transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:03] 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 therestisclassified.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.

Speaker 2:
[00:42] And I'm Gordon Corera.

Speaker 1:
[00:43] 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 Stakeknife, 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.

Speaker 2:
[01:44] Yeah, that's right, David. Stakeknife 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 amazing, remarkable access into its operation. 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.

Speaker 1:
[02:36] This entire story is set against the conflict in Northern Ireland, often called the Troubles, and probably worth setting the context a little bit. Ulster plantation, Gordon, go ahead.

Speaker 2:
[02:52] 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 briefer context. This episode is brought to you by HP.

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Speaker 2:
[04:25] 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. In the 60s, conflict is going to flare up, leading to the Troubles. Between 1966 and 2006, there are 3,720 conflict-related deaths and 40,000 people injured. As a reference point from one official study that says almost 2% of the population of Northern Ireland was killed or injured. If the same thing had happened to the population of Great Britain, that would be 100,000 people who would have been killed or injured. That gives a sense, I think, of the impact that it has on Northern Ireland. 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. We're not going to get deep into that, but we are going to keep it very much with The Rest Is Classified lens, aren't we?

Speaker 1:
[05:35] Just for the US comparison, to set that context for American listeners, the equivalent in the US 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-year period. 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.

Speaker 2:
[06:17] 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 close to each other. Yes, rural parts, but also urban parts. I think that is part of the story.

Speaker 1:
[06:32] That's 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?

Speaker 2:
[06:48] That's right. I mean, it is this story of Stakeknife, 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 continued tension over this issue of naming Stakeknife, 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 which starts 50 years ago, as we've seen, and it is about the darker recesses of the state and of an organization like the IRA. 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. 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.

Speaker 1:
[07:51] 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 Stakeknife. They're still fighting massive battles over this. But we actually can say who he was or is, can't we?

Speaker 2:
[08:09] Yeah, we can. 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 Stakeknife was a man called Freddie Scappatici. Now, Freddie Scappatici, let's talk about him because he's at the center of our story.

Speaker 1:
[08:27] 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.

Speaker 2:
[08:44] Has got an Italian name.

Speaker 1:
[08:45] I know, which shows my ignorance about the fact that there is a vibrant Italian immigrant community in Northern Ireland. But I was shocked to find that this is the name.

Speaker 2:
[08:57] It is one of the things that makes him really distinctive. 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. 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 Freddy Scappatici, 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 at the moment. But it doesn't work out. He's quite short, quite stocky. Let's talk 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, 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 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.

Speaker 1:
[10:37] And a fan of Bond films, apparently.

Speaker 2:
[10:41] There we go.

Speaker 1:
[10:41] Yeah. That was my fact. I found that interesting. When you're in the other dial, you could be a fan of British.

Speaker 2:
[10:49] British intelligence.

Speaker 1:
[10:50] Maybe not British intelligence, but British culture, right?

Speaker 2:
[10:54] British culture.

Speaker 1:
[10:54] He becomes a fan of Manchester City as well.

Speaker 2:
[10:57] 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. 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. Now she's 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, it's one of those things, isn't it, where circumstances intrude and 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 him.

Speaker 1:
[11:54] And so in the mid-60s, I guess you describe it, there's a civil rights movement that starts in Northern Ireland.

Speaker 2:
[12:02] 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 neighbourhoods, 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 two different communities as well as between the police and protestors. And people are forming groups to defend their communities, and amongst them is Scappatici 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.

Speaker 1:
[13:00] 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?

Speaker 2:
[13:11] It is. It is a sectarian divide, is how it's often put. But 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 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 in a way, that is the heart of it, but it's also much more than that. By, I suppose, 1969, it's starting to escalate into violence. And that year, the REC 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.

Speaker 1:
[14:32] I think the group that the British Army will come into direct conflict with is the IRA. And that group dates back to, I mean, I guess, the Irish fight for independence in 1919-1920. And that is going to be the kind of the central conflict here, right? Will be the British state and the IRA.

Speaker 2:
[14:57] 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 is focused, interestingly enough, on 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. 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 PYRA, or the Provos, or often just called the IRA really, because the other part, the official IRA as it's termed, will fade from view and PYRA or the Provos will become the main IRA and the main force fighting the Brits. Scappatici, like a lot of the younger generation, joins the Provos because the Provos are the young and they're new, the new members are gonna rise fast. He's gonna 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 Becki, our producer, will need the bleep gun here because he would look at them and he goes, it's Scapa F*****g Tichi, 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 withdraw. 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 firefights on the streets with the army during these years. And Scapatecia is one of those involved in that early period with more and more shootings and the British government by 1971 struggling to control things.

Speaker 1:
[17:22] And the violence escalates, there's more and more shootings, bombings. The British government is really struggling to control things. And that in 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, I mean, without reason, I guess, in some cases.

Speaker 2:
[17:51] 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 Scappatici. So at 4:30 a.m. 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 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 crowd 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 IRA 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 Scapatici himself gets released in early 1974, goes back to the IRA, but then in August 1974, he gets banged up again for another period of internment. So he's in and out a lot during this phase.

Speaker 1:
[19:47] And I guess they're with Scapatici just about to get out of prison for really some crucial years. Let's take a break and when we come back, we will look at the intelligence piece of this dirty war.

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Speaker 1:
[21:15] Welcome back. After this escalation of the conflict between 1970 and 1971, the Brits are desperate for intelligence. The IRA, the provisional IRA, is pretty new. It's a pretty new organization. It 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.

Speaker 2:
[21:58] 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 in the Mao Mao uprising in Kenya, an uprising against British rule. And 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 Leicester 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 and 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 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 Radden-Keefe'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 Freds for some reason.

Speaker 1:
[24:05] 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.

Speaker 2:
[24:13] A bit weird, didn't it?

Speaker 1:
[24:13] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[24:14] Yeah. So the MOF 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 FRU, 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 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.

Speaker 1:
[25:07] And if you're the British state, if you're the army or if you're the FRU, 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 leak, 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.

Speaker 2:
[26:03] 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 and your livelihood. So you can see if you 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. That's where I think the tension lies over what techniques were used. We're not talking about classic blackmail, although that may have happened, although how much is not clear, but it's forms of pressure, and I guess there's an elasticity and a spread of how you can use that, isn't there, David?

Speaker 1:
[27:29] Well, by the mid-1970s, this intelligence focus is really starting to pay off. 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 sort of a push and pull to this, isn't there? Because the IRA is starting 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 of the army penetrates one cell, they don't roll everybody up, right? 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 Scappatici comes back in.

Speaker 2:
[28:34] Yeah, that's right. So Scappatici 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 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 tax man. But it means he can, you know, extend the house. He's going on foreign holidays, buying, you know, TVs and cars. As you said, he likes his football. He's going to install a bar and snooker table in his house. He likes stuff.

Speaker 1:
[29:24] He goes to Florida.

Speaker 2:
[29:25] 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 have 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.

Speaker 1:
[29:56] Why do you think he went back to the IRA? And did he, 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 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?

Speaker 2:
[30:18] 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. 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 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 the people are 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 IRA at this point fear, I think rightly, that there's touts at lots of different levels in this. 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.

Speaker 1:
[31:36] But if the listeners think this is a sort of smoke and mirrors, George Smiley-esque world of counterintelligence or counterespionage. Think again, because SCAP is practising a much more brutal and dare I say, knuckle dragging version of counterintelligence and counterespionage. Because he's essentially interviewing everybody who the IRA suspects is being an informant or who comes out of prison and needs to be vetted to see if the Brits have turned them.

Speaker 2:
[32:09] Yeah. So he's the interrogator. And this ISU, which we should say is, the people in the ISU are all slightly older. There 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 Richelieu Raw's book is an excellent study of scappatici. It's called Stakeknife's Dirty War. And Richelieu Raw, we should say, was an IRA member who actually kind of encountered scappatici at this point, so kind of understands of what he writes. And in Raw'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, scappatici is going to be his deputy, so scappatici is number two in the ISU. As you said, they have some interesting jobs because one of them is vetting new recruits. So anyone who comes in through Belfast, scappatici would be one of those to interrogate them in a dark room. One person who had been an IRA member himself, Eamon Collins, writes about how this would typically take place from his understanding of talking to people. And he said, scapp 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 scapp 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 one function, is to vet your incoming members basically.

Speaker 1:
[34:11] And he also looks at failed or compromised operations for evidence of security breaches. And this main role though is interviewing individuals who have been detained or arrested because of course the IRA is massively penetrated and they're deeply fearful that the Brits are conducting this kind of jail house 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 Scapatigi are trying to root out.

Speaker 2:
[34:58] 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 Radden-Keefe's book and the TV series, and we're going to talk to him on a bonus. But that's the instruction because they know that's when it happens. The pitch is made by the Brits. But when someone is released from detention, they get questioned by the ISU, by Scapatici's unit. And it's partly, they know not everyone's going to be pitched out or turned, but they want to understand what the Brits are asking. They want to know what are the tactics the Brits are using to try and turn someone.

Speaker 1:
[35:48] And Scap is the main interrogator, which is interesting because he's the number two to McGee. And McGee will take this approach of asking questions in a clear voice, take his time, have the person tell their story in detail, look to see, 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.

Speaker 2:
[36:38] 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 Scapp, Ticci 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, Scapp, Ticci, his idea is to tell them he already knows what that person has done.

Speaker 1:
[37:32] He's the bad cop, Scapp, Ticci is the bad cop.

Speaker 2:
[37:35] It's better for them to confess quickly rather than keep him waiting.

Speaker 1:
[37:41] Richard O'Rourke has a great quote describing Scapp's style. He says, Scapp'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. I think it's interesting there that he's dangling, I can probably get you out of this as this gives someone hope that if they just tell you the truth, it'll be over and everything will be fine. Of course, that's usually not the case.

Speaker 2:
[38:35] 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. 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 rank than the accused. You can see the sense in which the IRA is very much seeing itself as a military organization in its own perception of itself. There'd be a member from the 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.

Speaker 1:
[39:35] And Eamonn Collins, who is the former IRA member, who was later killed by the IRA, quotes a conversation he had with John McGee and Scappatici in his book, Killing Rage. And he writes, I asked whether they always told people that they were going to be shot. Scapp 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. Scapp told the man he would take him home, reassuring him he's got nothing to worry about. Scapp had told him to keep the blindfold on for security reasons as they walked from the car. It was funny, this is Scapp talking, watching the bastard 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**k 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, you 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.

Speaker 2:
[40:46] 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 families. Sometimes Scappatice would take them himself. And I mean, sometimes those confessions were real, but sometimes people just obviously make it, you know, made it up because they thought, you know, it might get them off. So they confess to anything. So it's hard to know. So as we reach the end of the 1970s, Scappatice 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 Scappatice himself at this point is an agent for the British state.

Speaker 1:
[41:28] Well, let's end this episode there. And next time we will look at how Scappatice 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 therestisclassified.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 Radden-Keefe, who is the author of Say Nothing, and the upcoming book, London Falling.

Speaker 2:
[42:07] 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 Centre in London. So just look for that on the South Bank Centre website. But otherwise, we will see you next time.

Speaker 1:
[42:23] See you next time.

Speaker 5:
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