← The Rest Is Classified
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- [00:04]
A
For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad free listening, early access to series first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter and discounted books. Join the Declassified club@the restisclassified.com. How do you protect an undercover agent inside a group like the ira? And how do you decide who lives and who dies? Well, welcome to the Rest is classified. I'm David McCloskey.
- [00:38]
B
And I'm Colton Carrera.
- [00:40]
A
And we are looking at Freddie Scappatici, the agent known as Steak Knife who has been recruited by British army intelligence run by a group called the Force RA Research Unit. He's the number two in the IRA's internal security unit, the counterintelligence team that are interrogating suspected traders. They decide who lives and who dies inside the IRA during the Troubles. But we left off last time, Gordon, I think with this massive question which really, I think it's the heart of this, this series, this examination of Steak Knife and his role in this intelligence war during the Troubles of how do you run a really, really valuable agent who's also doing absolutely despicable things and in this case interrogating, torturing and in some cases murdering citizens of the United Kingdom? And so we have this kind of question, I think at the heart of things. And Steak Knife, when we left off last time, is being run by the army in the middle of the Troubles.
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B
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A
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B
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B
That's right. I mean it does involve huge both moral and practical complexities which we're going to dive into in this episode particularly. First of all, I mean, we should establish what this internal security unit or the Nutting squad, which we should remind people who don't know the nut is the term for people's head and they used to shoot people in the head. So hence they got this term of nutting people and called the nutting squad. That was their job. Scapatici, early 80s is number two in it. It's worth just establishing just what it got up to because here from the Canova report is the official verdict. Members of the isu, the internal security unit, were responsible for torture, inhumane and degrading treatment and murder, including of children, vulnerable adults, those with learning difficulties and those who were entirely innocent of the claims made against them. Confessions to being agents, whether in audio recordings or in writing, were obtained through violence or deception and by making false promises to victims. So you get a sense there. And they talk about the activity, including physical beatings with iron bars, hammers, also shooting of some victims in their legs, elbows, knees or feet when they're involved in lower level kind of crime or antisocial behavior as opposed to the execution you get if you're an informer for the British. And of course the complexity of this, as we established last time, is, is that the British state knows these things are going on from their agent inside Scappertici steak knife and that steak knife is actually carrying out these acts. And they sometimes know when someone is under suspicion. So they know in advance when these things happen. Because we, you know, we saw last time, Scapaticci is in pretty regular contact with his handlers, isn't he? He's meeting them and on the phone to them quite a lot all the time.
- [04:55]
A
I mean, it's almost, it's near constant communication. The handlers know exactly what's going on.
- [05:00]
B
Yeah, and I think what's also even more complicated is when you're getting to these situations where Scappardici is interrogating people, sometimes the people really are informers for the British state and sometimes they're not. Some of those alleged to be agents working for the British state are actually being accused of that because of internal factional disputes within the ira. I mean, what better thing to do than accuse someone else of being an informer? Or you get a clash over a criminal activity which the IRA is also involved in. And you know, in some occasions it's even said that you get someone accused of being an informer because one person is trying to eliminate someone else because of having an affair with that person's wife and because of extramarital relationships. So you've got a kind of really complicated situation here about the people who are being interrogated by Scappatici for Different things.
- [05:56]
A
I think here there's really three things that are happening. The first one is that there are murders that are committed by agents of the state. So there are cases here where one agent murders another agent. Right. And also rolled up into this are that agents do things that sort of go beyond or directly contradict the orders given to them by their handlers. The, there's also the murder of alleged agents, including some of the victims weren't agents at all, but there's nothing done to stop them. And then there are cases where actually the violence, the murder could have been prevented. So the British army, the fru, the Forest Research Unit may have actually had forewarning, they may have had intelligence that someone was going to be killed, but they didn't act on that to prevent the burner for fear of exposing Scapatici. Steak knife or another agent inside the ira.
- [07:00]
B
Yeah, and I mean, you get to this really kind of complicated question. If you're the British, the intelligence running him, you know what if he is going to murder someone who is one of your agents, is that okay? Because you're trying to protect Scappatici and if you don't let him do it, it might expose him. The truth is no low level agent is going to be as valuable as Scapatici. So do you sacrifice someone who is really one of your agents in order to preserve Scapatici in place? Because there's certainly a hierarchy. I mean, they've got lots of informers, the British, from kind of low level drivers up through to people in senior positions in the IRA who are kind of strategic assets. Do you let someone who is effectively innocent of being one of your informers, but who therefore is an IRA person be killed? Are you happy about that? Is that okay? So you kind of encourage that because in your view they are an IRA member. I mean, you just start thinking, don't you, David, about the kind of complexities of this. And you have this additional issue that you mentioned, which is that steak knife isn't always under your control. It's not like he'll always do what you want him to do or you're always able to tell him what to do.
- [08:10]
A
I was trying to think of what a direct comparison might be in the US today. And the closest I could get would be if the FBI, most likely be the FBI were running a source who's an American citizen, like a confidential informant inside a drug cartel or inside an organized crime syndicate. And as part of their job they had to commit violent crime against other American citizens. And in this case, the direct parallel would be if the FBI had forewarning of this. You know, in some cases where you have an American citizen who is going to kill other American citizens, and the security service law enforcement actually knows in advance that this is going to happen and decides in some cases not to intervene because of the value that the source is, you know, providing or may provide in the future, would that happen? You could make the case that it kind of happened like in the Whitey Bulger case at the FBI, where his handlers did know, in some cases, it seems that he was committing murder and allowed it to happen. I think the difference is that in that case, those handlers were effectively corrupted by Whitey Bulger.
- [09:38]
B
Wow.
- [09:39]
A
And eventually, in the end, spoiler alert, there won't be a lot of accountability on the part of the British state for what happens with Steak Knife, whereas in the Whitey Bulger case, he goes to prison and his handlers do as well. So there are some key differences. Yeah, but, but, you know, it was interesting because I put the question to a couple FBI special agents of, you know, would there be an incident where, because you can get waivers for your confidential informants committing crimes? Like, that's a, That's a thing you could get. You can get that at the CIA if you're running an asset inside a terrorist organization and they're. They're providing material support to that organization. Like, there are ways to get things wavered in extended circumstances. But it was interesting, like, you know, this direct question of would the FBI allow a confidential informant to commit murder? I couldn't. I honestly couldn't get a clear answer. Now, small sample size, I think it'd be an absolutely extreme case. And there is a process which is different from the snake knife one, but that's kind of the, that'd be the, the American frame for this today.
- [10:43]
B
Yeah. And I guess that the, The. The context is worth saying. I mean, it's. We're in what people would see different ways of seeing it. Civil war, insurgency, counter terrorism, operation going on within the country, as opposed to just normal criminality, if you like, even if you want to call drugs and Mafia normal criminality. But, you know, there is a different context there, which I think to some extent explains it. But let's drill down a little bit more into kind of some of the cases, because I think you really only understand it when you get to some of the cases, and we'll get to some specific named cases in, in a bit. But the Canova inquiry, which is the official Inquiry Interstate Knife does actually give some accounts of cases which are useful because even though they're anonymized, they've been investigated by the authorities. So we can be pretty confident about them because there are other cases where it's a bit more murky what state Knife's role was. But in one case, Internal Security Unit of the IRA starts an investigation after suspicions raised that someone was an alleged agent for the ruc, the police Special Branch Steak Knife is fully involved in the investigation and informs his through handlers that the victim had been abducted and taken to the Republic of Ireland for interrogation. He Steakknife would be involved in the interrogation and would have access to a firearm, and highly likely the victim would be shot if found guilty. The victim's ordeal during interrogation is set out in detail in the through records of Steak Knife's debriefings. Steak Knife played a central role in securing an alleged confession from the victim and was involved in his court martial. The handlers were aware that consideration was being given to the murder of the victim. During the interrogation, Special Branch was supplied with information to the victim's whereabouts and who was involved. The fruit was aware of the escalating threat to the victim, and the RUC Special Branch failed to pass on information to the Irish police so they could attempt a rescue, apparently in the mistaken belief that the victim would not be shot. He was. So that gives you a sense of the kind of narrative. But I think what's useful about that is you get a sense that the. The fruit are being told about it as it's underway and the decisions are being made about whether to pass it or not. And just one more point on that, which I think is interesting, is that what it means is that after the murder takes place, the Special Branch of the IUC know who was involved in the abduction, interrogation and murder. And what they don't do is pass it on to their fellow police officers from the Criminal Investigations Department who are investigating the murder. So this is one of the problems of the case. You have one bit of the RUC who are investigating a murder because it's a criminal act, but another part, the Special Branch who are not telling them that they actually know who was involved in the murder and who did it, meaning the crime is going to go unsolved and unpunished, because obviously they are prioritizing, protecting the agent rather than investigating the crime.
- [13:39]
A
And to drill down a little bit into this, you know, we talked to the last episode about how the British army and, you know, and essentially the security services that were operating in Northern Ireland did have a wide variety of, like, technical penetrations of the IRA as well. And how in some cases, there were efforts made to prevent these kind of killings if they could get the intelligence from, you know, some form that wasn't. Steak Knife wasn't a human.
- [14:13]
B
Yeah.
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A
And it does make me wonder if in some of these cases, and I'm not sure if it's true in this specific case, if part of the thought process, because I'm just trying to put myself at the mindset of, you know, steak knives handlers who are getting this information, seeing this in real time, and trying to figure out what to do with it. If there's a pretty grim calculation that gets made that says the only source we have for this is Freddy's Cappaticci. And if you're sole sourced on this thing and then you go in and you prevent this from happening, or later on you arrest the people who are involved. Maybe not in one case, but if the cumulative effect of that over not even a very long period of time would be that you lose the agents. And I'd have to think that there's just. There's no incentive on the part of the. The FRU handlers. You don't want to be the handler that loses Steak Knife. Yeah, that's a career killer all the way up the chain. If you. If the guy you have who's providing you with all this great intel on the IRA decides, or you end up getting him killed because you're. You're trying to save one person. Right. But you're trying to save someone who's a member of the ira. You know, you're the fruit handlers. You're like, no way. No way.
- [15:32]
B
Yeah. I think you've hit on the kind of. Kind of moral conundrum which is at the heart of this. And to some extent, you're right. The Brits are thinking to themselves, well, the people who are being killed in some cases are IRA anyway. And also I think there's probably a view which is, well, if scappatici. If Steak Knife doesn't pull the trigger, someone else will. So, you know, these people are probably dead anyway. So the fact that our agent is the one to pull the trigger or to be involved in the murder doesn't change the fact this person may die. And it preserves his position and his credibility in the organization. So those are the kind of very dark. Let's not pretend that they're not dark calculations which are being made in this case.
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A
Do we have any sense from Anything that has come out as part of the CANOVA investigation or otherwise, that there was any kind of process inside the FRU for thinking through these kind of questions, or is that just black box?
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B
Well, I think it goes up to this tcg, the kind of group which is the kind of decision making group about how to act on the through intelligence. And I think they are the ones who are going to be trying to work that out. And I think you're also right that they may be thinking like, is this single sourced? What are the costs? What are the benefits on every case? They're kind of thinking about balancing those things and trying to work it out. But all of it does mean that murders are taking place with the knowledge of the security forces and those responsible are not being investigated. And I do think you get to, I'm sure we'll come back to this at the end, kind of complicated questions about culpability because we should be clear, it is the IRA's Army Council which is giving the death sentence for these people. They're making the decision. But what they don't realize is that there's actually a group of British soldiers, police and intelligence officers who are kind of above them or outside them to some extent who are then deciding, well, are we going to do anything about that to stop that death sentence being carried out? And they're going to have to make some decisions about that. But I do think it does go back to this question about protecting the source. I think that is the big question which they've got because I think there are points at which Scappatici is going to come under suspicion potentially for being, or at least there's going to be suspicion about touts, about informers somewhere and in different places in the organization.
- [18:01]
A
And he does have some close calls. There's a story from Richard O Ra's book Steak Knives Dirty War that I think illustrates at kind of the granular human level, the kind of game that Scapatici is playing. And O raw writes, In 1982 markets, resident Marion McCullen was working in the kitchens of the five star Culloden Hotel in Hollywood County Down. Did I pronounce all of that correctly, Gordon, by the way?
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B
I think we'll go with that.
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A
We'll go with that. It's close enough. It should say it's. It's how it looks like it should be pronounced. I'll just say that, yeah. All right, back to the story. At one morning at 5:45, she was walking through the car park to go to work when Someone caught her eye. Is that Freddie Scap? She asked herself at this time in the morning. She continued to stare. It was Freddie and he was engrossed in conversation with two men who had long hair. She found it unusual that he would be having a meeting in a car park that early in the morning. They look like branch men, she said of the two men who were conferring with him. I'm from the markets. I know what Special Branch look like. Do they look like they. They have long hair, Gordon.
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B
Yeah, I know. I found that interesting, isn't it?
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A
That seems surprising to me. I would expect them to be clink up.
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B
Yeah. Maybe at this time they were trying
- [19:15]
A
to blend in, growing their long hair like an Irish Republican. These two look like ordinary men, but they weren't. One had an anorak and the other had a three quarter length coat. I just knew they were branch men. After work I told my partner who was in the RAW that they were branch men and he told me to wise up. But they were branch men. Nobody will tell me different. So spotted and just nobody could quite believe it, you know. And so she was dismissed.
- [19:45]
B
Yeah. Which goes back. It's interesting, isn't it, to this issue that the towns and the cities of Northern Ireland are. It's a small, small community and therefore the risks are quite large that people will spot each other. And you know, there are other moments as well where people do seem to suspect Scappa Ticci and particularly the South Armagh branch of the IRA do seem to have suspicions about him at the Belfast where he's, you know, primarily based, they stand by him. And it's interesting because this goes back to the. Our earlier discussion. One of the reasons they don't seem to suspect him is because of what he's willing to do. Because one of the ways the IRA sought to test if someone was maybe an agent, a tout, was to get them to kill someone. And of course if you refuse it, it's suspicious. And so this is the way of making sure you were loyal. But it's based on an assumption. And the assumption is that the British would not let one of their agents be involved in murder. I know. I mean, this is what's so interesting, that the IRA actually underestimated the ruthlessness of British military intelligence. Richard o' Rourke says this. He says the fatal flaw in this thinking was the erroneous if unspoken belief that the security forces occupied the high moral ground and would never allow one of their informers to willingly take a life. But at least one informer did. So it's really interesting that, isn't it? I think as an example of why Scapatici survives because of how far they let him go, how far the authorities allow him to do things, you know, so they are working quite carefully to manage those risks. But fundamentally it's because of what he's doing that they're prioritizing, keeping him going.
- [21:22]
A
And his fruit handlers are protecting him by, you know, in some cases, not using his intelligence to intervene and to save lives. But I guess as we move through the 1980s, protecting steak knife, deciding who lives and who dies is going to get even harder and it'll eventually force Scappatici Steak Knife to disappear.
- [21:47]
B
Yeah. So, you know, in the mid-80s, Scapatici is working on building sites by day, which is interesting, and playing a bit of five a side football, but mainly working for the ira. But he's actually going to rise in importance because around 1984, he's put in overall charge of the ISU, the Security Unit. As John Joe McGee steps back from that role, interestingly enough, the number of killings goes up after he takes charge in the latter part of the 80s, after there'd been a dip, you know, the number of people overall killed by the squad. Some people say 40 people, some think it's more like 70. ISU also gets this role vetting Belfast operations for security before they take place. So it has a kind of insight, but also a veto. Know it's like acting like a counterintelligence team, isn't it? An intelligence agency, like a security team going, is this operation too risky? And that becomes an additional role that Scapatici takes on. So he's got more and more influence. And also you get into this controversial issue in the 80s about whether the UK was operating what Republicans called a shoot to kill policy. And that would be where members of the British sas, the Special Forces, would effectively get a tip off and then ambush IRA members because they'd had intelligence about where they would be and then kill them. And you then have an additional dynamic where the military is sometimes pushing, it said, for operations to go ahead by the RA because they want to be able to ambush them. And Scapatici is actually brought in to investigate some of these ambushes. And where IRA operations go wrong in his security functions is a particularly important 1/8 of May 1987 at Lough Gaul, which is an RUC base in County Armagh, where eight IRA men are ambushed and killed when they're planning an attack. The largest loss of life for the ira. And one of the interesting things about that, and that goes back to our earlier discussion, is immediately that the IRA think it's towns, its informers, but actually it's not always. I think that's one of the interesting things.
- [23:54]
A
Do we know what Scappatici's interior life is like at this time? Do we have any insight? Because he's running this high wire operation as now head of the isu. He's also, as you said, he's working at building sites during the day.
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B
Yeah. Which is weird, isn't it?
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A
He's married, he's got kids. Just the psychological complexity of, of this for him feels like it would be crushing.
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B
Yeah, I find it quite hard, I mean, maybe unsurprisingly, I find it quite hard to get into his head or his interior life of a man who's kind of capable of doing this. And I think it's a good question because of course we think he's recruited about 78, we're now into the kind of second half of the 80s. And you know, you hear this talk, which is most agents after about 10 years start to get jumpy and start to burn out. It's quite hard for someone to be run undercover for longer than a decade. And he is hitting that point as we kind of reach 87, 88, where the pressure and the toll of that you'd think is getting to him, but actually there's not much sign of it. I think the intelligence war is kind of getting more complex and I think that's one of the aspects to this because if you go back to something like, you know, the investigation in Lof Gore, you've got actually the. It may well have been not informers, but the fact that they, by this point, British intelligence has got very good technical penetration of the IRA in terms of kind of bugs and bugging devices, you know, which MI5 and others are putting in. And yet in the IRA they always think it's informers, they're obsessed with informers and towns. And so the kind of pressure on the ISU to find the touts and find the informants I also think is getting more intense and creating a kind of paranoia within the ira. And of course Capitici is at the center of that, which, which I agree,
- [25:56]
A
he's the chief tout at this point, right?
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B
I mean, he's the, he's the chief tout. The chief tout hunter, you know, I mean, crazy.
- [26:02]
A
It reminds me a little bit of the recent admission by the Iranians, this was a few years ago. That they had stood up a unit, a counterintelligence function, to root out Mossad operatives inside their own intelligence services. And then it came out that the guy who was running it was himself an agent of the Mossad and had brought other agents of the Mossad in to work with him. So it remind. It's just this, it's this fox in the hen house thing that's so. I mean, you. The whole thing is the whole organization's turned inside out when that happens.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And I guess by the, by the late 80s, the IRA is shifting to this strategy called the long war. So more, more emphasis on political activity.
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B
Yeah, political activity. Republican political party, Sinn Fein, Britain also trying to get agents inside Sinn Fein and close to them and, you know, trying to understand that as well. But at the same time, the intelligence war with Steak Knife at its heart is coming, I think, for Steak Knife himself, to a climax at the second half of the 1980s. And I think to understand why it becomes incredibly intense and why eventually one case will finish him, we need to deep dive into the stories of some of those individuals who found themselves involved in this dirty war and, and tangled up with Scappatici. So let's take a break and when we come back, we'll look at that and how it really brings an end to Steak Knife's work. This episode is brought to you by sky. From the writer of Bridge of Spies and the BAFTA winning director of Peaky Blinders. Here comes the new sky original action thriller, Prisoner. Ooh.
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A
With that, you know this is going to be full of twists and turns.
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B
That's right. A prison transport officer and a professional killer are handcuffed together and forced to go on the run. And they must make impossible moral choices in order to survive.
- [28:10]
A
Now, in our world, we know that institutions are not always what they seem, don't we?
- [28:15]
B
That's right, David. And in this series, it's built around the things we find most compelling, which
- [28:21]
A
are, of course, conspiracy, institutional corruption and moral ambiguity.
- [28:26]
B
That's us. These are the grey areas where the right call isn't always clear.
- [28:31]
A
This is a fast paced edge of your seat story where you never quite know who to trust or what happens next.
- [28:38]
B
That's right. So it's the next great thing to binge. And you can watch all episodes from the 30th of April on Sky.
- [28:46]
A
Well, welcome back. We are going to dive into some of the individual stories about the people inside the IRA or adjacent to the IRA who sort of found themselves wrapped up in this, in this dirty war. And I guess one very valuable agent of influence, Gordon, was named Willie Carlin.
- [29:09]
B
Yeah, that's right. I think we're going to look at three agents, informers, and how they got tangled up with Capaticci. Each one tells you something interesting about who lives and who dies and why. And the first one is this agent called Willie Carlin, really interesting character, died just a couple of years ago, actually. Working class Catholic from Derry who joins the British army before the trouble starts. When he's then planning on returning to Northern Ireland, he's recruited by MI5. Now, this is important because it's initially an MI5 operation. We talked in some previous episodes, didn't we, that MI5 on the whole wasn't recruiting and running people there. But this is a slightly different case because it's someone who's outside of Northern Ireland, from Northern Ireland, but planning to go back MI5, send him back in undercover and to go into the political world, which is something they're more interested in, of the Republican movement. So he's in that world rather than the gunman. And he becomes close to, to Martin McGuinness, who's a senior Republican. And Carlin, though, and this is where it gets really kind of interesting, he has problems with his MI5 handler. He knows this handler is Ben. And this character Ben he finds really odd. He always wants to meet at pubs and he's often drunk. I mean, he sings rebel songs when he's drunk.
- [30:29]
A
So that's kind of not your typical MI5 guy, I suppose, in that sense.
- [30:34]
B
I don't. I've not met many who are like that. One time, Carlin finds him drunk in his car outside Martin McGuinness house. Now, Carlin tells London that this guy is going to get him killed and he wants out. So he goes to London and Carlin actually meets two senior MI5 officers. One he later realizes is actually the future head of MI5, Stella Rimington. So that's one of the people he meets, which gives you a sense, you know, she's on the rise at this point point. But it gives you a sense how important he is. He tells them he wants out, can't trust his handler, he gets paid off, he's out. But then there's this kind of story about in the early 80s, he witnesses something terrible in his neighborhood. He's back. He's at that point still involved in the republican movement politically, but not as an agent. A young mother, age 29, is doing a census for the British government, paid five pounds a day. The IRA are boycotting the census, the woman takes a wrong turn and ends up in a Republican neighborhood. They tell her to get out. Carlin also warns her it's dangerous. But she rings more doorbells and a gunman comes out and shoots her in the head. Now Carlyn, she's just been at Carlin's house, at Willy Carlyn's house, runs over and he sees her body and he will recall that she's still holding her senseless clipboard as she's lying there dead. And he gets so angry when the IRA claimed that the Brits had staged the shooting because he obviously knows the truth, that he calls his old number to try and get back to work as an agent. There's no answer. So instead he contacts the military and it means this time he's going to be run not by MI5, but by Frue, by the Force Research Unit. And he becomes a pretty valuable agent straight on reporting again on the political aspect to the Republican movement when it's going through this shift of what they call the armor light, the rifle and the ballot box, which is a kind of dual strategy from the Republican movement.
- [32:27]
A
This is where the story gets perhaps even more wild and actually winds up crossing streams with another story we've done. Because believe it or not, Gordon, you found a way to get Oleg Gordievsky into a story about steak knife and the ira. And uh, we did a six part series on Gordievsky last year, which is fascinating in its own right. But Gordievsky is the KGB resident in London in the early 1980s. He is spying for the Brits, he's spying for MI6. And Gordievsky has revealed to MI6 that an MI5 officer has offered himself up to the KGB in London. Now that officer is a man called Michael Bettany who's caught after mole hunt. But Bettany had been based in Northern Ireland where his experiences had pushed him toward alcoholism and breakdown, which I guess if you've been listening to the series so far, you would, you would understand after working so close to the Troubles. And Michael Bettany is the handler who Carlin, Willie Carlin had known as Ben.
- [33:35]
B
It's Wahild, isn't it?
- [33:36]
A
And then we get. We'll get Kevin Bacon here in a moment. Yeah, I know.
- [33:40]
B
I'm just wondering how we get kind of Bin Laden or Edward Snowden into this podcast as well, because you wouldn't think you'd suddenly kind of cross over into the world of the kgb, but it does because Bettany is arrested because of Gordievsky's. Intelligence. And then he goes to prison. But Bettany, in prison, is not very well isolated. And he tells another prisoner who is linked to the ira. Bettany says he has run an agent called Willie, who is close to the top figures in Sinn Fein, the Republican Party. And he also says he's aware of another army agent who's important, but he doesn't know his name, which may well be Scapatici. And that means that word gets back to Northern Ireland that there's an agent that MI5 have run called Willie. And so it's obvious, you know, pretty obvious who it is. And so the nutting squad, steak knife and all, are told to go and get Carlin. Scappardici tells his handlers that Carlin's life is in danger. And what's so interesting is this time the agent is an important one and clearly they decide in this case they're going to act. So they contact Willie Carlin and they tell him he has to get out immediately. That moment, you know, they want to save him and get him out before the nutting squad take him. So he and his family are rushed to a small airport without even time to pack, and he's flown out of Northern Ireland on what he describes as the Prime Minister's private jet, a ministerial jet, and actually taken to meet Margaret Thatcher, as he's considered so valuable.
- [35:10]
A
That can't be right, right, that he's flown out on.
- [35:13]
B
On a private jet.
- [35:14]
A
I thought the PM flew commercial.
- [35:17]
B
Well, I think in those days they might have had a jet. I think these days there's less money, budget cuts, austerity. Yeah, no Air Force One for us. But I mean, I think it's so interesting, isn't it, because it's an example that if they really want to, the authorities can save someone who's. Who's in front of who's coming up
- [35:35]
A
for investigation and that there's another case, Joe Fenton, who is going to be one of these tragic characters who gets caught up in this dirty war and who ends up paying a significant price. Who is Joe Fenton?
- [35:50]
B
This is interesting because in contrast to Carlin, who they decide to save, Fenton is someone they don't. So by the 80s, Joe Fenton is in his 30s, he's married with four kids, he's been working for the IRA and it will eventually become particularly useful because his job later becomes being an estate agent. So looking after properties. And that, of course, gives the IRA access to properties which they can use for interrogations and to hide things. He's got the keys for all of them. But what they don't know is he'd been turned years earlier by the Brits. Now, you know, this is where, of course, it's off to murky, because there are reports he's pressured to do it by the ruc, as he's told he'll be prosecuted. Unless, you know, this goes back to some of our earlier discussions, unless he agrees to become an informer. And of course, he then becomes incredibly valuable for the RUC because they can then bug the properties that he is allowing the IRA to use. So he becomes a kind of pretty useful agent at that point. But it looks like at one point he wants to get out. He applies for both him and his family to get visas to go to Australia because he just wants to kind of get out of. You get the sense of a guy who's trapped, but the visas are blocked by the authorities, operations are getting compromised. Suspicion at one point falls on him. In 1985, it looks like he diverts suspicion by pointing to two other people as informers and they are then killed by the isu, which I think is interesting. But then by the late 80s, 88, 89, the heat is back on him and eventually he's brought in to be interrogated in a house in West Belfast. Now he's held in a spare bedroom. The person whose house it is could hear the kind of thumping and shouting from upstairs. It's so interesting, the kind of vivid memories people have of this, because that person then recalls some of the people who are doing the interrogation upstairs coming down to watch a boxing match between Mike Tyson and Frank Bruno, which was, I think, happening maybe in Vegas that night. And, you know, they get tea and toast and then go back upstairs for the interrogation. I mean, kind of weird scene, isn't it? I mean, it's details like that, which I think, I don't know, almost make it more chilling. But Scappardici tells his handlers that Fenton is going to be killed, but nothing is done in this case to prevent the killing, even though he has been an informer. So he's taken out the house and he's shot and his body is found soon after.
- [38:16]
A
So I think, obviously the cold logic here is that some of these assets are more useful to the British state and some are less useful. And so there's a kind of rank ordering. But why is Carlin a big fish and Fenton isn't in this case? Because, I mean, Fenton's doing something that's really valuable to the FRU and to the British Army. So why did they let him die?
- [38:41]
B
I mean, I'm not sure I can answer that. I mean, I guess with Carlin, he had been an MI5 and a FRU agent and his political intelligence had probably got to people in a way that was more significant than the tactical kind of intelligence that someone like Fenton was, I'm guessing at this, that Fenton was supplying. You wonder if that was the kind of the logic behind it and that maybe that Fenton is not worth risking Scapatici for by, you know, pulling him out, whereas Carlin is. Scapatici is directly involved in, you know, this interrogation and killing. But the suspicions do, I think, start to grow about Scapaticci at this point. There's a particular senior IRA figure called Brendan Hughes who's kind of been in and out of jail at various points, you know, very senior. And he's obsessed with the idea of penetration and thinks that they've got a high level penetration and that it might be Scappatici. So I think, you know, you can sense that that's a big part. I mean, it's, you know, we've got the bonus episodes for members with Patrick Raden Keefe, who wrote this amazing book, say Nothing. Also a very good TV drama which I think, you know, focuses actually on Brendan Hughes and about some of these characters and some of the sense of fear about informers that's going on.
- [39:59]
A
There's also the case of Sandy lynch and this takes place in early 1990. Sandy lynch is 34 years old at the time, an IRA man who's involved in selecting targets for operations. And he's detained for questioning by the ISU about whether or not he's an informer.
- [40:22]
B
And this is in a way the last of our cases and it for steak knife will be the most significant because Sandy lynch is taken to a house in West Belfast. It's the same house that Joe Fenton has just been held in earlier. He's pushed down onto a bed as he hears the words IRA security. He's blindfolded, placed in a chair facing a wall. He doesn't see who does it initially, but Scappaticci then checks him. This is I find interesting with a bug detector. So they have some kind of bug detector. They've got colder, which I guess is looking for radio frequencies being emitted. And lynch hears a voice because he's blindfolded, but he hears the voice and he recognizes it as Scapatici, saying the device is going haywire. But the interrogation continues, which I kind of think it's A little bit odd in that detail. And Scapatici tells him he's going to be hanging upside down in a cowshed until he confesses. Now there are two teams doing the interrogation and they take turns. But Scapatici, all this time is keeping his handlers up to speed about events in the coming hours. And here's what's interesting. Lynch is going to be saved, but the reason is because he's effectively being used as bait in a trap to lure in senior Republicans. Because the Republicans have decided that they want lynch to do a press conference in which he admits to having been forced to be an informer and then making allegations linking the security forces with this policy of shoot to kill. So they've decided they can kind of, rather than just kill lynch, they can use him for publicity. And what that means is that senior Republicans are going to kind of from the political side of the movement are going to come in to talk to him about that. And Scapatici is ensuring lynch is in the State House and then Sinn Fein. So the political party's director of publicity, Danny Morrison, arrives to come and talk to him about this kind of press conference and confession. And of course the police have been watching and at that point they move in and Danny Morrison, you know, he's written and talked about this, he tries to escape, he jumps a fence, he goes into the next door house, but they find him in there and he actually gets sentenced to eight years for being involved in this. Although that's quashed that conviction later due to the role of Scapatician events. And Scapatici himself has slipped out of a back door before the security forces have arrived. But I mean, I mean that's bound to raise suspicions, isn't it, within isu.
- [42:53]
A
Hold on, just to go back to this multi layered trap that's being set here. So this is a ploy by the fru, by the army to lure senior Republicans into one spot so that they can be arrested, is that right?
- [43:10]
B
The crucial thing is because the political wing of the Republican movement always says it is not involved in the violence and separate. But by going to a house where someone has been abducted and detained you can prosecute them for being involved in that abduction. And that's the kind of key thing that the Brits realize they can use this case for and kind of effectively use Sandy lynch as a trap for these senior Republicans. So that I think is why this ends up being slightly different. Partly because the Republicans aren't going to just kill him, but they're going to kind of make him public.
- [43:47]
A
And of course, the IRA know after this raid has occurred, which obviously, I guess just the, the mere fact that the raid happens would raise your suspicions that, yeah, there was someone who had knowledge of the meeting or who was actually there who had tipped off the. The British authorities. But of course, since Scapitici Steak knife has used that bug detector device, you know, to scan for radio frequencies, he's used that on Lynch. It's got his fingerprints on it, right?
- [44:19]
B
Yeah. Lynch recognizes Scapatici's voice because lynch, of course, doesn't know Scapatici is also an informer. So lynch is going around going, I know Freddie Scapatici was there. I recognize his voice.
- [44:30]
A
So from the standpoint of the ira, Scapatici should go to.
- [44:34]
B
Should be hunted, should be wanted. Yeah.
- [44:37]
A
You know, and go to prison or be pursued for prison. Yeah.
- [44:41]
B
You know, in their minds, the police should now logically have enough at the very least to arrest Scappatici as well, if they can get hold of him. Now he's actually fled to Ireland at this point, to the Republic, and he spends 22 months in Ireland after this event in 1990, pretending to be hiding and on the run. But of course, you know, he's actually in contact with his handlers all the time and they're trying to work out a cover story for how to deal with this problem because, you know, his fingerprints are on the, on the bug detector device and they come up with this, with this story, which I find a bit implausible, but they're going to claim the fingerprints are on the device as he's been doing some electrical work on the building as part of his day job, you know, because he's a builder and that they get a witness to back that up.
- [45:29]
A
That seems kind of thin, little thin to me.
- [45:32]
B
It does. And, you know, interesting enough, they coach him, so the fruit officers coach him on how to answer questions from the police if and when he comes back. I mean, this is nuts, isn't it? You've got British military intelligence coaching the guy on how to avoid answering questions by the British police when he returns to Northern Ireland and inevitably gets arrested.
- [46:00]
A
You have to think that some in the ira, the senior officials in the Iraq, maybe they don't have hard proof, but they've got to assume that Scapatici's bad. Right. And maybe it's one of these cases where you just can't quite, you know, the truth. It almost reminds me a little bit of some of the Cambridge Five where you kind of know or maybe you know, but it's almost too unsettling to confront it. And so you just turn a blind die.
- [46:36]
B
Yeah, I think that's, I think that is exactly right. A bit like some MI6 officers with a Philby. Just the, it was too much to think to acknowledge that this guy might be bad. So he, you know, he does come back, he does get arrested and then he's released without charge. And I agree, I think, you know, people just don't want to confront the possibility and it's that he's, he's bad, that he's an informer. And it is strange that he's not quite questioned more at this point by the ira. He's not really interrogated it seems. And it's all, I think odd, this situation. I think your point that it's denial is perhaps the only thing. But Scapatici's been away for this period and there are suspicions about him. So he's been marginalized. And this is the problem for him because he wants to get back in the game.
- [47:25]
A
And this is the early 90s, right?
- [47:27]
B
Yeah, we're into the early 90s, kind of 1990, 92, you know, around this period. And he wants to get back into the game. So he comes up with a story that maybe there's a spy on the army council and he should be brought in to look for it. That causes inevitably anger. And so he stood down. The ISU were kind of reformed. Stood down. So now he's out of the action. And of course Scappatici does not like being out of the action. You know, he doesn't like being marginalized. I mean go back to the kind of late 70s. I think that's one of the reasons he might have even been recruited is because he hated being marginalized. And so now he's effectively out and he's going to spiral into a depression. And that in turn is going to lead him to a very, very strange, bizarre and dangerous decision which is going to have long lasting consequences and ultimately lead to his exposure and the name Steak Knife emerging into the open.
- [48:25]
A
Oh, there's a cliffhanger, Gordon. I think we should leave it there and we come back next time we will see how it all unravels for Freddy Scappatici in the finale of this four part series on Steak Knife. But of course if you don't want to wait for that finale, you don't have to. You can go and join the declassified club@the restisclassified.com Get Early Access to this series, to all of our series, as well as to some phenomenal bonus content. We have two, I think, really exceptional interviews that are linked to this series. One with the journalist Patrick Radden Keefe. We're going to be talking with him about kind of informants and the intelligence war during the Troubles. We also got a great conversation with longtime BBC journalist Peter Taylor, who covered this kind of intelligence conflict during the troubles for better years. So you get access to all of that, but otherwise, we will see you next time for the thrilling finale.
- [49:26]
B
See you then.
- [49:33]
C
It is out of control in the White House right now.
- [49:37]
D
Welcome to the Rest Is Politics us.
- [49:40]
C
I'm Kati K. I'm Anthony Scaramucci, who is the worst politician in Washington right now.
- [49:45]
D
They don't know how to manage Donald Trump.
- [49:48]
C
I talked to the people that organized the abduction. I'm telling you why they did it.
- [49:53]
D
The White House isn't a bind.
- [49:54]
C
Anthony, here's what I would say to
- [49:56]
D
you about the chaos is the strategy.
- [49:59]
C
It should not have happened, and it is a violation of international law.
- [50:03]
D
Is he losing control of the party?
- [50:05]
C
I survived 11 days in Trump's White House. I knew the sob.
- [50:10]
D
I've been covering politics in Washington for almost 30 years. Twice a week, we break down what's really going on in Trump's White House.
- [50:17]
C
The big issue for the United States is going to be we were once seen as a benevolent superpower, and now we're seen as an aggressor.
- [50:26]
D
You know, he can lie about a lot of things, but he can't lie about what people are feeling about the economy.
- [50:33]
C
If you really want to understand what's going on in China, Trump's mind, just search the Rest is Politics Us Wherever you get your podcasts.