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

Episode Date: April 19, 2026

Who was the real man behind the infamous codename, “Stakeknife”? Why did he join the ranks of the IRA? And how did he become a spy for the British? Listen as David and Gordon begin a four-part series delving into the true story behind the British state’s most valuable IRA mole during The Troubles. ------------------- Join the Declassified Club to go deeper into the world of espionage with exclusive Q&As, interviews with top intelligence insiders, regular livestreams, ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, and weekly deep dives into original spy stories. Members also get curated reading lists, special book discounts, prize draws, and access to our private chat community. Just go to ⁠⁠⁠therestisclassified.com⁠⁠. ------------------- Email: ⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠ Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@restisclassified⁠ Video Editor: Bruno di Castri Social Producer: Emma Jackson Assistant Producer: Alfie Rowe Producer: Becki Hills Head of History: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter, and discounted books. Join the Declassified Club at the rest is classified.com. How do you run an undercover agent inside an organization like the IRA? And do you let your agent commit murder? This is a story that neither the IRA nor the British state have wanted to be told. Well, welcome to The Rest is Classified. I'm David McCloskey. And I'm Gordon Carrera. And today we are starting a series looking at maybe one of the most controversial agents ever in British intelligence history. A man with the code name Steakknife, a British spy at the heart of the Irish Republican Army, the IRA. And we do a lot of stories, obviously on this podcast, about agents inside groups. CIA agents or assets inside the KGB, assets inside MI6, Russian assets inside MI6.

We look at their motivation for doing what they do, how they're handled, what happens with the intelligence they provide, and the difference it makes. And this story is similar in many respects. It's about an agent that's being run inside the heart of the IRA, but it has a twist that is, I think, much darker and much more complicated than many of the agent-running stories that we've told so far. Yeah, that's right, David. I mean, State Knife was described by a British general as the golden goose for the army,

their best source over a quarter of a century of conflict. And he was at the heart of an organisation that the British state was fighting. And as such, he provided kind of amazing, remarkable access into its operation. And there are claims, and we'll get to the accuracy of these claims. later, that his intelligence even saved many lives. But this is also a story, I think, of the ethical dilemmas of running agents inside groups who are involved in violence, criminality, and murder. Because this is an agent inside the heart of the IRA being run by the British state who is directly involved in murder, not just aware of it, but actually carrying out

murder himself and with the knowledge and even support of the security forces. This entire story is set against the conflict in Northern Ireland, often called the troubles, and probably worth setting the context a little bit. So, Ulster plantation, Gordon. Go ahead. Yeah, I'm sorry to disappoint you, David. I know you like your deep context to these stories, but we're not going to go back to Cromwell an island in the 17th century or the deeper history even beyond that. Our fellow podcasters

Empire have looked at that. If people are interested, David, maybe if you want to, you can go into that. So I'll give slightly brief a context. This episode is brought to you by HP. In intelligence work, it's rarely the obvious problem that causes failure. It's the overlooked detail or the flaw nobody quite solved. The kind of vulnerability, intelligence services look for. business is the same, especially when you're building or growing a team. It's the risks you can't see or don't understand. HP designs technology, so devices, collaboration tools and security work together as a single system, helping teams keep everything running smoothly at home, in the office, and out in the field. The protection is built in, hardware-level security working quietly in the

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Keep exploring at nespresso.com. Northern Ireland is created in 1921, when the rest of Ireland becomes an independent republic and breaks away from British control following a civil war, six counties in Northern Ireland, with a Protestant majority and a Catholic minority are partitioned off at that point of independence and remain as part of what's now called the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Now in the 60s, conflict is going to flare up, leading to this thing called The Troubles. And between 1966 and 2006, there are 3,720 conflict-related deaths and 40,000 people injured. And as a reference point, from one official study that says almost 2% of the population of Northern Ireland was killed or injured. And if the same thing had happened to the population of Great Britain, that would be 100,000 people who'd have been killed or injured. So that gives a sense, I think, of the impact that it has on Northern Ireland. And we should acknowledge at the outset that there may be people listening who are affected by the conflict, many who have strong views on the rights and wrongs of the different sides and what they were doing. And we're not going to get deep into that, but we are going to,

keep it very much with the rest as classified lens, aren't me? And just for the U.S. comparison to set that context for American listeners, the equivalent in the U.S. would be if we had experienced double the deaths that we experienced during the Second World War, it's essentially the combined casualty figure would equate to the entire population of North Carolina, all killed or injured inside a space roughly the size of Connecticut, over a 30. period. So the numbers, you know, in absolute terms, maybe to American listeners may not sound massive, but when you scale it, this is a massive, massive conflict inside the British state

that goes on for decades. Yeah. And in a relatively small area, I think the comparison with Connecticut there, and I think the intensity of it, because these are quite small communities living, you know, close to each other, yes, rural parts, but also urban parts. I think that is part the story, yeah. I guess another part that will be returning throughout this four-part series. Is this question of how do you actually investigate or bring to light some of the activities that occur inside the fairly dark recesses of the security state? That's right. I mean, it is this story of steak knife, as we'll see, and it emerges over the years gradually and is really pulled out. And there are still really big arguments about it today and in the last few years about whether,

for instance, it should be permissible to identify someone who has worked as an agent of the security services, of the state. And there's been, you know, continued tension over this issue of naming steak knife, of identifying him, of whether there should be prosecutions of what the legacy should be. It is still very much with us today, even though this is a story, you know, which starts 50 years ago, as we've seen. And it is about the darker recesses of the state and of an organisation like the IRA. And there's a reason, I think, as we'll see in this tale,

about why the intelligence battle, in particular in Northern Ireland, was known to some as the dirty war. And it is very much a story that neither the IRA nor the British state have wanted to come out and to be told, as we'll see. So we just talked about the issue of naming agents and as we'll see, the British state has... continued to resist actually naming the individual codenamed Steakknife. And they're still fighting massive battles over this. But we actually can say who he was or is, can't we?

Yeah, we can. And I think we can say it with a very high degree of confidence. As we get through the story, we'll understand why. But for many years, the name was rumored, reported, but not confirmed. But I think now everyone knows that Steakknife was a man called Freddie Scappatici. Now, Freddie Scapatici, Let's talk about him because he's at the center of our story. Can I just say that there aren't going to be many moments of levity in this series because it is getting to some dark topics. But I was dismayed as we were putting this series together to find that the star player in our first ever series set in Ireland, in Northern Ireland,

is a guy named Freddie Scappatici. It has got an Italian name. I know. It shows my ignorance about the fact that there is a sort of vibrant Italian immigrant immigrant community in Northern Ireland. But, I mean, I was shocked. to find that this is the name. And it is one of the things that makes him really distinctive and makes him stand out, I think,

is the fact he has got this Italian name because his family were Italian immigrants, Catholic family, his father runs an ice cream parlor and sells ice cream from the van. They do quite well for a living. And they live in the markets area in the south of Belfast, which is an old working class community at the time, packed full of dense housing,

which is where actually many of the Italians who'd come to Northern Ireland to Belfast had gone to. Now, young Freddie Scapetici, one thing to know is that he's a very good footballer as a child. As a teenager, he actually goes for a football trial with Nottingham Forest, who are a well-established club, although they're struggling a little bit in the premiership of the moment, but it doesn't work out. He's quite short, quite stocky, you know, he's talked about maybe he's a bit overweight, maybe he's not quite good enough for the team. So he doesn't get in. He is quite small and he's described as small and barrel-chested, and as someone puts it with classic

Mediterranean looks, which is, you know, we're going for the stereotypes here. Olive skinned with tight, curly black hair. So that's the young Freddie. No football career means he's going to train as a bricklayer. But back to football, he is known as a ferocious tackler on the football pitch and, crucially, as having a temper. Now, he doesn't talk or mouth off a lot. And also, So he doesn't drink that much. So most of the time, he's under control. But beneath that surface, he has real anger management problems, which can explode into violence. So he is seen even as a teenager, as a bit of a bully who walks with a swagger and won't step away from a fight.

And a fan of Bond films, apparently. There we go. Yeah. That was my fact. I found that interesting. When you're under other dialogue, you could be a fan of sort of sort of, sort of, of British. British intelligence. Maybe not British intelligence, but British culture, right? British culture, yeah. He becomes a fan of Manchester City as well. Yeah, Manchester City Football Club,

yeah. But yeah, so he's got a bit of violence for it. Now, in 1964, aged 18, he ends up in court for a fight in the city centre with some Protestant kids. It's not entirely clear what the fight was about, but he's fined £10, which I guess in those days is a fair bit of money. Age 20, though, he gets married to Sheila. described as a devout Catholic. There are reports of violence and that he hits her, but they do stay married for more than 50 years. Now, I think what's interesting is if it wasn't for events around him, he'd have basically just stayed a bullying violent bricklayer. I mean, you know, it's one of those things, isn't it, where circumstances intruding are going to take his life in a very different direction. Because in the late 1960s, the world around him changes. It becomes more

violent. And that, I suppose, provides a place for a man with a violent temperament like it. And so at the mid-60s, I guess you describe it, there's a civil rights movement that starts in Northern Ireland. Yeah, that's right. The Catholics who are about a third of the population at time are protesting against discrimination, calling for equal treatment in housing and jobs, because the Protestant population have control of politics and institutions starts with peaceful protests. Next couple of years, though, you get marches through different neighborhoods, counter-marches, demonstrations, people stirring up tension. The Royal Ulster Constabulary, now that's the RUC, the local police force are often called in, but that force, and we'll come

back to it, it is Protestant-dominated, so it's mistrusted by the Catholic population. And by the summer of 1969, you start to get violent clashes between sections of the two different communities, as well as between the police and protesters. And people are forming groups to defend their communities. And amongst them is Scapetici in the Markets area of Belfast. Now, at this point, it's not that organized, it seems. But he is part of defending his community and getting involved in violence. Is the essence of the conflict, I realize this will be an oversimplification,

but is the essence of the conflict a Catholic Protestant one? Or is it more complicated than that? It is. It is a sectarian divide. how it's often put. But, you know, the complexities of it are also that you've got a Northern Irish government and a British government who are not always quite on the same page and perceptions of difference between them. And as we'll, you know, we may get to later on as well, you're going to have different paramilitary violent groups on both sides and allegations about how the

British state treats them differently. So it's much, in a way, that is the heart of it, but it's also much more than that. By I suppose 69, it's starting to escalate into violence. And that year, the RUC clearly can't cope anymore. And the Prime Minister in London, then Harold Wilson, orders the deployment of British troops to Northern Ireland. Now, this is, I think, a huge moment because this is what's called Operation Banner, which is going to be the longest deployment in British military history. So, 1969 until 2007. Wow. It's going to lead to more than 700 British troops being killed. But I think it's the fact that you've now got British troops who are, after all, trained to fight foreign wars, you know, fighting the Cold War and fight counterinsurgency

campaigns in Asia and the Middle East. That's what they've been doing. They're now patrolling the streets of Northern Ireland. And that is going to also change the dynamic of this conflict. And the group that the British Army will come into direct conflict with is the IRA. Yeah. And that group dates. back to, I mean, I guess the Irish fight for independence in 19, 1920. And that is going to be the kind of the central conflict here, right? It will be the British state and the IRA. That's right.

And it's interesting because the IRA's roots go back, as you said, to the fight for independence. And it's persisted. But the main part of the IRA at this time in the late 60s is actually the part in Northern Ireland it is focused interestingly enough and trying to establish unity of Protestant and Catholic working class as the first route to getting independence. But what you see within that part of the IRA is that that is seen as failing to protect the community.

So there's a split in December 1969. And those who are more militant and want to confront the British state and now the British Army form something called the provisional IRA, often called Pira or the provos, or often just call the IRA really, because the other part, the official IRA, as it's termed, will fade from view and Pira or the provost will become the main IRA and the main force fighting the Brits. And Scapatici, like a lot of the younger generation, joins the provos.

Because the provos are the young and they're new, the new members are going to rise fast. He's going to get well known in the markets area. I mean, people do say, I mean, going back to the name, that it makes him distinctive. I do like, you know, one fact is supposedly he'd get annoyed when people wouldn't pronounce his name right. And Becky, our producer, will need the bleep gun here because he would look at them and he goes, it's Skapa, f***-teachy, is how he'd tell them to pronounce it when they got it wrong. But I think it does suggest that he's young here in his early 20s, but he's already a bit of a character as the provisional IRA is pursuing this strategy,

which is it's going to use force to try and collapse the Northern Ireland Unionist government and inflict casualties on the British Army with the hope that that will make them withdraw and ultimately the British state withdrawal. So by October 1970 there's going to be a bombing campaign. The first members of the security forces are killed that year. And you go through phases, I think initially there's disorder and rioting. And then from around 1971, you get what's called the insurgency phase, where the provisional IRA is quite, it's formed. in a militaristic manner with companies, battalions, and brigades. And there are firefighters

on the streets with the army during these years. And Scapetitia is one of those involved in that early period with more and more shootings and the British government by 1971 struggling to control things. And the violence escalates. There's more and more shootings, bombings. The British government is really struggling to control things. And that at August of 1971, there's the introduction of internment, which is detention without trial, right? I guess there's an advantage of no written constitution, Gordon, right there. And IRA supporters can essentially be jailed without any kind of trial or, or I mean, without reason, I guess, in some cases. Yeah, they could just be, yeah, they just picked up hundreds of them. And included amongst those picked up in that wave in August

1971 is Freddy Scapetici. So at 4.30am on the 9th of August, 1971, his front door is kicked in by British soldiers. They take him away, give them supposedly a good kicking as they do. He's one of these hundreds locked up. Now, he's not one of a smaller group who are subject to what's called euphemistically deep interrogation. CIA will be aware of these euphemisms, which involves five techniques like hooding and sleep deprivation and had been developed, you know, by the British army during counterinsurgency. So he's not subject to that. And he's held at an internment camp called Longkesh, which is a former RAF based near Lisbon, about 10 miles from Belfast. Now, meanwhile, the act of internment leads to an escalation in violence, which aids IRA recruitment. And

Scapatici is going to be interned for a considerable period for crucial years as the conflict escalates. So 30th of January, 1972, soldiers from the 1st Battalion, the parachute regiment of the British Army, opened fire on a ground of people marching against internment in the city of Derry. 14 people end up dying from that, and that becomes known as Bloody Sunday. And 1972 is the bloodiest year of the conflict. 472 people killed, 321 civilians, 100 soldiers, 16 members of the RUC. And you see the RRA also moving from shootouts to smaller scale operations in this period. And you see them moving towards bombings, including bombings on the mainland in England,

to try and put pressure on the government to withdraw. So you see an activity in England, which I think leaves 45 people dead by the end of 1974. And Scapetici himself gets released in early 1974, goes back to the RA, but then in August 74, he gets banged up again for another period of internment. So he's in and out a lot during this phase. And I guess there with Scapetici just about to get out of prison for really some crucial years. Let's take a break and we come back. We will look at the intelligence piece of this dirty war. It is out of control in the White House right now. Welcome to the rest is politics. U.S.

I'm Cathy Scaramucci. Who is the worst politician in Washington right now? They don't know how to manage Donald Trump. I talk to the people that organized the abduction. I'm telling you why they did it. The White House isn't a bind, Anthony. Here's what I would say to you about FAFU. The chaos is the strategy. It should not have happened and it is a violation of international law. Is he losing control of the party? I survived 11 days in Trump's White House. I know the SOB. I've been covering politics in Washington for almost 30 years. Twice a week, we break down what's really going on in Trump's White House. The big issue for the United States is going to be we were once seen as a benevolent superpower and now we're seen as an aggressor. And now we're seen as an aggressor

He goes into the speech and says any way affordability, it's a hoax. If you really want to understand what's going on in Trump's mind, just search the rest is politics, US, wherever you get your podcast. Welcome back. After this escalation of the conflict between 1970 and 1971, the Brits are desperate for intelligence. I mean, the IRA and the provisional IRA is pretty new. It's a pretty new organization. I mean, started in 1969. It's full of younger people. And I think it's safe to say that the British state doesn't really understand this organization very well. So naturally, they need to recruit people

inside it, around it, to understand its plans, intentions, capabilities. And I think crucially, in this period, to try to prevent violence. Yeah. This is where the intelligence side of this conflict really kicks in because the army realized that they're struggling to deal with the bloodshed and they respond partly by using some of the counterinsurgency tactics they've learned overseas, for instance, fighting the Mao Bauer uprising in Kenya, an uprising against British rule. And, you know, that's part of the interrogation techniques, but also some of the attempts to create informers and recruit informers within communities. So they're importing some of those techniques and the army.

also takes the decision that they want to develop their own intelligence capabilities, rather than rely on the RUC, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the local police. One of the reasons is the RUC, as I said, is perceived as biased towards the Protestant population. It's kind of disproportionately Protestant. And the army also think that many individuals who might provide intelligence would not deal with the RUC as a result. So the army are going to kind of develop their own capability. They start with these things called covert bomb squads, whose remit was to collect an act upon intelligence related to bombings, hence the name.

Later, that's then remodeled into something called the Military Reaction Force in 1971. Now, this is quite a controversial unit. MRF military reaction force members were deployed in disguise at vehicle checkpoints, trying to identify potential members of groups. They're often operated in plain clothes, using unmarked vehicles. They used front companies, so a mobile laundry service and a massage parlor, to try and gather intelligence. Famously, there's some incidents,

and I think these are recounted in the TV drama, Say Nothing, which we'll talk about a little later on, based on Patrick Braddon Keith's book, and who we're going to be talking to in a bonus. But there's a scene there, which is dramatized where the IRA then get intelligence about one of these laundry service vans, and they shoot up the laundry van.

You know, this really did happen, killing one of the soldiers who's hiding in the roof. They're also linked to a unit, which is recruiting agents, and that gets known as the, Fred Force, which is a kind of strange name, because the agents were called Fred's for some reason. You don't want to be part of the Fred Force. That sounds all these other groups sound somewhat menacing, but the Fred Force sounds comical, didn't it? Yeah. Yeah. So the MRI is controversial,

and particularly because it's said that some of the tactics they use are not that dissimilar to the ones used by the IRA with claims of drive-by shootings as well as intelligence gathering. So it's going to get disbanded in 1973. You're going to get new groups like the Special Reconnaissance Unit, 14 Intelligence Company, and later, crucially, and we'll get to this in more detail, an organisation called the FRIU, the Force Research Unit, or the Fru. Now, I guess it's worth talking a little bit about this, because this is the intelligence war about how the army is recruiting people. But the reality is that they're stopping lots of people on the street, they're doing thousands of house searches, they're doing vehicle stops at all the time, and they're

bringing people in for interrogation. So that really offers them the avenue to approach people and to talk to them and to try and persuade them to be an informer. And if you're the British state, if you're the army or if you're the Fru, right, you have tremendous advantages in this context because you have, you control the legal system. And so you can, you know, is it blackmail? Is it not blackmail? I mean, in a lot of these cases, I know that the way that the handlers have tried to talk about these recruitments are saying, oh, we're, you know, we're sort of playing off of agents need for money or their desire for status or grudges that they have with others in the community, all good fodder, of course, for recruiting a human asset. But at the same time, you can essentially use the, I mean, the fact that they're part of is, you know, a recruit might be part.

of the IRA affiliated with the IRA might have committed some other legal infraction. That's tremendous leverage for the Army as they're thinking about their agent pool in Northern Ireland. Yeah, that's right. And I think this is, it's one of the interesting aspects of this is the different accounts of how the Army, at some extent, the RUC recruit agents because they say, well, we, you know, it's the normal stuff, money status grudges. But if you listen to people on the Republican side, they will say that they use the kind of state leverage. You're talking about to put pressure on people to become informers by using situations or engineering situations.

So the claim is that, for instance, if you're a taxi driver, you might get arrested for driving under the influence and be told if you don't become an informer, then you'll be prosecuted for DUI, and then it's game over and you'll lose your job as a taxi driver in your livelihood. And so you can see if you kind of control aspects of the situation and the legal process, you've got leverage to try and put pressure on people to become informers. And you can potentially engineer situations in which maybe they lose a job so they need money. Or you can do little things like their car need expensive repairs, so they need money. And that's where I think the tension lies over what kind of techniques were used.

So we're not talking about, you know, classic blackmail, although that's. may have happened, although, you know, how much it's not clear, but it's forms of pressure. And I think there's a, I guess there's an elasticity and a kind of spread of how you can use that, isn't there, David? Well, by the mid-1970s, this intelligence focus is really starting to pay off. I mean, obviously, given the context we've just described, the army would have a massive pool of potential agents to recruit from. And that's paying off. But the IRA, I mean, this is, you know, there's sort of a push and pull to this, isn't there? Because the IRA is starting to to adapt to this. And what it discovers it needs is it needs a different cell structure to improve

security. So it's a classic kind of, we see this kind of classic arc of you go from open conflict insurgency to a kind of more clandestine cell structure where you try to fragment or atomize things so that if the British state, if the army penetrates one cell, they don't roll everybody up. So you've got to be careful about the links between these kind of groups. And crucially, they're looking for ways of dealing with informers, with the penetrations that the British state has recruited. So they need a counterintelligence function. And this is where our friend, Scapetici, comes back in.

Yeah, that's right. So Scapatici gets released from internment the second time in December 1975. So he's done two periods of internment. He's now out. He doesn't go back as quickly this time, it seems. to the IRA, which is interesting. There's a little, seems to be a bit of a break here. Maybe, you know, he has spent much of the last three or four years interned and maybe he doesn't want to go back. He's not getting any younger. He also does seem to be interested in money and he

wants to provide for his family, which is growing. He gets involved in the building trade. And he does make some serious money. Partly, and we'll come back to this, through a complicated fraud, a building fraud, which is scamming the taxman. But it means he can, you know, extend the house. going on foreign holidays, buying, you know, TVs and cars. As you said, he likes his football. It's going to install a bar and snooker table in his house. He likes stuff. He goes to Florida.

He goes to Florida on holiday at one point. Yeah. So, you know, he's definitely a man who enjoys certain material comforts. But still, he will go back into the Belfast IRA. And now, crucially, he goes in as an intelligence officer. Because, as you said, you know, the IRA had been struggling with this issue of informers in their ranks in Belfast because they can see that the security forces have been, you know, have clearly managed to penetrate them and are trying to roll up as many of the leaders as they can.

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

I mean, some people have wondered, well, maybe he was recruited to go back. I don't think that looks to be the case. I just think he's someone who doesn't like to be slighted and to be on the outside. And I think he's got that kind of drive to be inside where things are happening. He doesn't always get on with other people. And he's got kind of grudges and attitudes towards other people, as we'll see, you know, through his career. And it will play a big role in his rise and fall. But you wonder if that is part of it, where he just doesn't like to not be in the middle of things.

Because, yeah, he is going to go back. And it's this interesting role, because rather than going into what's called an active service unit, who are the people actually going out and doing the violence, he's going to become an intelligence officer. Because it's this search for infiltration and informers. And informers are known as touts. That's the kind of phraseology used by the IRA, deep, dark place in the imagination of some, given the history with the British over the years. And the RRA at this point fear, I think rightly, that there's touts at lots of different levels in this.

And so as you said, they're going to build a more centralized counterintelligence function. And in 1978, they're going to create something called the Internal Security Unit, the ISU, which is their counterintelligence team. But if listeners think this is a sort of smoke and mirrors George Smiley-esque world, of counterintelligence or counter espionage. I think again, because SCAP is practicing a much more brutal and, dare I say, knuckle-dragging version of counter-intelligence and counter-esper. Because he's essentially interviewing everybody who the IRA suspects as being an informant

or who comes out of prison and needs to be vetted to see if the Brits have turned them. Yeah, so he's an interrogator. And this ISU, which we should say is, you know, people in the ICU are all slightly older. They tend to be men in their 30s and 40s who'd been in prison, which means that they've got a bit of experience of the tactics that the police and the security service are using. So they're not young. It's about 20 of them. Now, interesting enough, the head of the internal security unit is a guy called John Joe McGee. He's described in Richard O'Rour's book is an excellent study of Scapetici. It's called Steak Knife's Dirty War. And Richard O'Rour, we should say, was an IRA member who actually kind of encountered Scapetitche at this point.

So kind of understands of what he writes. And in O'Rour's book, he talks about the head of the ISU being John Joe McGee, who's a portly middle-aged man with receding once ginger hair at first looked like an old soak. But had actually been a member of the SBS, the British Special Boat Service, so the elite special forces, kind of pre-trouble. And he's hard drinking and soft-spoken. Now, Scapetici is going to be his deputy. So Scapetici is number two in the ICU. And as you said, they have some interesting jobs because one of them is vetting new recruits.

So anyone who comes in through Belfast, you know, Scapetici would be one of those to interrogate them in a dark room. One person who had been an IRA member himself, Amon Collins, writes about how this would typically take place from his understanding of talking to people. And he said, SCAP asked them all the same questions. Had they any previous connection with the Republican movement? did they attend Republican marches, events or funerals? Did they drink in well-known Republican pubs? Had they ever sung rebel songs publicly? Were they known in the area as IRA supporters?

Had they ever been arrested? Did they have a criminal record? If so, what for? If they answered yes to any question, then SCAP would ask follow-up questions. When, where and with whom did they attend the march, the event or the funeral? And the most significant question was, why did they want to join the IRA? So that's, you know, one function, is to vet your...

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

ISU and Scapetici are trying to root out. Yeah, that's right. Because, I mean, the IRA is very aware that so many people are being swept up by the British. That's when they try and recruit them. And the IRA have something called the Green Book, which was the training and induction manual for new volunteers, which told them what to expect if they're detained. And the instructions were, if you're detained, say nothing, sign nothing, see nothing, hear nothing. Say nothing, we should say is the title of Patrick Radenkeef's book and the TV series and we're going to talk to him on a bonus. But, you know, that's the instruction because they know that's when it happens. You know, the pitch is made by the Brits. But when someone is released from detention, they get

questioned by the ISU by Scappatici's unit. And it's partly, they know not everyone's going to have been, you know, pitched out or turn, but they want to understand what the Brits are asking. You know, they want to know what are the tactics the Brits are using to try and turn someone. And Scap is the main interrogator, which is interesting because he's the number two to McGee. And McGee will kind of take this approach of asking questions in a clear voice, take his time, have the person kind of tell their story in detail, kind of look to see, okay, are they, are they hesitating? Are they contradicting themselves? Importantly, I think, just as a note on the way you might interrogate someone to understand if they're telling the truth is tell this,

ask them question after question, have them tell you their story over and over again, and you're kind of looking for inconsistencies or anomalies in that story to understand, you know, And then if you find them, you zero it on those and kind of try to break someone down that way. So you can understand if they're telling you the truth. Yeah, I mean, because, you know, they're questioning a lot of people, but it's only if you're suspected of being an agent for some reason that things get particularly dark. And then you get taken to a safe house, tend to be put in a boiler suit, put in a darkened room with a chair-facing a wall. So you can't see who's asking them questions.

And you're right. McGee would do this kind of quite patient, careful questioning of someone. to see if they hesitate or contradict themselves, and that can go on for days, whereas Scap, Tici, takes a different role and a different style. He can shout or he can whisper, but his trick is more, you know, and it's interesting because it is still more at this point psychological pressure rather than torture, although that can happen. But whereas McGee is looking for inconsistencies,

Scappatici, his idea is to tell them he already knows what what that person has done. He's the bad cop. Scaputicich is the bad cop. And it's better for them to confess quickly rather than, you know, keep him waiting. And Richard O'Raw has a great, quote, describing Skapp's kind of style. He says, Skapp's party piece was to say, you have an hour in which to make your mind up whether you're going to tell me everything. If you don't tell me everything within the hour, then I can't do anything for you. I'm washing my hands of you. I can put your case to the IRA Army Council. I can probably get you out of this as long as you tell me everything. But after that hour, I'm gone and other people will take you away and they are going to hang you

upside down in a barn, skin you alive, and crucify you. As the hour counted down, he would say, you have 10 minutes to go, five minutes to go, two minutes to tell me everything. That often worked. People talked, hoping they wouldn't get tortured. And I think it's, you know, it's interesting there that he's kind of dangling. I can probably get you out of this, you know, as this Give someone hope that if they just tell you the truth, it'll be over and everything will be fine, when of course that's usually not the case. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. He would later remark that he was telling them that he'd set them free if they confess,

but he would admit that's a lie. And he says, everybody being what they are, everybody has a breaking point, you know, and they think they're going home, but they don't. Now, after an ISU investigation, a court martial takes place, which technically consists of three members of equal or higher rights. rank than the accused. You can see the kind of sense in which the IRA is very much seeing itself as a military organization in its own perception of itself. And there'd be a member from the, you know, army council or the general headquarters, the army council being the kind of top body. An observer

would inform the army council who would then ratify a sentence for an informer. And the sentence, if you're a serious informer, would often be death. Now the IRA normally killed agents by shooting them in the head, also known as the nut. So the ISU, became known as the nutting squad. And that was how they were often referred to because they usually put two bullets to the back of the head or the nut. And Emin Collins, who is the former IRA member, who was later killed by the IRA, quotes a conversation he had with John McGee and Scappettici in his book, Killing Rage. And he writes, I asked whether they always told people that they were going to be shot. Skaep said it depended on the circumstances. He turned

to John Joe, who's his boss, John Joe McGee, and started joking about one informer who had confessed after being offered an amnesty. Skapp told the man he would take him home, reassuring him he's got nothing to worry about. Skapp had told him to keep the blindfold on for security reasons as they walked from the car. It was funny, this is Scap talking, watching the bastards stumbling and falling,

asking me as he felt his way along railings and walls, is this my house now? And I'd say, no, not yet. Walk on some more. And then you shot the f*** in the back of the head, said John Joe, and both of them burst out laughing. So you get a sense of the man that who, you know, know, this guy has made some kind of transition from the bullying bricklayer with a bit of a

penchant for, you know, violence to someone who's executing it regularly in his role inside the IRA. Yeah, and the ISU also always sought confessions from these people, and they often recorded them on audio tapes where someone had to admit to being an agent for the security forces. They were then played to family, sometimes Capitici would take. take them himself. And I mean, sometimes those confessions were real, but sometimes people just obviously made it, you know, made it up because they thought, you know, it might get them off. So they confessed to anything. So it's hard to know. So as we reach the end of the 1970s, Scappatici is now number two in the ISU, the Nutting Squad, and he's meeting out punishment

to people said to be informers for the British. But what the IRA doesn't know is that Scappertici himself at this point is an agent for the British state. Well, let's end this episode there. And next time we will look at how Skaap is recruited and how really how the British state, British security forces, run an agent inside the IRA, an agent that is himself committing murder. Also, a reminder that listeners can and should, I think we'd say, Gordon, go and join the declassified club at the the rest is classified.com where you'll get early access to this entire series as well as exclusive bonus content, including an interview that we will be doing with Patrick Radin-Keefe, who is the

author of Say Nothing and the upcoming book, London Falling. That's right. And also don't forget that live show tickets are now available for the 4th and 5th of September for those events we're doing at the South Bank Center in London. So just look for that on the South Bank Center website. but otherwise we will see you next time we'll see you next time