149. Britain’s Man Inside the IRA: The Truth Behind Stakeknife (Ep 1)

14:27David:And that is going to also change the dynamic of this conflict.

14:32Gordon:And the group that the British army will come into direct conflict with is the IRA. Yeah. And that group dates back to, I mean, I guess the Irish fight for independence in 1919, 1920. And that is going to be the kind of the central conflict here, right, will be the British state and the IRA.

14:56David:That's right. Right. And it's interesting because the IRA's roots go back, as you said, to the fight for independence and it's persisted. But the main part of the IRA at this time in the late 60s is actually the part in Northern Ireland is focused, interestingly enough, on trying to establish unity of Protestant and Catholic working class as the first route to getting independence. But what you see within that part of the IRA is that that is seen as failing to protect the community. So there's a split in December 1969. And those who are more militant and want to confront the British state and now the British army form something called the provisional IRA, often called Pyra or the provost, or often just called the IRA, really, because the other part, the official IRA, as it's termed, will fade from view.

15:48David:And Pyra or the provost will become the main IRA and the main force fighting the Brits. And Scappaticci, like a lot of the younger generation, joins the provosts because the provosts are the young and they're new. The new members are going to rise fast. He's going to get well known in the markets area. I mean, people do say, I mean, going back to the name, that it makes him distinctive. I do like, you know, one fact is supposedly he'd get annoyed when people wouldn't pronounce his name right. And Becky, our producer, will need the bleep gun here because he would look at them and he goes, it's Scappaticci is how he'd tell them to pronounce it.

16:24David:when they got it wrong. But I think it does suggest that he's young here in his early 20s, but he's already a bit of a character as the provisional IRA is pursuing this strategy, which is it's going to use force to try and collapse the Northern Ireland Unionist government and inflict casualties on the British army with the hope that that will make them withdraw and ultimately the British state withdraw. So by October 1970, there's going to be a bombing campaign. The first members of the security forces are killed that year. And you go through phases, I think, initially there's disorder and rioting.

16:57David:And then from around 1971, you get what's called the insurgency phase, where the provisional IRA is quite, it's formed in a militaristic manner with companies, battalions and brigades. And there are firefights on the streets with the army during these years. And Scappatichie is one of those involved in that early period with more and more shootings and the British government by 1971 struggling to control things.

17:22Gordon:And the violence escalates. There's more and more shootings, bombings. The British government is really struggling to control things. And then in August of 1971, there's the introduction of internment, which is detention without trial. I guess there's an advantage of no written constitution, Gordon, right there. And IRA supporters can essentially be jailed without any kind of trial or, I mean, without reason, I guess, in some cases.

17:51David:Yeah, they could just be, yeah, they just picked up hundreds of them. And included amongst those picked up in that wave in August 1971 is Freddy Scappaticci. So at 4.30am on the 9th of August, 1971, his front door is kicked in by British soldiers. They take him away, give them supposedly a good kicking as they do. He's one of these hundreds locked up. Now, he's not one of a smaller group who are subject to what's called euphemistically deep interrogation. CIA will be aware of these euphemisms, which involves five techniques like hooding and sleep deprivation and had been developed by the British Army during counterinsurgency.

18:27David:So he's not subject to that. And he's held at an internment camp called Longkesh, which is a former RAF based near Lisbon, about 10 miles from Belfast. Now, meanwhile, the act of internment leads to an escalation in violence which aids IRA recruitment and Scappaticci is going to be interned for a considerable period for crucial years as the conflict escalates. So 30th of January 1972 soldiers from the 1st Battalion the Parachute Regiment of the British Army opened fire on a ground of people marching against internment in the city of Derry. 14 people end up dying from that and that becomes known as Bloody Sunday and 1972 is the bloodiest year of the conflict.

19:07David:472 people killed, 321 civilians, 100 soldiers, 16 members of the RUC. And you see the RA also moving from shootouts to smaller scale operations in this period. And you see them moving towards bombings, including bombings on the mainland in England to try and put pressure on the government to withdraw. So you see an activity in England, which I think leaves 45 people dead by the end of of 1974. And Scappaticci himself gets released in early 1974, goes back to the IRA, but then in August 1974, he gets banged up again for another period of internment. So he's in and out a lot during this phase. And I guess there with Scappaticci just about to get out of prison for really some crucial

19:54Gordon:years, let's take a break and when we come back, we will look at the intelligence piece of this dirty war.

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21:15Gordon:Welcome back. After this escalation of the conflict between 1970 and 1971, the Brits are desperate for intelligence. I mean, the IRA, the provisional IRA is pretty new. It's a pretty new organization. I mean, it started in 1969. It's full of younger people. And I think it's safe to say that the British state doesn't really understand this organization very well. So naturally, they need to recruit people inside it, around it, to understand its plans, intentions, capabilities, and I think crucially in this period to try to prevent violence.

21:57David:Yeah, this is where the intelligence side of this conflict really kicks in because the army realise that they're struggling to deal with the bloodshed. And they respond partly by using some of the counterinsurgency tactics they've learned overseas. For instance, fighting in the Maobao uprising in Kenya, an uprising against British rule. And that's part of the interrogation techniques, but also some of the attempts to create informers and recruit informers within communities. So they're importing some of those techniques. And the army also takes the decision that they want to develop their own intelligence capabilities rather than rely on the RUC, the Royal Arts to Constabulary, the local police.

22:40David:One of the reasons is the RUC, as I said, is perceived as biased towards the Protestant population. It's kind of disproportionately Protestant. And the army also think that many individuals who might provide intelligence would not deal with the RUC as a result. So the army are going to kind of develop their own capability. They start with these things called covert bomb squads, whose remit was to collect and act upon intelligence related to bombings, hence the name. Later, that's then remodeled into something called the Military Reaction Force in 1971. Now, this is quite a controversial unit. MRF, Military Reaction Force, members were deployed in disguise at vehicle checkpoints, trying to identify potential members of groups.

23:21David:They're often operated in plain clothes, using unmarked vehicles. They used front companies, so a mobile laundry service and a massage parlor to try and gather intelligence. Famously, there's some incidents, and I think these are recounted in the TV drama, Say Nothing, which we'll talk about a little later on based on Patrick Braddon Keefe's book and who we're going to be talking to in a bonus. But there's a scene there which is dramatised where the IRA then get intelligence about one of these laundry service vans and they shoot up the laundry van. And this really did happen, killing one of the soldiers who's hiding in the roof.

23:53David:They're also linked to a unit which is recruiting agents. And that gets known as the Fred Force, which is a kind of strange name, because the agents were called Freds for some reason.

24:05Gordon:You don't want to be part of the Fred Force. All these other groups sound somewhat menacing, but the Fred Force sounds comical. A bit weird, doesn't it? Yeah.

24:14David:Yeah. Yeah. So the MRF is controversial, and particularly because it's said that some of the tactics they use are not that dissimilar to the ones used by the IRA with claims of drive-by shootings as well as intelligence gathering. So it's going to get disbanded in 1973. You're going to get new groups like the Special Reconnaissance Unit, 14 Intelligence Company, and later, crucially, and we'll get to this in more detail, an organisation called the FRU, the Force Research Unit, or the FRU. Now, I guess it's worth talking a little bit about this, because this is the intelligence war about how the army is recruiting people.

24:47David:But the reality is that they're stopping lots of people on the street. They're doing thousands of house searches. They're doing vehicle stops all the time. And they're bringing people in for interrogation. So that really offers them the avenue to approach people and to talk to them and to try and persuade them to be an informer. And if you're the British state, if you're the army or if you're the FRU, right, you have tremendous advantages in this context because you have you control the legal

25:22Gordon:system. And so you can, you know, is it blackmail? Is it not blackmail? I mean, in a lot of these cases, I know that the way that the handlers have tried to talk about these recruitments are saying, oh, we're, you know, we're sort of playing off of agents need for money or their desire for status or grudges that they have with others in the community, all good fodder, of course, for recruiting a human asset. But at the same time, you can essentially use the fact that a recruit might be part of the IRA, affiliated with the IRA, might have committed some other legal infraction. That's tremendous leverage for the army as they're thinking about their agent pool in Northern Ireland.

26:03David:Yeah, that's right. And I think this is, it's one of the interesting aspects of this is the different accounts of how the army, and to some extent the RUC, recruit agents. Because they say, well, we, you know, it's the normal stuff, money, status, grudges. But if you listen to people on the Republican side, they will say that they use the kind of state leverage you're talking about to put pressure on people to become informers by using situations or engineering situations. So the claim is that, for instance, if you're a taxi driver, you might get arrested for driving under the influence and be told if you don't become an informer, then you'll be prosecuted for DUI.

26:45David:And then it's game over and you'll lose your job as a taxi driver in your livelihood. And so you can see if you kind of control aspects of the situation and the legal process, you've got leverage to try and put pressure on people to become informers. and you can potentially engineer situations in which maybe they lose a job, so they need money, or you can do little things like their car need expensive repairs, so they need money. And that's where I think the tension lies over what kind of techniques were used. So we're not talking about classic blackmail, although that may have happened, although how much is not clear, but it's forms of pressure.

27:23David:And I think there's a, I guess there's an elasticity and a kind of spread of how you can use that, isn't there, David?

27:29Gordon:Well, by the mid-1970s, this intelligence focus is really starting to pay off. I mean, obviously, given the context we've just described, the Army would have a massive pool of potential agents to recruit from, and that's paying off. But the IRA, I mean, this is sort of a push and pull to this, isn't there? Because the IRA is starting to adapt to this. And what it discovers it needs is it needs a different cell structure to improve security. So it's a classic kind of, we see this kind of classic arc of you go from open conflict insurgency to a kind of more clandestine cell structure where you try to fragment or atomize things so that if the British state, if the army penetrates one cell, they don't roll everybody up.

28:16Gordon:So you've got to be careful about the links between these kind of groups. And crucially, they're looking for ways of dealing with informers, with the penetrations that the British state has recruited. So they need a counterintelligence function. And this is where our friend Scappaticci comes back in.

28:34David:Yeah, that's right. So Scappaticci gets released from internment the second time in December 1975. So he's done two periods of internment. He's now out. He doesn't go back as quickly this time, it seems, to the IRA, which is interesting. There's a little, seems to be a bit of a break here. Maybe, you know, he has spent much of the last three or four years interned and maybe he doesn't want to go back. He's not getting any younger. He also does seem to be interested in money and he wants to provide for his family, which is growing. He gets involved in the building trade and he does make some serious money.

29:08David:Partly, and we'll come back to this, through a complicated fraud, a building fraud, which is scamming the taxman. But it means he can extend the house. He's going on foreign holidays, buying TVs and cars. As you said, he likes his football. He's going to install a bar and snooker table in his house. He likes stuff. He goes to Florida. He goes to Florida on holiday at one point. Yeah. So, you know, he's definitely a man who enjoys certain material comforts, but still he will go back into the Belfast IRA. And now, crucially, he goes in as an intelligence officer because, as you said, you know, the IRA have been struggling with this issue of informers in their ranks in Belfast because they can see that the security forces have been, you know, have clearly managed to penetrate them and are trying to roll up as many of the leaders as they can.

29:56Gordon:Why do you think he went back to the IRA? The gap, I guess, kind of makes some sense. Maybe you just want to have a somewhat normal life for a bit after you've gotten out of prison. We should say, I mean, he's about 30. So you'd think maybe he started to think a little bit more about the future or family, but he goes back. What's your sense of why he does that?

30:18David:I think that's really hard to know I mean some people have wondered well maybe he was recruited to go back I don't think that looks to be the case I just think he's someone who doesn't like to be slighted and to be on the outside and I think he's got that kind of drive to be inside where things are happening he doesn't always get on with other people and he's got kind of grudges and attitudes towards other people as we'll see you know through his career and it'll play a big role in his rise and fall but you wonder if that is part of it where he just doesn't like to not be in the middle of things because yeah he he is going to go back and it's this interesting role because rather than going into what's called an active service unit who the people actually going out and doing the violence he's going to become an intelligence officer because it's this search for infiltration and informers and informers are known as touts that's the kind of phraseology used by the The IRA, deep, dark place in the imagination of some, given the history with the British over the years.

31:16David:And the IRA at this point fear, I think rightly, that there's touts at lots of different levels in this. And so, as you said, they're going to build a more centralized counterintelligence function. And in 1978, they're going to create something called the Internal Security Unit, the ISU, which is their counterintelligence team.

31:36Gordon:But if listeners think this is a sort of smoke and mirrors, George Smiley-esque world of counterintelligence or counterespionage, think again. Because Scab is practicing a much more brutal and, dare I say, knuckle-dragging version of counterintelligence and counterespionage. Because he's essentially interviewing everybody who the IRA suspects as being an informant or who comes out of prison and needs to be vetted to see if the Brits have turned them.

32:09David:Yeah, so he's an interrogator. And this ISU, which we should say is, you know, the people in the ISU are all slightly older. There tend to be men in their 30s and 40s who'd been in prison, which means that they've got a bit of experience of the tactics that the police and the security service are using. So they're not young. It's about 20 of them. Now, interestingly enough, the head of the internal security unit is a guy called John Joe McGee. He's described in Richard O 'Rourke's book is an excellent study of Scappaticci. It's called Steak Knife's Dirty War. And Richard O 'Rourke, we should say, was an IRA member who actually kind of encountered Scappaticci at this point, so kind of understands of what he writes.

32:50David:And in O 'Rourke's book, he talks about the head of the ISU being John Joe McGee, who's a portly middle-aged man with receding once ginger hair, at first looked like an old soak, but had actually been a member of the SBS, the British Special Boat Service, so the elite special forces, kind of pre-trouble. And he's hard drinking and soft-spoken. Now, Scappaticci is going to be his deputy. So Scappaticci is number two in the ICU. And as you said, they have some interesting jobs because one of them is vetting new recruits. So anyone who comes in through Belfast, Scappaticci would be one of those to interrogate them in a dark room.

33:24David:One person who had been an IRA member himself, Eamon Collins, writes about how this would typically take place from his understanding of talking to people. And he said, scat asked them all the same questions. Had they any previous connection with the Republican movement? Did they attend Republican marches, events or funerals? Did they drink in well-known Republican pubs? Had they ever sung rebel songs publicly? Were they known in the area as IRA supporters? Had they ever been arrested? Did they have a criminal record? If so, what for? If they answered yes to any question, then SCAP would ask follow-up questions.

33:57David:When, where, and with whom did they attend the march, the event, or the funeral? And the most significant question was, why did they want to join the IRA? So that's one function, is to vet your incoming members, basically.

34:11Gordon:And he also looks at failed or compromised operations for evidence of security breaches. And this main role, though, is interviewing individuals who've been detained or arrested because, of course, the IRA is massively penetrated and they're deeply fearful that the Brits are conducting these kind of jailhouse, in many ways, recruitments, right? Right. Someone comes in. Now the Brits have legal leverage over them, can get information on their personality, on their background, on sort of who's up and who's down in their world in the IRA, use all of that to come up with a way to sort of release them back into the wild to work for the British state.

34:52Gordon:And that is exactly what the ISU and Scappatici are trying to root out.

34:58David:Yeah, that's right. Because, I mean, the IRA is very aware that so many people are being swept up by the British, that's when they try and recruit them. And the IRA have something called the Green Book, which was the training and induction manual for new volunteers, which told them what to expect if they're detained. And the instructions were, if you're detained, say nothing, sign nothing, see nothing, hear nothing. Say nothing, we should say, is the title of Patrick Raddenkeith's book and the TV series, and we're going to talk to him on a bonus. But that's the instruction because they know that's when it happens.

35:27David:The pitch is made by the Brits. but when someone is released from detention they they get questioned by the isu by scappatici's unit and it's partly they know not everyone's going to be you know pitched out or term but they want to understand what the brits are asking you know they want to know what are the tactics the brits are using to try and turn someone and scap is the main interrogator which is interesting

35:52Gordon:because he's the number two to to mcgee and and mcgee will kind of take this approach of asking questions in a clear voice, take his time, have the person kind of tell their story in detail, kind of look to see, okay, are they hesitating? Are they contradicting themselves? Importantly, I think just as a note on the way you might interrogate someone to understand if they're telling the truth is ask them question after question, have them tell you their story over and over again, and you're kind of looking for inconsistencies or anomalies in that story to understand. And then if you find them, you zero in on those and kind of try to break someone down that way so you can understand if they're telling you the truth.

36:38David:Yeah. I mean, because they're questioning a lot of people, but it's only if you're suspected of being an agent for some reason that things get particularly dark. And then you get taken to a safe house, tend to be put in a boiler suit put in a darkened room with a chair facing a wall so you can't see who's asking them questions and you're right mcgee would do this kind of quite patient careful questioning of someone to see if they hesitate or contradict themselves and that can go on for days where scap teachy takes a different role and a different style he can shout he can whisper but his trick is is more you know and it's interesting because it's it is still more at this point psychological pressure rather than torture, although that can happen.

37:21David:But whereas McGee is looking for inconsistencies, Scappaticci, his idea is to tell them he already knows what that person has done. He's the bad cop. Scappaticci is the bad cop. And it's better for them to confess quickly rather than keep him waiting. And Richard O.

37:41Gordon:Raw has a great quote describing Scapp's kind of style. He says, Scapp's party piece was to say, you have an hour in which to make your mind up whether you're going to tell me everything. If you don't tell me everything within the hour, then I can't do anything for you. I'm washing my hands of you. I can put your case to the IRA, Army Council. I can probably get you out of this as long as you tell me everything. But after that hour, I'm gone and other people will take you away and they are going to hang you upside down in a barn, skin you alive and crucify you as the hour counted down he would say you have 10 minutes to go five minutes to go two minutes to tell me everything that often worked people talked hoping they wouldn't get tortured and i think it's you know it's interesting there that he's he's kind of dangling i can probably get you out of this you know as this yeah give someone hope that if they just if they just tell you the truth it'll be over and everything will be fine when of course that's usually not the case.

38:35David:Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. He would later remark that, you know, he was telling them that he'd set them free if they confess, but he would admit that's a lie. And he says, everybody being what they are, everybody has a breaking point, you know, and they think they're going home, but they don't. Now, after an ISU investigation, a court-martial takes place, which technically consists of three members of equal or higher rank than the accused. You can see the kind in a sense in which the IRA is very much seeing itself as a military organisation in its own perception of itself. And there'd be a member from the Army Council, the General Headquarters, the Army Council being the kind of top body, and an observer would inform the Army Council, who would then ratify a sentence for an informer.

39:17David:And the sentence, if you're a serious informer, would often be death. Now, the IRA normally killed agents by shooting them in the head, also known as the nut. So the ISU became known as the nutting squad. And that was how they're often referred to because they usually put two bullets to the back of the head or the nut.

39:36Gordon:And Eamon Collins, who is the former IRA member, who was later killed by the IRA, quotes a conversation he had with John Dickey and Scappaticci in his book, Killing Rage. And he writes, I asked whether they always told people that they were going to be shot. Scapp said it depended on the circumstances. He turned to John Joe, who's his boss, John Joe McGee, and started joking about one informer who had confessed after being offered an amnesty. Scapp told the man he would take him home, reassuring him he's got nothing to worry about. Scapp had told him to keep the blindfold on for security reasons as they walked from the car.

40:08Gordon:It was funny. This is Scapp talking. Watching the bastard stumbling and falling, asking me as he felt his way along railings and walls, is this my house now? And I'd say, no, not yet. Walk on some more. And then you shot the in the back of the head, said John Joe, and both of them burst out laughing. So you get a sense of the man that, you know, this guy has made some kind of transition from the bullying bricklayer with a bit of a penchant for, you know, violence to someone who's executing it regularly in his role inside the IRA. Right.

40:45David:Yeah. And the ISU also always sought confessions from these people. And they often recorded them on audio tapes where someone had to admit to being an agent for the security forces. They were then played to family. Sometimes Scappaticci would take them himself. And I mean, sometimes those confessions were real, but sometimes people just obviously made it up because they thought it might get them off. So they confessed to anything. So it's hard to know. So as we reach the end of the 1970s, Scappaticci is now number two in the ISU, the Nutting Squad, and he's meeting out punishment to people said to be informers for the British.

41:20David:But what the IRA doesn't know is that Scappatici himself at this point is an agent for the British state.

41:28Gordon:Well, let's end this episode there. And next time we will look at how Scapp is recruited and how really how the British state, British security forces run an agent inside the IRA, an agent that is himself committing murder. Also, a reminder that listeners can and should, I think we'd say, Gordon, go and join the Declassified Club at TheRestIsClassified.com, where you'll get early access to this entire series, as well as exclusive bonus content, including an interview that we will be doing with Patrick Radden-Keefe, who is the author of Say Nothing and the upcoming book, London Falling.

42:07David:That's right. And also don't forget that live show tickets are now available for the 4th and 5th of September for those events we're doing at the South Bank Centre in London. So just look for that on the South Bank Centre website. But otherwise, we will see you next time. We'll see you next time.