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Showing posts with label Freddie Scappaticci. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Freddie Scappaticci. Show all posts
Dixie Elliot ✍I finally managed to watch Seamus Kearney's gut-wrenching interview on Prime Time.

We can never imagine what Seamus went through that day, as he was given the terrible news that his brother Michael had been shot dead as an informer and dumped on the side of a border road. 

Many years later, forty-four to be exact, we saw the pain etched on his face as he recounted the priest breaking the news, his journey back to the Hell-Blocks and being taunted by a screw.

The British were determined to win the war at any cost, even sacrificing their own agents to keep those higher up, like Scappaticci, in place. Going as far as to let members of their own military forces die so as not to expose a high-ranking agent/tout.
 
There is no doubt that the British government, MI5 and FRU were guilty of war crimes. It was indeed a dirty war in which many brave volunteers were dying not knowing that the 'leadership' had plans to end it from at least 1987. Not knowing how high up betrayal went and surely never believing that those, like Scappaticci and John Joe Magee, who led the unit tasked with rooting out touts were actually touts themselves.

Volunteer Michael Kearney was just one of their victims, how many more innocent victims of Britain's dirty war might there be?

How many more Stakeknives might still be waiting to be uncovered?
Thomas Dixie Elliot is a Derry artist and a former H Block Blanketman.
Follow Dixie Elliot on Twitter @IsMise_Dixie

How Many More?

Caoimhin O’Muraile ☭ Amid all the recent euphoria, frivolities and pretentiousness of US President Joe Bidens visit to Ireland one piece of otherwise headline news, relegated to also ran, came to many peoples attention.
 

 On Tuesday 11th April it was announced on the news, after reams and reams about the President’s visit had bored the pants off every sane person, that “the British Army’s top agent inside the IRA was dead”. Freddie Scappaticci, also known as “Stakeknife” the man who terrorised his own comrades, if stories are correct and they do look likely, on behalf of the enemy had died. 

Scappaticci was the head of the IRAs internal security division known as the “Nutting Squad”, the department within the IRA which interrogated suspected informers, many of whom were no such thing, until they confessed often to a crime they had not committed. The interrogations were, according to accounts, brutal and even the innocent eventually confessed after days of unbridled torture by “Stakeknife” and his gang. 

Scappaticci could be described as a modern-day Mathew Hopkins, the man who roamed Eastern England back in the days of the English Civil War looking for witches. He was known as the “Witch Finder General” and he interrogated innocent women on the slightest hunch or the word of a bent informer until they confessed to being a Witch. They were then invariably burnt at the stake! Scappaticci was in the same league, if the stories are true, as was Hopkins who, like “Stakeknife” just disappeared when the heat got too hot. It must be added at this point that Freddie Scappaticci has, or had, always denied these allegations and they could, just could, be a ruse set up by the British, as also could his death!

On Wednesday 12th April the Irish Mirror reported “IRA Spy Stakeknife Dead and Buried” on page 17. Ordinarily this would have been front page news but became a minor detail by comparison with the visit of Joe “pretend to be Irish” Biden. This title I have given the President is not his fault but the result of mass hysteria on the news about the President's Irish roots. He also has English origins, something he mentioned while in Belfast, but little was made of this by the media. The Irish Mirror told us “The IRA spy who was known as Stakeknife died several days ago and was buried last week” so anytime between 1st April and the 7th April sounds about right for his timely death. If this was the case, why the delay? Why wait until a time when few people, hypnotised by Joe Bidens visit, would take a blind bit of notice, why wait until now to announce the death of such a high-profile figure? If he died “several days ago” why not tell us “several days ago”? The paper then went on:

The West Belfast man would have been in his 70s and had left Northern Ireland in 2003. This is when he was first accused of being the highest-ranking British spy in the Provisional IRA.

It would be thought that such a headline and high-profile person as Scappaticci would have been named and aged precisely, not being in his 70s, which covers ten years of his life. How old was he exactly and where if anywhere was he buried? If such a lot is, or was, known about the man’s activities working for the British FRU (Force Research Unit) a top secret British undercover unit answerable to nobody, not even the Home Secretary, which was disbanded after the “Stevens Inquiries” into allegations of collusion between loyalist paramilitary groups and the security forces, including the FRU, why not his precise age, and exact time of death? 

The reality in fact was the FRU was not disbanded just renamed the “Joint Support Group” and continued as usual. These allegations have been confirmed by some former members of the unit, not least Martin Ingram, real name Ian Hurst, who went public about the FRUs activities and they are more than capable of arranging a phantom death, a death which may have never occurred. The disbandment and rebranding of the FRU could be likened to the closure of the Windscale Nuclear Power Station after the nuclear accident in 1957. After a further string of accidents, it was renamed Sellafield in 1981. The truth was it was not closed at all just renamed Sellafield in much the same way the FRU had been renamed the “Joint Support Group”!

If “Stakeknife” has been dead for several days, as the Irish Mirror reported then why have we waited so long to be told? After all, back in the early 21st century when news of this man’s involvement hit our screens and news-papers it was headline stuff. Why has his supposed death being relegated to a passing comment? Has anybody seen a body or remains to confirm this mysterious passing? Or could it be that Scappaticci is not dead at all and all this is just a pretence by the British? If, and I stress if, that is the case it raises the question, why? If he is not dead but alive and kicking in some unknown destination what reason could the British side have for this deception? Could there still be a kind of mini cold war going on between the British Army and the IRA despite the signing of the so-called Good Friday Agreement back in 1998? Could the British still have agents to protect inside the Provisional movement? Could the continued official existence of “Stakeknife” have posed some kind of threat to British operations? If this is the case why not just kill Scappaticci out of hand? Is this what may have happened to that other high ranking British Agent, Denis Donaldson? He went public about his involvement working for the British side, retired to Donegal and was found dead. No person(s) have been caught for his murder, which is what it was, and all suspicions were conveniently pointed in the direction of “dissident republicans”! The British SAS are just as culpable in the Donaldson death, he knew too much!!

Almost two weeks have now passed since the media first briefly mentioned the passing of Freddie Scappaticci and nothing more has been heard of him, or his body. Now that Biden-mania has died down, and the reality hits home that half the population are not related to the US President, there have been plenty of slots in the news and newspapers to tell us a little more about the British number one agent inside the IRAs demise. Yet, not a murmur! When it first hit the airwaves and media back in the early years of the new century it was earthshattering news. Every bulletin had something to say about the “British Agent” who was the IRA's top torturer, possibly even putting other lesser agents of the Crown through the grinder! Yet all we have had in the news is where Gerry Hutch is going to next which, frankly, is about as interesting as what colour boxer Shorts Prince Harry wears. Why has nothing been said about “Stakeknife”? could it be he may not be dead after all and it is another British ruse? If so, why? Why would the British make up such a tale? Could it be that despite the Good Friday Agreement they, the British, are still conducting a “dirty war” in the six-counties? Has a body of Freddie been seen by any independent witnesses? Do bodies not usually have to be identified? Has anybody done this? Of course, I may have missed something so if anybody reading this has heard any news which clarifies this enigma it would be interesting to hear. Maybe he is dead, equally maybe he is alive and well on Mars!!

So, is “Stakeknife” dead? If he is when is the funeral, oh, sorry, he has already had a burial according to the Irish Mirror. Surely, he has family and as he denied the allegations to his dying day, if indeed that is what he met, then surely, they would be standing by him? Or, on the other hand have his denials fell on deaf ears, including his family, and, this being the case, have the British secretly disposed of him? Perhaps he could be, if he is dead, be at some unknown bog in the twenty-six counties like so many other of the “disappeared” many sent there by this man himself, as that must surely now be what Scappaticci could be, one of the “disappeared!!” Have the British disposed of their inconvenient waste in much the same way as the IRA did theirs. This being the case, if indeed it is the case, it makes all the hype over the “disappeared” look a little hypocritical, but it is very early days. Perhaps when the Biden hype has died down a more in-depth account of what has happened to Fred Scappaticcii my surface.

The final question, for the moment is; is Fred the Dread really dead or is he alive and well after plastic surgery somewhere in South America?

🖼 Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent Socialist Republican and Marxist.

Is Fred The Dread Really Dead?

Seamus Kearney ✍ James Young took the oath of allegiance to the IRA in 1974, while living in the tiny fishing village of Portaferry, at the mouth of Strangford Lough, County Down. 

He only played a minor role until 1975, the year in which his life changed, after he was ordered to partake in an armed robbery to raise funds for the purchase of weapons. His role as an active service volunteer ended in the Spring of 1976, when he was arrested and charged with robbery and possession of incendiary devices, thanks to the information of an informer.

On 11th November 1976, Jimmy was sentenced to 8 years imprisonment, but was released within 4 years due to the 50 per cent remission clause. He returned to his home in Beechwood Avenue, Portaferry, determined to resume married life.

However, in August 1981 he was involved in a car accident, deemed to be his fault and told to report to Newtownards RUC station. When Jimmy arrived he was met by two Special Branch officers and blackmailed into becoming an informer. If he refused their offer, then it was indicated to him that he could be returned to prison, to serve out the remaining 4 years of his sentence. He agreed to work for them under duress.

From November 1981, Jimmy Young was under orders from Special Branch, along with Military Intelligence, to rejoin the local PIRA unit and to become much more active. He passed on details of a co-ordinated bombing campaign in County Down, which resulted in operations being abandoned, along with a number of IRA volunteers being killed or captured.

By the end of 1983 the IRA were aware that many of its operations were known to the British, so an internal investigation was launched, with a field of suspects being narrowed down, one by one. By the end of the first week of February 1984 the IRA believed the culprit was none other than Jimmy Young. The PIRA investigation team ascertained that Young had been turned as a result of the car accident in 1981 because he had never been arrested since that time. The question for them now was how to get Young out of the sleepy village of Portaferry and into the ' Bandit country' of South Armagh, where an in depth interrogation could commence.

After the IRA told Young to attend a meeting, he in turn told his handlers, who gave him two phone numbers in case he was walking into a trap. However, he never got the chance to phone anyone as he was quickly transported to South Armagh, and handed over to the IRA 's special interrogation and execution unit.

As was standard procedure at the time, the IRA Internal Security Unit, or ISU, was requested, not by South Armagh, but by Northern Command to oversee the interrogation of James Young. When Freddie Scappaticci and his superior, the former British Marine, arrived, they began asking questions of Young which aroused suspicion from the tightly knit South Armagh Brigade men. It was the type of questioning levelled at Young, in which Scap would want to know about every IRA volunteer in the County Down area and the operations they carried out, along with the location of arms dumps, which raised eyebrows from others in the room.

Young broke under 3 days of IRA interrogation and confessed that he was an agent, working for Special Branch and British Military Intelligence. He revealed that he had tampered with explosive devices to ensure they did not detonate and had transported a sub-machine gun to Belfast the previous month, January 1984, with the help of his handlers. This alerted the IRA to the possibility that the sub- machine gun could be bugged, or a tracking device inserted in the butt of the weapon, which had happened before.

As was standard practice with Freddie Scappaticci and his superior, who were both working for the British, Scap with the military Force Research Unit and his superior for RUC Special Branch, they vacated the safe house in the Irish Republic, a few miles from Jonesborough, in South Armagh, 24 hours prior to the execution.
 
Scappaticci, aka Stakeknife, informed his handler of exactly the circumstance with Jimmy Young, along with the address etc. The handler in turn, through his SB50 form, quickly submitted it to the Task Co - Ordinating Group ( TCG), the body of senior RUC / Military personnel, with the power over life and death, similar to the Roman Emperors overseeing the gladiatorial contests, giving a 'thumbs up, or thumbs down' to the combatants in the arena.

On this occasion and for no apparent reason, the TCG made the absolutely rare decision to send the cavalry, and informed the Gardai of the whereabouts of Jimmy Young.

Tragically for Jimmy, the Gardai cordoned off the little cul de sac of houses, but stormed into the wrong house looking to rescue him. Once the IRA volunteers realised what was happening, they immediately grabbed Young and sprinted out the rear door, frog marching him across the neighbouring fields. The two remaining IRA volunteers walked out the front door and leisurely climbed into their car, but were stopped by the Gardai patrol in the cul de sac. One Gardai officer approached their vehicle and recognised the IRA driver, then stated' " You have a hell of a cheek defending anyone in a court martial". The car was then flagged on.

Subsequently, on February 13th, 1984, Jimmy Young was executed by South Armagh Brigade and he was found lying face down by a stone wall on a roadside near Crossmaglen. He had been shot once in the head. Young left a wife and four children behind.

The South Armagh Brigade, based on what had transpired at the Gardai check point and the raid on the cul de sac, blamed Scappaticci for the compromise. A report was sent to Belfast and Northern Command but for some inexplicable reason nothing was done. As a result Scap and his superior in the Special Boat Service ( Royal Marines) escaped and lived to fight for the British for another day.

As for the bugged submachine gun, it was moved to an arms dump in Dunloy, County Antrim. The IRA reckoned that the submachine gun was bugged and a tracking device had been inserted. As it turned out, they were correct: a covert unit of SAS were heading toward Dunloy, to ambush an IRA unit in possession of the bugged weapon. Two IRA volunteers, Henry Hogan and Declan Martin, were informed about the situation and moved into position, armed with an Armalite rifle and a 12 bore sawn - off shotgun. In the ensuing fire fight, both IRA volunteers were killed along with a decorated SAS trooper, 26 year old Sergeant Paul Oram, with a second SAS trooper badly wounded.

Thus ended the saga of a man called Jimmy Young.


Seamus Kearney is a former Blanketman and author of  
No Greater Love - The Memoirs of Seamus Kearney.

Stakeknife ✏ The Case Of Jimmy Young

Anthony McIntyre ☠ Much of the coverage in the wake of the death of Freddie Scappaticci, focussed on how the Provisional Movement sought to cover up for the executioner in its own ranks as well as in the pay of the British state. 

Scappaticci killed the same people on behalf of both the IRA and the FRU. That never stopped him denying his role as a British agent. Those denials came to be viewed in similar fashion to those of one of his bosses, Gerry Adams, who has consistently denied being a member of the IRA. The Interahamwe of the Rwandan genocide was translated as we who kill together. I wonder if a single word exists for we who lie together.

Twenty years have passed since Freddie Scappaticci’s Provisional colleagues and their friends rushed to his aid making claims that now look embarrassingly ridiculous. Vociferous then, Scap's little helpers, large ones too, are silent today about their role in the cover up. If they mention Scap it is to finger point at the Brits, in this matter confirming the validity of the old maxim that when you point a finger there are always three pointing back.

Yet some people were taken in by the nonsense generated by the leadership lie machine. Seamus Kearney recounted his experience of meeting people who accused him of being a dissident, regurgitating smears against a veteran republican. A former O/C of Cage 11 featured in the letters page of the Andersonstown News signalling his virtue: he proclaimed to the world that he was going to believe Scap before me. One ex-prisoner I met at a funeral told me I had been taken in by the lies of sleazy securocrats. A former Sinn Fein Belfast Lord Mayor berated me on the Falls Road one evening. He wanted me to know that I was a disgrace. In all three cases I knew history would come to view them as the three stooges rather than the three wise men. 

One of the funniest stories told to me was from a West Belfast bar when a documentary covering the Stakeknife affair was aired.  Bastard, two Sinn Fein members were heard shouting at the screen. When the barmaid said yeah, Scap, the men said no, that bastard McIntyre. Such was the mist of derangement that had descended from Connolly House and Sevastopol Street to envelop the Sinn Fein constituency.  At the time it was like living in a surreal Kafaesque world where people so convinced by the nonsense they had been fed were succumbing to the Dunning-Kruger Effect. 

The anti-intellectual milieu which made this abandonment of reason possible was cranked into service by the Provisional spin & spoof secretariat. Like the Catholic Church when confronted with the pervasiveness of paedophilia within its ranks, Sinn Fein closed its own ranks. The online journal The Blanket edited by my wife, and for which I wrote frequently, was a voice in the wilderness punching holes in the false narrative manufactured to both serve Scappaticci and salvage the political careers of others, some of whom as Army Council figures had signed off on his actions.  

The then Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams, in accepting Scappaticci’s denial, sought to smother the efforts of investigative journalism to expose one of Britain’s lethal allies, stating that for their endeavours the media were losers who "had a big job of work to be done … to redeem yourselves."

The disseminators of malign influence were at it as well. Denis Donaldson was telling the press that “I still can’t believe it . . My God.”  His fellow envoy, Danny Morrison, claimed that the allegations were:

bizarre and without any proof. Until proven otherwise I'm very sceptical about stories which emanate from sources of British military intelligence.

But even Danny Morrison had difficulty believing Danny Morrison as was demonstrated by his own claim that thirteen years prior to his professed scepticism, the IRA had provided him with a version of events about Scappaticci which he believed.

The Andersonstown News did not cover itself in glory, engaging in what one of its own journalists at the time would later describe as a farcical cover up. In a piece of non-investigative journalism, it scooped an interview with Scappaticci in which it represented him rather than the community it was meant to serve. It simply never asked him one challenging question, for which it has been scorned ever since. 

Poor as that was, there were even lower depths to be reached elsewhere. A piece in An Phoblacht by Adam O’Toole from the Fawlty Towers School of Journalism remains peerless for the stupidity it served up. If ever a writer went on a search and destroy his own reputation mission, this was it.

The thing about nonsense is that it never takes long for it all to come tumbling down in the face of sustained rigorous critique, while the reputations of those responsible for churning it out can sometimes never recover. 

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Foolscap

Anthony McIntyre ☠ When the recent death of Freddie Scappaticci was made public the journalist Andree Murphy tweeted:

A traitor. A British spy who infiltrated the IRA as part of Britain’s dirty war. His victims deserve our thoughts and support. 

An eminently fair suggestion given what was inflicted on those he killed and their families. 

Unless she says otherwise, it would be wrong to read into Murphy’s comment that those who died at the hands of Scappaticci were exclusively victims of the British state and its dirty war. They were also victims of the IRA army council and its war, which too was frequently dirty and which those of us who were members of the organisation cannot wash our hands of. Rage at the leadership as much as we wish but many of us nodded our approval of Gerry Adams when he said of the late Charles McIlmurray, killed in 1987:

Mr McIlmurray, like anyone else living in West Belfast, knows that the consequence for informing is death.

The Army Council sanctioned Scappaticci to carry out the acts he did. It is difficult to think of a single killing carried out by him that would have happened without the approval of the Army Council. He was not someone who infiltrated the IRA to do only the bidding of the British. He was a longstanding member before the British turned him. Each of the killings he carried out was cleared at the highest levels of the IRA. All had the imprimatur of both the British state and the IRA Army Council. When he was exposed in 2003 there was no shortage of IRA and Sinn Fein figures lining up to shield him from public scrutiny. My view now is much as it was in 2017:

Like the Catholic Church hierarchy in sex abuse cases, the IRA leadership acted to protect themselves and their own reputations by covering up the truth about Stakeknife, rather than reaching out to help those who had been wronged.

In short, they colluded in covering up what the British state’s dirty war actually meant for its victims. This was not the result of ignorance of his activities but was borne from a wilful intent. Danny Morrison has claimed that from as early as 1990 the leadership had been aware that Scappaticci was a wrong one. Morrison did not share that with his co accused who might have found it valuable for their defence in court. Despite claiming to have been aware for thirteen years of Scappaticci’s treachery, Morrison and the leadership went along with his denials of the British state homicides in which he was deeply complicit. Morrison dismissed the allegations as "bizarre and without any proof." Gerry Adams when asked for his view of Scappaticci’s refutation that he was a British agent responded "I have to accept that."  Perhaps having forgotten to tell his co-accused, it never occurred to Morrison to mention it to Adams either.

All of this invites deliberation on how the mechanism by which Andree Murphy’s laudable support and thoughts for those left bereaved by his actions is to be enacted. Lash the Brits out of it for sure, but to the public ear it is one hand clapping.

One option would be an acknowledgement by the IRA leadership, or those who comprised it at the time, that all those killed by its Internal Security Department merit a posthumous pardon, that they were the victims of a travesty of justice and wrongly killed. That is not to say that they were innocent in the way that Volunteer Michael Kearney was, but merely to accept that the evidence against them was so corrupted and contaminated that the findings by the Army Council that they were informers who rightly suffered the consequences, death, can no longer have merit. 

If the British judiciary can overturn its verdicts in cases like the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four, hubris should not get in the way of the Army Council doing the same thing. In making the same suggestion in 2017, I argued that, 'surely the IRA leadership is not going to continue to rely on the evidence of a British agent?'

None of this would restore the life of one single victim but it would go some distance towards restoring a peace of mind to the grieving families whose loved ones had their lives snuffed out in a morbid joint enterprise.

It would at least remove from the loved ones the mark of Cain which they have been compelled to carry within the communities where they lived. For all the talk of there being no hierarchy of victims, within the republican caste system the informer has the status of the untouchable.

Thoughts and support for the victims of Scappaticci will insist that they be exonerated now, that the terrible ignominy he inflicted on them and their families be buried alongside him, never again to see the light of day.

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.


Posthumous Pardons

Seamus Kearney ✍ recalls visiting Brendan Hughes In Divis Tower twenty years ago. 

The Dark

After my brother Michael was cleared from any suspicion that he was a paid informer, on 28th January 2003, the IRA Leadership not only cleared him but continued to meet me in a series of clandestine meetings until September of that year.

I had been informed by the IRA Leadership that Freddie Scappaticci had been involved in the court martial and subsequent execution of my brother, but had not played a central role, which I accepted. However, in May 2003 a journalist, Greg Harkin, appeared at the front door of Freddie Scappaticci 's house, in the Riverdale area of West Belfast, and accused him of being a British agent with a codename, 'Stakeknife'.

I was still meeting the IRA Leadership at the time, so raised my concerns with them at our next meeting, underlining that if true, then Michael had been interrogated by the British more so than the IRA. My concerns were dismissed and I was told by the two IRA staff officers that Scappaticci was "innocent until proven guilty".

Before the IRA investigation commenced in October 2001, I had deliberately organised and set up a secret strategic 'think tank' of 5 former IRA soldiers, which included myself, with a 6th man in place designed to be a ' spearhead'. The role of this 6th man was to coordinate and impress upon the IRA Leadership the need to commence an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the execution of Volunteer Michael Kearney, on the 12th July 1979. He succeeded in carrying out that task and hence the unprecedented IRA investigation came about as a result.
 
After meeting the IRA Leadership in May 2003, I then reported back to my own group and discussed the current situation. To confuse matters further, all shades of the Republican Movement were informing their base that Freddie Scapppaticci had been the victim of a gutter press with a sinister British Intelligence motive to undermine the Peace Process. Incredibly, people who I had earlier thought were intelligent and free thinkers, were accusing me of being a 'dissident', which I was not, and for attempting to 'smear a hard working Republican from Riverdale, the victim of an anti Republican media campaign'.

A member of my own group then suggested that I settle the matter and arrange a meeting with Brendan Hughes (The Dark), who had particular knowledge on the IRA 's Internal Security Unit (ISU), as he was in charge of GHQ Intelligence, which overseen the workings of the Internal Security Unit. I was informed that Brendan took on this role after his release from prison in November 1986.

Consequently, a few weeks later, in June 2003, after climbing the stairs of Divis Tower, I appeared outside the small flat, at the top of the tower, and rapped the front door, eager with anticipation.
When the door opened I met my old comrade with a smile on his face and we embraced. When I entered his living room he motioned me toward his sofa, with the words: "be careful what you say in here, because a bug was discovered recently under that sofa". I automatically asked, "was it RUC Special Branch?" But he replied, "no, Sinn Fein!". With a puzzled look upon my face we moved on with the matter in hand.

I told him that my brother Michael had been cleared by the IRA Leadership and he became emotional, a common trait of his, hugging me and wiping a tear from his eye. He said, "that is fantastic news and well done to you for staying the course and showing such loyalty to your dead brother". I informed him that the publicity would come later in the year, as I was still meeting the Army Leadership with a view to agreeing a text for a public statement - and the official statement had to be agreed by the IRA Army Council. The IRA had wanted to release their own statement, but I disagreed and had come up with a novel idea of a joint 'Army/Family Statement', which seemed to have caught their interest and attention.

He enquired about my mother and I was happy to tell him that she was still alive, which brought a sigh of relief from him, as we both understood how poignant and important that was in the scheme of things.

We then discussed the current media speculation concerning Scappaticci and the confusion from all sides. When I informed him that my brother Michael had been interrogated by Scappaticci, he replied:

Seamus, your brother was interrogated by a British Military Officer, not a member of the IRA. Standing over your brother was an enemy officer, the only thing missing was the fact that Scappaticci wasn't wearing his British Army uniform, complete with his riding crop.

At that moment it was my turn to become emotional and I began to weep uncontrollably. Brendan then got up out of his chair and sat beside me on the sofa, with his loving arms wrapped around me, with him repeatedly saying, "I know, I know, what a horrible war. So much pain, too much pain".

After sitting together for what seemed like ages, he returned to his seat opposite mine and began to explain: 

I believe that whole unit was infiltrated. When I took charge of GHQ Intelligence I realised that the Internal Security Unit had been compromised and voiced my concerns to the Leadership, but they dismissed them, accusing me of being in jail too long and being paranoid. After the Joe Fenton case, when I specifically ordered Freddie Scappaticci and that other enemy agent in the Special Boat Service, to bring Fenton to me across the border, they failed to do that. They both had Fenton executed in February 1989, rather than bring him to me for in depth interrogation. When I asked Scap why he shot Fenton out of hand, rather than bring him to me, he came off with some feeble excuse about the need to execute Fenton because of Brit activity in the area. I never believed that for one second. But I finally realised that that whole unit was rotten and full of enemy agents. I got scared and resigned from the Army after that. I had nothing more to do with them from February 1989.

When I asked Brendan the names of those involved in the Internal Security Unit he got up and opened a drawer, taking out a sheet of paper and a pen. I watched as he wrote the names of the British agents down on paper, and then handed the paper to me. I studied the names, five names in total, and then asked about the mechanics of the Internal Security Unit and its role in the war.

He explained to me that the plan to execute my brother, as in other subsequent cases, would have been hatched in Castlereagh by RUC Special Branch and the military. The decision to release my brother Michael, instead of charging him, would have triggered a chain of events from Castlereagh to the streets of West Belfast, to Dundalk and finally to a lonely border road. Freddie Scapatticci could not have operated on his own, that was impossible, so he needed others in the ISU to cooperate or at least acquiesce in his endeavours to satisfy his British masters.

The personnel inside the Internal Security Unit should have been rotated, as is standard procedure in any army, but the enemy agents were allowed to remain in situ, as was the case with Scap and his Special Boat Service superior, who both remained in position from Autumn 1978 to at least 1990. That was simply incredible, Brendan explained.
 
At exactly 2pm that day Brendan Hughes suddenly stood up and told me he had to leave. When I asked him the reason why the Republican Movement were muddying the waters and confusing the issue with regards Scappaticci, the Dark replied:

Damage Limitation. Seamus, Freddie Scappaticci shot his bolt in January 1990 after the Brits hit the house in Lenadoon and rescued Sandy Lynch. They were too eager to capture the 'Lord Chief Justice', than rescue Sandy Lynch. They weren't interested in saving Sandy Lynch, too eager to capture their main prize, and as a result compromised all three British agents in that house, including Scap, his big mate from the SBS and that other agent who brought Lynch to the house in the first place. Your focus should be on the honour of the IRA and the oath you gave when you joined Oglaigh na hEireann. For those who compromised or were British agents, whether with RUC Special Branch or Military Intelligence, you should give them no quarter, whether certain people want to cover for them or not. Your loyalty should be to the Army, not the British Army .

Brendan and I then shook hands and I gave him a final hug, thanking him for his honesty and time. I returned to my own group and informed them of developments, whereupon we came to the conclusion that Michael and his story would not be straight forward and our journey toward truth and justice would be a long one.
Seamus Kearney is a former Blanketman and author of  
No Greater Love - The Memoirs of Seamus Kearney.

Stakeknife ✏ A Meeting Of Minds

Anthony McIntyre ☠ Time did not so much run out for British spy and IRA Northern Command figure Freddie Scappaticci as it did for the loved ones of those he sent to early graves. 

The British state simply recalibrated the old D Notice and ran down the clock as part of a strategy of deny, defer, delay and derail.

The official history of the D Notice system was explained by its author as having:

emerged amorphously across three decades of increasing concern about army and navy operations being compromised by reports in the British (and sometimes foreign) press.

Reading that, it is easy to grasp that the four-part D Notice employed in the Stakeknife case had at its core a concern about certain matters of state being compromised if a tight lid was not kept on sordid secrets. The objective of D notices, in their original and latest application, had the same objective – protecting perfidy.

Scappaticci’s death in England at the ripe age of 77 has most likely pulled the curtain down on what was a truly shameful affair, described by the BBC investigative journalist Darragh MacIntyre as homicide ‘on an industrial scale.’ The Kenova Inquiry, always in the process of coming but never in the state of arrival – done and ready to go to court in 2020, yet here we are in 2023 - has lost its star witness.

Even here, Kenova would appear to have been limited in its remit: investigating the figure everyone already knew about. Kevin Winters, acting for the families of several of the slain, discerningly observed:

I wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised if there were more senior agents linked to the Provisional IRA internal security unit than Freddie Scappaticci. My personal view is that Scappaticci presented as but one of a number of agents and informers in the organisation’s internal security. I have long been concerned about the narrow remit of the terms of reference of Operation Kenova, which were Freddie Scappaticci-centric to the exclusion of looking at other agents.

Even prior to the demise of Scappaticci, it seemed his value as a witness was being tactically eroded by the authorities. For four decades the British had covered up his activities but suddenly decided to prosecute him for possession of animal porn. Distasteful but hardly the most serious of the serial slayer's transgressions. Occam’s Razor cuts to the chase: Scappaticci was prosecuted with porn possession but not with murder for one obvious reason which was to seriously damage his character before he ever set foot in a witness box to give evidence against his handlers.

Imagine the scene in a sombre Belfast courtroom setting:

Scappaticci: I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, M’Lud.

Defence Barrister: Did you ever dick donkeys?

Credibility catastrophe.

When the North’s conflict was raging Scappaticci was positioned between two warring forces. The IRA Army Council and British state security services. The Army Council was the underwriter for Scappaticci's death diplomacy, performed on its behalf, despatching the execution chamber’s ubiquitous P O’Neill to the scene of the crime to sign the despatch papers. P O’Neill’s public persona easily induced in the would-be victim, desperate for hope, an illusion that their oasis had sprang up before their eyes, with his promise to escort them to a press conference at which, before being freed, they would reveal how Perfidious Albion had yet again been practicing spycraft for the most nefarious of ends.

Think of Freddie Scappaticci as a puppet with two sets of puppet masters, each pulling the strings often for a shared desired effect. This has led me to hope that the authors of Lost Lives, that tremendous contribution to historical memory, might yet consider a rewrite where rather than ascribe responsibility for many of the killings it details to individual organisations, will instead place them in a joint enterprise typology. For example, in the case of the slain IRA Volunteer Michael Kearney, rather than being a victim of the IRA, his killing will be more accurately classified as being the joint work of the IRA Army Council and British state security services.

There would be little if any merit in claiming that each side realised that it was involved in a joint enterprise. The British certainly knew but it remains much less certain that the Army Council did. Yet, it is beyond dispute that within both camps there were those who had a mutual interest in covering up for the state terrorism of the British.

This helps explain why for almost two decades one man’s role has given me much thought for reflection. I have discussed the possibilities endlessly with a wide range of former IRA colleagues and journalists, meeting little resistance to my deep misgivings. On Friday in response to a query from a journalist friend I made this observation.

And we have to wonder how far the penetration goes: the person who was P O’Neill at the time of the Sandy Lynch kidnapping continued to cover for Scap long after the point where he says he knew him to be an agent. This raises huge questions – the main one being was the compromised element within IRA Internal Security working with P O’Neill to complement Frank Kitson’s strategic law – which was all about disposing of unwanted people? They target somebody and P O’Neill signs off on it. Person successfully disposed of. That old phrase an ‘appalling vista’ leaps to mind.

Next chapter - Stakeknife and Snakeknife?

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Serial Slayer

Deirdre Younge ✒ Freddie Scappaticci, a British agent inside the IRA, sought immunity from prosecution from British legal authorities so he could claim he was not Agent Stakeknife at a secret meeting with a tribunal in Dublin.


Introduction

Freddie Scappaticci became an agent for British Army intelligence in 1978. A member of the IRA in Belfast he worked his way up the IRA hierarchy, eventually becoming second in command of the ‘Internal Security Unit”, known as the feared “nutting squad”. He joined the British Army’s newly-formed Force Research Unit in 1982. Scappaticci has consistently claimed he is not an agent called ‘Stakeknife’ or ‘Steaknife’ including in his dealings with the Smithwick Tribunal in Dublin. The latter was established to investigate allegations of Garda collusion in the murders of Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan in South Armagh, after they had left a meeting in Dundalk Garda Station in March 1989.

Freddie Scappaticci
Scappaticci had an extensive engagement with the Smithwick Tribunal set up in 2005 which reported in 2013. Though he did not give sworn evidence his legal team argued on his behalf that he was not an agent called ‘’Steaknife’ or ‘Stakeknife’.

Through letters obtained through Freedom of information requests to the Lord Advocate of Scotland and the Attorney General of England and Wales it is clear that Scappaticci obtained protection from prosecution or immunity in relation to his interactions with Smithwick from the Lord Advocate of Scotland. He did not not receive a similar immunity or amnesty from the Attorney General of the UK despite Smithwick’s assertions that witnesses from the UK and Northern Ireland had received such protection.

Documents obtained through Freedom of Information requests to the (Irish) Department of Justice show Scappaticci was paid his full legal costs of 382,270 euro in 2015. The bills were paid by the Department of Justice, signed off by the Department of Public Expenditure.

The Letter From The British Attorney General

The absence of such an amnesty has enormous implications in light of perjury allegations against Scappaticci in relation to his continual denials that he is an agent called ‘Steaknife’ or ‘Stakeknife’. It also calls into question the decision by the Smithwick Tribunal, set up in 2005 by Dail Eireann, not to reveal details of covert meetings with him and the decision by the Irish State to pay Scappaticci nearly 400,000 in legal costs, primarily to claim he was not a British Military Intelligence and MI5 Agent called Steaknife or Stakeknife. Senior legal sources assert that Scappaticci spent three days in Dublin talking to the Tribunal. Documents released by the Department of Justice under FOI in relation to substantial legal costs paid to him in 2015, indicate extensive interactions between Scappaticci and the Tribunal.

Smithwick On Amnesty

In the opening chapters of his 2013 report Judge Peter Smithwick has a chapter on amnesty for witnesses and the legal cover afforded by the Irish Tribunals of Evidence Act as follows:

Any witness before the Tribunal would have protection in this jurisdiction from criminal prosecution on the basis of evidence given before it. The protection is enshrined in section 5 of the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act 1979 which provides as follows:
A statement or admission made by a person before a Tribunal or when being examined in pursuance of a commission or request issued under subsection (1) of section 1 of the Principal Act shall not be admissible as evidence against that person in any criminal proceedings (other than proceedings in relation to an offence under subsection (2) ( c ) (as inserted by this Act) of that section) – ( and that is a reference to the offence of providing false testimony to the Tribunal) and subsection (3) of that section shall be construed and have effect accordingly.

The Judge went on to explain how witnesses from outside the jurisdiction could be provided with legal cover, particularly those from Northern Ireland and the UK:

However, given the cross-border aspects of the Inquiry, it was equally important to securing the attendance of witnesses that such protection be extended to the United Kingdom. The Tribunal therefore sought and received an undertaking from the then Attorney General of England and Wales, the Right Hon., The Baroness Scotland Q.C., to similar effect. Subsequent to the devolution of policing and Justice powers to Northern Ireland on the 12th April 2010, Sir Alistair Frasier, the Director of Public Prosecutions for Northern Ireland confirmed that he would continue to honour Baroness Scotland’s undertaking. After the change of Government in the United Kingdom…the new Attorney General of England and Wales..Dominic Grieve Q.C M.P provided the Tribunal with confirmation that Baroness Scotland’s undertaking would continue to apply. The Tribunal subsequently, at the request of Freddie Scappaticci, sought and received a similar undertaking from the Lord Advocate, in relation to Scotland. This was given in terms specific to Mr Scappaticci.. - (Page 9, the final Smithwick Report, 2013).

Judge Smithwick went on to to refer specifically to Scappaticci in the one and only reference to him in the Tribunal report, as follows:

The Tribunal subsequently, at the request of Freddie Scappaticci, sought and received a similar undertaking in relation to Scotland. This was given in terms specific to Mr Scappaticci ...



The Lord Advocate of Scotland in her role as Crown Prosecutor gave Freddie Scappaticci an amnesty to cover his interactions with the Smithwick Tribunal so that he could provide “a full account” to the Tribunal in 2012.
An extract from the letter shown in full above

The AG of England and Wales it is now apparent gave no such amnesty to Scappaticci.

Other witnesses from the UK and Northern Ireland included Scappaticci’s former FRU / British Army Intelligence handler, retired Major David Moyles, other British army officers, as well as ex RUC and PSNI officers. Witnesses also included representatives of the IRA ASU who talked to the Tribunal from 2008 onwards.

First Representation

Scappaticci’s solicitor first made an application for legal representation in 2006 but this was refused.

However his legal representative, Belfast solicitor Michael Flanagan submitted his first bill in relation to meetings in 2007.


Like all Scappaticci’s covert interactions with the Smithwick Tribunal, information about these meetings were withheld from other interested parties at the Tribunal.

By May 2011 the Tribunal decided that Scappaticci would get limited legal representation which was later to develop into full legal representation. He had now been brought into evidence by the various assertions of Ian Hurst, a former Sergeant in the British Army’s Force Research Unit who put a ‘statement’ online in 2011 containing various allegations concerning Scappaticci.

Kevin Fulton whose real name was Peter Keeley, a former FRU, RUC and PSNI Special Branch agent and informant also implicated Scappaticci in his statements and evidence in December 2011. He had already described Scappaticci, who he called ‘Michael’ in his book ‘Unsung Hero’ and claimed that he (Keeley) had acted as a driver for the Internal Security Unit including Scappaticci and John Joe Magee.

In evidence he accused Scappaticci of involvement in the abduction of Louth farmer Tom Oliver in July 1991. ( See ‘Smithwicks Secret Witness’ for details of these allegations ). Scappaticci emphatically denied involvement in Oliver’s abduction and murder. Kenova is investigating the murder of Mr Oliver and has recently appealed for witnesses to come forward.

Scappaticci Denials

Most Importantly Scappaticci received legal representation to deny claims that he was not the British Agent known as Steaknife or Stakeknife.

In July 2011 Judge Smithwick made a ruling as follows:

He (Scappaticci) has consistently denied these allegations and maintains that denial. Nevertheless the public may identify him with ‘Stakeknife’. Mr Flanagan argues cogently that he should receive all documentation in relation to the ‘Stakeknife’ allegation so that his client may disprove the allegation once and for all and secondly, so that his client has the opportunity to test such evidence as that could impact on the credibility which the Tribunal ultimately attaches to the witnesses who made this allegation.

Scappaticci was awarded legal representation accordingly.

In a final legal submission given to the Tribunal on his behalf in 2013 Scappaticci himself claimed that Smithwick extended legal cover primarily to allow him to claim he was not an agent called Steaknife or Stakeknife.

Steaknife’s Handler

Scappaticci’s British Army Intelligence handler during most of his career as a Force Research Unit (FRU) agent, Major David Moyles, giving evidence in April 2012 about Agent Steaknife (his spelling), was clearly answering questions about Scappaticci. In particular in response to ex-FRU Sergeant Ian Hurst’s assertions that Scappaticci was a Garda handler, he denied that the agent had ever given him information relating to Gardai colluding with the IRA or had given prior warnings relating to the IRA ambush of Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan in March 1989.

At the end of Witness 82, Moyles’ cross examination, Scappaticci’s Junior Counsel Ms Fitzgerald reiterated Scappaticci’s denials in a somewhat surreal exchange:

Q – I am aware, Mr Chairman, of the witness’s position that he won’t confirm or deny. I merely want to ask him if he is aware of the fact that my client has always and continues to deny those allegations that he was in fact a British agent.

A – Sorry I don’t know who your client is.

Q – I appear for Mr Scappaticci.

A – OK.

Q –  ... Witness 82. So you will be aware of those allegations I am sure. And are you aware of the fact that my client has always and continues to deny those allegations ?

A – I believe that is in the public domain.

Costs Awarded

At the end of the Smithwick Tribunal Scappaticci was awarded his costs, signed off by the Secretaries General of the Departments of Justice and Public Expenditure. They were cut almost in half by the State Claims Agency. A heavily redacted document also referred to one meeting with Scappaticci in the UK but the rest of the paragraph, presumably relating to other contacts, was redacted.


After the Tribunal Owen Corrigan took a Judicial Review against certain assertions in Judge Smithwick's report. The fact of Scappaticci’s involvement was highly relevant new evidence. The solicitor for the Tribunal denied emphatically he gave ‘evidence’ in the following terms:

Without prejudice to the relevance ... we can confirm that Mr Scappaticci did not provide evidence to the Smithwick Tribunal. Mr Scappaticci ( who is outside the jurisdiction) would not cooperate in providing evidence. He declined to provide a signed statement to the Tribunal and declined to give oral evidence.

These assertions are highly reliant on a strict definition of evidence which in the context means a signed statement or sworn evidence. It is evident the Tribunal withheld important information from lawyers.

In Belfast, as part of its investigation into Agent Steaknife or Stakeknife, Operation Kenova under Chief Superintendent Jon Boutcher submitted files relating to perjury to the PPS. One of those files is believed to relate to Freddie Scappaticci.

Frank Mulhern, whose son Joe was murdered by the IRA internal Security Squad in 1993 and who received information from Scappaticci about the manner of his death, is now appealing the PPS’s decision not to proceed to prosecution on the Scappaticci perjury file through his solicitor Kevin Winters of KRWLaw.

In the High Court in Belfast Judge Horner has refused to grant Operation Kenova’s application (September 23) that a stay be put on civil proceedings in relation to ‘historic crimes’ committed by FS – the ‘alleged agent Stakeknife’. That ruling will no doubt have relevance in relation to perjury allegations against Scappaticci. Judge Horner’s ruling means that 25 civil cases against the Chief Constable of the PSNI and the Ministry of Defence in relation to the activities of ‘Stakeknife’ can now proceed.

The response of the Attorney General of England and Wales to the FOI request about Scappaticci begs questions about who is prepared to defend his activities and whether or not he may escape behind any new legislation proposed by the British Government in an attempt to draw a line under legacy investigations, before the full grim truth of Scappaticci’s grisly activities is revealed. 

⏩Deirdre Younge is a writer/producer/director.

Licence To Lie

🔺Since this article was written the Public Prosecution Service of Northern Ireland has decided not to press charges relating to perjury against three people - two public officials and another, believed to be Freddie Scappaticci, on foot of files submitted by Operation Kenova. The present DPP N.I Stephen Herron, appears to have accepted that Scappaticci was entitled to rely on the ‘defence of necessity’ in May, 2003 when he took a judicial review against Jane Kennedy, a Minister in the Northern Ireland Office. Scappaticci had asked the Minister to deny allegations in the media that he was the agent called ‘Steaknife’ or ‘Stakeknife’ which she refused to do on the grounds that it was standard policy to give a ‘neither confirm nor deny’ (NCND) response to questions related to National Security. The Minister's decision was upheld in August 2003 when Scappaticci’s application for Judicial Review was dismissed. 
An official in the Public Prosecution Service in 2006, reviewing Scappaticci’s sworn statements of 2003 on foot of complaints received, accepted that Scappaticci had committed perjury but that he was justified in claiming that he was not the agent ‘Steaknife’ or ‘Stakeknife’ in the circumstances, as to do otherwise would have put his life in danger - the ‘defence of necessity’. That decision was itself reviewed in 2018 by the then DPP Barra McGrory with the consequences explained below. The latest decision by the DPP Stephen Herron therefore, accepts Scappaticci’s defence.

By Deirdre Younge 

From the Village ➤ Smithwick Tribunal found Garda collusion in murder of RUC officers, but couldn’t name the colluder. 

This was partly because it allowed a motley band of FRU operatives, informants and agents like the serial ‘intelligence nuisance’ Fulton and elusive thug Scappaticci endlessly to mislead it on who the colluder was so that, when MI5 conduit Drew Harris gave definitive evidence to the contrary, the Tribunal was forced to give what the authorities, North, South and in the UK wanted: a false finding of collusion that was impossible for anyone, particularly an unnamed colluder, to challenge.

‘He was the Golden Egg, something that was very important to the Army. We were terribly cagey about Fred’ – General Sir John Wilsey ex GOC N.I 2012.

Chief Constable Jon Boutcher, from Bedfordshire Police, is leading operation Kenova whose independent team is investigating a range of activities surrounding an elusive individual intriguingly codenamed Stakeknife, or Steaknife.

Freddie Scappaticci/Stakeknife/Steaknife
Its detectives arrested and interviewed the British Army agent Freddie Scappaticci, a 72-year-old Belfast man, in early 2018. He is widely suspected of being that individual. A member of the Belfast IRA from the early 1970s, he was recruited as an agent for the Army’s Intelligence Corps in the mid to late 1970s. He moved to British Army intelligence Force Research Unit (FRU) in Northern Ireland which secretly penetrated terrorist organisations in 1982 with his then handler, Major David Moyles, who instructed him and channelled his information. 

Scappaticci was observed operating around Dundalk and the Border region North and South from around 1982 until 1990. He is believed to have attempted to take over a unit run by another IRA man in Louth in the early 1980s. He was also described as the co-ordinator of its North-South operations. Later he was second in command to JJ Magee in the Internal Security Unit which conducted IRA interrogations along the border.

He is linked to at least 20 murders.

But he fell out with the IRA, and in with MI5 and its emanations which paid him £80.000 a year. Serious allegations have emerged to the effect that, to protect his cover, the British government allowed up to 40 people to be killed via the IRA’s Internal Security Unit or ‘Nutting Squad’ which he led.

It appears Kenova is pursuing several perjury cases against Scappatacci for denying he is Stakeknife or Steaknife. Some are sceptical whether he will be held to account as it has, for example, been alleged he retains tapes of his dealings with his handlers.

A number of individuals connected to the Stakeknife scandal, and keen for an accounting, have claimed perjury is the easiest way to ensure the alleged spy will appear in a court of law.

According to Henry McDonald in the Guardian:

The whistleblower who first publicly identified Stakeknife as Scappaticci, the former Force Research Unit soldier Ian Hurst, has described the perjury route as a ‘slam dunk’ if Boutcher and his detectives decide to prosecute on that front.

The focus of this article is on how such an eminently unreliable persona was allowed to elaborately subvert the naïve and misdirected Smithwick Tribunal that reported in the Republic in 2013.

One gauge of the unreliability is perhaps that in court in 2019 counsel for Britain’s Ministry of Defence revealed the total number of lawsuits against the alleged spy.

Tony McGleenan QC said: “There are 31 claims. Some have taken the form of correspondence [but] 24 writ actions have been issued. All of these name the second defendant (Scappaticci)”.

Scappaticci had been outed as the alleged agent Stakeknife or Steaknife at the time of the Stevens Inquiry in London in 2003. The outing is credited to his sometime associate Peter Keeley aka Kevin Fulton. But it is also attributed to a former Sergeant in the Army Intelligence Corps and FRU, Ian Hurst aka Martin Ingram. Scappaticci was also the subject of allegations in relation to the Tom Oliver murder in County Louth in the book Stakenknife published in 2003 by Journalist Greg Harkin and Ian Hurst under his pseudonym Martin Ingram. That’s three different line-ups alleging the identity.

Keeley and Hurst are egregiously shadowy figures who were to feature in the Smithwick Tribunal and whose allegations led to Scappaticci being afforded unlikely credence and indeed getting legal representation there.

Members or agents of British Army Intelligence were to play a huge role in the Smithwick Tribunal which investigated whether there was collusion between the Garda in Dundalk and the IRA killers of two RUC officers, Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan, who were shot dead in South Armagh in March 1989, shortly after leaving a meeting in Dundalk Garda station. 


BBC ‘Spotlight’ (October 1, 2019) revealed that Scappaticci conducted the IRA debrief assessment after its East Tyrone active service unit, led by Patrick Kelly and Jim Lynagh, were shot dead by forces including RUC Special Branch /TCG, SAS and UDR soldiers, at Loughgall in 1987. RUC Detective Chief Inspector Ian Phoenix led the operation against the IRA unit. His reaction to the deaths at Loughgall was described in a book ‘Phoenix: Policing the Shadows’ (1997), compiled after his death in 1994.

Harry Breen became a target for the IRA after Loughgall. He was believed to have been in charge of the armed members of the RUC Divisional Mobile Unit at the Co Armagh RUC station, when it came under attack by the IRA in 1987. After the fatal operation he was photographed with weapons retrieved from the dead IRA men.

The IRA representatives who talked to Smithwick said those published pictures were used to identify Breen.

The IRA plan was that Breen would be captured and interrogated about an alleged informer who betrayed that operation but instead he was shot dead.

Village has elsewhere reported credible if shocking allegations that Breen supplied weapons and information to Loyalist terrorists.


Smithwick found, incoherently, that there had been collusion but, partly due to a last-minute intervention which seems to have thrown him, never stated who the colluder was. Most lawyers would say that if you do not know who the colluder is it is unlikely you would pass the standard of proof necessary to make a finding of collusion.

Drew Harris, now – extraordinarily – the Republic’s Garda Commissioner, compounded Smithwick’s problems when he arrived, as the PSNI’s liaison officer with MI5 (!), to whisk the rug from under the Tribunal at the very last minute, in October 2012, with his evidence of a new Garda not identified to the Tribunal who had been the ‘real’ colluder in the murders of Breen and Buchanan and a man called Tom Oliver.

This man, on whom so much should have rested, has not yet been identified and while the Garda Commissioner stands by his evidence he has not elaborated further in public.

Most of the establishment, and the media, in Ireland and the UK have played down or failed to understand the significance of Harris’s intervention, or the discrediting anomaly of a judge making a decision that anybody can see was inept, that there had been collusion but not by anybody in particular.


The whole evolution of the Smithwick Tribunal, and the selection of a Circuit Court judge with known links to Britain, who was determined to find the desired conclusion of collusion, to chair it, merits sustained investigation.

This article looks at the villains who misled the Tribunal, enabling it to come to such an unlikely conclusion. It focuses in particular on Freddie Scappaticci’s role in diverting it at enormous cost, and on whether perhaps imminent perjury prosecutions in Northern Ireland may finally frame some of the stranger calls on the facts made by Mr Justice Smithwick. 

Scappaticci got full legal representation, paid for by the Irish Government to allow him to disprove the allegations “once and for all” (in the words of Judge Smithwick) that he was Agent Steaknife or Stakeknife, despite the fact that his handler, Major David Moyles, who obviously would have known, effectively corroborated that he was. Clearly observing army protocols, indeed he gave evidence unnamed as ‘Witness 82’, Moyles would only refer to an agent called Steaknife but he knew that everyone understood he was referring to Scappaticci.

In 2013 lawyers for Scappaticci submitted a written statement to Smithwick vigorously denying the reality that Scappaticci was Stakeknife. The following extract shows what was at steak:


The statement noted allegations from:

Kevin Fulton (aka Peter Keeley) and Ian Hurst (aka Martin Ingram) that Mr Scappaticci worked as an agent for the Force Research Unit (FRU) of the British Army under the codename ‘Stakeknife’…Both have a history of headline-grabbing and sensationalist publications. It has become clear from evidence given to this Tribunal that the sole source of the allegation is Mr Hurst…who told the Tribunal that ‘Kevin Fulton knew nothing of Scappaticci’s role until I told him..’….Mr Hurst has persisted in repeating the ‘Stakeknife’ allegation since 1999 and this allegation has fed into a more general claim that for much of the Troubles in the North of Ireland, the number of informers was so great and so highly placed within both Loyalist and Republican organisations that the British Government effectively controlled or were in a position to prevent many of the tragic incidents which occurred at that time. This allegation has been and continues to be denied by Mr Scappaticci.


The Smithwick Tribunal, set up in 2005, began consideration of applications for legal representation in 2006 and Scappaticci’s solicitor applied at this point, but was refused.

It is now clear that by 2007 the Tribunal lawyers had made contact with Scappaticci and his Belfast solicitor, Michael Flanigan. 


By 2011 he had gained full legal representation at the Tribunal. The PSNI and the British Army liaised with the Tribunal over the appearances of RUC and Military officers and in dealings with Scappaticci and other agents or handlers. Information contained in a statement obtained by Village in the response to an FOI request, throws light on how Scappaticci wended his way into the Tribunal and finally got a full legal team at public sessions. The Tribunal detailed the three allegations now being made against Scappaticci –

1. That Mr Scappaticci was the agent “Steaknife” — also spelt Stakeknife — working with the IRA on behalf of British Security services
2. That Mr Scappaticci, as a member of the IRA, was the handler of Garda Sergeant Owen Corrigan and
3. That Mr Scappaticci was involved in the abduction and interrogation of Mr Tom Oliver, a man murdered by the IRA. 

Judge Smithwick continued:

“He has consistently denied these allegations and maintains that denial. Nevertheless the public may identify him with ‘Stakeknife’. Mr Flanagan [sic] argues cogently that he should be represented and receive all documentation in relation to the ‘Stakeknife’ allegation so that his client may disprove the allegation once and for all and secondly, so that his client has the opportunity to test such evidence as that could impact on the credibility which the Tribunal ultimately attaches to the witnesses who made this allegation.

The Tribunal accordingly extends the right of Mr Scappaticci to limited representation on those occasions when either Mr Scappaticci or “Stakeknife” is mentioned”.

After the awarding of costs Cyril O’Neill, cost accountant, submitted a statement on behalf of  Scappaticci and his lawyers to the State Claims Agency.

Throughout the Tribunal Judge Smithwick referred to unsworn statements or conversations as ‘evidence’ but – contrariwise – the Tribunal, despite holding meetings with Scappaticci privately and granting him legal representation, emphatically denied, in judicial review proceedings taken by the man who was (falsely) alleged to have been the Garda informer who informed the IRA, Owen Corrigan, in November 2015, that Scappaticci had ever given ‘evidence’:

“Without predjudice to its relevance…we can confirm that Mr Scappaticci did not provide evidence to the Smithwick Tribunal. Mr Scappaticci (who is outside the jurisdiction) would not cooperate in providing evidence. He declined to provide a signed statement to the Tribunal and declined to give oral evidence”. The Tribunal went out of its way to deny Scappaticci had the formality of involvement necessary to constitute his contribution as ‘evidence’. Much of the Tribunal’s time was taken up by discussions with Scappatticci of which there is no record except the extraordinary bill for the public.


However, documents exclusively obtained by Village from the Department of Justice under Freedom of Information show that Scappaticci met the Tribunal’s lawyers in the UK. A high-level source has told Village that Scappaticci also had meetings with the Tribunal over three days in Dublin. The Tribunal clearly went out of its way, also, to engage Scappaticci.

In part reflecting this behind the scenes and unofficial activity, the investigatory phase of Smithwick was three times longer than the public hearings. This is contrary to the spirit and intentions of the Tribunals Act.

Remarkably then, Scappaticci gets one cursory mention in the Smithwick Report published in 2013 and only in connection with the subject of amnesty for witnesses. The brevity is deceptive. It’s now apparent through material revealed through FOI and through informed sources, that Scappaticci had extensive covert engagement with the Tribunal and that by the end of the Tribunal Scappaticci’s lawyers including his Solicitor, QC and Junior Counsel, were paid nearly 400,000 euro, ostensibly for less than two years representation at the Tribunal, principally in order that he could rebut accusations that he was the notorious agent.

Normally third-party costs are not granted. However, Judge Smithwick explains why this case was different:

There are, however, other costs which are incurred. Potential witnesses have to be sought out by the Tribunal and encouraged to make a statement. Some of them have concerns about doing so lest they breach the Official Secrets Act in their jurisdiction or expose themselves to conviction for criminal offences there. I have several cases of this kind and Mr Flanagan’s client is one. It is a matter of very great delicacy and in order to persuade his client to help us his client needs to have Mr Flanagan’s assurance that it will be safe for him to do so.

Is it conceivable in 2015 when legal fees were authorised, that the Department of Justice or the Smithwick legal team were unaware that Scappaticci was in fact beyond all reasonable doubt this notorious agent or that it was open to endless entertainment of the doubt? Or is it more likely much of his evidence was not about who he was but concerned Corrigan?

The fact that the Tribunal withheld all the information of their dealings with Scappaticci was a grave omission and may have heavily, and illegally, disadvantaged Corrigan.


In a judgment by Justice O’Neill in the High Court in October 2005 – Owen O’Callaghan v Judge Alan Mahon – dealing with disclosure disputes, he asserted (concerning the Planning Tribunal) that the applicant’s right to defend his good name prevails over others right to privacy, in relation to the obligation of a tribunal to properly disclose documents or information, Mr Justice O’Neill quoted passages from Mr Justice Geoghegan in an associated Supreme Court Judgment of March 9th, 2005, as follows:

Whereas the Tribunal undoubtedly has the latitude which may not be available to a court of law, it is always bound to ensure, as far as possible, compliance with Constitutional rights and obligations and that, of course, includes the vindication of a person’s good name. It was absolutely essential that the documents and materials which were sought for the purpose of carrying out a worthwhile cross-examination in the extraordinary circumstances where wild allegations were flying around the Tribunal against Mr O’Callaghan and of which he had not prior notice, be duly produced.

There is a serious danger that the fundamentally questionable approach of the Smithwick Tribunal – collusion without colluder, which was inexplicable and therefore appeared to have come from nowhere, was in fact driven by the upshot of its undue reliance on the utterly unreliable Scappaticci. The fact is that the source of the allegations was never “duly produced”. All of this may have made it more difficult for Smithwick too to name a colluder since the allegation about both collusion and colluder was manufactured.

This all seems analogous to the evidence given by James Gogarty to the Planning Tribunal. The Supreme Court overturned most of the findings based on his evidence, including serious findings against Ray Burke and Joe Murphy, on the basis there had never been an opportunity for their lawyers to cross-examine Gogarty in circumstances where among the plausible allegations he made were some that were deemed utterly unsustainable about Fine Gael TD Nora Owen and former Supreme Court judge Seamus Henchy. If Gogarty had been cross-examined this implausible evidence would have been used to subvert his credibility.

Is it possible Scappaticci’s centrality to the Tribunal’s thinking was suppressed to avoid his being cross-examined and discredited?

Smithwick’s unshakeable reliance on his deeply flawed witness, Keeley, the covert nature of his relationship with Scappaticci, the non-sharing of possibly exculpatory Intelligence and reliance on untestable hearsay assertions allow for uncomfortable comparisons.

Did Smithwick have legal advice that he could not name the person he wanted to name as colluder because the process involving Scappaticci was illicit? 


Peter Keeley joined FRU in 1981 and was sent to Northern Ireland. He gave evidence to Smithwick under the alias ‘Kevin Fulton’. Without Keeley there would have been no inquiry. A preliminary inquiry by a former Canadian Supreme Court judge, Peter Cory, made it clear he was the last-minute witness that persuaded him to recommend a public inquiry. The last-minute witness seems to be an unfortunate pattern in this benighted sphere. That inquiry was to be the Smithwick Tribunal.

It seems to have been an essential policy agreed between the UK and Ireland that there would be such an inquiry, perhaps as a quid pro quo for other inquiries that the Irish Government wanted conducted by the British government into murky murders in the North. What they hadn’t reckoned on however, was that the Inquiry would be held in the South and therefore be hobbled from the start, by having no authority or jurisdiction over the RUC, PSNI or British army and just ‘grace and favour’ access to their intelligence files. 


Still, many managed not to focus too much on the dramatic legal dysfunctionalities obvious both in its genesis and its conclusions. According to the Irish Times at the time of publication of the Tribunal’s considered but incoherent report: “in terms of fallout it seems unlikely that there will be a major negative political dimension to the Smithwick report”. This was because, as the Irish Times unquestioningly noted:

The judge found there was Garda collusion but that it was localised and, it seems, at a low-ranking level. Such corruption is hard to come to terms with, but will hardly damage British-Irish or North-South relations. 

And that, against the background of nasty but murky murder, was the entire purpose of the exercise.

Anyway, impelled in part by the conclusions of the Canadian judge, as far as Smithwick was concerned Keeley was his star witness and no amount of inconsistency or changed stories dented that premise.

In November 2011 Keeley was cross-examined by Scappaticci’s barrister whose central focus was that Keeley dragged Scappaticci into his narrative for publicity and to pressurise the State over his financial package. The Queen’s Counsel also questioned Keeley about his role in a legal claim being pursued by his wife against Scappaticci. When asked why Scappaticci did not feature in his book in relation to the Tom Oliver case Keeley washed his hands of editorial responsibility, blamed the ghost writers and denied the relevance: “Scappaticci, to me …you are saying he is relevant because he is your client but to everybody else he is not that relevant”.

Indeed sources close to Keeley have told Village that the statement was invented or “written up” and given to Keeley so as to kick-start an inquiry into the murders of Breen and Buchanan.

Senior security sources say the RUC Special Branch and M15 spent years desperately trying to put the ‘Fulton’ genie back in the bottle and only succeeded after offering him an apartment and expenses around 2005. He still operates under their watchful eye and under threat of arrest.

Keeley’s so-called ‘Fulton statement’ to Cory in 2003 said a Garda tipped off IRA man Patrick ‘Mooch’ Blair that Breen and Buchanan had arrived at Dundalk Garda Station. Fulton alleged he was in a car with Blair when the Garda told them that “they” had arrived at Dundalk Garda station, thus triggering the ambush of the two men. 

The allegation later changed in 2006 at Smithwich to centre on an alleged conversation between Blair and Corrigan in a car in the car park of a pub. This time the collusion involved the passing of information about Tom Oliver. The subject of the conversation, the location and the year changed between Cory and Smithwick. So, in 2006 when Fulton aka Keeley was under the ‘protection’ of M15 his central allegation changed completely from the murders of Chief Superintendent Harry Breen in South Armagh in 1989 to that of Tom Oliver in Co Louth in 1991. 


Patrick “Mooch” Blair adamantly denied that he ever had such a meeting and said his life would have been in danger if a meeting had taken place. Corrigan vehemently denied all Fulton’s allegations and sources close to Keeley, who had an insight into everything that happened at the time, confirmed to Village that no such meeting had ever happened.

This change of story is something that is extraordinarily important in assessing the performance of the Smithwick Tribunal.

In any event, the changed story and statement brought Scappaticci into the frame. By the time the statement made its way to Smithwick the central collusion allegation had transmogrified into one not about Breen and Buchanan but about the murder of farmer Tom Oliver. Bizarrely, nevertheless, the Smithwick Tribunal’s lead SC declared at a public sitting that the Oliver murder was not part of the Tribunal’s remit, even though Scappaticci was to get legal representation partly to counter accusations implicating him in the Tom Oliver murder.

Tom Oliver, murdered by the IRA in 1991
The case of Tom Oliver, who was abducted from his home, on the Cooley Peninsula in Louth, murdered and dumped in County Armagh, was brought into evidence by three former members of the British Army Intelligence Corps. Scappaticci was alleged to have been part of the IRA Interrogation Unit which abducted Oliver. In fact it would appear that after 1990 and events surrounding the interrogation of another informer, Alexander Lynch in Belfast, designed to entrap a senior Sinn Féin spokesperson, Danny Morrison, Scappaticci had become persona non grata for a time, and was not part of the interrogation team at the date of Oliver’s murder.

Ian Hurst first contacted the Smithwick Tribunal after it was set up in 2005. He claimed that he was being prevented from giving relevant information because of a ‘gagging order’ imposed by the UK Ministry of Defence. The Tribunal wrote to the UK Treasury Solicitor, the Ministry of Defence and the Northern Ireland Office about his possible appearance.

Hurst had made a number of assertions in the co-authored book Stakeknife published in 2004.

One was that an agent in the IRA had made recordings of Tom Oliver’s conversations with gardaí in Dundalk which led to Oliver’s murder.


In his statement to Smithwick in June 2011 he made the key allegation that there was Intelligence implicating retired Special Branch Sergeant Owen Corrigan in passing information to Scappaticci. These allegations were published by some credulous reporters and Corrigan has sued successfully on a number of occasions.

However, Hurst’s heinous and untrue allegations gained him access to the Tribunal. They were also to ensure that Scappaticci was granted full legal representation paid for by the Irish State. 

Hurst’s allegations ensured that both Hurst and Scappaticci were witnesses at the Tribunal. Even with Hurst discredited, he had opened the door for Scappaticci to corroborate Keeley. He had served his purpose.

Moyles was emphatic that Steaknife, who he handled, was not aware of the procurement of information from Corrigan or any other member of the Garda and that he had not seen any intelligence generated by Scappaticci suggesting he had.

He also said that Steaknife had no advance knowledge of the IRA ambush of Breen and Buchanan, nor did he ever indicate that it was based on information provided by a member of the Garda.


Despite Moyle’s emphatic evidence that he had seen no secret store of Army intelligence about Garda collusion, Smithwick chose to believe Keeley because without him there was no evidence of collusion.

That was a momentous mistake. Much of the Tribunal’s time was taken up by discussions with Scappatticci of which there is no record except the extraordinary bill for the public.

Operation Kenova too has found no intelligence or evidence linking Scappaticci with Oliver, according to reliable sources.

It is submitted that the evidence of Mr Hurst must be disregarded by the Tribunal of Inquiry on the basis that both he and his evidence are lacking in any credibility. For the following reasons.

↦ Mr Hurst has admitted under oath to being a liar.
↦ Mr Hurst by reason of his training within the FRU and elsewhere, is trained, to an exceptional level, in deceit.
↦ In the context of his report on Bloody Sunday, Lord Saville of Newdigate came to the following conclusions about the evidence given to him by Mr Hurst”.

In fact Hurst had left the Army in 1991 in good standing on full pension and with an “exemplary record”. Nonetheless, even Smithwick rejected Hurst, noting in his report:

We formed the view that Martin Ingram (Hurst) had, at best, an imperfect recollection of events and that it would be unwise to rely on his evidence.
We are of the view that Martin Ingram to a substantial degree exaggerated the importance of his role at HQNI and the level of knowledge and access in intelligence. I attach no weight to the evidence given by Ian Hurst.

Hurst had wilted under cross examination at the Tribunal but his statement along with Keeley’s levered Scappaticci into the Tribunal by his obtaining expensive legal representation if not in person.

Hurst is credited with first revealing that Scappaticci was agent Steaknife.

Keeley’s wife and he also allege they were interrogated by Scappaticci in 1994 after an attempt on the life of a senior RUC officer failed. Reliable sources tell Village Scappaticci had in fact been stood down as an enforcer by this time. She has taken a case against the Chief Constable to which she has attempted to join Scappaticci.

Doubting Keeley’s authenticity Scappaticci noted in his statement that no Military Intelligence handlers appeared before the Tribunal to give evidence or verify Keeley’s account of himself. 

Again damagingly, in one of a number of actions before the courts dealing with alleged entrapment in 1985, (R v Patrick Quinn) the British Army has refused to engage with Keeley as they maintained he wasn’t working for them then.


It remains to be seen if they will maintain this stance in future civil actions.

Chief Superintendent Boutcher has submitted 12 files to the Public Prosecution Service in Northern Ireland for its consideration. Three of those files have reportedly been in relation to perjury. We may speculate what they concern.

For example, Belfast man Joe Mulhern was shot dead by the IRA in 1993; his body was left on the road in Castlederg, County Tyrone. After his death Joe’s father, Frank Mulhern, was told by Scappaticci how his son had died.

Frank Mulhern’s campaign for Justice was central to the setting up of Operation Kenova despite the fact that Kenova has found no evidence to connect Scappaticci to his death.

In 2017 Frank Mulhern initiated a judicial review action against a decision of the PPS (NI) not to bring a prosecution against Scappaticci for the offence of perjury in denying he was Stakeknife in relation to a 2003 case brought by Scappaticci, against a Northern Ireland Minister, Jane Kennedy. Mulhern’s lawyers referred to a 2017 Panorama television programme, ‘A Spy in the IRA’, which alleged that Scappaticci was agent Stakeknife and disclosed the PPS decision not to prosecute.

Frank Mulhern’s court actions revealed a letter from the then Director of Public Prosecutions Northern Ireland, Barra McGrory, to this effect. The letter from the DPP’s office read as follows:

The Director has asked me to reply to your letter of 16th May 2017.
You will appreciate that the PPS is unable to make any comment on the suggestions in your letter as to the identity of the agent codenamed Stakeknife.
It is correct however that an individual was reported to the PPS in 2006 for the alleged offence of perjury during court proceedings in 2003 involving the individual referred to in your letter. While it was considered on the evidence that perjury was committed, the view was taken that the individual concerned had a viable defence of necessity and a ‘no prosecution’ decision issued. These matters are now the subject of investigation by Operation Kenova and it would be inappropriate to comment further.

It was clear that, if Kenova had not been investigating, the PPS would have considered initiating a prosecution itself:

I have serious concerns in relation to this decision [not to prosecute]. Having reviewed all of the available evidence I consider that the original decision did not take into account relevant considerations, and also took into account irrelevant factors. I have concluded that the original decision was not within the range of decisions that could reasonably be taken in the circumstances. This decision has been set aside.


Another possible case for perjury was strangely revealed in a final legal written submission made to the Smithwick Tribunal on Scappaticci’s behalf in 2013 which referred to the 2003 case taken against Minister Jane Kennedy, which unsuccessfully sought to force her, in the wake of publication of the Harkin and Hurst book ‘Stakeknife’, to deny allegations he was the eponymous ‘mole’ in the IRA. Scappaticci’s denials in this case were considered as possible grounds for his prosecution for perjury. Scappaticci retained the same solicitor who had acted for him in the Kennedy case, to represent him at Smithwick. 

In September 1989 journalist Martin O’Hagan was interrogated by the South Armagh Brigade of the IRA. His name had been found in a notebook taken from the car in which Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan had been travelling when they were shot. The ‘internal security unit’ carried out the questioning of O’Hagan.


But the extraordinary outcome of the Smithwick Tribunal was that by awarding Freddie Scappaticci legal representation to defend his reputation and prove “once and for all” that he wasn’t Agent ‘Stakeknife’ or ‘Steaknife’, the Irish State was forced to hand over hundreds of thousands of pounds for a man believed to be a notorious British Army Agent. An agent who is under investigation for perjury in relation to his denials, and his alleged involvement in multiple murders.

Scappaticci ended his final submission with a final denial and a reminder of the role of the two FRU operatives Fulton and Hurst:

Mr Scappaticci is represented because he made the point that there was an allegation, which he denies, that he is a person under the sobriquet of ‘Stakeknife’… The only people who assert this position are Mr Fulton and Mr Hurst. ..It is contended that both of these men have proven to be unreliable witnesses. Their allegations concerning Mr Scappaticci are wholly inaccurate. They have abused their opportunity to give evidence to the Tribunal and used it as a platform on which to make sensationalist claims and further their campaign against Mr Scappaticci. They are both individuals who have been trained in deceit and it is submitted they have both used those skills in an attempt to deceive the Tribunal. 


Operation Kenova, led by Chief Superintendent Boutcher, looks likely to attempt “once and for all” to prosecute Freddie Scappaticci for perjury, so framing the Smithwick Tribunal’s decision to give him credence and pay his legal fees.

If Kenova finishes up identifying the person who perpetrated the Stakenife horrors and further undermining the Smithwick Tribunal’s implausible report it would have significantly advanced the fragile cause of justice in benighted Northern Ireland.



See Killusion By Deirdre Younge - the backstory of how Freddie Scappaticci got "pulled" into the Smitwhwick Tribunal.

⏩Deirdre Younge is a writer/producer/director. 

MI5 High Steaks ➤ The Kenova Investigation Could Nail Scappaticci For Perjury So Why Did Smithwick Pay His Legal Bills?

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