151. Britain’s Man Inside the IRA: From Spy to Executioner (Ep 3)

19:12David:Clean cut. Yeah, maybe at this time they were trying to blend in.

19:16Gordon:Trying to grow in 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 yeah which

19:45David: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 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 scappatici and particularly the south armar branch of the ira do seem to have suspicions about him the belfast where he's primarily based, they stand by him. And it's interesting, because this goes back to 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 to tout, was to get them to kill someone.

20:24David: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 underestimate 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.

20:59David:But at least one informer did. So, you know, it's really interesting that, isn't it, I think, as an example of why Scappaticci survives, because of how far they let him go, how far the authorities allow him to do things. 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.

21:21Gordon:And his fruit handlers are protecting him by, in some cases, not using his intelligence to intervene and to save lives. But I guess as we move through the 1980s, protecting Steakknife, deciding who lives and who dies is going to get even harder and it'll eventually force Scappaticci's Steakknife to disappear.

21:47David:Yeah. So in the mid-80s, Scappaticci 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.

22:28David:So it has a kind of insight, but also a veto. 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 Scappatici takes on. So he's got more and more influence. and 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 are sometimes pushing, it's said, for operations to go ahead by the IRA because they want to be able to ambush them.

23:18David:And Scappaticci is actually brought in to investigate some of these ambushes and where IRA operations go wrong in his security functions. There's a particularly important one, 8th of May 1987 at Lofgall, which is an RUC base in County Armagh, where eight IRA men are ambushed and killed when they're planning an attack. It's 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, it's informers. But actually, it's not always. I think that's one of the interesting things.

23:53Gordon:Do we know what Scappaticci'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.

24:17David:Yeah, which is weird, isn't it?

24:18Gordon:He's married. He's got kids. Just the psychological complexity of this for him feels like it would be crushing.

24:29David: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 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 reach 87, 88, where the pressure and the toll of that you'd think is getting to it.

25:07David: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 the investigation in Lofcourt, you've got actually, it may well have been not informers, but the fact that by this point, British intelligence has got very good technical penetration of the IRA in terms of bugs and bugging devices, which MI5 and others are putting in. And yet in the IRA, they always think it's informers. They're obsessed with informers and touts. And so the kind of pressure on the ISU to find the touts and find the informers, I also think is getting more intense and creating a kind of paranoia within the IRA.

25:53David:And of course, Gapitici is at the center of that, which I agree. He's the chief tout at this point, right? I mean, he's the chief tout hunter.

26:00Gordon:I mean, crazy 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 massad operatives inside their own intelligence services and then it came out that the guy who was running it was himself an agent of the massad and had brought other agents of the massad in to work with him. So it's just this fox in the hen house thing that's so... I mean, the whole thing is... The whole organization's turned inside out when that happens. And I guess by the late 80s, the IRA is shifting to this strategy called the Long War.

26:44Gordon:So more emphasis on political activity.

26:48David:Yeah. Political activity, Republican political party, Sinn Féin, Britain also trying to get agents inside Sinn Féin and close to them and trying to understand that as well. But at the same time, the intelligence war with State Knife at its heart is coming, I think, for State 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 tangled up with Scappaticci. 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.

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28:10Gordon:Now in our world, we know that institutions are not always what they seem, don't we?

28:15David:That's right, David, and in this series, it's built around the things we find most compelling. Which are, of course, conspiracy, institutional corruption, and moral ambiguity. That's us. These are the grey areas where the right call isn't always clear.

28:31Gordon:This is a fast-paced, edge-of-your-seat story where you never quite know who to trust or what happens next. That's right.

28:38David:So it's the next great thing to binge, and you can watch all episodes from the 30th of April on Sky.

28:45Gordon: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 dirty war. And I guess one very valuable agent of influence, Gordon, was named Willie Carlin.

29:08David:yeah that's right i think we're going to look at three agents informers and how they got tangled up with scappatici each one tells you something interesting about who lives and who dies and why and the first one is is this agent called willie carlin really interesting character died just a couple of years ago actually um 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.

29:48David: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, the Republican movement. So he's in that world rather than a gunman. And he becomes close 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 as Ben. And this character, Ben, he finds really odd. He always wants to meet at pubs.

30:23David:And he's often drunk. I mean, he sings rebel songs when he's drunk. So that's kind of -

30:29Gordon:Not your typical MI5 guy, I suppose. in that sense.

30:33David:No, I've not met many who are like that. One time, Carlin finds him drunk in his car outside Martin McGuinness's 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 realises is actually the future head of MI5, Stella Rimmington. So that's one of the people he meets, which gives you a sense, you know, she's on the rise at this point, but it gives you a sense of 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.

31:11David:In his neighbourhood, he's back. He's at that point still involved in the Republican movement politically, but not as an agent. A young mother, aged 29, is doing a census for the British government, paid£5 a day. The IRA are boycotting the census. The woman takes a wrong turn and ends up in a Republican neighbourhood. 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 Carlin, because she's just been at Carlin's house, at Willie Carlin's house, runs over and he sees her body. And he will recall that she's still holding her census clipboard as she's lying there, dead.

31:52David: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. Instead, he contacts the military. It means this time he's going to be run not by MI5, but by Fru, by the Force Research Unit. He becomes a pretty valuable agent straight on, reporting again on the political aspect of 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.

32:27Gordon: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 Steakknife and the IRA. And 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.

33:13Gordon: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 understand after working so close to the troubles. And Michael Bettany is the handler who Carlin, Willie Carlin, had known as Ben.

33:34David:It's wild, isn't it?

33:35Gordon:And then we'll get Kevin Bacon here in a moment.

33:38David:Yeah, I know. 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 Féin, 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 Scappaticci.

34:18David: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, Snake Knife and all, are told to go and get Carlin. Scappaticci 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.

34:55David: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.

35:09Gordon:That can't be right, right? That he's flown out on -

35:12David:On a private jet.

35:14Gordon:I thought the PM flew commercial.

35:16David: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 coming up for investigation.

35:36Gordon: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?

35:49David: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, this is where, of course, it's often murky because there are reports he's pressured to do it by the RUC, as he's told he'll be prosecuted unless, this goes back to some of our earlier discussions, unless he agrees to become an informer.

36:35David: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 he also, 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. 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.

37:16David: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 they get tea and toast and then go back upstairs for the interrogation.

37:54David: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 Scappaticci 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 of the house and he's shot and his body is found soon after.

38:15Gordon: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 do they let him die?

38:40David: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 Scappaticci for by pulling him out, whereas Carlin is. Scappaticci is directly involved in this interrogation and killing. But the suspicions do, I think, start to grow about Scappaticci at this point.

39:25David:There's a particular senior IRA figure called Brendan Hughes who's been in and out of jail at various points, 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 Scappaticci. 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 Radden-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.

39:58Gordon: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.

40:22David:And this is, in a way, the last of our cases. And for State Knife, it 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 hold of which i guess is looking for radio frequencies being emitted um and and lynch hears a voice because he's blindfolded he hears the voice and he recognizes it as scappatici 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 scappatici tells him he's going to be hanging upside down in a cow shed until he confesses.

41:19David:Now, there are two teams doing the interrogation and they take turns, but Scappaticci 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.

41:59David: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 Scappatich is ensuring Lynch is in the safe house. And then And Sinn Féin, 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, 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.

42:32David: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 Scappaticci in events. And Scappaticci himself has slipped out of a back door before the security forces have arrived. But I mean, that's bound to raise suspicions, isn't it, within ISU?

42:53Gordon: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?

43:09David: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 the 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.

43:46Gordon:And of course, the IRA, no, after this raid has occurred, which obviously, I guess, just the mere fact that the raid happens would raise your suspicions that there was someone who had knowledge of the meeting or who was actually there who had tipped off the British authorities. But of course, since Scappatici's steak knife has used that bug detector device to scan for radio frequencies, he's used that on Lynch. It's got his fingerprints on it.

44:19David:Right. Lynch recognizes Scappatici's voice because Lynch, of course, doesn't know Scappatici is also an informer. So Lynch is going around going, I know Freddie Scappatici was there. I recognize his voice.

44:29Gordon:So from the standpoint of the IRA, Scappaticci should be hunted. Should be wanted, yeah. And go to prison or be pursued for prison, yeah.

44:40David:In their minds, the police should now logically have enough at the very least to arrest Scappaticci 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 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 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.

45:29David:That seems kind of thin, a little thin to me. It does. And, you know, interesting enough, they coach him. So the Fru 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.

45:59Gordon:You have to think that some in the IRA, the senior officials in the IRA, maybe they don't have hard proof, but they've got to assume that Scappatici'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 of the the cambridge five where you kind of know or maybe you know but it's almost it's almost too unsettling to confront it and so you just turn a blind eye yeah i think that's i think that is

46:36David: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 he's released without charge. And I agree. I think people just don't want to confront the possibility that he's bad, that he's an informer. And it is strange that he's not questioned more at this point by the IRA. He's not really interrogated, it seems. It's all, I think, odd, this situation. I think your point that it's denial is perhaps the only thing. But Scappatici's been away for this period, and there are suspicions about him.

47:19David:So he's been marginalized. And this is the problem for him because he wants to get back in the game. And this is the early 90s, right? Yeah. Then we're into the early 90s, kind of 90 to 92, 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, Scappaticci does not like being out of the action. You know, he doesn't like being marginalized.

47:52David:I mean, go back to the kind of late 70s. I think that's one of the reasons he might even be 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 State Knife emerging into the open.

48:25Gordon: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 Scappaticci in the finale of this four-part series on Steakknife. 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 at therestisclassified.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.

49:07Gordon:We've 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. See you then.

49:32Gordon:It is out of control in the White House right now. Welcome to The Rest is Politics, U.S. I'm Katty Kay. I'm Anthony Scaramucci. Who is the worst politician in Washington right now? They don't know how to manage Donald Trump. I talk to the people that organized the abduction. I'm telling you why they did it. The White House is in a bind, Anthony. Here's what I would say to you about FAFA. The chaos is the strategy. It should not have happened, and it is a violation of international law. Is he losing control of the party? I survived 11 days in Trump's White House. I know the SOB. I've been covering politics in Washington for almost 30 years.

50:13Gordon:Twice a week, we break down what's really going on in Trump's White House. 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.

50:26David:You know, he can lie about a lot of things, but he can't lie about what people are feeling about the economy.

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