Reply #64: STAKEKNIFE -- But you knew that, right?

[HamdenRice]

Stakeknife <the British agent within the IRA> is also said to have facilitated Operation Santa, just before Christmas 1978, when he and another IRA man known as “Bald Eagle” were sent to England to activate a team of IRA sleepers and launch a bombing campaign in Britain. All police leave was cancelled and tanks and armoured cars were deployed at Heathrow airport.<74>


http://www.birw.org/Stakeknife.html

STAKEKNIFE

Freddie “Scap”<1> Scappaticci has been named as the FRU agent Stakeknife<2>.

His name was published on 11th May 2003 in the Sunday Tribune, the Sunday Herald, the Sunday World and the Sunday People<3>. The Scottish Sunday Herald approached the D Notice Committee in the days prior to publication on 11th May 2003 and were told that they would not be injuncted if they named Stakeknife so long as a newspaper in another jurisdiction had named him already. When they asked the committee whether they would put Scappaticci’s life at risk if they named him, he was told that Stakeknife was out of the country<4>, which was apparently untrue. Andrew Jaspan, editor of the Sunday Herald, waited for the first editions of the three Irish Sunday papers that named Stakeknife before going to press himself<5>. Some newspapers claimed that Stakeknife was named as Scappaticci on the Cryptome website, but this was not in fact the case<6>.

Scappaticci is in his late fifties<7>. He comes from a large, staunchly republican family in west Belfast. He has had homes in both Dublin and Belfast<8>, where he lives at Riverdale Park North in Andersonstown<9>.

He joined the IRA in 1970 and was interned with Gerry Adams in 1971<10>. He was interned again in 1974<11>. He is reported as having approached British military intelligence in 1978 and volunteered to act as an informer after he was severely beaten up by a Belfast IRA man<12>. He became the Force Research Unit’s most highly placed agent within the IRA<13>. A dedicated team, known as “the rat hole” was set up within FRU solely to handle Stakeknife<14>.

Over time, Stakeknife rose through the ranks of the IRA to become a key figure in the “security department” known as the “nutting squad”, which sought out and eliminated informers and security force agents. He is alleged to have been second in command under John Joe Magee<15>. The IRA is said to have executed over 50 people: 16 IRA members, 7 ex-members, and 24 others.<16>

Stakeknife is alleged to have been trained in interrogation techniques in Libya in the 1980s<17>. It has been alleged that four men who supplied information to the security forces about the IRA have been interrogated by or have escaped interrogation by Stakeknife: Martin McGartland, Raymond Gilmore, Sandy Lynch<18>, and the man calling himself Kevin Fulton<19>. The latter, a former British army agent, has lodged a complaint with the police in London that Scappaticci threatened to kill him in 1994 because he suspected Fulton had thwarted the attempted murder of a senior RUC officer, Derek Martindale<20>. Another informer, Eamon Collins, who was subsequently murdered by the IRA, has written about Scappaticci’s role in the nutting squad, of which Collins was also a member, in his book Killing Rage<21>.

Stakeknife was allegedly paid £80,000 a year for the information he provided<22>, although one report said he received only £200 a week<23>. He spent very little of the money, which he regarded as being for his family<24>. It was paid into a secret bank account in Gibraltar<25>.

His career spanned the terms of office of three prime ministers: Margaret Thatcher, John Major, and Tony Blair<26>.

He is alleged to have been involved in the following deaths:

· Paul Valente, murdered by the IRA in 1980, allegedly for revealing to Special Branch the identity of an IRA mole within the RUC<27>

· Maurice Gilvarry, an alleged informer, murdered by the IRA in January 1981<28>

· Patrick Trainor, murdered in February 1981; his family denied that he was an informer<29>

· Vincent Robinson, found shot in the head in June 1981; again it was disputed that he was an informer<30>

· Anthony Braniff, a senior member of the IRA killed in September 1981; the IRA have issued an apology for his death and confirmed that he was not an informer<31>

· John Torbett, shot by the IRA in January 1982 after defying an IRA exclusion order<32>

· Seamus Morgan, an IRA member and election worker for Bobby Sands, abducted in February 1982; his body was found on 6th March 1982; his family denied he was an informer<33>

· Patrick Scott, a former member of the IRA whose body was found on 3rd April 1982; he had given himself up to the IRA in order to convince them he was not an informer<34>

· James Young, an IRA man who was also allegedly an informer, murdered in February 1984<35>

· Brian McNally, another IRA member whose status as an informer is disputed, found tortured and killed in July 1984<36>

· Kevin Coyle, murdered in February 1985 after providing a taped confession to the IRA that he was an informer<37>

· John Corcoran, an IRA man allegedly sacrificed to save another informer, Séan O’Callaghan, murdered in March 1985<38>

· Catherine and Gerard Mahon, a couple who confessed to being RUC informers, murdered in 1985<39>

· Damien McCrory, found dead in October 1985; the IRA said he had confessed to being an RUC informer, but he was of low inteligence and any such confession must have been questionable<40>

· an RUC Special Branch informer known by the codename Campaign, also known as DJ, murdered by the IRA in 1985 ]<42>

· Frank Hegarty, an IRA quartermaster in Derry who was an informer. He revealed the whereabouts of the large Eksund consignment of weapons from Libya. Margaret Thatcher allowed the Irish government to seize the dump. Hegarty’s cover was blown and he was removed from Northern Ireland, but he returned after receiving assurances from the IRA that he would not be killed. However, he was murdered by the IRA in 1986.<43>

· David McVeigh, an IRA member murdered in September 1986; his family deny he was an informer<44>

· Charles McIlmurry, an IRA man who confessed to being an informer during a supposed amnesty; the IRA murdered him in April 1987<45>

· Thomas Wilson, a member of the Official IRA whose family denied he was an informer, murdered in June 1987<46>

· Eamonn Maguire, a former IRA member whose family deny that he had worked as an informer for An Garda Síochána<47>

· Francisco Notorantonio, killed to divert loyalists from targeting Stakeknife, October 1987<48>

· 8 IRA men - Patrick Kelly, Patrick McKearney, Declan Arthurs, Seamus Donnelly, Eugene Kelly, Michael Gormley, Gerard O’Callaghan, James Lynagh – and passer-by Antony Hughes, killed in a security force ambush at Loughgall, November 1987<49>

· an unnamed IRA man ] who questioned Stakeknife’s trustworthiness, 1988

· IRA members Sean Savage, Daniel McCann and Mairead Farrell, killed by the SAS on Gibraltar, 1988<52>

· Joseph Fenton, an estate agent who was allegedly an informer, 1989<53>; he is alleged to have allowed empty properties to be used as safe houses by the IRA but informed the police, who bugged the houses<54>; it has been alleged that FRU could have rescued him but let him die in order to preserve Stakeknife’s cover<55>

· John McAnulty, whose body was found in July 1989; his friends deny that he had been an RUC informer for 17 years<56>

· Paddy Flood, killed by the IRA as an informer in 1990<57>

· Co Louth farmer Tom Oliver, tortured and killed by the IRA in 1991<58>; he allegedly passed information to An Garda Síochána about IRA activity on the border, endangering a safe house used by Stakeknife for interrogations<59>

· Rory Finnis, murdered by the IRA as an alleged informer in June 1991<60>

· IRA men Aidan Starrs, Gregory Burns and John Dignam, tortured and executed in 1992 after they murdered Burns’ former girlfriend, Margaret Perry, who had threatened to expose them as informers<61>; the three men were allegedly FRU agents<62>

· Robin Hill, another IRA member whose family dispute he was an informer, murdered in August 1992<63>

· Gerald Holmes, murdered in August 1992, after the IRA extracted a taped confession that he had been an informer, which his family do not accept<64>

· Christopher Harte, whose body was fund in February 1993; it is alleged that the security forces may have framed him to look like an informer<65>

· James Kelly, whose family dispute IRA claims that he was an informer, murdered in March 1993<66>

· John Mulhern, an alleged informer murdered in June 1993<67>

· Michael Brown, whom the IRA alleged had been an IRA informer, murdered in April 1994<68>

· Caroline Moreland, allegedly falsely accused of being a Special branch informer, 17th July 1994<69>

· Joseph O’Connor, RIRA man shot in 2000, allegedly because he threatened to expose Stakeknife<70>.