British agent inside IRA ‘saved more lives than he took’, defence officials claim

The British spy who worked as an IRA executioner may have saved more lives than he took, former defence officials have argued.

A long-awaited report implicated the notorious agent codenamed Stakeknife, widely believed to be the senior IRA member Freddie Scappaticci, in 14 murders and 15 abductions during the Troubles.

The nine-year investigation was highly critical of the Army plant within the IRA’s Internal Security Unit (ISU) and of the security service’s efforts to shield the IRA killer of suspected informants.

Families of victims killed by the ISU called on authorities to tell them the truth and said the probe – which was known as Operation Kenova and cost almost £40m – missed a “key detail” in not naming Stakeknife.

For years, security services and army officers protected Stakeknife, believing his intelligence was vital – and responsible for saving many lives. Senior Army figures treated him as the “crown jewel” of British intelligence, and he had a reputation as “the goose that laid the golden eggs”.

The report estimated that the number of lives saved by his intelligence-gathering was between the “high single figures and low double figures”.

While the inquiry’s author, Sir Iain Livingstone, concluded it was probable that Stakeknife’s actions “resulted in more lives being lost than were saved”, senior military figures questioned that assumption.

The inquiry recovered and reviewed some 90 per cent of the reports attributed to Stakeknife. This amounted to 3,517 reports – including 377 in an 18-month period – much of which was “valuable”.

Defence sources said that it was therefore impossible to know how much more was gleaned from the agent in reports that were not reviewed, or went unrecorded.

Furthermore, the report said: “It must be acknowledged that the complete reporting picture was not recovered, e.g. intelligence passed orally over the phone may not have been recorded and would now be impossible to recover.”

Defence sources argued it was impossible to quantify the potential benefits of Skateknife’s prolific intelligence reports.

Colonel Tim Collins, a former British Army officer who served with the SAS and as commander of the Royal Irish Regiment during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, said agents such as Stakeknife helped prevent wider bloodshed.

Writing for The Telegraph, he said: “The report lays bare a catalogue of failures – operational, ethical and institutional – that cannot be ignored.

“But Kenova also risks obscuring a far more important truth: if we let one compromised agent define the entire intelligence war, we distort history and abandon the reality that informants and covert agents saved thousands of lives during the Troubles.”

Col Collins added: “The question is not whether agent-handling was perfect. It wasn’t. The question is whether it was necessary. And it was – because the alternative was far worse.”

Col Philip Ingram, a former officer in Army intelligence – who claimed to have known some of Stakeknife’s handlers – insisted the agent would have saved more people than investigators have claimed.

He told The Telegraph: “Stakeknife will have saved directly high singles [single figures] or low doubles of people.

“What’s impossible to put out are those he will have saved indirectly by other operations being disrupted or the right comments [that] pushed other potential operations in another direction. Stakeknife and other agents will have saved hundreds if not thousands of lives.”

He added the intelligence gathered may not have always been acted upon, but could have helped to shape future operations. “You need bad people in bad organisations to run as agents. It doesn’t make them good people. Stakeknife was not a hero,” he added.

Sir Ben Wallace, the former defence secretary and former Army officer, said the use of agents and informers had been vital in forcing the IRA into negotiations that led to the Good Friday peace deal.

“What is true is that the IRA was defeated because of the penetration of the organisation by agents,” he said. “It got to the stage where the IRA couldn’t move because of people inside the organisation informing on them. The use of informers was vital in defeating terrorism.

“The hardest thing in intelligence services to deal with is the more important an informer is, the more likely they are to be right at the centre of the organisation, and that is a difficult line to tread. Occasionally they get it wrong. They are risking their lives to keep us safe and there is no easy solution.”

IRA executioner ‘killed with MI5’s knowledge’

The 164-page report by Sir Iain, a former chief constable of Police Scotland, was critical of Stakeknife’s handlers, detailing how the rogue agent acted as an IRA executioner with the knowledge of MI5 and the British Army.

Operation Kenova found that MI5 was aware of the identity of Stakeknife, who spied for the Army, from the “outset”, and knew about his involvement in the notorious IRA death squad.

He was also twice taken “on holiday” by Army handlers when they knew he was wanted for murder, it found.

The report said that new evidence undermined previous claims MI5 had only a “peripheral” role in connection with Stakeknife and concluded that it was in fact “closely involved”.

It said that from the outset, MI5 was aware of his identity and role within the ISU as well as his “involvement in the abduction and interrogation of suspected agents who were then murdered”.

An interim report last year found that Stakeknife probably cost more lives than he saved and that some “on the inside” of the security forces viewed him “through rose-tinted spectacles”.

His reputation should have raised alarm bells because the comparison was “rooted in fables and fairy tales”.

Stakeknife was recruited by the Force Research Unit (FRU), a covert section of the British military intelligence corps.

He was paid hundreds of thousands of pounds by the British Army while he kidnapped, tortured and killed victims as part of the ISU.

The IRA unit became known as the “Nutting Squad”, a nickname derived from the method of killing suspected informants with a shot to the back of the head.

Detailing the murders and abductions Stakeknife was involved in, the report said that he authorised and carried out killings as part of the IRA.

It revealed that in some cases, Stakeknife played a central role in securing “confessions” from victims at IRA “court martials”, with the British Army “aware” victims could be murdered, and information was not passed on to police.

Families of victims still searching for ‘truth’

Eugene Simons was disappeared in 1981. His body was found by chance in a shallow grave in County Louth.

Moira Todd, the sister of Mr Simons, said her family had searched the streets of Dublin and Dundalk for years trying to find him. All the while, she said, the state authorities knew what had happened to him.

“I just want someone to take me into a room and tell me the truth,” she said. “If they want a non-disclosure agreement, I’ll sign it. I just want to know the truth.

“It’s 45 years ago, almost to the day since my brother was taken and tortured by Stakeknife. He was murdered after. The authorities had all the details.

“Forty-five years on, I’m sitting here, really none the wiser, and hearing about the truth being suppressed, and the Government avoiding accountability, and it’s just totally frustrating.”

Paul Wilson, whose father Thomas Emmanuel Wilson was also killed by the ISU in 1987, questioned the report for missing a “key detail” in not naming Stakeknife.

“You can’t investigate the agent known as Stakeknife, spend all the money, and then not find out who he is – that seems like a gaping own goal,” he said.

“Kenova are doing the investigation but it never feels like they’re in complete control of the investigation. It always feels like when they get so far, it’s no more, stop.”

Stakeknife was unmasked as Scappaticci by the media in 2003. MI5 relocated him to England, where he lived in a detached house in Surrey and drove a Mercedes.

Scappaticci died in 2023 aged 77, but the Government has still refused to confirm his identity, in keeping with a longstanding protocol to neither confirm nor deny (NCND) agents’ identity.

On Tuesday, Sir Iain called for the Government to make an exception and name Stakeknife, saying there was a “compelling ethical case for the UK government to derogate from the NCND policy regarding the agent Stakeknife. It is in the public interest that Stakeknife is named.”

Jon Boutcher, chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), said there was “no good reason” why the identity of Stakeknife could not be revealed, saying the Government’s refusal to name the agent “is untenable and bordering on farce”.

Security forces sorry for providing evidence ‘late’

Kenova was also critical of MI5’s late release of additional files relating to Stakeknife, calling it “extremely disappointing”.

MI5 shared the further material eight years after the independent investigation began, which the report found showed the agency had “earlier and greater knowledge of the agent than previously stated” and wanted to “avoid any prosecutions relating to Stakeknife”.

Despite his prolific intelligence-gathering, MI5 “expressed concerns and reservations about Stakeknife in the early and later stages of his operation as an agent”. However, Kenova found “no evidence” these concerns were escalated.

Sir Ken McCallum, the MI5 director general, apologised for the failure to disclose information about Stakeknife.

He said: “MI5 retrieved and provided to the Kenova investigation a very large volume of historical records. 

“Regrettably, after this extensive disclosure process was complete, we discovered additional relevant information. MI5 informed Kenova and shared the material without delay.

“I apologised to Sir Iain Livingstone, and asked former Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Helen Ball to conduct an independent review to establish why the additional material had not been initially found.

“This review concluded that none of the material was deliberately withheld, but made recommendations on how MI5 could improve its processes for the future. MI5 is now implementing all of ex-AC Ball’s recommendations. I repeat today my apology for the late discoveries.”

[Source: Daily Telegraph]