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

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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 therestisclassified, I'm David McCloskey, and I'm Gordon Carrera.

And today we are starting a series looking at maybe one of the most controversial agents

ever in British intelligence history, a man with the codename steak knife, a British

spy at the heart of the Irish Republican Army, the IRA, and we do a lot of stories, obviously

on this podcast about agents inside groups, CIA agents or assets inside the KGB, assets

inside MI6, Russian assets inside MI6.

We look at their motivation for doing what they do, how they're handled, what happens,

with the intelligence they provide, and the difference it makes.

And this story is similar in many respects, it's about an agent that's being run inside

the heart of the IRA, but it has a twist that is I think much darker and much more complicated

than many of the agent running stories that we've told so far.

Yeah, that's right David, I mean steak knife was described by a British general as the

golden goose for the army, their best source over a quarter of a century of conflict.

And he was at the heart of an organization that British state was fighting.

And as such, he provided kind of amazing remarkable access into its operation.

And there are claims and we'll get to the accuracy of these claims later that is intelligence

even saved many lives.

But this is also a story I think of the ethical dilemmas of running agents inside groups

who are involved in violence, criminality, and murder because this is an agent inside

the heart of the IRA being run by the British state who is directly involved in murder.

Not just aware of it, but actually carrying out murder himself and with the knowledge and

even support of the security forces.

This entire story is set against the conflict in Northern Ireland, often called the troubles

and probably worth setting the context a little bit.

So Ulster Plantation Gordon, go ahead.

Yeah, I'm sorry to disappoint you David, I know you like your deep context to these stories,

but we're not going to go back to Cromwell and Ireland in the 17th century or the deeper

history even beyond that.

Our fellow podcasters, Empire have looked at that if people are interested.

David, maybe if you want to, you can go into that.

So I'll give slightly brief a context.

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Northern Ireland is created in 1921, when the rest of Ireland becomes an independent republic

and breaks away from British control, following a civil war six counties in Northern Ireland,

with a Protestant majority and a Catholic minority are partitioned off at that point of

independence and remain as part of what's now called the United Kingdom of Great Britain

and Northern Ireland.

Now, in the 60s, conflict is going to flare up, leading to this thing called the Troubles.

And between 1966 and 2006, there are 3,720 conflict-related deaths and 40,000 people injured.

And as a reference point, from one official study of that says almost 2% of the population

of Northern Ireland was killed or injured, and if the same thing had happened to the population

of Great Britain, that would be 100,000 people who'd have been killed or injured.

So that gives a sense, I think, of the impact that it has on Northern Ireland.

And we should acknowledge at the outset that there may be people listening who are affected

by the conflict, many who have strong views on the rights and wrongs of the different

sides and what they were doing.

And we're not going to get deep into that, but we are going to keep it very much with

the rest is classified lens, aren't we?

And 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.

So the numbers, you know, in absolute terms, maybe to American listeners may not sound massive,

but when you scale it, this is a massive, massive conflict inside the British state that

goes on for decades.

Yeah.

And in a relatively small area, I think the comparison with Connecticut there, and I think

the intensity of it, because these are quite small communities living, you know, close

to each other.

Yes, rural parts, but also urban parts.

I think that is part of the story.

Yeah.

That's another part that will be returning through throughout this four part series.

Is this question of how do you actually investigate or bring to light some of the activities

that occur inside the fairly dark recesses of the security state?

That's right.

And it is this story of steak knife, as we'll see, and it merges over the years gradually,

and is really pulled out.

And there are still really big arguments about it today and in the last few years about

whether, for instance, it should be permissible to identify someone who has worked as an agent

of the security services of the state.

And there's been, you know, continue tension over this issue of naming steak knife, of identifying

him, of whether there should be prosecutions or what the legacy should be.

It is still very much with us today, though this is a story, you know, which starts 50

years ago, as we've seen, and it is about the darker recesses of the state and of an organization

like the IRA.

And there's a reason, I think, as we'll see in this in this tale, about why the intelligence

battle in particular in Northern Ireland was known to some as the dirty war.

And it sees very much a story that neither the IRA nor the British state have wanted

to come out and to be told, as we'll see.

So we just talked about this issue of naming agents and, as we'll see, the British state

has continued to resist actually naming the individual code name steak knife, and then there's

still fighting massive battles over this.

But we actually can say who he was, or it's can't we?

Yeah, we can.

And I think we can say it with a very high degree of confidence, as we get through

the story, we'll understand why, but for many years, the name was rumored, reported,

but not confirmed.

But I think now everyone knows that steak knife was a man called Freddy Scapatici.

Now, Freddy Scapatici, let's talk about him because he's at the center of our story.

Can I just say that there aren't going to be many moments of levity in this series?

Because we did some dark topics, but I was dismayed as we were putting the series together

to fight that the star player in our first ever series set in Ireland in Northern Ireland

is a guy named Freddy Scapatici.

It's got an Italian name.

I know.

It shows my ignorance about the fact that there is an, you know, a sort of vibrant Italian

immigrant community in Northern Ireland, but I mean, I was shocked to find that this

is the name.

And it is one of the things that makes him really distinctive, and you know, makes him stand

out.

I think it's the fact he has got this Italian name because his family were Italian immigrants,

Catholic family, his father runs a nice cream parlor.

And sells ice cream from the van.

They do quite well for a living, and they live in the markets area in the south of Belfast,

which is an old working class community at the time, packed full of dense housing, which

is where actually many of the Italians who come to Northern Ireland to Belfast had gone

to.

Now, young Freddy Scapatici, one thing to know is that he's a very good footballer, as

a child, as a teenager, he actually goes for a, a, 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, you know, he's talked about, maybe he's a bit overweight,

maybe he's not quite good enough for the team, so he doesn't get in.

He is quite small, and he's described a small and barrel-chested, and then someone puts

it with classic Mediterranean looks, which is, you know, we're going for the stereotypes

here.

Olive skinned with tight, curly, black hair.

So that's the young Freddy.

No football career means he's going to train as a brick layer, but back to football.

He is known as a ferocious tackleer 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.

And a fan of Bond films, apparently.

There we go.

Yeah.

That was my fact.

I found that interesting.

When you're indoor of the dialogue, can you, you can be a fan of, of sort of British,

British intelligence?

Maybe not British intelligence, but, but British culture, right?

British culture becomes a fan of Manchester City as well.

Yeah, Manchester City Football Club, yeah, but yeah, so he's, he's got a bit of violence

for it.

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 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, you know, it's one of those things, isn't it, where circumstances in Trudeon

are going to take his life in a very different direction, because in the late 1960s, the world

around him changes, it becomes more violent.

And that, I suppose, provides a place for a man with a violent temperament like it.

And so with the mid 60s, I guess you describe it, there's a civil rights movement that starts

in Northern Ireland.

Yeah, that's right.

The Catholics who are about a third of the population at time are protesting against

discrimination, calling for equal treatment in housing and jobs, because the Protestant

population have control of politics and institutions starts with peaceful protests.

Next couple of years, though, you get marches through different 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 the two

different communities, as well as between the police and protesters and people are forming

groups to defend their communities, and amongst them is Scapatiti in the markets,

the area of Belfast.

Now, at this point, it's not that organised, it seems, but he is part of defending his

community and getting involved in violence.

Is the essence of the conflict, I realise this will be an oversimplification, but is

the essence of the conflict a Catholic Protestant one, or is it more complicated than that?

It is, it is a sectarian divide, it 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'll, you know, we may get to later on as well, you're going to have different

paramilitary violent groups on both sides and allegations about how the British state treats

them differently.

So, it's much, in a way that is the heart of it, but it's also much more than that.

Only, I suppose, 69, it's starting to escalate into violence, and that year the RUC clearly

can't cope anymore, and the Prime Minister in London, then Harold Wilson orders the deployment

of British troops to Northern Ireland.

Now, this is, I think, a huge moment because this is what's called Operation Banner, which

is going to be the longest deployment in British military history, so 1969 until 2007.

Wow, it's going to lead to more than 700 British troops being killed, but I think

it's the fact that you've now got British troops who are after all trained to fight foreign

wars, you know, fighting the Cold War and fight counterinsurgency campaigns in Asia and

the Middle East.

That's what they've been doing.

They're now patrolling the streets of Northern Ireland, and that is going to also change

the dynamic of this conflict.

And the group that the British Army will come into direct conflict with is the IRA.

Yeah.

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?

It will be the British state and the IRA.

That's right.

And it's interesting because the IRA's roots go back, as you said, to the fight for independence.

And it's persisted.

But the main part of the IRA at this time in the late 60s is actually the part in Northern

Ireland is focused on interestingly enough and trying to establish unity of Protestant

and Catholic working class as the first route to getting independence.

But what you see within that part of the IRA is that that is seen as failing to protect

the community.

So there's a split in December 1969.

And those who are more militant and want to confront the British state and now the British

Army form something called the provisional IRA, often called 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, you know, the provos will become the main IRA and the

main force fighting the Brits.

And scapetitji, like a lot of the younger generation joins the provos because the provos

are the young and the new, the new members are going to rise fast.

He's going to get well known in the markets area.

I mean, people do say, I mean, going back to the name that it makes him distinctive.

I do like, you know, one factor, supposedly he'd get annoyed when people wouldn't pronounce

his name right.

And Becky, our producer, will need the bleep gun here because he would look at them.

And he goes, it's scaper, teachy, is how he'd sell them to pronounce it when they got

it wrong.

And 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 while 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 scaper teachers is one of those involved in that early period with more and more shootings

and the British government by 1971 struggling to control things.

And the violence escalates, there's more and more shootings, bombings, the British government

is really struggling to control things.

And then in August of 1971, there's the introduction of internment, which is a detention

without trial.

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.

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's Capititi.

So at 4.30am on the 9th of August 1971, his front door is kicked in by British soldiers.

They take him away, give them supposedly a good kicking as they do.

He's one of these hundreds locked up.

Now he's not one of a smaller group who are subject to what's called euphemistically

deep interrogation.

The CIA will be aware of these euphemisms, which involves five techniques like hooding

and sleep deprivation and had been developed, you know, by the British army during counterinsurgency.

So he's not subject to that.

And he's held at an internment camp called Longkesh, which is a former RAF based near Lisbon

about 10 miles from Belfast.

Now meanwhile, the act of internment leads to an escalation in violence, which aids IRA

recruitment.

And Capititi is going to be in turn for a considerable period for crucial years as the

conflict escalates.

So 30th of January 1972, soldiers from the first 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 the 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 Capititi 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.

And I guess they're with Capititi just about to get out of prison for really some crucial

years.

Let's take a break and we come back.

We will look at the intelligence piece of this dirty war.

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Welcome back.

After this escalation of the conflict between 1970 and 1971,

the Brits are desperate for intelligence.

I mean, the IRA and the provisional IRA is pretty new.

It's a pretty new organization.

I mean, started in 1969, full of younger people.

And I think it's safe to say that the British state doesn't really understand

this organization very well.

So naturally, they need to recruit people inside it, around it,

to understand its plans, intentions, capabilities.

And I think crucially in this period to try to prevent violence.

Yeah, this is where the intelligence side of this conflict really kicks in.

Because the army realized that they're struggling to deal with the bloodshed.

And they respond partly by using some of the counterinsurgency tactics

they've learned overseas.

For instance, fighting in the Mao-Bao uprising in Kenya,

an uprising against British rule.

And that's part 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 Udster Constabulary, the local police.

One of the reasons is the RUC, as I said,

is perceived as biased towards the Protestant population.

It's kind of disproportionately Protestant.

And the army also think that many individuals

who might provide intelligence would not deal with the RUC as a result.

So the army are going to kind of develop their own capability.

They start with these things called covert bomb squads,

whose remit was to collect an act upon intelligence

related to bombings, hence the name.

Later, that's then remodeled into something

called the military reaction force in 1971.

Now, this is quite a controversial unit.

MRF military reaction force members were deployed in disguise,

vehicle checkpoints, trying to identify potential members of groups.

They're often operated in plain clothes using unmarked vehicles.

They used front companies, a mobile laundry service,

and a massage parlour 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 Raddenkief's book,

and who we're going to be talking to in a bonus.

But there's a scene there, which is dramatised

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.

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,

isn't it?

Yeah.

So the MRI is controversial, and particularly

because it's said that some of the tactics they use

are not that dissimilar to the ones used by the IRA

with claims of drive-by shootings,

as well as intelligence gatherings.

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 at all the time,

and they're bringing people in for interrogation.

So that really offers them the avenue

to approach people and to talk to them

and to try and persuade them to be an informer.

And if you're the British state,

if you're the army or if you're the FRU, right,

you have tremendous advantages in this context,

because you 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 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 fact that their part of a recruit

might be part of the IRA affiliated with the IRA,

might have committed some other legal infraction.

That's tremendous leverage for the army

as they're thinking about their agent pool

in Northern Ireland.

Yeah, that's right.

And I think this is one of the interesting aspects

of this is the different accounts of how the army,

and to some extent, you see 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.

And so you can see if you kind of control

aspects of the situation and the legal process,

you've got leverage to try and put pressure on people

to become informers and you can potentially

engineer situations in which maybe they lose a job

so they need money or you can do little things

like their car need expensive repairs so they need money.

And that's where I think the tension lies

over what kind of techniques were used.

So we're not talking about, you know, classic black male,

although that may have happened or, you know,

how much not clear, but it's forms of pressure.

And I think there's a, I guess there's an elasticity

and a kind of spread of how you can use that,

isn't there, David?

Well, by the mid 1970s, this intelligence focus

is really starting to pay off.

I mean, obviously, given the context we've just described,

the army would have a massive pool

of potential agents to recruit from.

And that's paying off.

But the IRA, I mean, this is, you know,

there's sort of a push and pull to this, isn't there?

Because the IRA is starting to 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,

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, Scapetici comes back in.

Yeah, that's right.

So Scapetici 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 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, we'll come back to this,

through a complicated fraud, a building fraud,

which is scamming the tax man.

But it means he can extend the house.

He's going on foreign holidays, buying TVs and cars.

As you said, he likes his football.

It's going to install a bar and it's nuke a table in his house.

He likes stuff.

He goes to Florida.

He goes to Florida on holiday at one point.

Yeah.

So 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, the IRA

has been struggling with this issue

of informers in their ranks in Belfast

because they can see that the security forces

have been, have clearly managed to penetrate them

and are trying to roll up as many of the leaders as they can.

Why do you think he went back to the IRA?

And the gap, I guess, kind of big subsents.

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?

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 slated

and to be on the outside.

And I think he's got that kind of drive to be inside

where things are happening.

He doesn't always get on with other people

and he's got kind of grudges and attitudes

towards other people as we'll see through his career.

And it'll 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

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 phrasology 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.

And so as you said, they're going to build

a more centralized counterintelligence function.

And in 1978, they're going to create something

called the internal security unit, the ISU,

which is their counterintelligence team.

But if listeners think this is a sort of

smoke and mirrors George Smiley-esque world

of counterintelligence or counter-espionage,

I wouldn't think again.

Because Scab is practicing a much more brutal

and dare I say, knuckle-dragging version

of counterintelligence and counterintelligence,

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.

Yeah, so he's an 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 Richler Raw's book

is an excellent study of Scapatiche.

It's called Steakknife's Dirty War

and Richler Raw, we should say, was an IRA member

who actually kind of encountered Scapatiche at this point.

So kind of understands of what he writes.

And in a 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 there 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, Scapatiche is going to be his deputy.

So Scapatiche is number two in the ISU.

And as you said, they have some interesting jobs

because one of them is vetting new recruits.

So anyone who comes in through Belfast,

Scapatiche would be one of those to interrogate them

in a dark room.

One person who had been an IRA member himself,

Aiman Collins writes about how this would typically take place

from his understanding of talking to people.

And he said, SCAP asked them all the same questions.

Had they any previous connection with the Republican movement?

Did they attend Republican marches, events or funerals?

Did they drink in well-known Republican pubs?

Had they ever sung rebel songs publicly?

Were they known in the areas IRA supporters?

Had they ever been arrested?

Did they have a criminal record?

If so, what for?

If they answered yes to any question,

then SCAP would ask follow-up questions.

When, where and with whom did they attend the march,

the event or the funeral?

And the most significant question was,

why did they want to join the IRA?

So that's one function is to vet your incoming members basically.

And he also looks at failed or compromised operations

for evidence of security breaches.

And this main role, though, is interviewing individuals

who've been detained or arrested,

because, of course, the IRA is massively penetrated

and they're deeply fearful that the Brits

are conducting these kind of jailhouse in many ways,

recruitments, right?

But if 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 SCAPATici

are trying to root out.

Yeah, that's right.

Because I mean, the IRA is very aware

that so many people are being swept up by the British.

That's when they try and recruit them.

And the IRA have something called the Green Book,

which was the training and induction manual for new volunteers,

which told them what to expect if they're detained.

And the instructions were, if you're detained,

say nothing, sign nothing, see nothing, hear nothing.

Say nothing, we should say,

is the title of Patrick Rabenkeev's book in the TV series

and we're going to talk to him on a bonus.

But you know, that's the instruction

because they know that's when it happens.

You know, the pitch is made by the Brits.

But when someone is released from detention,

they get questioned by the ISU, by SCAPATici's unit.

And it's partly, they know not everyone's going to be,

you know, pitched out or termed.

But they want to understand what the Brits are asking.

You know, they want to know what are the tactics

the Brits are using to try and turn someone.

And SCAP is the main interrogator,

which is interesting because he's the number two

to McGee.

And McGee will kind of take this approach

of asking questions in a clear voice,

take his time, have the person kind of tell their story

in detail, kind of look to see, okay,

are they hesitated, 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 questions after question,

have them tell you their story over and over again,

and you're kind of looking for inconsistencies

or anomalies in that story to understand,

you know, and then if you find them, you zero it on those

and kind of try to break someone down that way,

so you can understand if they're telling you the truth.

Yeah, I mean, because, you know,

they're questioning a lot of people,

but it's only if you're suspected of being an agent

for some reason that things get particularly dark.

And then you get taken to a safe house,

tend to be putting a boiler suit, put in a dark and room

with a chair facing a wall,

you can't see who's asking the 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,

where a scap,

Tichy 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 where is McGee is looking for inconsistencies?

Scappa Tichy, his idea is to tell them,

he already knows what that person has done.

He's the bad cop.

Scappa Tichy is the bad cop,

and it's better for them to confess quickly,

rather than, you know, keep him waiting.

And Richard O'Rourke has a great quote,

describing scaps kind of style.

And so Scappa'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 at 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, you would say,

you have 10 minutes to go,

five minutes to go, two minutes to tell me everything.

That often worked, people talked,

hoping they wouldn't get tortured.

And I think it's interesting there

that he's kind of dangling.

I can probably get you out of this,

as this gives someone hope that if they just,

if they just tell you the truth,

it'll be over and everything will be fine.

And of course, that's usually not the case.

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting.

He would later remark that he was telling them

that he'd set them free if they confess,

but he would admit that's a lie.

And he says, everybody being what they are,

everybody has a breaking point, you know?

And they think they're going home, but they don't.

Now, after an ISU investigation,

a court martial takes place,

which technically consists of three members

of equal or higher rank than the accused,

you can see the kind of sense in which the IRA

is very much seeing itself as a military organization

in its own perception of itself.

And there'd be a member from the Army Council,

the general headquarters,

the Army Council being the kind of top body,

and an observer would inform the Army Council,

who would then ratify a sentence for an informer.

And the sentence, if you're a serious informer,

would often be death.

Now, the IRA normally killed agents by shooting them

in the head, also known as the nut.

So the ISU became known as the nutting squad.

And that was how they were often referred to,

because they usually put two bullets

to the back of the head or the nut.

And Iman Collins, who is the former IRA member,

and was later killed by the IRA,

quotes a conversation he had with John DeGuin's

Gapotechi in his book, Killing Rage.

And he writes,

I asked whether they always told people

that they were going to be shot.

Skap said it depended on the circumstances.

He turned to John Joe, who's his boss, John Joe McGee.

I started joking about one informer who it confessed

after being offered an amnesty.

Skap told the man he would take him home,

reassuring him he's gotten nothing to worry about.

Skap had told him to keep the blindfold on

for security reasons as they walked from the car.

It was funny, this is Skap 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 **** in the back of the heads

of 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 brick layer

with a bit of a penchant for, you know,

violence to someone who's executing it regularly

in his role inside the IRA.

Yeah, and the ISU also always sought confessions

from these people.

And they often recorded them on audio tapes

where someone had to admit to being an agent

for the security forces.

They were then played to families.

Sometimes Skap teach you 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 confessed to anything.

So it's hard to know.

So as we reach the end of the 1970s,

Skap teaches 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 Skap

teaching himself at this point is an agent for the British state.

Well, let's end this episode there.

And next time we will look at how Skap has recruited

and how really how the British state

for the 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 Redden, Keith who is the author of Say Nothing

and the upcoming book London Falling.

That's right.

And also don't forget that live show tickets

are now available for the fourth and fifth of September

for those events we're doing at the South Bank Center in London.

So just look for that on the South Bank Center website.

But otherwise, we will see you next time.

We'll see you next time.