152. Britain’s Man Inside the IRA: Unmasking the Traitor (Ep 4)

16:08Gordon:I was going to ask, why is Hearst, what's his motivation? This seems, was he disgusted with the way that the Fru had handled itself and so he's trying to get back at the organization?

16:20David:Yeah, he's a disillusioned crew member. And I think particularly the fact of what Scappaticci 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 Steakknife is out, but it's going to be another four years nearly before Scappaticci's name becomes associated with it. And this is also fascinating because the link between Steakknife, the agent, and Scappaticci starts to appear 10th to 11th of May in news reports, 2003. Irish media, US websites, finally in the UK media.

17:00David:Scappaticci 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 realised at this point that if he disappears, That's just going to be taken as confirmation and leave him and his family worried. So I think he takes this decision, which he's going to go public. He's going to appear before journalists. He's going to do interviews and deny everything.

17:31Gordon:You wonder also, just given that he had 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 yeah that's his only hope yeah that that's my only hope exactly i mean there's some of the

17:56David:bits are 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 frederico scappatici

18:05Gordon:that's a credible defense there that's gonna that's gonna that's gonna hold water yeah yeah

18:10David:Yeah. And he also goes to see the IRA leadership. Now, we have to remember, from 1998, there's been a Good Friday Agreement. So there is a peace process now. So the war has effectively stopped. But everyone in the IRA appears to be in shock because they worry that they've been penetrated by their enemy. But 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 acknowledge that it's Scappatici. Better for them as well to deny it.

18:38Gordon:And at this point, what is the hard evidence that's being presented?

18:42David:So the Sunday Times reporting gets the steak knife out there, and then later reporting says, okay, that's Freddy Scappatici.

18:51Gordon:But what actually is the hard evidence provided?

18:53David:Well, that's the problem, is it's basically sources from Fru 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 they're just going to deny it. And the Sinn Féin leader, Gerry Adams, puts out a statement saying people who, you know, say he's an agent of being played by British intelligence. You know, 12th of May, Scappaticci goes to speak to the Anderson Town 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.

19:33David: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.

19:45Gordon:he's uh he's holding his ground there right yeah and i guess he i guess he figures he can get away with the 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 he can say it's all a ploy by by british intelligence and i guess that is the plan right So he, scap, goes out, talks to a ton of journalists, denies everything.

20:13David:I mean, he even swears an affidavit. I mean, he even swears in front of a solicitor an 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 gone away with it. I mean, because I think at that point, people are like, well, he says, she says, you know, 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 Mark McGuinness. They recognize it's the same voice as the guy they met in the car who called himself Jack or whatever.

20:57David:And that that is the guy now denying it who told them all about the inner workings of the IRA. Right. So July 2003, the recording of that 1993, the secret recording they'd made of him, is put out by the journalists. And they reveal that at the time they've been told by the security forces to do everything they could to stop his name coming out as he was such an important source.

21:23Gordon:That's game over for Scab, right? And so then he has to run, moves to England, changes his name in 2003, and thereafter has to do another location to name change on at least one more occasion. But for a while, he lives in Manchester, which I guess makes that squirted because then he can follow. He had at one point been a season ticket holder to Manchester City, right? So he can follow his favorite club.

21:52David:Yeah, he had a bit of time in Scotland, it sounds like. It's obviously quite mysterious. Ends up, we think, in Guildford, 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.

22:16Gordon:He just loves the game, man. I mean, that's his job. What else is he going to do? You know I love talking about families on The Rest is Classified. I'm 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 um but she's not they've been together this whole time but but she doesn't make the move no i think that it's interesting as

22:56David: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 um frank cowley i think one of the interesting questions though is is because the ra now know that he is a he's been a tout he's been an informer you know

23:18Gordon:but they don't they don't hunt him down 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 uh reference point here where you know i think we discussed him a little bit on our series of the young uh kim Philby where 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. It's too difficult to reveal that he's been a Soviet spy. And I think it could be the same with Scap here.

24:01Gordon:It kind of raises a question, a fundamental question if you're the IRA about the caliber of the entire organization and what it was doing if it had been penetrated at the very top for decades, right? 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.

24:28David: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 rawr 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 there's 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.

25:04David:And Wilsey's written a book, a memoir called Ulster Tales, which had, and we talked about this, I think, in the second episode, about, you know, he talks without using the name State 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 Hurst, posing as journalist, Anne Willsie, on the BBC podcast series, which is excellent, called State Knife. And it's staggering because Hearst 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 Scappaticci.

25:36David:And Willsie, the general, he's quite elderly at this point, he goes, I was in a car with him. Hearst 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 Scappaticci. Who is he? You don't know who freddy scappatici 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 scappatici steak knife the reason willsy had met him was that was the period where scappatici had wanted reassurance you know with stephen's inquiry going on that he wouldn't be exposed so willsy had been the one to kind of meet him and willsy you know described him as the best agent the golden egg and you know it kind of goes through a description of why.

26:21David:So basically, Hurst has got Willsie to admit, you know, that Scappaticci is steak knife now. So, you know, the ability to deny it is just, you know, completely falling apart.

26:32Gordon:This is the bizarre, one of the bizarre pieces of this is that Scappaticci's identity, his role as an agent of the state, is still technically protected by the state, right? So there's been no, even though at this point, it's publicly known that Scappaticci 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 the British authorities in this intelligence war in Northern Ireland. I'd imagine you also have a lot of victims and families of victims who want answers about what the FRU and what the British Army did during the troubles.

27:15Gordon:And that leads to the creation of Operation Canova in the summer of 2016 to investigate the truth about this case.

27:25David:That's right. Canova, initially launched under police officer John Boucher, starts building a case not just against Scappaticci, 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 Scappaticci.

27:59David: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 oh with that

28:13Gordon:you know this is going to be full of twists and turns that's right a prison transport officer

28:19David:and a professional killer are handcuffed together and forced to go on the run, and they must make impossible moral choices in order to survive.

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

28:33David: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.

28:49Gordon: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.

28:56David:So it's the next great thing to binge and you can watch all episodes from the 30th of April on Sky.

29:09Gordon:Well, welcome back. Let's look, Gordon, at Canova, this investigation into Freddy's Scappaticci and Steakknife.

29:19David:Yeah, I mean, driven really by families, 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 state 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 failed to disclose information from me canova is going to see similar challenges in trying to get to the truth about state knife remember this This is an inquiry, a British inquiry, led by a British police officer.

30:02David:Some of the details are not comic, but they are blackly 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 realised that the Ministry of Defence officials have different logins to the same computer system. 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 facts, parts of the state do not want the truth to come out. And it's the same. It's described as an extremely fractious relationship with MI5.

30:40David:And they talk about MI5 reclassifying material to 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.

30:54Gordon: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 Thames House headquarters to store classified material. Thames 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.

31:30David:It reminds me a little bit, actually, that bit about when you had the Senate Select Committee investigating the CIA over the enhanced interrogation. There was the same kind of battle, wasn't it, about which files and what would they know about the treatment of detainees in the war on terror? Similar, isn't it? I mean, different cases, but the same kind of tension over an investigation and what gets revealed.

31:54Gordon: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 seventies and eighties and early nineties, but this is now. I mean, this is an active part of British political life today.

32:17David: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 you know the key you know battle i guess with mi5 the friction is about how much mi5 knew about steak knife and we should probably you know reference here that there had you know uh eliza manning and bulla the head of mi5 appeared on um you know our the rest is politics leading podcast with warian alistair and kind of said that uh that she and mi5 hadn't known much about the case and would have rejected it you know at the start and then later on these files emerge and you know So MI5 and 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.

33:08David:And there is an investigation into whether MI5 had deliberately 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? And the new information does show that they knew about steak knife from the start.

33:29Gordon: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, I don't actually find that question very interesting.

33:40David:But I think the other thing that's going on, and you talked about it being recent politics, is the timeline is important because 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 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 through officers you know the decision is it's too late to be able to prosecute them.

34:27David:And that tension is there in the inquiry and the timelines. And I think crucially, we should get back to Scappaticci himself, because by the time that final report comes out, Scappaticci himself is dead.

34:41Gordon:What had Scappaticci 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.

35:08David:Yeah. I mean, Henry Hemming in his book, you know, writes about Scappaticci became increasingly lonely. He'd 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 that one day they might come for him. Now, his father dies only in 2017, buried supposedly with an Italian flag on the coffin. Scapp supposedly turns up for that.

35:45David:but when scappatici's 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 canova 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 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 it 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 uh sex with animals i mean

36:40Gordon:it's kind of wild isn't it it's it's wild it's pretty gross i presume that's illegal to it is in your possession is that right yeah is that it is correct okay so he's so so he is then

36:54David:is he is he tried yeah he's taken to court yeah 4th of december 2018 sits in the dot 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 the court here scappatici told police he was not sexually interested in animals and preferred women again apologies for our listeners with big breasts um 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.

37:38Gordon:It's going to get weirder. Do you need to do another trigger warning? Because it can't possibly get weirder than the last two paragraphs of your outline.

37:47David:I mean, this is a trigger warning, I think, 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. The magistrate doesn't know who he is, though, does he? Well, I mean, it's been in the newspapers, you know, that Freddy Scantici 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, I think got fined for a fight. But, you know, the Canova interim report goes, these remarks frustrated many victims and families.

38:28David:And I can understand why. I mean, you can, can't you? A magistrate's saying you've got good character because you haven't appeared in court, and yet you've been involved in death and murder. But then the end comes for Scapp, for Scappaticci, March 2023. So, you know, only three years ago, he dies aged 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.

38:55Gordon:Obviously, we can trust whatever the British state says about Freddy Scappaticci, right? So clearly, if unnamed investigators have looked into it.

39:04David:It's what people thought, though. And you can understand why. 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? So they actually 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 Scappaticci'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.

39:42David:I mean, which I think must be because the will will confirm his identity and must have some details in it, which will make clear that Freddie Scappaticci was an agent of the British state. Because that's something the British state continues to deny, not deny, not comment on, we should say.

40:08Gordon:And even the Tinova team, they're not allowed, of course, as part of that, to confirm that SCAP was steak knife.

40:16David:It's amazing, isn't it?

40:17Gordon: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... Yeah.

40:32David:I thought we'd get to this question.

40:34Gordon:Yeah. It comes from the CIA. the so-called the Glomar response, which is the huge Glomar explorer, this salvaged vessel that's secretly deployed by the US government to recover a sunken Russian submarine in 1974. And so the CIA has similarly neither confirmed nor denied its involvement in that.

41:00David:Yeah. And it's so interesting because NCND, as it's known, neither confirmed nor denied, has become quite a big issue, I think, for MI5 in the UK. And Canova is basically saying this totemic status, as it puts it, has become an implacable dogma. And 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 been involved in criminality, which should overcome the desire for NCND and never to confirm an agent's identity.

42:03Gordon:There's this section also from the Canova report, which I think 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.

42:45Gordon:What do you think of that?

42:47David: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 people everyone knows story and 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 difficult situations when those agents are involved in criminality. There's been another case recently in Britain, Agent X, as he's known, as someone who was accused of using the fact he was an agent, an asset of MI5, to beat people up and use it as a free pass.

43:32David:Again, 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.

43:44Gordon: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, we'll protect your identity kind of protection, right?

44:37Gordon:But if you don't have that, you end up in a situation where you've given the agent this promise, which doubtless 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 breaking the law or anything like that. So that's the problem here is that it does – and I think I kind of agree with this preface to the final Canova report here that says, you know, NCND, neither confirm nor deny, must be exercised in a proportionate and necessary manner and should not be an absolute bar to providing truth and justice. And I think that's right.

45:20Gordon:I think reasonable people can agree on that. But it cannot be used, this is the Caneva 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 an asset, as an agent. And that's the kind of Gordian nod of this. Yeah. Yeah.

45:55David:And just to finish off the NCND point, I mean, it's notable that February 11th this year, 2026, the Irish Taoiseach, or the Prime Minister, named Stake Knife as Freddie Scappaticci. So he stands up in Parliament, in the Irish Parliament, and said that the identity of Stake 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 Féin. There's obviously a bit of politics here in Ireland, we should acknowledge that, in respect of the activities of the provisional IRA as documented in this report, the Canova report.

46:35David:It's long past time for that apology and renunciation of what happened to occur. So, 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 state knife. I mean, just one point to start us off. There is a debate amongst people about the role intelligence played, before we get to Stakeknife himself, overall in bringing the conflict to an end. There are different aspects of this. We've not delved into all of it. 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, which was how they described the IRA.

47:35David:We're actually going to look at that backchannel 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 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 up to a quarter or to a half of people in the IRA either were agents or had agents close to them.

48:14Gordon:A quarter to a half of the entire organization?

48:16David:Yeah, 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 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. It kind of takes away from all the other factors which led the British state and the IRA to realise that neither of them were going to achieve their fundamental aims and so they had to talk.

49:01David:So 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 suppose.

49:13Gordon:And I suppose a massive question also, as we've talked throughout the series, is, you know, did Steakknife save lives or did he cost lives? And I will say, I mean, I think that is a good question. It also reduces the Borel complexity down to a math problem, you know, which I think is not right. But I think it's worth trying to unpack it a bit because it gets at the risk-reward tension that colored the entire case.

49:52David:Yeah. And I think, you know, Canova looks into this in quite a lot of detail. And it does say that Statenife became kind of mythologised with exaggerated stories, both about the benefits he brought as well as the dark things. And they say, you know, any serious security and intelligence professional hearing an agent being likened to the goose that laid the golden eggs as Statenife was should be on alert because the comparison is rooted in fables and fairy tales. I like that point because 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.

50:40David:because they based the hundreds of lives being saved on 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. It's a counterfactual, which is quite 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 would have happened with it.

51:06Gordon: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, I mean, really pedantically, the way you would get promoted inside the organization would be the intelligence that your agent has provided. How good is it? How much do you have? What does it accomplish? So you would think that there would be an incentive, like a bureaucratic incentive to at some point have logged that stuff, even if it's exaggerated.

51:41Gordon:But do we have it? Does it exist?

51:44David:Well, so again, Canova says that the Fru kept success books, which I guess is what you're talking about, for some agents, but the one for State Knife has never been recovered. Another mysterious disappearance, you know, which 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.

52:24David:He's going to be linked to at least 14 murders and 15 abductions.

52:29Gordon:When we say linked there -

52:30David: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. 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?

53:11David: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, you know, saved versus killed.

53:28Gordon:And the context, the wartime context, I mean, obviously is kind of lost now, but is hugely important. You know, 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 listers, 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 idea that any Fru handler would have said, you know what, let's cut this guy loose, it's totally implausible.

54:24Gordon:Now, maybe that's not the most interesting question to answer, but I think you've got to start from that kind of contextual, let's just think about this from the standpoint of the Fru and the war that was going on at the time.

54:38David:The context point is important. Of course, the context now, we've had very fortunately peace in Northern Ireland with some violence, but nothing like what it was for many years now. But the fact it was wartime, I think, or wartime, you use the phrase wartime there, is part of the kind of question because people make different judgments in wartime. and 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 what's complicated is the IRA would have said it was a war and that they were an army and it was a war, but the British state would have said, well, it's criminality and we're dealing with it in that way.

55:19David: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 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, which I think too hard to get into much detail about, which is 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 or are there risks for that because you know there's a fight in that in the uk i think at the moment about you know what that means and about opening up more prosecutions, whether it was kind of Bloody Sunday, which we talked about in 1972, or State Knife, another incident.

56:29David:So, you know, this is hard stuff, I think, you know, 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.

56:42Gordon:I, you know, I think it's actually kind of, 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 how you end up with senior officials 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. Yeah. 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 formal 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?

57:26Gordon: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 lawbreaker, right? And so it's nuts. 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 is a failure. Because the CIA kind of analog here is there was a review of what the CIA called kind of dirty assets in the 1990s led by then DCI John Deutsch. And it came out of a whole bunch of cases from earlier in the agency's, you know, sort of lifespan, and in particular, 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.

58:29Gordon:And part of 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 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 underway against them. Are there criminal indictments against this person? 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 based on what kind of laws the agent is breaking. I think this point is really a critical one is at some point, these questions stop becoming intelligence questions and they become policy questions.

59:20Gordon: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 not something that individual low-level handlers of a source should have to sort of figure out, right? That is a policy question of the British state.

59:49David:Yeah, it's a good point. It's interesting. I was talking to people and they were pointing out that there's new legislation which has come in, I think, 2021 about exactly this, authorising criminal conduct for MI5 agents and others, so that it's clearer what is being authorised and what is not being authorised. But one interesting point with that is it deliberately, I remember looking at this at 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.

1:00:28David:Because immediately, if you do say, as a public policy, we're not going to authorize state 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 you know 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 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.

1:01:16Gordon: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?

1:01:33David:Good question. I think probably people didn't know what he was up to, but it was never put on paper and people chose to turn a blind eye. That's the first thing. But the second thing is, I think at various points with bombs going off in England and prime ministers nearly being assassinated by bombs and the scale of violence in Northern Ireland on all sides, I think people were willing to do things, which I think now look very questionable. That's part of it. But that's why I think it is a genuinely complicated, difficult story. Indeed.

1:02:12Gordon: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 and dark corner of what it means to run agents inside 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 pod on agent running, and we do hope that you've enjoyed it. You can get early access to all of these series as a provider if you go to therestisclassified.com and join the Declassified Club.

1:02:59Gordon:Also get access to the bonus episodes that we do every week. And we've done some, I think, some really interesting bonus episodes linked to this series on Steakknife, haven't we, Gordon?

1:03:12David:Yeah, that's right, with Patrick Ratham-Keefe 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 fourth and fifth 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 we'll see you next time