Intelligence chiefs face quiz over top spy

Senior British intelligence officers are expected to be questioned about their No.1 spy in Northern Ireland who has been linked to a series of IRA murders of informants, it emerged tonight.

Not only will Freddie Scappaticci be interviewed after fleeing his west Belfast home, but the men he worked for are also to be investigated as part of an inquiry which is set to shake the military establishment.

Sinn Fein said Scappaticci’s family had said he was still in Belfast and looking to consult lawyers but security sources revealed that he had gone into hiding in Britain.

The sources said police helped smuggle the 45-year-old who was once a close associate of Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams out of the country because he feared for his life.

His red-brick semi-detached home at Riverdale Park North in the Andersonstown area was vacant tonight.

London Metropolitan Commissioner Sir John Stevens, who is heading up an inquiry into collusion involving military intelligence, police special branch and loyalist paramilitaries will now have to widen his probe after the exposure of the spy codenamed Stakeknife which left the Provisional leadership stunned.

All military intelligence officers who worked with him after he became an informer in 1978 are certain to be asked key questions.

Scappaticci, a builder, was alleged to have been second in command of the IRA’s internal security unit which was responsible for discipline, as well as the identifying, interrogating, torturing and killing of informers.

His defection after more than 25 years working at the heart of the Provisionals is a devastating blow for the republican movement.

It also heightened demands for a full scale judicial inquiry into the work of military intelligence in Northern Ireland.

Taoioseach Bertie Ahern said he was alarmed at reports that a spy within the IRA had been allegedly free to murder. He intended to raise the affair with British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Demands for a judicial inquiry intensified after some security sources admitted a blind eye was turned to IRA killings of suspected informants in order to protect the army’s team of agents.

Scappaticci was a feared member of the IRA’s internal security unit in the city but not as ruthless as the man he worked under, according to security sources in Belfast tonight. He has been operating as a double agent, allegedly on £80,000 a year since 1987.

Some sources claimed his role had been exaggerated, but others who were aware of Scappaticci’s work for British military intelligence insisted it was crucial as part of the secret war against the Provisionals.

They said it also helped keep tabs on senior republicans, including a number who hold high office within Sinn Fein.

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 today: “We are in peacetime, but people tend to forget that during the 70s and 80s it was for us a battle of survival. Quite frankly, if a member of the IRA indicated they were going to take steps to eliminate another member of the IRA, nobody lost much sleep.

“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, referred to things which crawl out from under stones. In actual fact they were among those of the bravest souls around.

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

“We were fighting a war, and the attitude of mind then was that if PIRA wanted to wipe out PIRA, it meant it was one less terrorist to deal with.

“We (the police and army) were not independent observers or referees. We were the subject of their attention and if internal fighting cause them to be less effective, then it was to the (British) government’s interest.”

Scappaticci was alleged to have tipped off British security chiefs about IRA volunteers who were later shot dead by three SAS in Gibraltar where they planned a car bomb attack in March 1988.

It has been claimed as well that he was involved in a series of murders of Provisionals accused of informing and alerting security forces in January 1990 about an IRA operation which ended with the arrest of Danny Morrison, one of Sinn Fein’s senior members at the time.

He was later jailed for eight years for unlawfully imprisoning a police informer.

The security source added tonight: “The military worked very hard to preserve him from being in charge of any one outfit, because the person who survives the longest is generally the second in command.

“He was running for a long time and provided a steady flow of information which would have more or less gone to the top. He was entirely owned by the military, and basically other agencies survived on what they chose to give, the form in which they chose to give it and when they chose to give it.

“You were never too sure if the information was sanitised, or re-written. There was no capacity to verify its accuracy. It may have affected quality of the information, but at least it helped preserve the individual, and that’s why Scappattci stayed with us all this time. I wouldn’t say he was the most important (agent) we ever had, but he certainly was the longest lasting.

“He had access to those people who were in charge of activities in the greater Belfast area. The republican movement is riven with jealousies, deep, deep suspicions and fear. The military side was always very careful about what they attributed to Stakeknife and what was being said about him by other agents further down the line.

“You never knew what he was being told, or how pally they were with him. With Stakeknife, and the value the army placed on him, there was always a concern that perhaps he had been tipped off that other people were speaking about him.

“If that was the case, did you carry the analysis of that on through, or did he take steps of his own to make sure that those people who were talking about him, were not around for too long.

“In terms of IRA bombing operations, Scappaticci would have known virtually nothing in advance, but you can be dammed sure he had the SP (all the details) not long afterwards. He was right at the centre, although his importance had tailed off significantly since 1994 (the first IRA ceasefire).”

Sinn Fein’s Gerry Kelly, who also knows Scappaticci, said the party had advised his family to seek legal advice, but insisted it had not been in direct contact with him.

He blamed military intelligence for the intense newspaper speculation and claimed: “I’ve never seen briefings of this scale.”