The ‘Stakeknife’ investigation and the dark reality of double agents

The decision by Barra McGrory, the Director of Public Prosecutions in Northern Ireland, to recommend an official investigation into the activities of Freddie Scappaticci – the alleged IRA enforcer and British agent known as ‘Stakeknife’ – seems likely to unearth some of the most painful, long-buried secrets of the ‘dirty war’ in Northern Ireland. In so doing it will raise difficult questions about the permissible limits of state intelligence-gathering which remain highly relevant today.

Scappaticci, who denied being a British agent before departing Northern Ireland in 2003, is nonetheless widely reported to have been a longstanding head of the IRA’s ‘nutting squad’, or internal security unit, which was responsible for identifying and punishing informers. In IRA circles there was no more despised figure than the informer, or ‘tout’, whose information had the power to disrupt IRA operations and put its members behind bars. Within the IRA, the declared punishment for informing was death, often after a taped ‘confession’ had been obtained by torture.

At the same time as seeking out suspected informers – a task which former IRA members have attested that ‘Scap’ pursued with brutal relish – it is alleged that Scappaticci was the British army’s key agent at the heart of the IRA.