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Stakeknife a Double Act May 13 2003









Exclusive By Stephen Dempster





A SECOND Stakeknife is still operating at the heart of the IRA, a security source has claimed.



The British agent, run by the security forces in conjunction with Alfredo Scapatticci, is supplying top-grade intelligence from the Provos' highest echelons.



The senior informer has been named to the News Letter by the same security source which revealed Scapatticci's identity to this newspaper more than a month ago.



At the same time as the Special Branch operative confidently named Scapatticci - the now outed west Belfast republican and British agent in the IRA - he also named the second man.



''Stakeknife is an operation referring to two people, not one,'' he said.



He went on to provide details on Scappaticci which have now been widely publicised.



In naming the second man, he offered more details.



In particular, he said he was a republican of many years standing from north Belfast.



He specified his age and pinpointed where he lived.



The News Letter has taken the decision, on legal and security grounds, not to name the second agent at this time.



Senior British intelligence officers are expected to be questioned about Stakeknife and his links linked to a series of IRA murders of informants.



London Metropolitan Commissioner Sir John Stevens will now have to widen his probe and, not only will Scappaticci be interviewed but the men he worked for are also to be investigated as part of an inquiry which is set to shake the military establishment.



Yesterday, the IRA was also still reeling from the Stakeknife revelation and launched a review of internal security.



Added to that, the story was ''the talk of the town'' in republican areas.



In Scappaticci's home estate of Riverdale, Andersonstown, rumours were circulating that he had not actually left the area and was still at home.



For the IRA, the exposure of Freddie ''Scap'' Scappaticci as a double agent was a stunning blow.



As head of the Nutting Squad, one of the IRA's key men in tracing down informers within the ranks, Stakeknife oversaw interrogations, torture and murder - a perfect cover for his real role.



In return for what is alleged to have been a free rein from the security services to play a full role as a Provisional, he then provided valuable information on the IRA, its operations and members.



He is the man suspected of tipping off security chiefs involved in the undercover operation when three Provos were shot dead by the SAS in Gibraltar in 1987.



As a double agent, he was allegedly on £80,000 a year from the Government. A security source who was aware of Scappaticci's work said he answered to military intelligence and nobody else.



But his name - and, now, another man's name - has been widely discussed in security and media circles in recent times.



Many of his victims were also IRA double agents whom he feared could blow his cover if they were not killed off, according to security sources.



One said yesterday: ''The only people who we were interested in preserving were those people who had made up their mind - and will never get a medal for it - who detested the organisation but who were prepared to stay in it and report on it.



''Over the years, they have been belittled and maligned but, in actual fact, they were among the bravest souls around.



''Scappaticci did it for whatever reason but he did it in the full knowledge that if, at any time information was mishandled, his life was lost.''



s.dempster@newsletter.co.uk

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Replying to:

Belfast Telegraph

Echoes of the Collins era as questions of strategy arise



By Steven King

email: featureseditor@belfasttelegraph.co.uk





YOU can tell things are bad for the Republican Movement when Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness disappear. Poor Gerry Kelly has had to firefight, creating confusion wherever possible.



For once, I understand, the questions being asked in dismayed republican districts are of the republican leadership, not the Brits.



The key to Gerry Adams' rise from Official obscurity to a commanding role was his championing of the "cell structure". Small active service units of half-a-dozen "volunteers" were reputedly far more impervious to infiltration than the old "battalions."



The trouble was this created a weak point in the central internal security structure, supposedly staffed by those beyond reproach.



But who allowed Freddie Scappaticci to continue unchecked for more than two decades despite obvious signs of infiltration?



The cell structure necessitated a much smaller, more focused IRA. But the reduction in the number of "volunteers" ensured the security services developed a detailed picture of the whole movement by concentrating on handling deftly just a few informers.



The cell structure meant even relatively light casualties were hard to bear.



In 1983-84 and in 1987-88 the Provos lost around 15 and 20 members respectively to the SAS, most spectacularly at Loughgall.



The Provos themselves were aware they had a problem. In late 1987, they acknowledged, "By any standard, it is a high rate of attrition by a ruthless and undeniably sophisticated British enemy."



In October 1989, after a Crumlin Road jail breakout was easily foiled, an internal IRA memo went round saying, "Our conclusion is the BB (Belfast Brigade) may well be compromised."



But nothing, it seems, was done to correct the problem, or nothing very successful. Why?



Gerry Adams is occasionally fond of comparisons between himself and Michael Collins. He is, one assumes, well-read on the subject of British tactics during the so-called War of Independence of 1920-21.



For once, could history have repeated itself? Just as the British State infiltrated the IRA in those years, weeding out hardliners, allowing more political elements to rise through the ranks, so it appears it was in the Eighties.



Crucially, was this strategy tacitly encouraged by senior republicans themselves?



Whether or not that was the case, we are, at last, seeing in stark relief the extent to which the security services delivered the relative peace we now enjoy.



It is time we began to view the peace process not as some present from a beneficent nationalist and republican elite but the inevitable consequence of Mrs Thatcher relaxing the leash.



Once she realised the promised security benefits from the Anglo-Irish Agreement were illusory it was time for a bit of stick.



By these means a re-heated version of a Sunningdale-type internal settlement, subtly reworked and improved, was met with relief by the republican leadership.



The use of Covert Human Intelligence Sources or informers has been an essential weapon in the war against terrorism. It still is.



Thousands of lives have been saved by these means, dirty and underhand as they might appear.



But then the "army" Gerry Adams so pompously refers to is even less of an "army" than that which operated in 1920-21.



It is not an army at all. It is a cruel, unanswerable terrorist gang without obvious democratic legitimacy.



The real Army is different. It treads a fine line between surrendering to the paramilitaries the element of surprise and becoming equally depraved.



Tempting as it might be, democrats cannot simply ignore security force malpractice or write it off completely as being minor in the wider scheme of things (which it assuredly is).



Take Sir John Stevens' latest report. Many of the conclusions make very uncomfortable reading, notably that threat intelligence was not supplied even-handedly, and that the murders of Pat Finucane and Adam Lambert could have been prevented.



The harsh fact is, whether or not Pat Finucane was part of the Republican Movement, as has been alleged, the State still had a duty of care. To say it was a war and bad things happen in war is to concede legitimacy to a criminal conspiracy.



How Stevens imagines, though, that informers can be prevented from participating in terrorist crimes without revealing themselves, I am not quite sure.



Somehow, "Sorry, Mein Kommandant, I've a headache so I'm not up for blasting children today," seems an implausible line for any paramilitary to come out with, informer or not.



The Stakeknife story will run and run. It is still unclear whether Stakeknife was, indeed, Scappaticci, or Scappaticci alone, or whether "Scap" is short for Scapegoat - for an even more senior republican.



You don't need to be a republican conspiracy theorist, though, to imagine bad luck will continue to haunt the republican leadership so long as it doesn't do as it's told.



http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/story.jsp?story=406205