HILLARY Clinton's aides said she had grown "tired" of mentioning in speeches famously receiving an old teapot from women she met in a Belfast cafe two decades ago.
Declassified emails reveal advisers said Ms Clinton had cut the anecdote from a Stormont speech "because she thinks she's played it out".
Ms Clinton memorably met a group of Catholic and Protestant women - including celebrated peace campaigner Joyce McCartan - in the Lamplighter cafe on the lower Ormeau Road.
The then first lady was memorably given an old teapot by Ms McCartan during the visit to Belfast in 1995, which she used for brew-ups in the White House.
But in 2010 Ms Clinton's aides debated whether to include an anecdote about the Lamplighter meeting during preparations for a speech around St Patrick's Day.
"Jake tells me that you are tired of the Lamplighter story. I'm sorry, I didn't know," state department aide Megan Rooney told Mrs Clinton in an email.
Ms Rooney apologised for including the story in a speech, saying she would let another official know the story was "off limits for at least a few years".
However, it didn't seem to bother Mrs Clinton too much, who replied: "What is the Lamplighter story?"
Another aide refreshed her memory and said it was not necessarily "off-limits", but added: "She cut the Lamplighter example from her Stormont speech because she thinks she's played it out. Not sure how she'll feel about it in this speech."
The comments in 2010 are contained in the latest tranche of Ms Clinton's emails, released under US freedom of information laws.
Thousands of the presidential candidate's emails have been released after it emerged that she used a private server for government business when she was secretary of state.
Catholic woman Joyce McCartan lost numerous relatives during the Troubles, including her youngest son Gary in May 1987 when he was murdered in the family home by loyalist paramilitaries.
However, she rose above her grief to become a powerful worker for peace and cross-community reconciliation.
Ms Clinton met Ms McCartan and a small group of Protestant and Catholic women for a cup of tea in the Lamplighter drop-in centre in November 1995.
The meeting took place during a high-profile visit to Belfast with her husband and then US president Bill Clinton.
Just over a month after the visit Ms McCartan died aged 67. Ms Clinton paid tribute to her work for peace.
"Joyce's commitment and energy were an inspiration to me. The time I spent with her in Belfast will live on with me as a very special memory," she said.
The then US first lady returned to the north two years later to deliver the inaugural Joyce McCartan Memorial Lecture at the University of Ulster.
More than a quarter of Ms Clinton's work emails have now been released, after she provided the US State Department with 30,000 pages of documents last year.
Polls indicate that the email scandal has affected Ms Clinton's ratings, though she remains the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination in the 2016 presidential election.
