Show Notes
Stakeknife, real name Freddie Scappaticci, continues to be officially denied as a British agent by the Government. This is part of their Neither Confirm Nor Deny policy. Indeed the IRA itself is in denial over Scappaticci’s role, which was as a senior member of the provisionals' Internal Security Unit, responsible for rooting out IRA Volunteers who had been giving information to the RUC, Army or MI5. The methods employed by Scappaticci and fellow IRA members involved torture, and ended with shots to head, hence their nickname, the Nutting Squad.
A recent inquiry, Operation Kenova, concluded with the Head of the PSNI saying Scappaticci cost more lives than he saved. But, in that same report states he provided a VAST amount of intelligence much of which was valuable. He seemed primarily to be providing his Army handlers, the Force Research Unit, with information on what the IRA was thinking strategically. So, if much of his intelligence was valuable, that presented a complex moral challenge, particularly when one remembers there were dealing with a highly advanced insurgency that killed nearly 2,000 people during the Troubles, around 650 of whom were civilians.
But at the same time Scappaticci was, in some cases, torturing British agents himself. In addition, the same organisation, the FRU, ran another agent, Brian Nelson, within the loyalist UDA, and he was in the habit of providing addresses of suspected IRA members to his comrades, who would then pay them a visit and carry out murder and mayhem. He would obtain these details from the Army, and innocent civilians were killed, among them Patrick Finucane, a solicitor from West Belfast.
Joining today is John Ware, BBC man, Panorama presenter, and the man who broke the Omagh bombing story. He’s a highly respected journalist of the Troubles, interested in the moral compromises that had to be made during the conflict in Northern Ireland. He’s written a new book, Neither Confirm Nor Deny.
John Ware Links
Neither Confirm Nor Deny
Who Bombed Omagh? Panorama Documentary with John Ware
History Book Club Book List
Oliver Webb-Carter Links
Substack
Who Cares Who Wins?
Paean to Patrick Leigh Fermor
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