs to see some kind of reaction from the government.
"No one said anything about this officially," he said. "It's necessary to do something in this because it's not very good to have a court decision and a not very clear picture after that."
Instead the public is left to contend with explosive but unsubstantiated claims about its prime minister's and justice minister's connections to an alleged
pedophile ring, a tidal wave of conspiracy theories and counter-theories, and an MP who may be holding himself above the law.
What Adamsons doesn't know
Throughout the last month when he made his accusations in Parliament, stood trial for his KGB involvement, and the court ruled against him, Adamsons maintained his stance.
Yet he has produced no proof of his claims that he unveiled on Feb. 17 to an audience of Western reporters.
"I don't know what kind of proof I still have to show, because as much as I've done, nobody else has done," said Adamsons.
"About legal proof, we can only talk when there will be a law about investigation commissions [allowing them to investigate criminal cases] which [Andris] Skele and [Valdis] Birkavs are trying to hold back."
He has not swayed from this argument for a few months now, lashing out against outgoing Prosecutor General Janis Skrastins.
The prosecutor's office does not want to investigate these cases of pedophilia, Adamsons said, which is why the commission is established.
He added the commission is completely free of politics, an idea few experts such as Voika can take seriously.
"Adamsons, in my eyes, he's the top politician in a bad sense that he can blame others for the same things he has done," she said.
In 1995, when Adamsons was Interior Minister, Voika said he attracted negative attention to Latvia when a group of refugees was shunted back and forth across the country in a train, along with an unsuccessful attempt to smuggle them into Russia.
According to Dalbins, Adamsons also has limited access to confidential and secret information as a member of the defense and internal affairs commission: Adamsons is asked to leave the room because he's never had clearance for this material.
Dalbins said he didn't know how Adamsons could continue to name people in the pedophilia investigation if he lacked access in another commission.
"You know, it is better to ask him. One possibility for me is to wonder how he knows."
Adamsons said he did have security clearance and since Dalbins is not a member of the investigation commission, he cannot know what kind of documents he has or does not have.
Dalbins' claim has been one of many against Adamsons in the last four weeks; harsher criticism has come from former MPs like Meierovics.
"I think [allegations of pedophilia] are from Moscow," said Meierovics. "It's so easy because you don't have any proof. Those little guys, if you give them five bucks, they'll tell you anything you want."
He said Adamsons made his revelations against Skele and Birkavs on Feb. 17 because there was a strong presence of diplomats and officials from the West and the European Union.
In fact, Meierovics said he was suspicious of Adamsons and Latvia's Way MP Edvins Inkens, who produced the original pedophilia story on LNT's "Nedela" last September, and warned Birkavs, who was foreign minister.
"I said, 'Don't trust these guys, they are funny, you know,'' he said, who admitted to despising Inkens, going so far to label him as former KGB.
Meirovics said both men are simply following orders from Moscow in an attempt to undermine Latvia.
"Nothing is happening (with pedophilia) but Adamsons and Inkens don't know how to get out of it," he said. "They did their job because this is absolute nonsense what they did."
Yet Adamsons does not care that, in his opinion, there are people conspiring against him which resulted in the court ruling.
No matter what his critics said he remained adamant that the alleged pedophilia ring is not a politically-created scandal.
"What's going on here is that if somebody who belongs to the political party is put in prison, we see political involvement," Adamsons said.
That political involvement is much too much for an MP who said he's been investigated seven times by the prosecutor's office in the last five years; who said leading politicians fear his return to the Interior Ministry; who said he wants an orderly state where there are strong ministers and a strong government against organized crime.
"Why was this [KGB] case against me? When this case will be solved, there will be another case against me, because on this case there are six prosecutors working against me, and I can be proud of this. None of the criminals have ever had six prosecutors working against them."
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