The Rest Is Classified - 152. Britain’s Man Inside the IRA: Unmasking the Traitor (Ep 4)

Episode Date: April 29, 2026

What brought about Stakeknife’s downfall? How did the IRA react when they realised there was a spy at the very top of their organisation? And what was Operation Kenova, and how did it reveal the truth of the Stakeknife case? In the final part of their journey into the infamous mole inside the IRA, David and Gordon delve into the fractious aftermath of Stakeknife’s exposure as a “tout”. ------------------- THE REST IS CLASSIFIED LIVE 2026 at The Rest Is Fest: Buy your tickets ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to see David and Gordon live on stage at London’s Southbank Centre on 4 September: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/the-rest-is-classified-live/⁠⁠⁠ ------------------- Sign-up for our free newsletter where producer Becki takes you behind the scenes of the show: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mailchi.mp/goalhanger.com/tric-free-newsletter-sign⁠-up⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ------------------- 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 or join on Apple Podcasts. ------------------- Get a 10% discount on business PCs, printers and accessories using the code TRIC10. Visit ⁠⁠⁠https://HP.com/CLASSIFIED⁠⁠⁠ for more information. T&C's apply. ------------------- Email: ⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠ Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@restisclassified⁠ Video Editor: Charlie Rodwell 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. Britain's most valuable agent inside the IRA is spinning out of control. And that means the secret of his identity is at last going to come out. Well, welcome to The Rest Is Classified. I'm David McCloskey. And I'm Gordon Carrera.

And we are in the finale, Gordon, of our examination of Steakknife, the British Army's agent deep inside the IRA, his real name, of course, Freddie Scapatici. He has been leading the internal security unit, the counterintelligence function of the IRA, which investigates and in many cases kills suspected informers. but as we discussed last time, it is really Steak Knife's British handlers who are deciding who lives and who dies. And they're making this calculation, this kind of dark moral calculation, weighing Steak Knife's value as an agent against the lives of the people that his organization is killing. And it is difficult, it is dangerous. We talked a little bit last time about the tremendous psychological pressure that Scampatici is beginning to experience after many years of working as an agent for the British. And we left off in the early 1990s with Scampatici having been marginalized by the IRA itself. 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. And running a 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 background,

helping reduce risk without creating more work. With a team of business advisors, HP helps businesses of all sizes, find technology that fits their needs and budget. To see how HP helps businesses work securely and productively, visit HP.com forward slash classified. The rest-disclasified listeners also benefit from 10% off HP business technology with code TRIC-10. Need a vehicle that isn't afraid to make a splash? That's the Volkswagen Tauce.

Capable and confident, the Volkswagen Touse is fit for everyday life. Nimble in traffic, agile and tight spots, and still spacious enough for weekend getaways. While available 4-motion all-wheel drive gives confidence in rain and snow. The capable Touse. You deserve more confidence. Visit vW.ca to learn more. SUVW, German Engineered for All. There's something else here now.

Something new. From, exclusively on Paramount Plus, it's the series Stephen King calls Scary as Hell. Everything here is impossible, but it's also real. Sci-fi vision calls it the best show streaming right now. We're running out of time and we still don't know the rules. Don't miss what the movie blog calls something you need to work. Watch.

Saving those children is how we all go home. From Binge All Episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. This is an important part of the story because he's still reporting to the Brits occasionally in this period in the early 1990s, but the number of meetings has dropped off. You know, they can see his position has weakened. He's got less operational, tactical intelligence. It's more political. He's started to voice concerns about the way he's treated and about the fact this is taking its toll on him. He makes it clear he's unhappy when two of his long-term handlers are reassigned to other work.

He asks for them to be reinstated. That's ultimately refused. The army, the military, is still trying to kind of massage his ego, telling them that if he stops, the loss would be felt throughout the intelligence world. You know, kind of classic flattering and that they'll keep the money going. But he's angry, including with senior Republicans. And that will lead him to a bizarre and reckless move. So there is a TV investigative program, which is airing in 1993 called The Cook Report, which is looking into Martin McGuinness, who's a senior Republican. And Scapetici, though, seems to blame McGinnis for his, Scappatici's marginalization.

And he's come to kind of hate him. And Scapetich, as we know, is a man who has grudges. So he gets angry after seeing this TV program. And he's angry. They didn't go harder on McGuinness. And so he, I mean, this is crazy. He cold calls the producers of the program and says he's willing to meet them anonymously and tell them more. I mean, it's wild, isn't it? It's sort of, I mean, not to besmirch our geriatric listeners, but this is kind of a classic. This is like an old guy thing to do in a way, right?

It's like he gets outraged by something he sees on television. He sees on TV. And he goes, he goes nuts. And he, I, it's remarkable to think that this impulse plays such a significant role in what will eventually become as unmasking. Because he, he meets with, with this crew in a hotel car park. Yeah. And he calls himself Jack, so he doesn't give him his real name. But, and this is the important bit, he doesn't know that they are secretly recording him.

So they've got a kind of recording device in the car and they're going to take this conversation. He's the counterintelligence guy. Yeah, he didn't think about that. This is a massive lapse in tradecraft. It is. I mean, which I think goes to his psychology and his personality, don't you think? I mean, it's back to the kind of angry, angry guy under pressure, you know, does something stupid. I guess that's the thing.

So the conversation goes in different directions. But one focus is allegations that Martin McGuinness was linked to a death of a man called Frank Heggaty, who had been an IRA quartermaster. Briefly, in 1986, Hegati had been a frou agent who'd been an agent for the British, and he'd provided details of arms shipments which had come from Colonel Gaddafi's Libya to the IRA in which were being hidden in Ireland, because there'd been this interesting. It's another bit of the story, you know, maybe one day we'll do, which is about this kind of link between Gaddafi's Libya and the IRA.

Do you see this in the film Patriot games? Because I can't believe, I should say, yeah, is that part of the plot? I have shown tremendous restraint in not bringing up Patriot games until the fourth episode of this series. Which we should remind people is, is no less than Harrison Ford playing a CIA analyst, playing. It's not quite David McCloskey, is it? It's based off of it. It's loosely based off of my career. Yeah.

Very loosely, given it was made before, made when you were a small child. Apart from that. Well, and it also, it features Sean Bean as the main. John Bean, isn't it? Bad guy. That's right. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. We could spend time talking about the US and the RA, but I think that's another subject, which will also take us down to some interesting alleyways. But back to this, Kurt of Gaddafi was how we got there, which was his arms being hidden in Ireland. Frank Hegetty tells the Brits about this. They seize the weapons in Ireland. And so Frank Hegarty then inevitably has to go into hiding in England.

Now, this is the interesting bit. He's in a safe house in England, but he regularly calls it. his mother back in Northern Ireland. And it's claimed that Martin McGuinness goes around to his mother's house and tells her to tell Frank that it's safe for him to come back to Derry. And so he ends up slipping away from his handlers and, you know, bad decision goes back and soon after his body is found in a country lane. And there's a very good book about this, Four Shots in the Night by Henry Hemming. And this is what Scappatici is talking to the journalists about because Martin McGuinness is kind of role in allegedly luring back Frank Hegart.

to his death. And, you know, Scapetici says of McGinnis to the report is he's ruthless. He has the final say on informers and whether that person lives or dies. I mean, it's a kind of bizarre thing, isn't it? A bizarre conversation. Ironic coming from Scapetici, who is trying to, I mean, essentially try to tar McGinnis with the same actions that Scappatici himself has been taking inside the organization for years, which is wild. I mean, why is, why is, why is, Why is Scapetigi doing this interview? I mean, is it, you know, he's, he's an older guy who's kind of out of power and wants some of that power back by smacking McGinnis publicly? Yeah.

I think it is that thing about power, respect, hates being disrespected, wants to be in the action. I mean, I think that's what led him back into the IRA after his internment in the 70s and into British intelligence. And I think is leading him now. So it's, you know, it's that kind of same character which just defines him. But anyway, army intelligence learn about him going to see the journalists. They're kind of furious. They're worried. They tell the producers confidentially that the man they've met is a very important agent

and he mustn't be identified, although at this point they don't know his name anyway. You can see the army is like this guy's kind of getting out of control. And there's another thing going on, which is there's been a, inquiries into what's called collusion in Northern Ireland. Now, this is a kind of whole other set of podcasts we could do because that is the allegation that the security forces were working with Protestant paramilitaries. So they're kind of other side from the IRA and Scapetici. And that in particular there's one person who's Brian Nelson, who's a chief intelligence officer for a loyalist, so a kind of Protestant paramilitary group. He's almost like a parallel to

Scapatici on the loyalist side. And the claim is that he was, he'd been run as an agent by the fru, and the claim is that they'd been involved in passing intelligence to him for the purposes of targeting people to be murdered. So targeting, you know, getting the loyalists basically to bump off Republicans, but using this, and this is a kind of allegation of collusion, using their agent to do it. So there's been an inquiry going on into this called the Stevens' inquiry run by a former head of the Metropolitan Police, John Stevens, Scapatici isn't the target for this, so they don't know about Scapetici, but it's kind of unearthing lots of information about what the army has been doing. I mean, interestingly enough, Stephen says at the star, he didn't even know the fru existed.

But then in this bizarre moment, his office that the inquiry is being run out of in Northern Ireland, which is on an official kind of, you know, office building area, burns to the ground. You know, which the assumption, I don't think it is very conspiratorial to think the fru basically burnt his office down and tried to destroy the evidence. So this inquiry is running and getting pretty hot. And, you know, Stevens is not onto Scapetici, but Scapetici is worried that he will be unearthed as part of this inquiry. That, you know, stuff is coming out about what Fru and what British military intelligence was being done. And so at one point, we'll come back to this, a senior British military figure actually meets Scapatici to reassure him that he's going to be okay, his name's going to come out, and that's going to prove to be another problem. Meanwhile, outside of Scapiti's small world, you know,

you've got a ceasefire, 94, breaks down briefly because, you know, both sides are realizing they're reaching a stalemate. Eventually, in 1998, you're going to get the Good Friday Agreement. Also, that means Scapitche is less valuable and less needed. And so the army are thinking, well, maybe we'll try and get him out of Northern Ireland now and kind of get him away from everything. And they discuss his relocation with something called MI5 Central v Settlement Unit. This is from the official report to State Knife, which the CRU, which I don't know much about. But, you know, they're looking at the options about how to get rid of him and, you know, also kind of protect him from any legal repercussions and investigations, which might come. I mean, there's even talk about the army about staging a farewell dinner, you know, to say

goodbye to him as he goes, although it's not clear whether this actually took place. But kind of bizarre thing to do, but I guess it shows his importance. That doesn't seem that bizarre to me. Yeah. I mean, I guess not, I'm just thinking of the context of, you know, long run CIA assets can often be sort of, you know, fetid by handlers or, you know, and so. extreme cases, if there's a logical reason to do it, come to the states, they could actually meet senior officials at headquarters and have dinner or a meal with the director in the dining

room. But SCAP? Yeah, that's tough. That's because he's, you know, he's involved in some pretty dirty stuff. Yeah, you're not talking about a kind of Gordievsky or a Tolkechik figure, are you? You're talking about, I don't know, it's the equivalent of having someone you've run inside of ISIS or Al-Qaeda. I mean, maybe, maybe if they're the right kind of person. That's probably a bit of a stretch, you're right. They do relocate him briefly, but then it goes, he just on his own goes back to Northern Ireland and, you know, without telling them. And so, I mean, I love this fact. It was only due to the fact he was seen driving a vehicle in Belfast that MI5 CRU became aware he'd left Great Britain and the mainland. It just shows he's kind of,

which I think is part of the point with Scappatici is that they can't control him very much. He is, you know, which is one of the challenges all along. I think he's his own guy. You already get a sense of a guy who's difficult. And by the late 1990s, Scapp is in Belfast. Again, there's his attempts to kind of persuade him to maybe get out of the city and move to some other, or maybe more remote parts of Northern Ireland. He's offered money to purchase property and, you know, there's consideration given to pretty

significant financial incentives to cover kind of a pension or an annual salary. So again, that financial motive is still probably alive and well. But the secret of whose steak knife is is eventually going to emerge. Yeah, that's right, because there have been lots of rumors about high up informers, you know, in the IRA. But the first public claim that there'd be a. a Frew agent codenamed Stateknife operating within the IRA appears in articles by a journalist Liam Clark, in the Sunday Times in August 1999. Clark's source, who's later going to emerge,

is a former member of the Fruh, who's then referred to as Martin Ingram, but later identified as Ian Hurst. And it's interesting because Hurst hadn't handled Steakknife himself, but when he'd been in Thru, but he'd heard about an important agent because he remembered that there had been one night when the phone had rung and someone had said they'd been arrested for DUI and suddenly all the top intelligence chiefs came in and to work out how to bail this guy out from a driving under the influence of alcohol charge. And, you know, Hurst had known then that there was someone really significant because, you know, the top people had come in. So there's an injunction against Hurst and the Sunday Times in the High Court to not name him. I was going to ask, why is

Hurst? What's his motivation? This seems, was he disgusted with the way that the fru had handled itself? And so he's trying to get back at the organization. Yeah, he's a disillusioned fru member. And I think particularly the fact of what Scappertici had done and what he'd been up to is something which he becomes kind of very focused on trying to get out. But there's an injunction placed on him. So actually then, the existence of someone called Steakknife is out, but it's going to be another four years nearly before Scappatici's name becomes associated with it. And this is also fascinating because the link between

Steakknife, the agent and Scappatici starts to appear 10th the 11th of May in news reports 2003. Irish media, US websites, finally in the UK media. Scappatici is still in Northern Ireland. The next, I think, fascinating bit of the story. he decides he's going to brazen it out and just deny everything. I don't know what you think, but he's probably realized at this point that if he disappears, that's just going to be taken as confirmation, you know, and leave him and his family, you know, worried.

So I think he takes this decision, which he's just going to, he's going to go public. He's going to appear before journalists. He's going to do interviews and deny everything. You wonder also, I mean, just given that he had attempted to kind of resettle him out of, Northern Ireland and then he comes back if it's home. You know, I mean, if he doesn't, if he feels like, well, I want to stay here, you know, and as we'll see, there's a family dynamic too. Therefore, if I want to stay here, I just have to deny everything, right?

Yeah, that's his only hope. Yeah. That's my only hope, exactly. I mean, some of the bits are bizarre because he tells journalists who approach him that there's been a mistake. There must be an Alfredo Scappatici who's got confused with him, Frederico Scapatici. That's a credible defense there. That's going to hold water. Yeah. Yeah. And he also goes to see the IRA leadership. Now, we have to remember, there's been a, you know, from

1998, there's been a Good Friday Agreement. So there is a peace process now. So the kind of, the war was effectively stopped. But everyone in the IRA appears to be in shock because they worry that they've been penetrated by their enemy. But, you know, I think for them, again, it goes back to this point, it's really hard to admit it's true, isn't it? And to kind of acknowledge that it's Cappatici, better for them as well to deny it. And at this point, what is the hard evidence that's being presented? So the Sunday Times reporting gets the steak knife out there. And then later reporting says, okay, that's Freddie Scabitici. But what actually is the hard evidence provided? Well, that's the problem. Is it's basically sources from, through and other places,

suggesting that it was him. But that's not documentary evidence or kind of confirmation. And so, you know, the agreement he has, including, you know, with the IRA, is that they're just going to deny it. And the Sinn Féin leader, Jerry Adams, puts out a statement saying people who, you know, say he's an agent of being played by British intelligence. You know, 12th of May, Scapetici goes to speak to the Anderson Town News. And he says, according to the press, I'm guilty, are 40 murders. But I'm telling you this now. After this is settled, I want to meet the families of the people that they say I murdered. And when I do, I will stand in front of them and say, I didn't do it. I had no part in it. And I will look them in the eye when I do it.

I mean, he's holding his ground there, right? Yeah. And I guess he figures he can get away with the, with the fiction if the only facts out at that point are these kind of maybe shadowy fruit members, sources who are not necessarily named. There's not a lot of detail out. He can say it's all employed by British intelligence. And I guess that is the plan, right? So he, Skapp goes out, talks to a ton of journalists, denies everything. I mean, even swears an affidavit. I mean, even swears, you know, in front of a solicitor an affidavit, which is a kind of risky move because, you know, that's perjury. But then, I mean, but this is the bit that I think is, you know, so interesting. He might have got away with it. I mean, because I think at that point, people are

like, well, he says, she says, you know, there's not much way of proving it. But then it's the journalist who'd met him in the car park back in 1993, you know, for that Cook Report thing about Marketer McGuinness. They recognize it's the same voice as the guy they met in the car who called himself, you know, Jack or whatever. And that that is the guy now. denying it, who told them all about the inner workings of the IRA. So July 2003, the recording of that 1993, you know, the secret recording they'd made of him, is put out by the journalists. And they reveal that at the time they've been told by the security forces to do everything they could to stop his name coming out as he was such an important source.

That's game over for Skaap, right? And so then he has to run. moves to England, changes his name in 2003, and thereafter has to do another location to name change on at least one more occasion. But for a while, he lives in Manchester, which I guess Bakeset scored it, because then he can follow, he had at one point been a season ticket holder to Manchester City, right? So he can follow his favorite club. Yeah, he had a bit of time in Scotland, it sounds like it's obviously quite mysterious. ends up, we think, in Guilford, you know, not far from London. There is an injunction out, so the press are not allowed to name him, not allowed to try and find him.

Does seem to have plenty of money, lives in a detached property with a car. Although, I find this also weird. He seems to have gone back to work as a builder. I mean, he has the money. I mean, he just loves the game, man. I mean, he just, that's his job. What else is he going to do? You know I love talking about families on the rest of classified.

I'm a family man at heart. And it is one of the many tragic pieces of this. I mean, his wife stays in Northern Ireland, right? But she doesn't come with him, but does make periodic visits. And occasionally they go on holiday together. But it seems, you know, it is interesting. We don't really have a great sense of what that relationship. We had the allegations very early on that he was violent toward her.

But she's not, they've been together this whole time, but she doesn't make the move. No. I think that's interesting as well. And yet they are kind of together and still go on holiday together. He also seems to have a relationship with another woman though and maybe even tells her that he was a spy inside the IRA. You know, he's got the last name now Frank Cowley. I think one of the interesting questions, though, is, because the IRA now know that he is a, he's been a tout. He's been an informer, you know, but they don't, they don't hunt him down. I guess, again, it's that, I don't know. I mean, maybe, you know, maybe Anthony.

Blunt is from the, you know, the Cambridge Five is, is a good reference point here where, you know, I think we discussed him a little bit on our series of the young Kim Filby where, you know, Anthony Blunt had been a knight, he was a knight. He was the surveyor of the Queen's Pictures. He's this very senior in the establishment figure. And it's easier for everybody if you just keep it quiet, right? It's too, it's too difficult. He's been a Soviet spy. That he's been a Soviet spy, and I think it could be the same with Scap here where it kind of raises a question, a fundamental question, if you're the IRA, about the caliber of the entire organization and what it was doing if it had been penetrated at the very top for decades, right? And you'd rather not have that question out there, which is why when we started the series, we said this is a story that for obvious reasons the British state doesn't really want to discuss. It's also a story that the IRA doesn't want to discuss because it makes them look foolish. It makes them look foolish and it raises questions about, you know, why some people were killed as informers and why others weren't and about their competence. So you're right. I think, I think, yeah, Richard O'Rour uses that Anthony Blunt comparison.

I think it's a good one, which is sometimes it's easier just to kind of hush things up. But it gets harder, you know. I mean, there's another bizarre twist. So in April 2012, that former Fruh member, Hurst, uses a false name. and pretends to be a journalist and calls General Sir John Wilsie, who'd been General Officer Commanding for the Army in Northern Ireland, on the phone at his home. And Willsy's written a book, a memoir called Ulster Tales,

which had, and we talked about this, I think in the second episode, about, you know, he talks without using the name State Knife, I think using the name Curbstone, about the recruitment of an agent. And you can hear this conversation, the recorded conversation between Hurst, posing as journalist, Anne Wilsie on the BBC podcast series, which is excellent, called State Knife. And it's staggering because Hurst calls up this army officer and he says, there are documents, there's a recording of you admitting to being in a car with Freddie Scappatici. And Wilsie, the general, you know, he's quite elderly at this point.

It goes, I was in a car with him. Hurst goes, yeah, in South Belfast. And it's recorded in some contact forms we have. That doesn't sound right to me. I don't know Freddie Ska. Who is he? You don't know who Freddie Scapapagic is? No, not by that name.

know, well, you know him as steak knife. Oh, that chap. Yes, sorry. And so he basically tricks his general into admitting that, oh, yes, Cappatici, steak knife. The reason Willsy had met him was that was the period where Scapatich had wanted reassurance, you know, with Stephen's inquiry going on, that he wouldn't be exposed. So Willsy had been the one to kind of meet him. And Willsy, you know, described him as the best agent, the golden egg. And, you know, kind of goes through a description of Why? So basically, Hearst has got Wilsie to admit, you know, that Scapatici is steak knife now. So, you know, the ability to deny it is just, you know, completely falling apart. This is the bizarre, one of the bizarre pieces of this is that Scabatici's identity, his role as an agent of the state, is still technically protected by the state, right?

So there's been no, even though at this point, it's publicly known that Scapitici's, was steak knife. The state doesn't admit it, right? And I'd imagine you also have, so you have this kind of building momentum around steak knife and the role of, you know, the British authorities and this intelligence war in Northern Ireland. I'd imagine you also have a lot of victims and families, you know, of victims who want answers about what the fru and what the British Army did during the troubles. And that leads to the creation of Operation Canova in the summer of 2016. to investigate the truth about this case. That's right.

Konova initially launched under police officer John Boucher starts building a case, not just against Cappatici, but even those that handled him. And this is a massive and deeply difficult task as you get this final clash between different parts of the state effectively about whether or not the truth about steak knife should come out. So maybe at that point, let's take a break and look at, how it really does come to an end for Freddie Scappatici. This episode is brought to you by Sky,

from the writer of Bridge of Spies and the BAFTA winning director of Peaky Blinders. Here comes the new Sky original action thriller, prisoner. Ooh, with that, you know this is going to be full of twists and turns. That's right, a prison transport officer and a professional killer, a handcuffed together and forced to go on the run, and they must make impossible moral choices. in order to survive. Now in our world, we know that institutions are not always what they seem,

don't we? That's right, David. And in this series, it's built around the things we find most compelling. Which are, of course, conspiracy, institutional corruption, and moral ambiguity. That's us. These are the gray areas where the right call isn't always clear. This is a fast-paced edge-of-your-seat story where you never quite know who to trust or what happens next. That's right, so it's the next great thing to binge, and you can watch all episodes from the 30th of April on Sky. Amazon presents Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa, whether it's Verde, Roja, or the orange one.

For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flamethrower. Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea and milk. Habaniero, more like habanier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon. One day, you're negotiating with suppliers. The next, you're installing a shelf in the back room. Running a business means moving in many directions all the time. TD's new small business banking accounts are built for how your business moves. It's how we're making banking more human. Well, welcome back. Let's look Gordon at Canova. this investigation into

Freddie Scapetici and Steakknife. Yeah, I mean, driven really by families. I mean, because of course, parts of the British state don't want this to come out, but the families and others are victims of people who've been killed by the IRA want to know the truth. And as more and more details of State Knife

have come out, that leads to this decision. Now, previous inquiries into Northern Ireland have been a kind of problematic, let's put it that way. We talked about the Stevens' inquiry into collusion. He will say, you know, I was misled, I was criminally instructed from doing my job. You know, people fail to disclose information from me. Konova is going to see similar challenges in trying to get to the truth about State Knife. Remember, this is, you know, an inquiry, a British inquiry led by a British police officer.

And, I mean, some of the details are, they're not comic, but they are blackly, you know, kind of comic in some ways. At one point, they're given access to a computer system and told that they have full access. This is the Konova investigators. But they then realize that the Ministry of Defense officials have different logins to the same computer system. And when they test access with the MOD logins, they find they get loads more results, which had been hidden from them. I mean, it's just one example of, you know, how the facts, parts of the state do not want the truth to come out. You know, and it's the same. They have a very, it's described as an extremely fractious relationship with MI5.

and they talk about MI5 reclassifying material to prevent it being processed and delaying release, even giving former lawyers representing former security personnel, greater access to the MI-Files than the Konova investigators. I think this is a great or illuminating passage from the Konova report where it reads, it also emerged that MI5 personnel knew and had used the combination code for a secure safe used by Konova liaison officers, working at its Temps House headquarters to store classified material. Temps House, of course, referring to MI5's headquarters. This only came to light when one member of MI5 staff said that they had retrieved a file from the safe. The combination had to be changed as a result, thereby eroding an element of trust that Konova thought had been established.

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

The interim report is published and there's a final report published in December of 2025, which I think, you know, this is, we've been talking about a story that for the most part takes place in like the 70s and 80s and early 90s, but this is now. I mean, this is an active part of British political life today. Yeah. By then it's led by three in Livingston. And he reveals that he would have completed the report much earlier if MI5 had not discovered fresh material in the spring of 2024.

So that's eight years after the inquiry started. And, you know, the key, you know, battle, I guess, with MI5, the friction is about how much MI5 knew about steak knife. And we should probably, you know, reference here that there had, you know, Eliza Manning and Buller, the head of MI5 appeared on, you know, the rest is politics leading podcast with Warren Alistair and kind of said that she and MI5 hadn't known much about the case and would have rejected it, you know, at the start. And then later on, these files emerge. And, you know, MI5 and, you know, Eliza Manning Buller said they didn't know about some of this material because it all related to the seven.

until it was later found. And there is an investigation into whether MI5 had deliberately kind of hid the material and the investigation found they hadn't. They had just found it. But it does relate to this kind of ongoing tension, which was what did MI5 know about Stateknife, you know, and the new information does show that they knew about Stateknife from the start. I understand why that question is important to the inquiry. I will say, and I think we'll probably discuss it later during the washup of this whole series. I don't actually find that question very interesting. But I think, you know, the other thing that's going on, and you know, you talked about it being recent politics, is the timeline is important because, you know,

this new material comes out April 2024. There's new legislation which comes in. There's the Legacy Act, 2023, which is looking at giving a partial amnesty for those involved in the troubles. And this is one of the big questions, which is should people be prosecuted? So you're not talking about State Knife himself, will come to him in a second, but should those officers, you know, who handled him be prosecuted for their role? And, you know, one of the frustrations will be that by the time Kadovo finally reports, even though it finds that there is evidence of a case to answer against some through, former through officers, you know, the decision is it's too late to be able to prosecute them. And that, you know, that tension is there in the inquiry,

in the timelines. And I think, Crucially, we should get back to Scappatici himself, because by the time that final report comes out, Scappatici himself is dead. What had Scampatici been up to in his final years? My theory would be colored by maybe other stories of defectors and these, because he's not really a defector, but he's kind of, I mean, living more or less as one, you know, different identity and different, you know, it's not in Belfast, he's not with his family. It always ends up being really, or not always, but often ends up being kind of dark and sad at the end.

Yeah. I don't mean, Henry Hemming in his book, you know, writes about Scappatici became increasingly lonely. He'd spend long hours at home on his Lenovo laptop looking at websites devoted to cars, porn, we'll come back to that, maps, combat politics, football, or the British Army. After 2016, this is an interesting fact, he would also visit the website of Operation Canova, the police. investigation into him and his activities because he knows at one day they might come for him. Now, his father dies only in 2017, buried supposedly with an Italian flag on the coffin. Scap supposedly turns up for that. But when Scappiateshi's wife, Sheila, dies, it's said that he doesn't turn up for that

and the children don't want him there. But the crucial thing is, you know, he's watching that Konover inquiry and they are going for him and they want to get him. You know, they actually, this is, you know, a fascinating bit of the case. They arrest him in January 2018, so the Konova team. He says nothing when he's questioned about the kind of Konova cases, but they get that laptop from his sitting room. I mean, this is where, again, if it couldn't get weirder,

the laptop is found to contain 329 images of extreme pornography, specifically bestiality, which for those who are not aware, sorry for anyone here of a sensitive disposition warning, sex with animals. I mean, it's kind of wild, isn't it? It's wild. It's pretty gross. I presume that's illegal to have in your possession. Is that right? Yeah. It is correct. Okay. So he is then, is he tried? Yeah, he's taken to court. Yeah. Fourth of December 2018 sits in the dot wearing green track suit bottoms and a scruffy blue fleece, I mean at Westminster Magistrate's Court, and he pleads guilty to possessing this material. And he's sentenced to three months in custody suspended for 12 months. Now, again, the details of this are, it's just the weirdness of it, I think.

The court here, Scappitici told police he was not sexually interested in animals and preferred women. Again, apologies for our listeners, with big breasts. But he then says he wasn't doing anyone any real harm and he had depression and had been to quote the depths. Now, this is also where it goes even weirder. It's going to get weirder. Do you need to do another trigger warning? Because it can't possibly get weirder than the last two paragraphs of your outline. I mean, this is a trigger warning, I think, which applies, which did apply to the families of people who died at his hands.

Because the magistrate says, you've not been before the court for 50 years. And that's good character in my book. I mean, the magistrate doesn't know who he is, though, does he? Well, I mean, it's been in the newspapers, you know, that Freddie Scamity. I mean, I guess the magistrate, she's prosecuting him for the pornography rather. It's true that he's, you know, the last thing we knew was in the 70s, wasn't it, when he got done for 10, I think got fined for a fight. But, you know, the Konova interim report goes, these remarks frustrated many victims and families. And I can understand why.

And I mean, you can, can't you? That a magistrate saying you've got good character because you haven't appeared in God. And yet, you know, you've been involved in death and murder. But then the end comes from Fascapp, for Cappatici, March 2023. So, you know, only three years ago. He dies aged 77. And it's, you know, the investigators confirm. And I think this is interesting that it was natural causes and that he was definitely dead.

Obviously, we can trust whatever the British state says about. Freddie Scapetici, right? So clearly, if unnamed investigators have looked into it. It's what people thought, though, and you can understand why. You know, it's not beyond the bounds of imagination for some people to go, well, is this the British state finding another way of hiding him from Konova from the investigation? So they actually, you know, confirm that it's him and he's dead. One more, I just think, amazing, interesting fact, which comes from the report into him. The High Court in London orders that Freddie Scapetici's will is sealed and not made public. And it's noted this is the first case where such an order has been applied for in connection with the will of someone who was not a senior member of the royal family.

I mean, wow, which I think must be because the will will confirm his identity, you know, and must have some details. in it, which will make clear that he was a, Freddie Scappatici was, you know, an agent of the British state because that's something the British state continues to, you know, deny, not deny, not comment on, we should say. And even the Tenova team, they're not allowed, of course, as part of that, to confirm that Scapp was steak knife. It's amazing, isn't that? It is amazing. And it's, I guess, all part of this policy called neither confirm nor deny, which, I mean, as a CIA, former CIA guy, that, you know, those words, that sounds right, you know, that's Yeah, I thought we'd get to this question.

Yeah, it comes from the CIA. The so-called the glomar response, right, which is the huge Glomar explorer, the salvage vessel that's secretly deployed by the U.S. government to recover a sunken Russian submarine in 1974. And so the CIA has similarly neither confirmed nor denied its involvement in that. Yeah. And it's so interesting because NCND, as it's known, neither confirm nor deny, has, you know, has become quite a big issue in, I think, for MI5 in the UK. And Konova is basically saying this totemic status, as it puts it, you know, has become an implacable dogma.

And, you know, the tension here is, MI5 and others saying, you have to have it in order to be able to offer agents confidentiality and assure them you will never reveal their identity if they agree to spy for you. That's their argument, which you may have some sympathy voice. We'll come to that. But, you know, the Knova argument is,

what if that becomes a license to break the law? What if this agent is involved in murder? There are other things, other interests, and public demands, particularly when an agent's been involved in criminality, which should, you know, overcome the desire for NCND and never to confirm an agent's identity. There's this section also from the Konova report, which I think is interesting. It reads, proper handling and management mandates that agents are warned not to exceed their tasking or commit crimes without authorization or. act as agent provocateurs, and that doing so may have consequences. MI5 made representations to me that a, quote, promise of, quote, secrecy forever is crucial to its agent operations and the performance of its statutory functions.

For my part, I do not think secrecy forever could ever be guaranteed and think it would be wrong for the security forces to recruit an agent, thereby putting them at risk on the basis of false and unrealistic promises. What do you think of that? I mean, because the Brits do place MI5 and MI6 quite a premium on saying, we will protect your identity. I mean, it's why technically, sort of the madness of it sometimes, Gordievsky is still subject to NCND. So even though everyone knows he was an MI6 agent, people, everyone knows,

sort of smuggled him out, technically the British state will not confirm that Gordievsky was a, you know, MI6 agent. You know, they really do try and stick to this. but it gets them into kind of difficult situations when those agents are involved in criminality. I mean, there's been another case recently in Britain, kind of Agent X, as he's known, as someone who was accused of using the fact he was an agent, an asset of MI5, to kind of beat people up and use it as a kind of free pass. And again, there was a battle, actually, in that case, between the BBC and MI5

about whether or not he could be named and whether or not the kind of public interest trumped the agent protection principles. The reason that, or one of the reasons, this is such a challenging case, is that there was, it seems, a complete lack of structured process inside the fru and inside the security forces for how you manage the risk and the frankly illegal behaviors being conducted by one of your agents. And it's not to say that a process would work out all of the moral complexities because it wouldn't. But what it would have done is it would have created a framework by which you could assess whether the agent had lived up to their bargain. And if the agent doesn't live up to their bargain, I think the state doesn't owe the agent this kind of secrecy forever will protect your identity kind of protection, right? But if you don't have that, you end up in a situation where you've given the agent this promise, which doubtless, you know, his handlers did, which is that we will protect your identity. And the agent doesn't have a corresponding set of responsibilities with regard to breaking the law or anything like that.

So that's that's the problem here is that it does. And I think I kind of agree with this, you know, as a preface to. the final Konova report here that says, you know, NCND neither confirmed or did I, must be exercised in a proportionate and necessary manner and should not be an absolute bar, you know, to providing truth and justice. And I think that's right. You know, I think you can reasonable people can agree on that. But, you know, it cannot be used, this is the Knova report, it cannot be used to protect agents who commit grotesque, serious crime, leaving victims and families ignored in their demands for information and answers dismissed. I think I'd also agree with that,

but I would say in this case that in the Steakknife case, those grotesque and serious crimes were being committed as part of his work, frankly, as an asset, as an agent. And that's the kind of gordon nod of this. Yeah. Just to finish off the NCND point, I mean, it's notable that February 11th this year, 2026, the Irish Taoiseach or the Prime Minister, you know, named steak knife as Freddie Scapetici. So, you know, he stands up in Parliament, in the Irish Parliament and said, you know, that the identity of state knife was clear to everybody here, and he should be officially named by the British government, particularly because of his close relationship with those who like to refer to themselves as the Republican movement. He said, we should have an

apology from Sinn Féin. You know, there's obviously a bit of politics here in Ireland, which acknowledge that in respect to the activities of the provisional IRA as documented in this report, the Canova report. It's a long past time for that apology and renunciation of what happened to occur. So, you know, not named by the British state still, but named by the Irish state, which I guess brings us, you know, to the end, I mean, to the kind of really, I think, really complicated kind of issues around the value of state knife. I mean, just one point to start off. I mean, there is a debate which, you know, amongst people about the role intelligence played before we get to Stake Knife himself overall in bringing the conflict to an end. I mean,

there are different aspects of this. We've not delved into all of it. I mean, one was, there was a role for MI6, which we've not really talked about in this series, who ran a back channel through to the IRA through much of the conflict, which allowed deniable communications at key moments, even when the government's official line was we don't talk to terrorists, which was how they described the IRA. And we're actually going to look at that back channel in a bonus episode for club members with the journalist Peter Taylor, who covered the whole of the troubles, lots of work on the intelligence side, but particularly, you know, is the expert on that back channel.

So we'll look at that issue kind of separately. But then there's also this kind of claim that intelligence played a role because the level of penetration of the IRA by the security forces was so big that it kind of, put pressure on the IRA to eventually give up the campaign of violence. I mean, this crazy estimates, and I don't know how anyone really knows the truth, but that, you know, up to a quarter or to a half of people in the IRA either were agents or had agents close to them. A quarter to a half of the entire organization? Yeah, was either agents or had an agent close to them. Now, it's hard to know that's true. But the argument would be that's a kind of tactical intelligence

that the British state have built up, which then, because the IRA know it, puts pressure on them because they feel so badly penetrated, you know, and that some of these agents might also be kind of maneuvering politics to push the IRA towards talks. Now, this has, I think, created a slightly self-serving narrative, which you sometimes hear from people, which is the intelligence somehow won the war. And it kind of takes away from all the other factors, which led the British state and the IRA to realize that neither of them were going to achieve their, you know, their fundamental aims. And so they had to talk. So I think, you know, I think the idea that intelligence was the main reason for that, the intelligence penetration, is over-egging it.

It's a claim that's out there, I suppose. And I suppose a massive question also, as we've talked throughout the series, is, you know, did Steak Night? save lives or did he cost lives? And I will say, I mean, I think that is a it's a good question. It also, it reduces the boreal complexity down to a math problem, you know, which I think is not right. But it is, but it is worth, I think it's worth trying to unpack it a bit because it gets at the risk-reward

tension that, that colored the entire case. Yeah, and I think, you know, Konova looks into this in quite a lot of detail, and it does say that Stake Knife became kind of mythologized, you know, with exaggerated stories, I mean, both about the benefits he brought as well as the dark things, and that they say, you know, any serious security and intelligence professional, hearing an agent being likened to the goose that laid the golden eggs, as Stake Knife was, should be on alert, because the comparison is rooted in fables and fairy tales. And I kind of, I like that point because I think the idea, I think the idea is used by some people who were in British intelligence that this was the most amazing agent who saved some of the claims are hundreds of lives. But actually when you drill into the metrics for understanding the hundreds of lives, it doesn't quite stack up because, you know, they based the hundreds of lives being saved on, you know, perhaps a bomb or a gun was found which had been hidden and which, which, you know,

they get through a tip off maybe from State Knife, but that would have been used to kill X number of people. You know, it's a counterfactual, which is quite, you know, shaky, because you don't know if they'd have found it some other way or how many people it would really killed or what would have happened with it. I would presume, and maybe it's been destroyed, but I would presume that the fru along the way, the handlers, would have done some accounting somewhere that tries to get at the benefits that he's provided. Because you would think if you're the handler, like, I mean, really pedantically, the way you would get promoted inside the organization would be the intelligence that your agent has provided. How good is it? How much do you have? You know, what does it accomplish? So you would think that there would be an incentive, like a bureaucratic incentive to at some point have logged that stuff, even if it's exaggerated. But like what, do we have it? Does it exist? Well, so again, Konova says that the Frouquet's

success books, which I guess is what you're talking about, for some. agents, but the one for State Knife has never been recovered. Another mysterious disappearance, you know, which fits, fits something here. So, I mean, and they say, look, they look at the number of lives they can identify who were saved through relocation, warning or intervention. And they say it's between high single figures and low double figures and nowhere near the hundreds that are sometimes claimed. They also try and do an accounting of the lives cost by steak knife. I think this is significant. He's going to be linked to at least 14 murders and 15 abductions. When we say linked there. No, directly linked, I think in that sense.

So, you know, Konova's conclusion is, I think it is probable that his actions resulted in more lives being lost than saved. So their conclusion is more lives lost than saved. But I think they also make one more, which I think is an important point, which goes back to your point about maths, you know. Even if you say a particular agent within a group did more good than harm, the morality of letting them do any harm with the knowledge or on behalf of the state is a different matter. So, you know, there's a kind of question there which is, is it as simple as just saying, you know, numbers? Or do you have to consider what you are willing to let the state do? do and how far you're willing to let it go.

I think that's a different kind of interesting question beyond just the kind of 10 versus 12, you know, saved versus killed. And the context, the wartime context, I mean, obviously is kind of lost now, but is hugely important. You know, we started off the series giving some context for just how disruptive and violent the troubles were. And I think, you know, to make the comparison for American enlisters, the equivalent in terms of population killed or wounded, if it were in the states, it would be the equivalent of the entire population of North Carolina being killed or wounded inside a piece of territory the size of Connecticut. It's not an excuse, but it's merely to say that in that context, I think the idea that any fru handle.

would have said, you know what, let's cut this guy loose, is just like, they're just, it's, it's totally implausible. Now, maybe that's not the most interesting question to answer, but like, you have, you have to start from, I think you got to start from that kind of contextual, let's just think about this from the standpoint of the fru and, you know, the war that was going on at the time. The context point is important. Of course, the context now, you know, we've had very fortunately peace in Northern Ireland.

or, you know, with some violence, but, you know, nothing like what it was for many years now. But the fact it was wartime, I think, or wartime, you know, use the phrase wartime there, is part of the kind of question, because people make different judgments in wartime. And, you know, you see it in the Second World War about lives lost versus saved about how you act on intelligence and what you do. I guess, you know, what's complicated is, you know, the IRA would have said it was a war, you know, and that they were an army and it was a war. British state would have said, well, it's, you know, criminality and we're dealing with it in that way. And so there's a kind of tension there about how the standards you apply and the context that you see and whether you do see it as a war time and how how far you change to some extent, your kind of metrics or your tolerance for certain activities, if you do indeed see it as a war and how far you go. But, you know, I think it's hard. I mean, there are still these questions, I mean, which I think too hard to.

get into much detail about, which is, you know, should there be culpability for those handlers who let him carry out murders? And certainly some of the families of some of the victims of those killed by Stake Knife would like to see that, but there's no sign of that happening, which I think, you know, I was talking about this with someone else, you know, saying it is, you know, when conflicts like this finish, it is one of the big questions, which is, do you have to as a society kind of have justice in terms of criminal prosecutions for people who went who did things or are there risks for that? Because, you know, there's a fight in that in the UK, I think, at the moment about, you know, what that means and about opening up more prosecutions,

whether it was kind of Bloody Sunday, which we talked about in 1972 or Stateknife and other incidents. So, you know, this is hard stuff, I think, you know, for communities and particularly, I think for, you know, families of victims of people who died, you know, on all the different sides in this conflict. I think it's actually kind of a, frankly, a bit maybe gutless on the part of senior officers inside the security forces at the time to have allowed a case like this to have run without there being any kind of process, which is how you end up with senior officials at different elements or different arms of the security forces, basically being able to say, like, oh, we didn't quite know what was going on. Yeah. You know, even though the actual

as we described it in, you know, one of the earlier episodes, even though the actual, the formal rule inside, you know, the police and the army was that you can't have an agent involved in illegal behavior, which of course was nuts, right? Of course was nuts. You're trying to penetrate this organization that you consider to be a terrorist group. Anyone who's a member that you want to recruit is already a law, a lawbreaker, right? And so it's nuts. But then so you have this really extreme unrealistic rule that is guiding your agent running, which of course has to be broken constantly in the reality of the way you're going to run agents during the war, to then not have a process that is a failure. Because, you know, the CIA kind of analog here is there was a review

of what the CIA called kind of dirty assets in the 1990s, led by then, you know, DCI John Deutsch. And it came out of, you know, a whole bunch of cases from earlier in the agency's, you know, sort of lifespan. And in particular, some kind of nasty stuff from Guatemala in the 1980s where you had assets who had been, you know, who were involved in criminal behavior. Or members of, you know, in some cases, members of, you know, terrorist organizations. And part of the structure that came out of that review was like, basic stuff. You know, you got to go to DOJ, the Department of Justice, and actually, you know, if you're trying to recruit someone who's, you think is breaking the law, you've got to go to DOJ and see if they have an investigation underway against them. Are there criminal indictments against

this person? You know, you need to get waivers for your agent to conduct criminal behavior or whatnot, and the level of the organization that's got to sign off on that waiver gets higher and higher to, you know, based on what kind of laws the agent is breaking. I think this point is really a critical one is at some point these questions stop becoming intelligence questions and they become policy questions. Yeah. It becomes a policy of the state that in this case, we are going to permit the deaths of certain UK citizens in pursuit of this intelligence war. against what we see as a terrorist organization. That's not something that individual low-level handlers of a source

should have to sort of figure out, right? That is a policy question of the British state. Yeah, it's a good point. And it's interesting. I was talking to people and they were pointing out that there's new legislation, which is coming, I think, 2021, about exactly this, authorizing criminal conduct for kind of MI5 agents and others, so that it's clearer what is being authorized and what is not being authorised.

But one interesting point with that is it deliberately, I remember, you know, kind of looking at this at time, doesn't say what the limits are publicly for what an agent could do. Because it goes back to the part of the point with State Knife, which is you don't want to tip off a group that the state will never authorise murder, for instance, or something like that. because immediately if you do say as a public policy, we're not going to authorize a state, an agent to commit murder, then a terrorist group or any other group will use it as a test to see if someone's an agent. So I think, you know, these, and you can imagine that within, you know, kind of ISIS-like groups or other groups these days as well. So, you know, we've been talking about history and Northern Ireland, but I think, you know, you're right. These are ongoing questions for intelligence agencies. And I think that's the one, one of the lessons from this very dark tale is the need for, you know, a kind of much clearer sense of what the boundaries are and what the authorizations are and what the policies are because it just doesn't look like there was that with steak knife. Do you think that had everybody inside the security forces known exactly what was going on at the time?

do you think that given the context of the conflict, that any different decisions would have been made about how he was handled or whether he was handled? Good question. I think probably people did know what he was up to, but it was never put on paper and people chose to turn to blind eye. That's the first thing. But the second thing is, I think of various points with bombs going off in England and, you know, kind of, you know, prime ministers nearly being assassinated by bombs. and the kind of scale of violence in Northern Ireland on all sides, I think people were willing to do things, which I think now, I think, look very questionable. That's part of it.

But I think, you know, that's why I think it is a genuinely, you know, kind of complicated, difficult story. Indeed. And I think that is the place to leave it. We hope that even though it has been complicated, difficult, dark at times that you've enjoyed this exploration of, I think, a really compelling kind of and dark corner of what it means to run agents inside, you know, complicated, tough, paramilitary slash, depending on your point of view, terrorist organizations, how do you do that? How do you manage the risk and reward?

I think really, you know, a fascinating compliment to so many of the stories that we've done on this pod on agent running. And we do hope that you've enjoyed it. You can get early access to all of these series as a provider. If you go to the rest is classified.com and join the Declassified Club. Also get access to the bonus episodes that we do every week. And we've got some, I think, some really interesting bonus episodes linked to this series on Steakknife, haven't we, Gordon? Yeah, that's right with Patrick Radnkeith and Peter Taylor, where we're really going to kind of drill down into some of these issues and some of the kind of tensions over intelligence in Northern Ireland. Also a reminder, live show, fourth and fifth of September. The two of us

will be at the South Bank. Fourth of us doing our own live show, fifth, we got the mooch. Link to get your tickets in the episode description box. So do come along to that live show, but otherwise we will see you next time. We'll see you next time.