Dan Snow's History Hit - Infiltrating the IRA: Murder & Espionage in Northern Ireland

Episode Date: March 12, 2024

With Operation Kenova back in the headlines, we look to the story of Frank Hegarty, an IRA member turned British informant whose assassination led to the largest murder investigation in British history.Dan is joined by Henry Hemming, the bestselling author of Four Shots in the Night. Henry unravels this tale of espionage, murder, and justice, and explains how it fits into the longest-running conflict in recent British history - The Troubles.Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code DANSNOW sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/We'd love to hear from you- what do you want to hear an episode on? You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi everybody, on Friday the 8th of March, John Boucher, the Chief Constable of Northern Ireland held a press conference at which he announced the publication of a report into a man known as Stakenife, a British agent deep within the IRA. The Chief Constable was scathing about the entire operation. The report concludes that more lives were probably lost than saved as a result of Stakenife's activities. As a result of this breaking news, I'm bringing forward this podcast, which I'd recorded with the very brilliant author Henry Hemming.

It was due to go out in a few weeks' time, but I'm going to publish it right now. He's just finished his book all about steak knife, and you can hear about that man's remarkable career as an IRA operative and a British agent. This is a tale of murder, torture, espionage, and double-crossing. Here it is. No black-white unity till there is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And liftoff, and the shuttle has cleared the tower. Henry, great to have you back on the podcast. Dan, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.

Well, let's start. Let's start in the small hours of the 25th of May, 1986. Where are we and what's going on? Okay, so we're in the United Kingdom. We're in an administrative region of the United Kingdom called Northern Ireland. And there's a body. There's a body. It's been found by a local farmer. And we're outside a town called Castle Durg.

It's in County Tyrone. It's the west of Northern Ireland, and it's by the side of a remote country lane. I mean, you can just about picture the scene. It's a beautiful spot, windswept moorland. It's raining very lightly. And the farmer has seen off in the distance. At first, he thinks it's just a man sleeping by the side of the road, but very quickly he realizes this is a corpse. And he doesn't go right up to it. He goes to the police and he tells them what he's found. What he's seen, he's seen a body. It's a man who's fairly smartly dressed. And from where he was,

he could make out that around this man's wrists, you had some rope. So this man at some point clearly had been bound. But what's unusual about this is that the rope has been cut and the farmer didn't cut it. So clearly the rope was cut at some point around the time of this man's murder, which immediately suggests that whatever's happened here, the person who's been murdered might have known his murderer or murderers, which is already putting a bit of an angle on what's gone on. There's another thing that stands out. He can see that over the victim's eyes is some tape, so some masking tape, which has been attached to this man's eyes. And no one can figure out what that tape is doing. And I guess the one other really important detail to pass on, which is immediately obvious to the police when they find out, is that this man has been left, body has been left, very close to the border with the Republic

of Ireland, with the South. And this immediately suggests that possibly the IRA could have been involved. And I'll just fast forward for a moment to kind of really give you a little bit more of a taste of the context of what's going on here. There's a rumor that spreads maybe about 15 years later that this man was not only a spy, the person who's been killed, but that he might've been killed by another spy who was also inside the IRA. And that basically, that's the, it's the starting point of the story. It's also the starting point of when I became interested in all this. I think when I understood this setting, that's when my interest was really piqued. And so this is the way into it.

But let's talk about that setting. Let's talk about the troubles. 1986, there was an insurgency. There was counterinsurgency. There was terrorist activity in Northern Ireland. Where are we up to by 1986? What are the IRA to by 1986? What are the IRA trying to do? And what is the British government army intelligence trying to do?

Okay, so there's a lot there, but I'll, the troubles in brief, and let's assume that no one knows exactly what the troubles is. Let's just start from basics. It's an armed conflict. It lasts for 30 years, begins in 1969, ends in 1998 with the Good Friday Agreement. The main combatants, you have the British security forces, and that's mainly the army, MI5, the local police, MI6 for a little bit, but not so much. And they're up against a series of paramilitary groups, including famously the IRA. Now, the scale of this conflict is one that really I find fascinating. I mean, Dan, I'd love to know what you think, actually. If you had to guess how many British soldiers were involved, served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, roughly what would you go for? Wow. Well, obviously the Brits were rotated in and out, went on for 30 years. I mean,

so you're right, it must have been a multiple of, there's probably what, 10,000 people there at any one time? You're looking at three, 400,000? Yep, almost exactly about 300,000 people. So more than a quarter of a million people served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. I thought it was an astonishing figure because it's not a conflict that we hear a huge amount about. And I mean, it's almost, it's probably worth talking as well about exactly what the conflict was about. What were people fighting over?

And what it started out as is different to what it became. So it started out as a civil rights campaign. It started out with Catholics and Protestants marching in the street, and they were campaigning basically for an end to the discrimination against Catholics. This was about housing, it was about jobs, it was about votes. It was not at that time about whether Northern Ireland should be part of the UK or part of the Republic. But it later became about that, and it later became obviously much more violent as well. Maybe the only other thing I'd say, if I was trying to just sum up the troubles to someone

who knows nothing about it, is just to talk about the nature of the conflict. When you first read about it, let's say you go onto Wikipedia, one of the first things you'll see is something about the numbers involved. So 3,500 people were killed, 50,000 people were injured. And these are huge numbers. But the numbers tend to obscure the nature of this conflict and in some ways the intimacy of some of these murders that took place. You often had a situation where an IRA killer would know the victim and the victim's family would continue to know by sight

the IRA killer in the years and decades that followed because so many of these crimes did not end up with someone being prosecuted, did not end up with someone being sent to jail. So there is, as I say, there's a real intimacy to this conflict, which begins to explain some of the, just the psychological burden of what was going on. What are the British trying to do? Are they trying to fight the IRA conventionally, get into gun battles in the streets and the estates and the fields in Orlando? Are they trying to infiltrate, use intelligence-led operations, try and disrupt IRA operations and even arrest and perhaps take out IRA figures? Yeah. So the British, by 1986, they've got a new approach.

So back at the beginning, in the early 1970s, their approach very much was boots on the ground. Let's not quite flood the region with soldiers, but they had more troops there than any other point during the conflict. And their hope was that this would be a way to eliminate the IRA and any other Republican paramilitary groups. That didn't work. It made the situation worse. There were moments when they were heavy handed. There were moments when they went beyond their remit. And that, of course, made the IRA more popular. And when they created a situation like that, they realized maybe we need to try something else. And what they began to do from about 1980 onwards was focus much, much more on intelligence, on espionage, on trying to get

agents inside or close to these groups. And this is something which I find just absolutely fascinating. And I had a conversation with someone and they said, essentially, you do realize that the biggest story in British intelligence history from the last 70 years is spies inside the IRA, and how it's the number of spies inside the IRA that led to the end of the troubles. And that really piqued my curiosity. I was intrigued by this. I was skeptical as well, to begin with. And what's fascinating is just the scale of this operation. And by the mid-1980s, the British are running what's now acknowledged as being quote-unquote the largest counter-terrorism operation anywhere in the world. Now, how many

spies are we talking about here? There's a moment after the Troubles when Father Dennis Bradley, who's part of the consultative group on the past, he's allowed to see a classified piece of intelligence. And on this piece of paper, it gives him a number of how many agents there were being run by the British at any one time. And he says it was 800. So 800 agents. The adult population of Northern Ireland at this time is only about 1 million. And what's interesting is the reaction to that figure of 800. And there's a senior intelligence officer who was quoted by the BBC as saying that number is a conservative estimate. In other words, the real number is a lot higher. So you've got this astonishing situation where there might have been as many as 1,000 spies operating within this region. I mean, we've heard of the Cambridge Five.

Imagine the Northern Ireland 1,000. It's a huge number. And it's beginning by the mid-1980s to have a discernible impact. It's beginning to change the course of the troubles. And also, I'll tell you one story which might be interesting. It also saved the life of our current king, of Prince Charles as he then was. There's an amazing story about an agent inside the IRA, and this is a man called Sean O'Callaghan. And he was reporting at the time to the Irish police, but he'd soon be passing on information to MI5 as well. And the IRA, back in 1983, they come up with a plan. And their plan is to assassinate Charles and Diana. And their plan is they're going to put a bomb in a bathroom just behind the Royal Box in a theatre in London, where they know there's going to be a concert held in honour of the Prince's Trust. And the headline the middle of the Duran Duran set. That's the plan.

So Charles and Diana would be killed. A number of concert goers would be killed, maybe members of the band as well. And the only reason this does not happen is that the man given the job of planting the bomb inside the bathroom is Sean O'Callaghan. And he's reporting to the Irish and the British. And so the bomb never gets planted. What's so interesting about this is that no one knows about this beyond his handler and a small number of people. So there is this enormous operation, but it's completely secret. And

the story of Frank Hegarty is very much a part of what's going on. So British intelligence, they're trying to bring the IRA to a standstill. That's their number one objective. The number two objective is they're trying to turn Sinn Féin into a more viable political force. And the hope is that by doing this, eventually people within the IRA will push for a political solution, not a military solution. So that's the overall aim. And who are people like Sean O'Callaghan? And why is British intelligence so successful at turning them? Is it cash? Is it catching them and giving them deals that allow them to stay out of prison? What's the tactic here? You know what? It changes from agent to agent.

I mean, sometimes cash plays a big part, no doubt. And when I say that, that implies that some of these people who are being recruited are maybe just greedy and they want to get rich. That's not the case. A lot of the time, people would agree to pass on information because they have a problem with debt, because they've got a mortgage to pay off, because they've got a funeral and a wedding to pay for. People are not, as I say, getting rich out of this necessarily, but money does sometimes play a part. Another huge part of it is revenge. So a lot of the time, if someone has lost a family member or a loved one to an IRA bomb, there's a really good chance that they will at least have the motivation to work against the IRA and to supply information that could prevent further attacks.

the IRA and to supply information that could prevent further attacks. And I think one of the other ones that sometimes surprised me is that occasionally it was possible for the handlers to appeal to someone's just sense of self. In other words, if someone is in their life, perhaps not important or not getting the respect that they feel they deserved, having this team of handlers approach you, tell you that you're important, tell you that you can become a part of this exciting and relevant operation. Sometimes that can be something that sways you and makes you think, I want to become a spy. Certainly with Frank Hegarty, I think that was a small part of the reason. The other thing which is really important to add is just an idealistic desire to end the violence. And one of the soldiers involved in the recruitment

of Frank Hegarty, he talked about this. He said afterwards, they were all surprised and blown away by just how much he wanted to do this for a fairly virtuous reason. He just wanted peace. And he thought the violence had gone on for too long. Interesting. So what about Frank Hegarty? Tell me about his backstory. So Frank is in his early 40s. He is a family man.

He's got two young kids. He's someone who's always been good with animals. And I guess the main thing everyone will tell you about Frank Hegarty is that he's mad about greyhounds. He's owned greyhounds since he was a boy. He's raised greyhounds. He's trained greyhounds. He races greyhounds. And so a lot of his world is this greyhound world of men who go and race at some of the greyhound tracks nearby. He's someone who's often down the pub. He's got a lot of friends in different places. He's not part of the IRA. He's not someone you're going to see down the pub talking about the need for a united Ireland. He's also, he's Catholic. And at the same time he's living with, and the

mother of his kids is a Protestant. And by the early 1980s, that's unusual. But he was someone who was willing to go beyond some of the disapproval of his friends, some of his family members. And he was prepared to go through with that relationship. And he was recruited in 1980. He was taken on by the British Army. It was a pretty elaborate operation, which involved the army borrowing a dog at one point to use in this recruitment. And it worked. And in the months that follow, Frank begins to get into the habit of meeting up with his handler and then going to supply information about what he's heard. Mostly what he's just heard from friends, what he's heard down the pub, anything like that. As I say, he's not inside the IRA. He's what's called an eyes and ears agent. So he's someone

who just sort of tell you what's going on in terms of the gossip on the street. But then everything changes in 1984. So in 1984, he's taken aside by his handler. His handler says, look, Frank, we've got a new job for you. And it may sound extraordinary, but hear us out. We want you to infiltrate the IRA and get close to Martin McGuinness. And apparently, Frank, when he first heard this, I mean, I don't want to say spat out his tea, but if he had been drinking tea, he would have spat it out. He was shocked. This sounded bizarre. And mainly because he was one of the last people you could imagine joining the IRA. Also, I think, because everybody knows that the man to be most afraid of in Derry slash London Derry is Martin McGuinness. And he's someone who I found is just a fascinating character. I mean, usually when I

think when you're writing history, and when you're writing anything, actually, if you're writing fiction, even if you're listening to the news, most of the time people are described to you as either being generally good or generally bad. They can be flawed, but they're either one or the other. It's very rare to hear about someone who is both extremely bad and extremely good. And at the same time, this is what Martin McGuinness essentially was. He was capable of extraordinary brutality. He was responsible for a horrific number of deaths over a long period of time. He gave the order for a large number of murders, sometimes for people that he knew personally. At the same time, or rather at a later point, this is someone who was capable of extraordinary gestures of reconciliation and understanding. He agreed to work with Ian Paisley. He agreed to meet the Queen. He was someone who pushed for peace when many others in the IRA were pushing for war. And in terms of our story, Martin McGuinness is

the person that Frank Hegarty has to get close to. And Martin McGuinness is the person who says, Frank can join the IRA. So he vouches for him. There are some people who say, I'm not sure about this guy. I think Frank Hegarty might possibly be an agent. But McGuinness puts his neck on the line and he says, no, I think we can trust this man. So 1984, Frank begins to work with the IRA. Henry, I was actually in Northern Ireland quite early on in the 21st century, 20 noughties sometime. And there was a very brief but quite interesting rumour that Martin McGuinness himself was a British asset and the whole of Northern Ireland was like, he attended a football match and there was just silence in the stands. And that was a very interesting bit of rumour. Typical, the kind of rumours that used to swing around those counties.

Yeah. And that rumour is still going strong. I've heard that rumour many, many times. Yeah, absolutely. Maybe one day we will learn. One day I'm sure you will uncover those documents and you will find out the truth there. Yeah, between you and me, I don't think it's possible. But I think more interestingly, British intelligence identified him at an early point, about 1980s, early 1980s, as someone who they wanted to remain in charge of the IRA. They thought he was one of the most likely leaders to push for peace. And that in itself is interesting. I don't think he was a paid up asset. I think for so many reasons

that wouldn't have been likely, but I think he was certainly a protected species. Wow. That's a whole other category I hadn't really thought about, but that makes total sense. So, okay. So we've got our man. Hegarty is in the IRA. He's successful. He rises up through the ranks. Absolutely. He's doing really well. This is a good chance to talk about one of the hardest decisions that the people running Frank would have to make. And early on in Frank's career, he's given a load of weapons and he needs to do something

with these weapons. So he goes to hide them. He finds a spot in a cemetery nearby and the weapons are hidden. And he goes to his handler and he says, this is what I've done. The weapons are now hidden in the cemetery. Now the handler has to decide what to do. And this goes to the heart of just espionage, whether it's in Northern Ireland during the troubles, whether it's during the second world War with intelligence coming out of Bletchley Park, throughout the ages. The spymaster's dilemma is, am I going to save more lives if I act on this intelligence right now, or am I going to save more lives if I do nothing? And you think that's a no-brainer. Obviously, pass on the information to the police,

get the weapons out of circulation, then they can't be used. That's the best way to save the most lives. But the problem here is if you were to do that, then immediately Frank, your agent, the person you're looking after, is going to come under suspicion by the IRA. And the IRA very soon will send its specialist interrogation unit, the Nutting Squad. They will come and take Frank away. He will be interrogated. And there's a really good chance that then the order will come from the IRA Army Council for this man to be killed. In other words, you're endangering the life of your agent. But what also complicates it is that you know that if nothing happens, if those weapons are allowed to stay where they are to remain in play,

then Frank, your agent, is going to become more trusted. And if he becomes more trusted, then you might be able to get better intelligence in the months and years ahead. And that will allow you to save more lives. And maybe the only other thing to add to the confusion is that you don't have long to make this decision. You've maybe got only a few hours, perhaps a day at best. So you don't have time to really, really consider it. And this kind of decision was the thing that was faced by handlers throughout Northern Ireland, throughout the Troubles and on an extraordinary scale. I suppose the flip side of having so many agents in play is that there are so many of these decisions that have to be made. But anyway, early on, Frank goes to his handler and his handler says, actually, we're going to let those weapons stay in play. We're not going to do anything. And Frank becomes a lot more trusted. He begins to be entrusted with more information and more

weapons. Wow. So he thrives. So they make the latter decision. They allow certain operations to take place, even though they know, gosh, even British intelligence knows these things might be coming. They allow them to take place in order to cement Frank more firmly into the hierarchy. Exactly. And eventually it pays off. Frank becomes so trusted. He's told to look after an enormous shipment of weapons, which has come in from Libya. So Colonel Gaddafi by now, he's part of the picture. And he's sending weapons to the IRA because he wants to get back at the British government. And this goes back to the Libyan embassy siege several years earlier. So Gaddafi is supplying huge amounts of weaponry, and Frank is put in charge of the first big shipment.

And he passes this on to his handler. And on this occasion, they decide they have to act on this. So this time they have the spy master's dilemma. They decide this time we're going to take the weapons out of circulation. So there's a police raid. Suddenly all of these weapons are taken. And of course, Frank is now completely under suspicion. So at the same time, the British arrange to take Frank out of Derry, and they fly him over to England, and they put him in a safe house. So on the face of it, they've saved his life. But at the same time, from Frank's point of view, a part of him has just died.

It's hard to exaggerate just how much of a shock this would have been for Frank. He's lived in Derry all his life. He's got his two young kids. He's got his partner. He's got this enormous network of friends. He's not someone who travels a lot. He's not someone who dreams of moving away from Northern Ireland. He's really happy where he is. Suddenly, he's living in the safe house in Kent. And it's as if a part of him has died, as if he's lost a limb. He finds it very, very hard to adjust. I think the experience was traumatic. And one of the things that is the people looking after him in the safe house decide to do is they say that he can call home. He can start to telephone his

partner and his mother. So he starts to call his mother and he's close to his mum. They have a very, very close relationship. He comes from a large family, but everyone I've spoken to about this suggests that Frank was very much the favourite out of all the children. I imagine very close-knit Derry Catholic community, his family probably aren't having a great time because of his actions, right? Exactly. You barely need me to explain that stigma, the stigma attached to having someone in your family being accused of being a spy is huge. And Frank tells his mother that he's not a spy, he's been kidnapped. That's what he says. Whether she totally believes him or not, she goes along with that line. But almost from the day he disappears, Frank's mother begins to get these visits. And she gets visits from none other than Martin McGuinness. So Martin

McGuinness begins to come around almost every day. Every day he'll pop around, he'll have a cup of tea, and he'll talk to Frank's mother. And he tells Frank's mother, tell your son it's safe for him to come back. And then there's this extraordinary moment when Frank calls up, calls his mother, and at the same time, McGuinness is in the house. And McGuinness says, let me have a word with him. So McGuinness talks to Frank and tells him, come home, you'll be safe. This is a crucial, crucial detail. So Frank is then left with the toughest decision of his life. Does he trust McGuinness?

Does he accept that maybe he can find a way through this? Or does he realize this is just a sham? I need to start a new life overseas. I've just got to let my past go. And he spends several weeks thinking about it, and he then decides he's going to take the risk. He will go home. He finds a way to get back to Derry, to Northern Ireland, back to his mother's house. Very soon, Martin McGuinness hears that Frank is back in town. Several weeks later, Frank's body is found by the side of the road

in County Tyrone. And the question begins to circulate is, could he have been killed by McGuinness? Could he have been killed by another British spy? Or did something else happen? And maybe this is a good time to introduce this agent codename, Steak Knife. Stake Knife is a man called Freddy Scappaticci, and he's from Belfast. He was recruited back in the late 1970s, and he rose to become the most productive and valuable spy that the British had in Northern Ireland. I've heard him described as a one-man Bletchley Park. He had access to a phenomenal amount of information, and he was extremely good at passing it all on as quickly as possible. And there were times when the British had more information than they could possibly use. Usually when you're talking about

the kind of information that agents are providing, you talk about two types. There's tactical, which is basically where a bomb is going to be planted or where an IRA attack is due to happen. And usually the army is more interested in that or the police. And then there's also strategic intelligence. And that's more at a level of what's McGuinness thinking? What's Gerry Adams thinking? thinking. Are there people within the IRA who are about to oust them and take the IRA off in a more military direction? Who's in favor and who's not? And the amazing thing about Scappaticci was that he could provide both. He was aware of where attacks were going to happen and many lives were saved as a result of that. But he also had the trust, certainly of Jerry Adams and a large number of other senior IRA figures. And we know that Scappaticci's car was very much wired for sound. It was absolutely covered in microphones. And apparently he would often take Jerry Adams for drives around Belfast late at night. And they'd both talk about everything that was going on. And tapes of these conversations

were then played to visiting politicians when they came to the region. So Margaret Thatcher would often hear recordings of Gerry Adams talking to this agent, but in all likelihood, she never knew who the agent was. She just knew there was someone very close to Gerry Adams. But the difficulty with Scappaticci and the reason he's come into the news more recently, is that there was a price to pay for this intelligence. The reason he had such good intelligence was that he was part of something called the IRA Internal Security Unit. This is also known as the Nutting Squad. They're responsible for essentially finding spies inside the IRA. If they're given the order by someone on the IRA

army council, killing them. So that's what Scappaticci became a part of. And maybe later we'll talk about how justice and a desire for truth began to catch up with what he was doing and the reality of that period. This is Dan Snow's History Hit. More after this. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, Kings and Popes,

who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. It's just the most extraordinary thing about the world in which you're such an expert, isn't it? That you can have people that are among the most active and egregious members of a terrorist organisation

who are also essential assets for the other side. I mean, I'm trying to work out who's winning. Is the joke on all the rest of us? Are they winning? Because no matter who, whichever side wins, they've absolutely cemented their place. They've made themselves essential to both sides. Exactly. And I guess what's so interesting is that with someone like Scappaticci, it was never part of a long-term plan for him to end up in this position. And so much of the time, agents will find themselves in a situation that's not one that they've chosen.

It's just one thing follows another. And suddenly they find themselves in the situation you just described. And they realize that it's better to keep going than to try to get out. And Scappaticci was extraordinary in terms of just how productive he was, but also how intelligent he was, his ability to talk his way out and to not make mistakes. So he was very, very astute. You'd have to be astute. I don't know how you sleep at night. If half the day you're torturing and murdering IRA informants, the second half of the time you're big at IRA informants. It's exhausting. So where do we get to? So what happens when the body of Hegarty

is found? Does it change anything? Yeah. So the body of Hegarty is found. There's no immediate change, but in the years that follow, things begin to shift. And one of the first things that takes us to where we are now is actually a TV documentary, a TV investigation on a show called The Cook Report, which I'd forgotten about. I remember watching it as a kid and loving The Cook Report. And for anyone who hasn't seen it, this was an investigative TV program fronted by Roger Cook. program fronted by Roger Cook. And he would go after usually criminals and try and get to a point where he could confront the person and confront them with their crime. And they decided in 1993 that they were going to do a program all about the IRA. They wanted to know who was responsible for a particular bombing which had taken place that year. And although they didn't find out who

was responsible for that bomb, they kept interviewing people who said, look, the only person who matters in the IRA, the person who is authorizing most of these operations is Martin McGuinness. And you know, furthermore, the killing that's caused most upset in Derry where he's from is the killing of Frank Hegarty. And so they begin to put together a program all about Martin McGuinness and his relationship to Frank Hegarty. And Frank's mother agrees to appear in this program. And this makes a huge difference because up until then, no one in Derry is prepared to speak out against Martin McGuinness. He was feared. People were terrified of saying anything that could be construed as an attack on Martin McGuinness or anything other than hugely praiseworthy if they were the Catholics living in Derry. And Frank's

mother goes in front of the camera and says that of Martin McGuinness, evil is too good a word for him. And she accuses him of being responsible for her son's death. And this is a big moment. Program is a hit in terms of ratings. It leads to questions in parliament, but it also leads to a police investigation. The police realize they've now got enough information, they think, to have Martin McGuinness put away in jail for perhaps the rest of his life. So suddenly things begin to change. But there's one other thing that happens, which I find absolutely fascinating. One of the people who watches this program is Scappaticci. Scappaticci is sitting at home. He watches this program and it has an effect on him. It moves him.

It creates such an effect that he calls up the TV producers behind the Cook Report, and he says, I want to meet. He doesn't give his real name. He calls himself Jack. He says, I want to meet because I think there's a few things you need to know about the killing of Frank Hegarty. And so he meets up with the producers and they have an extraordinary conversation in which Scappaticci reveals details, which suggests that he knows

exactly who killed Frank Hegarty and that he may have been the person that pulled the trigger. This is the first step, if you like, towards Scappaticci being outed. trigger this is the first step if you like towards scappaticci being outed now the next one is one of the people who looked after frank in the safe house there's a guy called ian hurst and after the troubles finishes in 1998 ian hurst hears something about this man scappaticci and he's been trying to work out who was responsible for the death of frank hegarty because he looked after Frank Hegarty and he became friends with him. He cared about him and he was deeply saddened by the idea that he had been killed. But when Ian Hurst hears the rumor that Scappaticci might have been responsible for Frank's death, something happens to him. He decides this is something that has to be out. This needs to be

made public. And so he decides to become a whistleblower. He's the person who lifts the lid on the steak knife story. And it's a huge story. It's all over the news. He doesn't reveal the name, but he reveals that there was an agent called steak knife. He was in the Nutting squad. It takes four years until the name comes out. But for the first time, people have a sense. Maybe something was going on during the Troubles that we weren't aware of. Maybe there was this enormous intelligence operation. And maybe the Brits even had someone inside the IRA execution squad. So this is when the whole story of exactly how the troubles ended, this is when it begins to shift. And it's centered on what Scappaticci may or may not have done. So now in the early noughties, the story's beginning to circulate. Scappaticci, true to form, tries to brazen it out. He gives interviews to journalists. He says, no, you got the wrong man.

It's nothing to do with me. He gives a press conference. It lasts 55 seconds in which he just says, it's not me. But then he disappears and he goes into witness protection. He ends up living in a small suburban house on the outskirts of Guildford, of all places, where he has, apparently, according to one account, a higher than usual privet hedge in front of his house. And his neighbours would always joke with him, he must have something to hide. But they had no idea of the truth of who he was and what he was doing there. So this story then leads to a police investigation.

So, Henry, he's got the privet hedge. Who's he mostly hiding from, would you say? I mean, is it obviously the people that he betrayed in the IRA, or is it journalists and people willing to find out what's going on? It's partly journalists and historians like me and you. I think he's less worried about people in the IRA because he has a deal with senior figures in the IRA that as long as he keeps quiet, he's not going to be killed. So he's no longer living in fear of that. But I imagine he's also living in fear of repercussions from the family members of some of the people that he may have interrogated and possibly been involved in the murder of. But his story takes this dramatic twist in 2016,

because it's announced that there's going to be a new police investigation. And this is called Operation Canova. And this enormous investigation is going to cost 40 million pounds. It's going to have 72 detectives involved. And it's going to be focused on just one thing. And it's focused purely on what State Knife may have done. And it's focused purely on what State Knife may have done. And I mean, I find this a really fascinating moment in our cultural and political history.

Because up until that point, the State Knife story has been hidden away. The government has either tried to not talk about it or steps have been taken to make sure that Scappaticci is safe. And suddenly, there is this huge reckoning coming to Scappaticci is safe. And suddenly, there is this huge reckoning coming to Scappaticci. And this police investigation is led by someone called John Boucher. And he is, it seems, determined to find out exactly what happened, what Scappaticci did. He's going to speak to everyone. He's going to have access to classified information. He's not just going through the motions. And I guess this is about at what point you can begin to talk about things that have happened in the past, which are uncomfortable. And when it becomes history, when it ceases to be the journalistic past, it's now history and we need to just figure out what happened and what we can

learn from it. Were mistakes made? Did this intelligence operation in Northern Ireland, did it go too far? Or did the end justify the means? And these are the questions at the absolute heart of this story. And Scappaticci is eventually arrested. He's arrested twice, in fact, in 2019. And maybe I'll leave the end for the book. But Operation Canova gets very, very close to getting this man to have his trial in court. But then something happens at the very end, which means it's no longer possible. Oh, you tease, Henry. You tease while going by the book, everybody. Do you get the sense? It's very weird listening to you talk and looking at your book because you get the sense, it's very weird listening to you talk and looking at your book because you get the sense in some dark way, there are elements within the security forces and their old nemesis, the IRA, who are both aligned on wanting all of these ghosts of the past to stay in the past.

I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings. Normans. Kings and popes. Who were rarely the best of friends.

Murder. Rebellions. And crusades. Find out who we really were. By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. You're right. They are aligned on the face of it. There's a really moving moment in this story, which is centered on Martin McGuinness. And he, in the years after the Good Friday Agreement, to begin with, he says, yes, I might have had an involvement in the IRA,

but he doesn't go any further. He wants essentially to move on, not to talk about the past. And there's a moment when he puts himself forward. He runs to be president of the Republic of Ireland. This is 2011. And he begins to be asked every now and again on the campaign trail, will you talk about your past as a paramilitary? And he just ignores the question. He'll brush it off as if it's sort of a question in bad taste. And then with about two weeks to go before the polls, the family of Frank Hegarty decides to work with a journalist and put an article out about exactly what McGuinness did in terms of Frank's death. decides to work with a journalist and to put an article out about exactly what McGuinness did in terms of Frank's death. And it's a big piece, appears in the Daily Mail.

And suddenly, the narrative of this presidential race changes. Suddenly, other people come forward and they say, we also think Martin McGuinness was involved in the death of our loved one. And in all of the TV debates that follow, he's asked about his role in these particular deaths. And slowly, his popularity fades. At one point, he's the front runner to be next president of Ireland, and he ends up in fourth place. So this all falls apart. But what's so interesting is what happens in the years that follow. And McGuinness appears to have a change of heart. Up until then, he's been saying as little as possible about his IRA past. But in the months

and years that follow, he begins to say things like, I regret every single one of the deaths that took place. And there's a sense that he understands, and not all people in the IRA understand this at that time, but he understands that in order to go forward, there does need to be some kind of reckoning with the past, that it is important to work out what happened and to talk about it. And you're absolutely right. Most of the rest of the IRA at that time want this to be hidden, want this not to be talked about. But he begins to realise that actually, it is important to talk about it. And I found that shift really, really powerful. So yes, some people were against talking about it, but others, the historians out there,

think it's important to find out what really happened. And what about the British government? Has there been any institutional learning or lessons drawn about the extent to which you can allow your intelligence assets to carry out grotesque crimes if it's supposedly in the national interest and who's making the decisions? There has. In some ways, the tragedy of the situation during the Troubles is that you had young soldiers who were being told to operate as handlers. They did not have extensive training in what to do when you're faced with the spy master's dilemma. Yes, it was covered, but they weren't given the ins and the outs, nor were they given a really precise

guide to the legal side of this. The main reason for that is that there simply was no detailed legislation saying what you could and could not do as someone running a spy on British territory. And that's because it's so easy to forget this, but at the time in the mid-1980s, the government still did not even acknowledge the existence of MI5 and MI6. So of course, there'd be nothing on the statute book talking about what an MI5 officer could or could not do. Same goes for army officers and army NCOs in a similar situation. And one of the effects of all of this, and this only came in three years ago, is something called the Covert Human Intelligence Sources Criminal Conduct Act, and that's 2021. And this is a huge landmark in the history of British intelligence. And it's a direct result of Operation Canova and this investigation into State Knife. And this new law sets out for the first time in British history, what an agent handler can and cannot do. And that's one of the really tangible effects of this investigation.

And that's one of the really tangible effects of this investigation. The other one came two years after that, another new piece of legislation called the Northern Island Troubles Legacy and Reconciliation Act. And that was passed only a matter of months ago. And this is also really interesting. It's interesting because it cuts to the heart of where justice ends and history takes over, if you like. Under this law, people accused of taking part in a serious crime during the travels can no longer be prosecuted if, and this is the crucial part, if they agree to tell everything they know to a truth recovery

body. And the idea here underpinning all of this, one of the ideas is it's time now just to get as much truth, as many firsthand accounts of what really happened before the people who know what happened are dead. So this is an attempt to try and just get as much information out there as possible. And I think this is the direction that a lot of things are heading. The new head of the Northern Irish Police Force, or the PSNI, is the man who ran Operation Canova. That's an extraordinary twist in the story. And he's someone who is absolutely committed to getting more truth out there and trying to uncover what really went on in the shadows in this extraordinary intelligence war in Northern Ireland. And look, even the fact that I'm able to write this book and to have it published today, that's a development. And the fact that we're able to be having this conversation, 20 years ago, it would have been much, much harder to talk about this. So we are getting to a point where people are talking more about what happened. There's

more information and we're slowly getting to a better understanding of what actually happened during this extraordinary period. When I've interviewed veterans of more conventional wars, they often talk about the horrific aspects of them, but they often say things like, but it was worth it. In a way, I'm glad that I went through it. It took my life in interesting directions. I wouldn't be here today if it wasn't because of that. Is that true of savage counterinsurgencies and campaigns of terror? I mean, was there a general on both the government side and the Irish side? Did people largely regret what had happened? Or was there a sense of looking back with nostalgia on the comradeship, the working

together, working in national interest, believing in something? I think there was both. There's huge regret. And of course, there's huge sadness at what happened, at how long it lasted, and how few people were the perpetrators of what was going on and just how many people's lives they impacted. Just beyond the injuries and the deaths, for other people, it's the psychological burden of never knowing when it's going to end. It's the drip feed of atrocity after atrocity after atrocity. So there's a huge impact and there's, I think, huge regret. I think for some of the people who really caught up on it,

I've suddenly encountered many people telling me they're sad about how it's ended in terms of the peace is not the peace that they wanted. But for people who are not directly involved that they wanted. But for people who are not directly involved, I've heard nothing but people who are glad that there is some kind of a peace, even if it is a flawed peace. Is there some camaraderie between people who are involved? Yes, of course. And I've encountered that as well. I think it's maybe worth adding that's also combined with a sense of not enough people in Britain

know about what the army was doing in Northern Ireland. So it's not like someone who's served in, I don't know, the Falklands or going back to the Second World War. This is a conflict in which there were many people in England who were protesting against it. And a lot of the soldiers who served out there became used to the experience of trying not to talk about what they'd seen and trying not to talk about the fact that they were out there, not walking around in uniform, things like that. So that camaraderie is tinged with a small sense of more people should know about this. Well, they will now, buddy.

They will now. The book is called Four Shots in the called... Four Shots in the Night. Four Shots in the Night, folks. Henry Hemming, thank you very much for coming back on the podcast. Dan, thanks so much for having me. It's been wonderful. you