Stakeknife

He was born to a family of Italian immigrants and went on to become an enforcer for one of the most deadly groups in recent history. He left a trail of death wherever he went. Alfredo (Freddie) Scappaticci was a burly, barrel chested man, his day job, as a brick layer, well fit his build and demeanor. He did not work for the mob in the Chicago, as many may expect. He was the lead of the Internal Security Unit (ISU) for the Provisional Irish Republican Army's northern command. He was known to the Provos as Scap, or Wop. But, he had a another side gig, in which he was known as Stakeknife.

Freddie Scappaticci, BBC

The IRA came about to have Northern Ireland cease being a part of Britain, and become part of Ireland. The British animosity and racism against Catholics still ran (runs) deep, and perhaps even deeper in Northern Ireland. The British military became involved to try and quell the violence, but it turns out the IRA was right in stating that the military was not an objective peace keeper (as the government claimed), rather they favored and teamed with the Royal Ulster Constable (RUC) and loyalist para-military forces to cause havoc on the IRA, all the while keeping the loyalists generally safe and protected from the horrors they undertook. This era is referred to as the Troubles, and if anything, the Troubles show the intractability of history and the twists and turns that men and women can undertake. Of course, the IRA had splintered and would also fight each other. While the activities of the IRA groups were often pursued, little was investigated in regard to the murders and mayhem of the loyalist para-military forces, or the British military itself.

I suppose, if one wants a date of the beginning of the Troubles, it was Bloody Sunday in 1972, when a peaceful, but illegal protest of 10,000 saw the loyalists throw stones and rocks and the military shoot and kill 13 protesters, and injure 14 others. But, the IRA had long been fighting.

Bloody Sunday, 1972
BBC

Scap joined the Provos early in its existence. The Provos quickly determined, in order to protect their members, they had to organize into cells, a common tactic of terrorist groups. The one part of the organization, other than high leadership, that knew the full puzzle of the organization in Northern Ireland was the Internal Security Unit. The Provos thought of themselves as a military organization waging a war (hence Army in its title) and when imprisoned, wanted to be treated as prisoners of war. The war became famous for several IRA members who died in prison due to hunger strikes.

The ISU was known as the nutting squad. To the IRA, snitches, touts in the language of the Provos, were the worst type of person and a snitch would be tortured and many executed. At times the bodies would often be left as a deterrent to others. Scap is thought to have tortured and killed over 40 persons. His work extended for a long time. He was kept busy as the Brits say that up to 1 in 4 IRA members were touts. The IRA dismissed this claim. With the touts, some of them just plain disappeared (murdered), and little was said lest you draw attention to the matter and have yourself put at risk. 

Scap seemed not to care about being found out as he was rather brazen. It is reported in the book Say Nothing (p 249) that after "the bodies resurfaced, Scap liked to visit the families of the dead to play the recorded confession aloud and explain precisely why their loved one had been executed. Occasionally he would tell them in detail about the killing." What a horrible thing to have to sit through.

Freddie is to left. BBC

The British and the RUC knew about Scap. Yet they did not stop him. Perhaps because the loss of one Irish informant or 40 meant little to the information they received, or because perhaps they were told to leave Scap alone. You see, Scap was a double agent. It came out, by news reports in the early 2000's that Scap was also the notorious Stakeknife (code name by the British forces). The Provos never figured it out. The Brits let him continue to kill, I guess as a way to keep his cover, placing the Brits in the position of accomplices to murder of at least 40 persons. 

At one time there was a break-in into the Belfast Police offices, often assumed to be by the IRA. This break-in stole many records about the double agents the Brits were using. Scap was not one of them, and that is because knowledge of his existence, which showed his importance to the British military, was limited to a few persons purely on a need to know basis and his records were kept at the highest levels of the military. He had his own specific handlers. Scap approached the Brits, not the Brits Scap. It was a common method of the British to capture and try to turn IRA members into double agents. Even though the military and local police worked to retain safety for the loyalists, when it came to the Provos, they sometimes were in their own silos and much of the work by the military, such as Stakeknife's work was unknown to the local police.

IRA missions kept getting foiled, and the IRA had no clue why. They had the dead bodies that Scap had produced as evidence that the touts numbers should be dwindling. As reported in Say Nothing, the man entrusted to weed out moles was himself a mole. Apparently to the Brits, the means justifies the ends. As the writer of Say Nothing notes (p 273), about the allowing the murders to "save lives"  he reported: "This kind of logic is seductive, but perilous. You start running out numbers in your head , and pretty soon you are sanctioning mass murder." So much for the British system of law and order. British PM's were notified of what was being done, but simply chose not to know the details and allowed the murders to continue. One could suggest that the activities by the military during the Troubles was simply an offshoot of the mass starvation and genocide the British commenced against their Irish subjects in the 1800's. And the British like to tell themselves they are a civilized society. Perhaps Britain was allowed to be ruthless and morally suspect because they wrote much of the history we read today. So much for (at the time) Her Majesty's government being a pantheon or order and moral clarity.

At varied times, Scap provided accounts of his work and that of the Provos. Sometime after being outed as Stakeknife, he was arrested for 25 murders, but not surprisingly the charges were dropped due to  'insufficient" evidence. Clearly, Her Majesty's government did not wish the secrets and tactics of the military and its double agents to become known. In fact, it later became clear that M15 did not produce all materials about Stakeknife during an investigation as it said it had. A leader of the political group for the Provos, Sein Fein, said it was "'disgraceful and unsurprising' that British security services had withheld information from the inquiry." (Irish Times)

Stakeknife, or Scap, died in April 2023. Although he always denied that he was Stakeknife, he was still living under witness protection at the time so little is known of what occurred on the manner of his death. If nothing else, this shows how far a government is willing to go to tackle troubling times. It makes me think of the situation in Gaza and the Israeli response that has now again started to the terrorist actions that one day in October almost a year and a half ago. What I am sure of, is that today, there are many Stakeknifes working as double agents in varied parts of the world, with little moral compass to guide them.