[A-List] UK state: Northern Ireland

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

The story of Stakeknife is full of holes

Such as, if this man was a spy, why didn't the MoD protect him?

Danny Morrison
Friday May 16, 2003
The Guardian

Among some of the stories that have appeared in the newspapers in relation
to "Stakeknife", the alleged senior IRA informer, is that he was involved in
setting up myself and others for arrest 13 years ago.

On Sunday, January 7 1990, I was contacted by the IRA, who said that a
member whom they had arrested and interrogated had admitted being an
informer. This man, Sandy Lynch, had also confessed that his special branch
handlers had been forcing him to set up for assassination two well-known
republicans. They wanted these two men killed in revenge for an undercover
operation that had gone wrong, resulting in the death of one of their
colleagues.

In November 1989 Lynch had tipped off his handlers that a rifle was being
moved to a house in Belfast in preparation for an ambush. Incredibly, two
different groups of policemen - none aware of the presence of the other -
raided the house from the front and the back, shot at each other, resulting
in the death of RUC officer Ian Johnston. Special branch was furious, Lynch
had claimed.

Lynch was abducted and questioned by the IRA after a number of IRA
operations had gone wrong and suspicion fell on him. Lynch admitted being an
informer. He agreed that he would go to a Sinn Fein press conference and
would name his handlers and accuse them of forcing him to set the two men up
for assassination.

It was a "good" story, further proof of an RUC policy of shoot-to-kill. I
was the Sinn Fein director of publicity and was sent for. But when I arrived
at the house to meet Lynch, a raiding party of British army and police jeeps
swept into the street behind me. I tried to escape but was arrested next
door. Lynch, whom I never met, gave evidence in our trial and said that
while he had agreed to go to a press conference he didn't believe it would
happen and was convinced that he was going to be shot. We were variously
sentenced to between eight and 12 years' imprisonment.

At our trial Lynch - who was also found to be a liar by the judge - said
that one of his interrogators was Freddie Scappaticci and that Scappaticci
withdrew from the house on Saturday night. I had arrived on Sunday night. In
the early 1970s I had been interned in Long Kesh at the same time as "Scap",
as he was known, but I doubt if I have spoken to him more than once or twice
since, and certainly not in the last 14 years.

In October 2000 the British MoD issued gagging notices prohibiting
newspapers from naming an IRA informer, working for British intelligence's
force research unit (FRU), whose codename was Stakeknife. On the back of the
Stevens inquiry there was a claim that in order to protect Stakeknife from
an Ulster freedom fighters' assassination bid in 1987 another FRU agent,
Brian Nelson, diverted a UFF murder gang to the home of Francisco
Notarantonio, whom they shot dead.

I have always found something odd about this story. Surely, when this was
revealed in October 2000, the UFF men involved in the 1987 killing would
have remembered who was their thwarted target? After all, Nelson had been
unmasked as a British agent in 1990 and loyalists are bound to have
reflected and speculated on Nelson's decisions. There is only one
conclusion: loyalists, who notoriously cannot keep secrets, did not know who
Stakeknife was.

If Stakeknife was such a senior figure, sabotaging the IRA, then throughout
the past few years he or she did not do such a great job when one recalls
the mortar attack on No 10 in 1991 and the bombings in Bishopsgate and
Canary Wharf or on the British army's HQ in Lisburn in 1997 when a soldier
lost his life. It is alleged that last year the IRA broke into the special
branch HQ at Castlereagh and stole intelligence files and had a spy ring at
the heart of government. If so, where was Stakeknife to stop them? Had he
been retired or come under suspicion and been frozen out?

Stakeknife's usefulness as an informant might have expired, but rumours of
his existence and claims about his seniority have been used in recent years
by British intelligence in an attempt to sow confusion and fuel republican
dissent. Republican dissidents latched on to these reports to support the
contention that Stakeknife was someone close to the Adams' leadership and he
or she - through dirty work - had enervated the IRA's capabilities and
steered the movement towards compromise and the peace process - as if
republicans couldn't work out for themselves the wisdom of the peace
strategy.

I think we can take with a pinch of salt some of the more lurid claims being
made about the state of morale within the Republican movement. One national
newspaper wrote: "Meanwhile in the north the IRA appealed last night for
calm among members, but some spoke of 'the heart being ripped out' of the
organisation by the controversy, which had the potential to destroy it."

I live in west Belfast, where it is claimed that Stakeknife has been living
for over 20 years. The above quote reflects nothing of the true stoic mood
of the people in this area who examine closely all that is said, and by
whom. And what they see is bizarre.

For years the British MoD issued gagging orders against newspapers which
said they knew the real identity of Stakeknife. When those newspapers did
just that last weekend, the MoD was uncharacteristically talkative.

First, it said that Stakeknife was out of Ireland and in a British army base
in England. Security correspondents repeated that story until a journalist
found the west Belfast man who was being named, Freddie Scappaticci, at
home. The MoD then said Stakeknife was not with them.

Second, MoD sources - who for years had been protecting Stakeknife -
"confirmed" in off-the-record briefings that the man being named was their
agent. Why did they confirm this when they knew that no one had fled Ireland
or was in their custody? Why would they break one of the cardinal rules of
intelligence (which is to remain silent) and place this man in danger?

Scappaticci told the journalist on Saturday night, then again through his
solicitor on Monday, and again on television on Wednesday, that no one had
warned him that he was going to be named as Stakeknife and he has denied all
the allegations.

Stakeknife, if he exists, can do no more damage to the IRA. But if what is
attributed to him is true - that he was allowed to cull informers who were
no longer of any use to British intelligence - then he is a huge liability
to the British MoD and the British government because he can reveal many
truths about their dirty war in Ireland.

· Danny Morrison is a former publicity director for Sinn Fein.