← The Rest Is Classified
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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. Britain's most valuable agent inside the IRA is spinning out of control. And that means the secret of his identity is at last going to come out well. Welcome to the Rest Is classified. I'm David McCloskey.
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And I'm Gordon Carrera.
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And we are in the finale, Gordon, of our examination of Steak Knife, the British Army's agent deep inside the ira. His real name of course, Freddie Scapatici. He has been leading the internal security Unit, the counterintelligence function of the ira, which investigates and in many cases kills suspected informers. But as we discussed last time, it is really Steak Knives, British handlers who are deciding who lives and who dies. And they're making this calculation, this kind of dark moral calculation, weighing Steak Knife's value as an agent against the lives of the people that his organization is is killing. And it is, it is difficult, it is dangerous. We talked a little bit last time about the tremendous psychological pressure that Scapatici is, is beginning to experience after many years of working as an agent for the British. And we left off in the early 1990s with Scapatici having been marginalized by the IRA itself.
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This is an important part of the story because he's still reporting to the Brits occasionally in this period in the early 1990s, but the number of meetings has dropped off. They can see his position as weakened. He's got less operational tactical intelligence, it's more political. He's starting to voice Concerns about the way he's treated and about the fact this is taking its toll on him. He makes it clear he's unhappy. When two of his long term handlers are reassigned to other work, he asks for them to be reinstated. That's ultimately ref used. The army, the military is still trying to kind of massage his ego, telling them, you know, that if he stops, the loss would be felt throughout the intelligence world, you know, kind of classic flattering, and that they'll keep the money going. But he's angry, including with senior Republicans, and that will lead him to a bizarre and reckless move. So There is a TV investigative program which is airing in 1993 called the Cook Report, which is looking into Martin McGuinness, who's a senior Republican. And Scapatici, though, seems to blame McGuinness for his scapatici's marginalization. And he's come to kind of hate him. And Scapatici, as we know, is a man who has grudges. So he gets angry after seeing this TV program and he's angry they didn't go harder on McGuinness. And so he, I mean, this is crazy. He cold calls the producers of the program and says he's willing to meet them anonymously and tell them more. I mean, it's wild, isn't it?
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It's sort of, I mean, not to besmirch our geriatric listeners, but this is kind of a classic, this is like an old guy thing to do in a way. Right. It's like he gets outraged by something he sees on television, he sees on tv and he goes, he goes nuts. And it's remarkable to think that this impulse plays such a significant role in what will eventually become his unmasking. Because he meets with this crew in a hotel car park.
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B
Yeah. And he calls himself Jack. So he doesn't give him his real name. But, and this is the important bit, he doesn't know that they are secretly recording him. So they've got a kind of recording device in the car and they're going to take this conversation.
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A
He's the counterintelligence guy.
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B
Yeah, he didn't think about that.
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This is a massive lapse in tradecraft.
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B
It is. I mean, it. Which I think goes to his psychology and his personality, don't you think? I mean, it's back to the kind of angry, angry guy under pressure, you know, does something stupid. I guess that's the thing. So the conversation goes in different directions, but one focus is allegations that Martin McGuinness was linked to the death of a man called Frank Hegarty, who had been an IRA quartermaster. Now, briefly in 1986, Hegarty had been a FRU agent who'd been an agent for the British, and he'd provided details of arms shipments which had come from Colonel Gaddafi's Libya to the ira in which were being hidden in Ireland. Because there'd been this interesting. It's another bit of the story, you know, maybe one day we'll do which. Which is about this kind of link between Gaddafi's Libya and the ira.
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Do you see this in the film Patriot Games? Because I can't believe I should say,
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B
yeah, is that part of the plot?
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I have shown tremendous restraint in not bringing up Patriot Games until the fourth episode of this series, which we should remind people is.
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Is no less than Harrison Ford playing a CIA analyst playing. It's not quite David McCloskey, is it? It's Jack Ryan.
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A
It's based off of. It's loosely based off of my career.
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B
Yeah, very loosely, given it was made before. Made when you were a small child. Apart from that.
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A
Well, and it also. It features Sean Bean as the main.
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B
Sean Bean, isn't it?
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Bad guy.
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B
That's right, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We could spend time talking about the US and the ra, but I think that's another subject which will also take us down some interesting alleyways. But back to this. Colonel Gaddafi was how we got there, which was his arms being hidden in Ireland. Frank Hegarty tells the Brits about this. They seize the weapons in Ireland and so Frank Hegarty then inevitably has to go into hiding in England. Now, this is the interesting bit. He's in a safe house in England, but he regularly calls his mother back in Northern Ireland. And it's claimed that Martin McGuinness goes round to his mother's house and tells her to tell Frank that it's safe for him to come back to Derry. And so he ends up slipping away from his handlers and, you know, bad decision goes back. And soon after his body is found in a country lane. And there's a very good book about this, Four Shots in the Night by Henry Hemingway. And this is what Scappatici is talking to the journalists about, because Martin McGuinness kind of role in allegedly luring back Frank Hegarty to his death. And, you know, Scapaticci says of McGuinness to the reporters, he's ruthless. He has the final say on informers and whether that person lives or dies. I mean, it's A kind of bizarre thing, isn't it? A bizarre conversation.
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Ironic coming from Scapatici, who is, who is trying to, I mean, essentially try to tar McInnes with the same actions that Scapatici himself has been taking inside the organization for years. Which is wild. I mean, why, why is, why is Scapatici doing this interview? I mean, is it, is it, you know, he's an old, older guy who's kind of out of. Out of power and grudges, wants some of that power back by smacking McGinnis publicly.
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B
Yeah, I think it is that thing about power, respect, hates being disrespected, wants to be in the action. I mean, I think that was what led him back into the IRA after his internment in the 70s and into British intelligence and I think is leading, leading him now. So it's, you know, it's that kind of same character which just defines him. But anyway, army intelligence learned about him. Going to see the journalists, they're kind of furious. They're worried. They tell the producers confidentially that the man they've met is a very important agent and he mustn't be identified. Although at this point they don't know his name. Anyway, you can see the army is like, this guy's kind of getting out of control. And there's another thing going on, which is there's been inquiries into what's called collusion in Northern Ireland. Now, this is a kind of whole other set of podcasts we could do, because that is the allegation that the security forces were working with Protestant paramilitaries. So the kind of other side from the IRA and Scapatici, and that in particular there's one person who's Brian Nelson, who's a chief intelligence officer for a Loyalist, so a kind of Protestant paramilitary group. He's almost like a parallel to Scapatici on the Loyalist side. And the claim is that he'd been run as an agent by the fru, and the claim is that they'd been involved in passing intelligence to him for the purposes of targeting people to be murdered. So targeting, you know, getting the loyalists basically to bump off Republicans, but using this, this is a kind of allegation of collusion, using their agent to do it. So there's been an inquiry going on into this called the Stevens Inquiry, run by a former head of the Metropolitan Police, John Stevens. Scapatici isn't the target for this, so they don't know about Scapatici, but it's kind of unearthing. Lots of information about what the army has been doing. I mean, interestingly enough, Stephen says at the start he didn't even know the fruit existed. But then in this bizarre moment, his office that the inquiry is being run out of in Northern Ireland, which is on an official kind of, you know, office building area, burns to the ground, you know, which the assumption, I don't think it is very conspiratorial to think the Frue basically burnt his office down and tried to destroy the evidence. So this inquiry is running and getting pretty hot. And Stevens is not onto Scappatici, but Scappatici is worried that he will be unearthed as part of this inquiry. That stuff is coming out about what Frue and what British military intelligence was being done. And so at one point, and we'll come back to this, a senior British military figure actually meets Scapatici to reassure him that he's going to be okay, his name's going to come out and that's going to prove to be another problem. Meanwhile, outside of Scapatici, small world, you know, you've got a ceasefire. 94 breaks down briefly because, you know, both sides are realizing they're reaching a stalemate eventually in 1998 you're going to get the Good Friday Agreement also that means Scapatici is less valuable and less needed. And so the army are thinking, well, maybe we'll try and get him out of Northern Ireland now and kind of get him away from everything. And they discusses relocation with something called MI5 Central Resettlement Unit. This is from the official reporting estate Knife, which the cru, which I don't know much about, but you know, they're looking at the options about how to get rid of him and also kind of protect him from any legal repercussions and investigations which, which might come. I mean, there's even talk about the army about staging a farewell dinner, you know, to say goodbye to him as he goes. Although it's not clear whether this actually took place, but kind of bizarre thing to do, but I guess it shows his importance.
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A
That doesn't seem that bizarre to me.
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B
Yeah, doesn't it?
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I mean, I guess I'm just thinking of the context of, you know, long run CIA assets can often be sort of, you know, fetid by handlers or, you know, in some extreme cases, if there's, if there's a logical reason to do it, come to the States. They could, they could actually meet senior officials at headquarters and have dinner, you know, or a meal with, with the Director in the Dining room. So. But scap, yeah, that's tough. That's because he's, you know, he's involved in some pretty dirty stuff.
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B
Yeah, you're not talking about a kind of Gordievsky or a tolkachev type figure, are you? You're talking about, I don't know, it's the equivalent of having someone you'd run inside of ISIS or Al Qaeda. I mean, maybe, maybe if they're the
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right kind of person, but that's probably, that's probably a bit of a stretch. You're right.
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They do relocate him briefly, but then it goes. He just on his own goes back to Northern Ireland and, you know, without telling them. And so, I mean, I love this fact. It was only due to the fact he was seen driving a vehicle in Belfast that MI5 Cru became aware he'd left Great Britain and the mainland. It just shows he's kind of. Which I think is part of the point with Scapatici is that they can't control him very much. He is, you know, which is one of the challenges all along, I think he's his own guy. You already get a sense of a guy who's difficult.
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And by the late 1990s, SCAP is in Belfast again. There's attempts to kind of persuade him to maybe kid out of the city and moved to some other more, maybe more remote parts of Northern Ireland. He's offered money to purchase property and, you know, there's consideration given to pretty significant financial incentives to cover kind of a pension or an annual salary. So again, that financial motive is, is still probably alive and well, but the secret of whose Steak Knife is is. Is eventually going to emerge.
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B
Yeah, that's right. Because there've been lots of rumours about high up informers, you know, in the ira. But the first public claim that there'd be a FRU agent code named Steak Knife operating within the IRA appears in articles by a journalist, Liam Clark, in the Sunday Times in August 1999. Clark, source, who is later going to emerge is a former member of the Frue who's then referred to as Martin Ingram, but later identified as Ian Hirst. And it's interesting because Hirst hadn't handled Steak Knife himself but he'd when he'd been in Froud, but he, he'd heard about an important agent because he remembered that there'd been one night when the phone had rung and someone had said they'd been arrested for dui and suddenly all the top intelligence chiefs came in and to work out how to Bail this guy out from a driving under the influence of alcohol charge. And you know, Hearst had known then that there was someone really significant because, you know, the top people had come in. So there's an injunction against Hearst and the Sunday Times in the high Court to not name him.
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I was going to ask, why is Hearst? What's his motivation? This seems. Was he disgusted with the way that the fruit had handled itself and so he's trying to get back at the organization?
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Yeah, he's a disillusioned FRU member and I think particularly the fact that of what Scappatici had done and what he'd been up to is something which he becomes kind of very focused on trying to get out, but there's an injunction placed on him. So actually then the existence of someone called Steak Knife is out, but it's going to be another four years nearly before Scapaticci's name becomes associated with it. And this is also fascinating because the link between Steak Knife, the agent and Scapatici starts to appear 10th, 11th May in news reports 2003, Irish media, US websites. Finally in the UK media, Scapaticci is still in Northern Ireland. The next, I think, fascinating bit of the story, he decides he's going to brazen it out and just deny everything. I don't know what you think, but he's probably realized at this point that if he disappears, that's just going to be taken as confirmation and leave him and his family, you know, worried. So I think he, you know, he takes this decision which he's just gonna, he's gonna go public, he's gonna appear before journalists, he's gonna do interviews and deny everything.
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You wonder also, I mean, just given that he had been. They'd attempted to kind of resettle him out of Northern Ireland and then he comes back if it's home, you know, I mean, if he doesn't, if he feels like, well, I want to stay here, you know, and as we'll see, there's a family dynamic too. Therefore, if I want to stay here, I just have to deny everything. Right?
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Yes. That's his only hope.
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Yeah, that. That's my only hope. Exactly.
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I mean, there's some of the bits of bizarre because he tells journalists who approach him that there's been a mistake. There must be an Alfredo Scappatici who's got confused with him, Federico Scappardici.
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That's a credible defense there. That's gonna, that's gonna, that's gonna hold water. Yeah, yeah.
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And he also goes to see the IRA leadership. Now we have to remember there's been a, you know, from 1998, there's been a Good Friday agreement. So there is a peace process now. So the kind of the war is effectively stopped. But everyone in the IRA appears to be in shock because they worry that they've been penetrated by their enemy. But, you know, I think for them, again, it goes back to this point. It's really hard to admit it's true, isn't it? And to kind of acknowledge that it's scapatici better for them as well to deny it.
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A
And at this point, what is the hard evidence that's being presented? So there's the Sunday Times reporting gets. And then later, steak knife out there. And then later reporting says, okay, that's Freddy's gapatici. But what actually is the hard evidence provided?
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B
Well, that's the problem is. Is it is it is. It's basically sources from Frue and other places suggesting that it was him, but that's not documentary evidence or kind of confirmation. And so, you know, the agreement he has, including, you know, with the ira, is that it's. They're just going to deny it. And the Sinn Fein leader, Gerry Adams puts out a statement saying people who, you know, say he's an agent are being played by British intelligence. You know, 12th of May, scapatici goes to speak to the Andersontown News and he says, according to the press, I'm guilty of 40 murders. But I'm telling you this now, after this is settled, I want to meet the families of the people that they say I murdered. And when I do, I will stand in front of them and say, I didn't do it, I had no part in it, and I will look them in the eye when I do it. I mean,
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A
he's holding his ground there, right? Yeah. And I guess he figures he can get away with the fiction if the only facts out at that point are these kind of maybe shadowy fruit members, sources who are not necessarily named. There's not a lot of detail out. He can say it's all a ploy by British intelligence. And I guess that is the plan. Right. So he scap goes out, talks to a ton of journalists, denies everything.
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B
I mean, even swears an affidavit. I mean, he even swears in front for solicitor and affidavit, which is a kind of risky move because that's perjury. But then, I mean, but this is the bit that I think is so interesting. He might have got away with it because I think at that point, people are like, well, he says, she says, there's not much way of proving it. But then it's the journalists who'd met him in the car park back in 1993 for that Cook Report thing about Market McGuinness. They recognize it's the same voice as the guy they met in the car who called himself, you know, Jack or whatever, and that. That is the guy now denying it, who told them all about the inner workings of the IRA. So July 2003, they. The recording of that 1993, you know, the secret recording they'd made of him is put out by the journalists. And they reveal that at the time, they'd been told by the security forces to do everything they could to stop his name coming out. And as he was such an important
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A
source, that's game over for scap, right? And so then he has to run moves to England, changes his name in 2003 and thereafter has to do another location, a name change on at least one more occasion. But for a while he lives in Manchester, which I guess makes headscarded because then he can follow. He had at one point been a season ticket holder to Manchester City, right? So, yeah, he can follow his favorite. His favorite club.
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B
Yeah. He ends up bit of time in Scotland, it sounds like it's obviously quite mysterious. Ends up, we think in Guildford, you know, not far from London. There is an injunction out, so the press are not allowed to name him, not allowed to try and find him. Does seem to have plenty of money. Lives in a detached property with a car. Although I find this also weird. He seems to have gone back to work as a builder. I mean, he has the money.
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A
I mean, he just loves the game, man. I mean, he just. That's his job. What else is he gonna do? You know, I love talking about families on. The rest is classified. I am a family man at heart. And it is one of the many, I think, tragic pieces of this. I mean, his wife stays in Northern Ireland, right. But she doesn't come with him, but does make periodic visits and occasionally they go on holiday together. But it seems, you know, it is interesting. We don't really have a great sense of what that relationship. We had the allegations very early on that he was. He was violent toward her, but she's not. They've been together this whole time, but. But she doesn't make the move.
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B
No, I think that it's interesting as well. And yet they are kind of together and still go on holiday together. He also seems to have a relationship with another woman, though, and maybe even tells her that he was a spy inside the ira. You know, he's got the last name now, Frank Cowley. I think one of the interesting questions, though, is, is because the IRA now know that he is a. He's been a tout. He's been an informer, you know, but they don't. They don't hunt him down.
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A
I guess, again, it's that. I don't know. I mean, maybe, you know, maybe Anthony Blunt is from the. You know, the Cambridge Five. Is. Yes, is a good reference point here where, you know, I think we discussed him a little bit on our series on the young Kim Philby, where, you know, Anthony Blunt had been a knight. He was a knight. He was the surveyor of the Queen's pictures. He's this very senior in the establishment figure. And it's easier for everybody if you just keep it quiet. Right. It's too difficult.
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B
That he's been a Soviet spy.
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A
Yeah, that he's been a Soviet spy. And I think it could be the same with SCAP here, where it kind of. It kind of raises a question, a fundamental question, if you're the ira, about the. The caliber of the entire organization and what it was doing, if it had been penetrated at the very top for decades. Right. And you'd rather not have that question out there, which is why, when we started the series, we said, this is a story that, for obvious reasons, the British state doesn't really want to discuss. It's also a story that the IRA doesn't want to discuss because it makes them look foolish.
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B
It makes them look foolish and it raises questions about, you know, why. Why some people were killed as informers and why others weren't, and about their competence. So you're right. I think. I think, yeah, Richard o' Rourke uses that Anthony Blunt comparison. I think it's a good one, which is sometimes it's easier just to kind of hush things up, but it gets harder, you know, I mean, there's another bizarre Twist. So in April 2012, that former FRU member Hearst uses a false name and pretends to be a journalist and calls General Sir John Wilsey, who'd been general officer commanding for the army in Northern Ireland, on the phone at his home. And Wilsey's written a book, a memoir, called Ulster Tales, which had. We talked about this, I think, in the second episode about. About, you know, he talks without using the name Steak Knife. I think he used the name Curbstone about the recruitment of an agent. And you can hear this, you know, this conversation, the recorded conversation between who? Hearst, posing as journalist, and Wilsey on the. On the BBC podcast series, which is excellent, called Steak Knife. And it's staggering because Hurst calls up this army officer and he says, there are documents, there's a recording of you admitting to being in a car with Freddy Scappatici. And Wilsey, the general, you know, he's quite elderly at this point, goes, I was in a car with him. Hurst goes, yeah, in South Belfast. And it's recorded in some contact forms we have. That doesn't sound right to me. I don't know Freddy Scapper. Who is he? You don't know who Freddie Scapatici is? No, not by that name, no. Well, you know him as Steak Knife. Oh, that chap, yes. Sorry. And so he basically tricks this general into admitting that. Oh, yes, Scapatici Steak Knife. The reason Wilsey had met him was that was the period where Scapaticci had wanted reassurance, you know, with Stephen's inquiry going on, that he wouldn't be exposed. So Wilsey had been the one to kind of meet him. And Wilsey, you know, described him as the best agent, the golden egg, and, you know, kind of goes through a description of why. So basically, Hurst has got Woolsey to admit, you know, that Scapatici is Steak Knife now. So, you know, the ability to deny it is just, you know, completely falling apart.
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A
This is the bizarre. One of the bizarre pieces of this is that Scapatici's identity, his role as an agent of the state, is still technically protected by the state. Right. So, yeah, there's been no. Even though at this point it's publicly known that Scapatici was Steak Knife, the state doesn't admit it. Right. And I'd imagine you also have. So you have this kind of building momentum around Steak Knife and the role of, you know, the British authorities in this intelligence war in Northern Ireland. I'd imagine you also have a lot of victims and families, you know, of victims, who want answers about what the FRU and what the British army did during the Troubles. And that leads to the creation of Operation Canova in the summer of 2016 to investigate the truth about this case.
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B
That's right. Canova, initially launched under police officer John Boucher, starts building a case, not just against Scapaticci, but even those that handled him. And this is a massive and deeply difficult task as you get this final clash between different parts of the state effectively about whether or not the truth about Steak Knife should come out. So Maybe at that point, let's take a break and look at how it really does come to an end for Freddy Scappertic. 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.
- [27:44]
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 impulses, possible moral choices in order to survive.
- [28:00]
A
Now, in our world, we know that institutions are not always what they seem, don't we?
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B
That's right, David. And in this series it's built around the things we find most compelling, which
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A
are of course, conspiracy, institutional corruption and moral ambiguity.
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B
That's us. These are the gray areas where the right call isn't always clear.
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A
This is a fast paced edge of your seat story where you never quite know who to trust or what happens next.
- [28:27]
B
That's right. So it's the next great thing to binge and you can watch all episodes from 30th April on Sky.
- [28:40]
A
Well, welcome back. Let's, let's look, Gordon, at Canova, this investigation into Freddy's Scappetici and Steak Knife.
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B
Yeah, I mean, driven really by families. I mean, because of course, parts of the British state don't want this to come out. But the families and others or victims of people who've been killed by the IRA want to know the truth. And as more and more details of Steak Knife have come out, that leads to this decision. Now, previous inquiries into Northern Ireland have been a kind of problematic, let's put it that way. We talked about the Stevens inquiry into collusion. You know, he will say, you know, I was misled, I was criminally obstructed from doing my job. You know, people fail to disclose information from me. CANOVA is going to see similar challenges in trying to get to the truth about Steak Knife. And remember, this is, you know, an inquiry, a British inquiry led by a British police officer. And I mean, some of the details are they're not comic, but they are blackly, you know, kind of comic in some ways. At one point they're given access to a computer system and told that they have full access. This is the Canova investigators. But they then realize that the Ministry of Defence officials have different logins to the same computer system. And when they test access with the MOD logins, they find they get loads more results which had been hidden from them. I mean, it's just one example of how the fact parts of the state do not want the truth to come out. And it's the same. They have a very. It's described as an extremely fractious relationship with MI5. And they talk about MI5 reclassifying material to prevent. Prevent it being processed and delaying release. Even giving former lawyers representing former security personnel greater access to the MI files than the CANOVA investigators.
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A
I think this is a great or illuminating passage from the CANOVA report where it reads. It also emerged that MI5 personnel knew and had used the combination code for a secure safe used by CANOVA liaison officers working at its TEMS House headquarters to store classified material. TEMS House, of course, referring to MI5's headquarters. This only came to light when One member of MI5 staff said that they had retrieved a file from the safe. The combination had to be changed as a result, thereby eroding an element of trust that CANOVA thought had been established. Pretty wild.
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B
It reminds me a little bit, actually, that bit about when you had the Senate Select Committee investigating the CIA over the, you know, enhanced interrogation. You know, there was same kind of battle, wasn't it, about, you know, which files and what would they know about, you know, the treatment of detainees, you know, in the war on terror. Similar, isn't, isn't it? I mean, different cases, but the same kind of tension over an investigation and what gets revealed.
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A
Yeah, the interim report is published and there's a final report published in December of 2025, which I think, you know, this is. We've been talking about a story that for the most part takes place in like the 70s and 80s and early 90s. But this is now. I mean, this is an active part of British political life today.
- [31:49]
B
Yeah, by then it's led by Sir Ian Livingston and he reveals that he would have completed the report much earlier if Mi5 had not discovered fresh material in the spring of 2024. So that's eight years after the inquiry started. And the key battle, I guess, with MI5, the friction, is about how much MI5 knew about steak Knife. And we should probably reference here that there had Eliza Manningham Buller, the head of MI5, appeared on the Rest Is Politics leading podcast with Rory and Alastair and kind of said that she and MI5 hadn't known much about the case and would have rejected it at the start. And then later on, these files emerge and, you know, MI5 and, you know, Eliza Manning. Buller said they didn't know about some of this material because it all related to the 70s until it was later found. And there is an investigation into whether MI5 had deliberately kind of hid the material. And the investigation found they hadn't, they had just found it. But it does relate to this kind of ongoing tension which was what did MI5 know about steak Knife? You know, and the new information does show that they knew about Steak Knife from the start.
- [33:01]
A
I understand why that question is important to the inquiry, I will say, and I think we'll probably discuss it later during the wash up of this whole series. Like, I don't actually find that question very interesting.
- [33:12]
B
But I think, you know, the other thing that's going on and you know, you talked about it being recent politics is the timeline is important because, you know, this new material comes out April 2024, there's new legislation which comes in, there's the Legacy Act 2023 which is looking at giving a partial amnesty for those involved in the troubles. You know, and this is one of the big questions which is should people be prosecuted? So you're not talking about Steak Knife himself. We'll come to him in a second. But you know, should those officers, you know, who handled him be prosecuted for their role? And you know, one of the frustrations will be that by the time Canova finally reports, even though it finds that there is evidence of a case to answer against some through former Fruit officers, you know, the decision is it's too late to be able to prosecute them and that, you know, that tension is there in the inquiry and the timelines. And I think crucially we should get to back to Scapaticci himself because by the time that final report comes out, Scapaticci himself is dead.
- [34:13]
A
What had Scappatici been up to in his final years? My theory would be colored by maybe other stories of defectors and these because he's not really a defector, but he's kind of, I mean, living more or less as one, you know, different identity and different, you know, he's not in Belfast, he's not with his family. It always ends up being really or not always, but often ends up being kind of dark and sad at the end.
- [34:40]
B
Yeah, I mean Henry Heming in his book, you know, writes about Scapatici became increasingly lonely. He'd spend, spend long hours at home on his Lenovo laptop looking at websites devoted to cars, porn. We'll come back to that. Maps, combat, politics, football or the British army after 2016. This is an interesting fact. He would also visit the website of Operation Canova, the police investigation into him and his activities because he knows one day they might come for him. Now, his father dies only in 2017, buried supposedly with an Italian flag on the coffin. Scap supposedly turns up for that. But when Scapper teaches, wife Sheila dies. It's said that he doesn't turn up for that and the children don't want him there. But the crucial thing is, you know, he's watching that can over inquiry and they are going for him and they want to get him. You know, they, and they actually, this is, you know, fascinating bit of the case. They arrest him in January 2018. So the Canova team, he says nothing when he's questioned about the kind of Canova cases, but they get that laptop from his sitting room. I mean, this is where, again, if it couldn't get weirder, the laptop is found to contain 329 images of extreme pornography, specifically bestiality, which for those who are not aware, sorry, for anyone here, of a sensitive disposition. Warning, sex with animals. I mean, it's kind of wild, isn't it?
- [36:14]
A
It's. It's wild. It's pretty gross. I presume that's illegal to have in your possession, is that right?
- [36:21]
B
Yeah.
- [36:21]
A
Is that.
- [36:21]
B
It is correct.
- [36:23]
A
Okay, so he's so, so he is then, is he, Is he tried?
- [36:28]
B
Yeah, he's taken to court. Yeah. 4th of December 2018, sits in the dock wearing green tracksuit bottoms and a scruffy blue fleece. I mean, at Westminster Magistrates Court. And he pleads guilty to possessing this material and he's sentenced to three months in custody, suspended for 12 months. Now, again, this is. The details of this are. It's just the weirdness of it, I think. The court hears Scapatici told police he was not sexually interested in animals and preferred women. Again, apologies for our listeners with big breasts, but he then says he wasn't doing anyone any real harm and he had depression and had been, to quote the depths. Now this is also where it goes even weirder.
- [37:10]
A
It's going to get weirder, is it? Do you need to do another. Do you need to do another trigger warning? Because it can't, it can't possibly get weirder than the last two paragraphs of your outline.
- [37:19]
B
I mean, this is a trigger warning, I think, which applies, which did apply to the families of people who died at his hands. Because the magistrate says you've not been before the court for 50 years. And that's good character in my book.
- [37:33]
A
I mean, the magistrate doesn't know who he is, though. Does he?
- [37:36]
B
Well, I mean, it's been in the newspapers, you know, that Freddy Scagatici is, I mean, I guess the magistrate, she's prosecuting him for the pornography rather. It's true that he's, you know, the last thing we knew was in the 70s, wasn't it, when he got done for temp, I think got fined for a fight. But, you know, the Canova interim report goes, these remarks frustrated many victims and families. And I can understand why. And I mean, you can, can't you? That a magistrate saying you've got good character because you haven't appeared in and yet, you know, you've been involved in death and murder. But then the end comes for scapatici. March 2023. So, you know, only three years ago he dies, age 77. And it's, you know, the investigators confirm, and I think this is interesting, that it was natural causes and that he was definitely dead.
- [38:27]
A
Obviously, we can trust whatever the British state says about Freddy's Capaticci. Right. So clearly, if unnamed investigators have looked
- [38:35]
B
into it, it's what people thought, though. And you can understand why people, you know, it's not beyond the bounds of imagination for some people to go, well, is this the British state finding another way of hiding him from Canova and from the investigation? But they, so they actually, you know, confirm that it's him and he's dead. One more, I just think, amazing, interesting fact which comes from the report into him. The High Court in London orders that Freddy Scapatici's will is sealed and not made public. And it's noted this is the first case where such an order has been applied for in connection with the will of someone who was not a senior member of the royal family. I mean, wow. Which I think must be because the will will confirm his identity, you know, and must have some details in it which will make clear that he was a Freddie Scapatici, was, you know, an agent of the British state. Because that's something the British state continues to, you know, deny, not deny, not comment on, we should say.
- [39:40]
A
And even the Canova team, they're not allowed, of course, as part of that, to confirm that SCAP was steak knife.
- [39:48]
B
It's amazing, isn't it?
- [39:49]
A
It is amazing. And it's, I guess, all part of this policy called neither confirm nor deny, which, I mean, let's, you know, as a CIA, former CIA guy that, you know those words. That sounds right, you know, that's.
- [40:04]
B
Yeah, I thought we'd get to this question.
- [40:06]
A
Yeah. It comes from the CIA, the so called the Glomar response. Right, which is the, the Hughes Glomar Explorer, the salvage vessel that's secretly deployed by the US government to recover a sunken Russian submarine in 19, 1974. And so you, the CIA has, has similarly neither confirmed nor denied its involvement in that.
- [40:31]
B
Yeah, and it's so interesting because ncnd, as it's known, neither confirm nor deny, has, you know, has become quite a big issue in, I think for MI5 in the UK and Canova is basically saying this totemic status, as it puts it, you know, has become an implacable dogma. And you know, the tension here is MI5 and others saying you have to have it in order to be able to offer agents confidentiality and assure them you will never reveal their identity if they agree to spy for you. That's their argument, which you may have some sympathy with, we'll come to that. But you know, the Canova argument is what if that becomes a license to break the law? What if this agent is involved in murder? There are other things, other interests and public demands, particularly when an agent's been involved in criminality, which should, you know, overcome the desire for NCND and never to confirm an agent's identity.
- [41:35]
A
There's this section also from the Canova report which I think is, is interesting. It reads, proper handling and management mandates that agents are warned not to exceed their tasking or commit crimes without authorization or act as agent provocateurs and that doing so may have consequences. MI5 made representations to me that a, quote, promise of, quote, secrecy forever is crucial to its agent operations and the performance of its statutory functions. For my part, I do not think secrecy forever could ever be guaranteed and think it would be wrong for the security forces to recruit an agent, thereby putting them at risk on the basis of false and unrealistic promises.
- [42:17]
B
What do you think of that? I mean, because the Brits do place MI5 and MI6 quite a premium on saying we will protect your identity. I mean, it's why technically, so the madness of it, sometimes Gordievsky is still subject to NCND. So even though everyone knows he was an MI6 agent, everyone knows story of them smuggled him out. Technically, the British state will not confirm that Gordievsky was a, you know, MI6 agent. You know, they really do try and stick to this, but it gets them into kind of difficult situations when those agents are involved in criminality. I mean, there's been another case recently in Britain, kind of Agent X as he's known as someone who was accused of using the fact he was an agent, an asset of MI5, to kind of beat people up and use it as a kind of free pass. And again, the kind of. There was a battle actually in that case between the BBC and MI5 about whether or not he could be named and whether or not the kind of public interest trumped the, you know, agent protection principles.
- [43:16]
A
The reason that, or one of the reasons this is such a challenging case is that there was, it seems, a complete lack of structured process inside the FRU and inside the security forces for how you manage the risk and the, frankly, illegal behaviors being conducted by one of your agents. And it's not to say that a process would work out all of the moral complexities, because it wouldn't. But what it would have done is it would have created a framework by which you could assess whether the agent had lived up to their bargain. And if the agent doesn't live up to their bargain, I think the state doesn't owe the agent. This kind of secrecy forever will protect your identity kind of protection. Right. But if you don't have that, you end up in a situation where you've given the agent this promise, which doubtless, you know, his handlers did, which is that we will protect your identity. And the agent doesn't have a corresponding set of responsibilities with regard to, I think it's a really breaking the law or anything like that. So that's, that's the, that's the problem here, is that it does. And I, I think I kind of agree with this, you know, as a preface to the final Canova report here that says, you know, NCND neither confirm nor did I must be exercised in a proportionate and necessary manner and should not be an absolute bar, you know, to providing truth and justice. And I think that's right. You know, I think you can, reasonable people can, can agree on that. But, you know, it cannot be used. This is the can of report. It cannot be used to protect agents who commit grotesque serious crime, leaving victims and families ignored and their demands for information and answers dismissed. I think I'd also agree with that. But I would say in this case that in the steak knife case, those grotesque and serious crimes were being committed as part of his work, frankly, as, as an asset, as an agent. And that's the, you know, that's the kind of Gordian knot of this. Yeah, yeah.
- [45:27]
B
And just to finish off the NCND point, I mean, it's, it's notable that February 11th this year, 2026, you know, the Irish Taoiseach or the Prime Minister, you know, named Steak Knife as Freddie Scappatici. So, you know, he stands up in Parliament, in the Irish Parliament and said, you know, that the identity of State Knife was clear to everybody here and he should be officially named by the British government, particularly because of his close relationship with those who like to refer to themselves as the Republican movement. He said we should have an apology from Sinn Fein. You know, there's obviously a bit of politics here in Ireland. We should acknowledge that in respect to the activities of the Provisional IRA, as documented in this report, the Canova report, it's long past time for that apology and renunciation of what happened to occur. So, you know, you know, not named by the British state still, but named by the Irish state, which I guess brings us, you know, to the end, I mean, to the kind of really, I think, really complicated kind of issues around the value of. Of Steak Knife. I mean, just one point to start us off. I mean, there is a debate which, you know, amongst people about the role intelligence played before we get to Steak Knife himself overall, in bringing the conflict to an end. I mean, there are different aspects of this. We've not delved into all of it. I mean, one was there was a role for MI6, which we've not really talked about in this series, who ran a back channel through to the IRA through much of the conflict, which allowed deniable communications at key moments, even when the government's official line was, we don't talk to terrorists. You know, which was how they described the ira. And we're actually going to look at that back channel in a bonus episode for club members with the journalist Peter Taylor, who covered the whole of the Troubles. Lots of work on the intelligence side, but particularly, you know, is the expert on that backchannel. So we'll look at that issue kind of separately. But then there's also this kind of claim that intelligence played a role because the level of penetration of the IRA by the security forces was so big that it kind of put pressure on the IRA to eventually give up the campaign of violence. I mean, there's crazy estimates, and I don't know how anyone really knows the truth, but that, you know, up to a quarter or to a half of people in the IRA either were agents or had agents close to them.
- [47:45]
A
A quarter to a half of the
- [47:47]
B
entire organization was either agents or had an agent close to them. Now, it's hard to know that's true, but the argument would be that's a kind of tactical intelligence that the British state have built up which then because the IRA know it puts pressure on them because they feel so badly penetrated and that some of these agents might also be kind of maneuvering politics to push the IRA towards talks. Now this has, I think created a slightly self serving narrative which you sometimes hear from people, which is that intelligence somehow won the war. And it kind of takes away from all the other factors which led the British state and the IRA to realize that neither of them were going to achieve their, you know, their fundamental aims. And so they had to talk. So I think, you know, I think the idea that intelligence was the main reason for that, the intelligence penetration is over egging it. It's a claim that's out there, I
- [48:44]
A
suppose and I suppose a massive question also as we've talked throughout the series is, you know, did, did Steak Knife save lives or did he, did he cost lives? And I, I will say, I mean, I think that is a, it's a good question. It also, it reduces the, the moral complexity down to a math problem, you know, which I think is not, is not right. But it is a bit, it is worth it. I think it's worth trying to unpack it a bit because it gets at this, the risk reward, tension that, that colored the entire case.
- [49:24]
B
Yeah. And I think, you know, Canova looks into this in quite a lot of detail and it does say that State Knife became kind of mythologized, you know, with exaggerated stories, I mean, both about the benefits he brought as well as the dark things and that they say, you know, any serious security and intelligence professional hearing an agent being likened to the goose that laid the golden eggs as Steak Knife was, should be on alert because the comparison is rooted in fables and fairy tales. And I kind of, I like that point because I think the idea, I think the idea is used by some people who were in British intelligence that this was the most amazing agent who saved. Some of the claims are hundreds of lives, but actually when you drill into the metrics for understanding the hundreds of lives, it doesn't quite stack up because, you know, they based the hundreds of lives being saved on, you know, perhaps a bomb or a gun was found which had been hidden and which they get through a tip off maybe from Steak Knife, but that would have been used to kill X number of people. You know, it's a counterfactual which is quite, you know, shaky because you don't know if they'd have found it some other way or how many people it would have really killed or what, what would have happened with it.
- [50:38]
A
I would Presume, and maybe it's been destroyed, but I would presume that the FRU along the way, the handlers would have done some accounting somewhere that tries to get at the benefits that he's provided. Because you would think if you're the handler, like, I mean, really pedantically, the way you would get promoted inside the organization would be the intelligence that your, your agent has provided. How good is it? How much do you have? You know, what does it accomplish? So you would think that there would be an incentive, like a bureaucratic incentive to, to at some point have logged that stuff, even if it's exaggerated. But like, what? Where do we have it? Does it exist?
- [51:16]
B
Well, so again, Canova says that the Fruket Success books, which I guess is what you're talking about for some agents, but the one for Steak Knife has never been recovered. Another mysterious disappearance, you know, which fits, fits something here. So I mean, they say, look, they look at the number of lives they can identify who were saved through relocation, warning or intervention, and they say it's between high single figures and low double figures and nowhere near the hundreds that are sometimes claimed. They also try and do an accounting of the lives cost by Steak Knife. And I think this is significant. He's going to be linked to at least 14 murders and 15 abductions.
- [52:01]
A
When we say linked there.
- [52:02]
B
No, directly linked, I think in that sense. So, you know, Canova's conclusion is, I think it is probable that his actions resulted in more lives being lost than saved. So their conclusion is more lives lost than saved. But I think they also make one more, which I think is an important point which goes back to your point about maths. You know, even if you say a particular agent within a group did more good than harm, the morality of letting them do any harm with the knowledge or on behalf of the state is a different matter. So there's a kind of question there which is, is it as simple as just saying numbers, or do you have to consider what you are willing to let the state do and how far you're willing to let it go? I think that's a different kind of interesting question beyond just the kind of 10 versus 12 saved versus killed and
- [53:02]
A
the wartime context, I mean, obviously is kind of lost now, but is hugely important. We started off the series giving some context for just how disruptive and violent the troubles were. And I think to make the comparison for American listeners the equivalent in terms of population killed or wounded, if it were in the States, it would be the equivalent of the entire population of North Carolina. Being killed or wounded inside a piece of territory the size of Connecticut. It's not an excuse, but it's merely to say that in that context, I think the. The idea that any FRU handler would have said, you know what, let's cut this guy loose, is just like. They're just. It's. It's totally implausible. Now, maybe that's not the most interesting question to answer, but, like, you have. You have to start from. I think you got to start from that kind of contextual. Let's just think about this from the standpoint of the FRU and, you know, the, the war that was going on at the time.
- [54:10]
B
The context point is important, of course, the context now, you know, we've had very fortunately, peace in Northern Ireland or, you know, with. With. With some violence, but, you know, nothing like what it was for. But the fact it was wartime, I think, or wartime, you know, use the phrase wartime. There is part of the kind of question, because people make different judgments in wartime. And, you know, you see it in the Second World War about lives lost versus saved, about how you act on intelligence and what you do. I guess, you know, what's complicated is, you know, the IRA would have said it was a war, you know, and that they were an army and it was a war, but the British state would have said, well, it's, you know, criminality, and we're dealing with it in that way. And so there's a kind of tension there about how the standards you apply and the context that you see and whether you do see it as a wartime, and how. What. How far you change to some extent your kind of metrics or your tolerance for certain activities, if you do indeed see it as a war and how far you go. But I think it's hard. I mean, there are still these questions, I mean, which I think too hard to get into much detail about, which is, you know, should there be culpability for those handlers who let him carry out murders? And certainly some of the families of some of the victims of those killed by steak knife would like to see that, but there's no sign of. Of that happening, which I think, you know, I was talking about this with someone else, you know, saying it is, you know, when conflicts like this finish, it is one of the big questions, which is, do you have to, as. As a society, kind of have justice in terms of criminal prosecutions for people who went, who did things, or are there risks for that? Because there's a fight in that. In the uk, I think at the moment about what that means and about opening up more prosecutions, whether it was kind of Bloody Sunday, which we talked about in 1972, or steak knife and other incidents. So this is hard stuff, I think, for communities and particularly, I think for, you know, families of victims of people who died in, you know, on all the different sides in this conflict.
- [56:13]
A
I, you know, I think it's, it's, it's actually kind of a, frankly, a bit maybe gutless on the part of senior officers inside the security forces at the time to have allowed a case like this to have run without there being any kind of process, which is, which is how you end up with senior officials at, at different elements or different arms of the security forces basically being able to say, like, oh, we didn't quite know what was going on.
- [56:39]
B
Yeah.
- [56:40]
A
You know, even though the actual, you know, as we described it in, you know, one of the earlier episodes, even though the actual, the four ball rule inside, you know, the police and the army was that you can't have an agent involved in illegal behavior. Which of course was nuts. Right? Of course was nuts. You're trying to penetrate this organization that you consider to be a terrorist group. Anyone who's a member that you want to recruit is already a law, a lawbreaker. Right.
- [57:07]
B
Yeah.
- [57:08]
A
And so, so you, it's nuts. But, but then, so you have this really extreme, unrealistic rule that is guiding your agent running, which of course has to be broken constantly in the reality of the way you're going to run agents during the war to then not have a process that is a failure. Because, you know, the CIA kind of analog here is there was, there was a review of what the CIA called kind of dirty assets in the 1990s led by then, you know, DCI John Deutsch. And it, it came out of, you know, a whole bunch of cases from earlier in the agency's, you know, sort of lifespan, and in particular, some, some kind of nasty stuff from Guatemala in the 1980s where you had assets who had been, you know, who were involved in criminal behavior or members of, you know, in some cases, members of, you know, terrorist organizations. And part of the, the structure that came out of that review was like basic stuff. You know, you got to go to doj, the Department of Justice, and actually, you know, if you're, if you're trying to recruit someone who's you think is breaking the law, you got to go to DOJ and see if they have an investigation way against them. Are there criminal indictments against this person? You know, you need to get waivers for your agent to conduct criminal behavior or whatnot. And the level of the organization that's got to sign off on that waiver gets higher and higher to, you know, based on what kind of laws the agent is breaking. I think this point is really the critical one, is at some point these questions stop becoming intelligence questions and they become policy questions. Yeah, it becomes a policy of the state that in this case we are going to permit the deaths of certain UK citizens in pursuit of this intelligence war against what we see as a terrorist organization. That's, that's not something that individual low level hate handlers of a source should have to sort of figure out. Right. That is a policy question of the British state.
- [59:21]
B
Yeah, it's a good point. And it's interesting. I was talking to people and they were pointing out that there's new legislation which is coming, I think 2021, about exactly this, authorizing criminal conduct for kind of MI5 agents and others, you know, so that it's clearer what is being authorised and what is not being authorized. But one interesting point with that, is it deliberately? I remember kind of looking at this at the time, doesn't say what the limits are publicly for what an agent could do, because it goes back to the part of the point with state knife, which is you don't want to tip off a group that the state will never authorize murder, for instance, or something like that. Because immediately if you do say, as a public policy we're not going to authorize an agent to commit murder, then a terrorist group or any other group will use it as a test to see if someone's an agent. So I think, you know, these. And you can imagine that within kind of ISIS like groups or other groups these days as well. So, you know, we've been talking about history and Northern Ireland, but I think, you know, you're right. These are ongoing questions for intelligence agencies and I think that's the one. One of the lessons from this very dark tale is the need for a kind of much clearer sense of what the boundaries are and what the authorizations are and what the policies are. Because it just doesn't look like there was that with steak knife.
- [60:48]
A
Do you think that had everybody inside the security forces known exactly what was going on at the time? Do you think that given the context of the conflict that any different decisions would have been made about how he was handled or whether he was handled?
- [61:04]
B
Good question. I think, I think probably people did know what he was up to, but it was never put on paper. And People chose to turn to blind eye. That's the first thing. But the second thing is, I think at various points with bombs going off in England and, you know, kind of, you know, prime ministers nearly being assassinated by bombs and, you know, kind of. And the kind of scale of violence in Norway, Northern Ireland, on all sides, I think people were willing to do things which I think now I think look very questionable. That's part of it. But I think, you know, that's why I think it is a genuinely, you know, kind of complicated, difficult story indeed.
- [61:44]
A
And I think that is the place to leave it. We hope that even though it has been complicated, difficult, dark at times, that you've enjoyed this exploration of, I think a really compelling kind of end. Dark corner of what it means to run agents inside, you know, complicated, tough, paramilitary, slash, depending on your point of view, terrorist organizations. How do you do that? How do you manage the risk and reward? I think really a fascinating compliment to so many of the stories that we've done on this podcast on Agent Running. And we do hope that you've enjoyed it. You can get early access to all of these series. As a reminder, if you go to thereestisclassified.com and join the Declassified club, also get access to the bonus episodes that we do every week. And we've got some, we've done some, I think, some really interesting bonus episodes linked to this series on Stake Knife, haven't we, Gordon?
- [62:44]
B
Yeah, that's right with Patrick Radenkeef and Peter Taylor where we're really going to kind of drill down into some of these issues and some of the kind of tensions over intelligence in Northern Ireland. Also, a reminder, live show, 4th and 5th of September, the two of us will be at the South Bank. Fourth of us doing our own live show. Fifth, we got the Mooch link to get your tickets in the episode description box. So do come along to that live show, but otherwise we will see you next time.
- [63:11]
A
We'll see you next time.