Serial Slayer

By AM Sunday, April 16, 2023

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Anthony McIntyre ☠ Time did not so much run out for British spy and IRA Northern Command figure Freddie Scappaticci as it did for the loved ones of those he sent to early graves. 

The British state simply recalibrated the old D Notice and ran down the clock as part of a strategy of deny, defer, delay and derail.

The official history of the D Notice system was explained by its author as having:

emerged amorphously across three decades of increasing concern about army and navy operations being compromised by reports in the British (and sometimes foreign) press.

Reading that, it is easy to grasp that the four-part D Notice employed in the Stakeknife case had at its core a concern about certain matters of state being compromised if a tight lid was not kept on sordid secrets. The objective of D notices, in their original and latest application, had the same objective – protecting perfidy.

Scappaticci’s death in England at the ripe age of 77 has most likely pulled the curtain down on what was a truly shameful affair, described by the BBC investigative journalist Darragh MacIntyre as homicide ‘on an industrial scale.’ The Kenova Inquiry, always in the process of coming but never in the state of arrival – done and ready to go to court in 2020, yet here we are in 2023 - has lost its star witness.

Even here, Kenova would appear to have been limited in its remit: investigating the figure everyone already knew about. Kevin Winters, acting for the families of several of the slain, discerningly observed:

I wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised if there were more senior agents linked to the Provisional IRA internal security unit than Freddie Scappaticci. My personal view is that Scappaticci presented as but one of a number of agents and informers in the organisation’s internal security. I have long been concerned about the narrow remit of the terms of reference of Operation Kenova, which were Freddie Scappaticci-centric to the exclusion of looking at other agents.

Even prior to the demise of Scappaticci, it seemed his value as a witness was being tactically eroded by the authorities. For four decades the British had covered up his activities but suddenly decided to prosecute him for possession of animal porn. Distasteful but hardly the most serious of the serial slayer's transgressions. Occam’s Razor cuts to the chase: Scappaticci was prosecuted with porn possession but not with murder for one obvious reason which was to seriously damage his character before he ever set foot in a witness box to give evidence against his handlers.

Imagine the scene in a sombre Belfast courtroom setting:

Scappaticci: I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, M’Lud.

Defence Barrister: Did you ever dick donkeys?

Credibility catastrophe.

When the North’s conflict was raging Scappaticci was positioned between two warring forces. The IRA Army Council and British state security services. The Army Council was the underwriter for Scappaticci's death diplomacy, performed on its behalf, despatching the execution chamber’s ubiquitous P O’Neill to the scene of the crime to sign the despatch papers. P O’Neill’s public persona easily induced in the would-be victim, desperate for hope, an illusion that their oasis had sprang up before their eyes, with his promise to escort them to a press conference at which, before being freed, they would reveal how Perfidious Albion had yet again been practicing spycraft for the most nefarious of ends.

Think of Freddie Scappaticci as a puppet with two sets of puppet masters, each pulling the strings often for a shared desired effect. This has led me to hope that the authors of Lost Lives, that tremendous contribution to historical memory, might yet consider a rewrite where rather than ascribe responsibility for many of the killings it details to individual organisations, will instead place them in a joint enterprise typology. For example, in the case of the slain IRA Volunteer Michael Kearney, rather than being a victim of the IRA, his killing will be more accurately classified as being the joint work of the IRA Army Council and British state security services.

There would be little if any merit in claiming that each side realised that it was involved in a joint enterprise. The British certainly knew but it remains much less certain that the Army Council did. Yet, it is beyond dispute that within both camps there were those who had a mutual interest in covering up for the state terrorism of the British.

This helps explain why for almost two decades one man’s role has given me much thought for reflection. I have discussed the possibilities endlessly with a wide range of former IRA colleagues and journalists, meeting little resistance to my deep misgivings. On Friday in response to a query from a journalist friend I made this observation.

And we have to wonder how far the penetration goes: the person who was P O’Neill at the time of the Sandy Lynch kidnapping continued to cover for Scap long after the point where he says he knew him to be an agent. This raises huge questions – the main one being was the compromised element within IRA Internal Security working with P O’Neill to complement Frank Kitson’s strategic law – which was all about disposing of unwanted people? They target somebody and P O’Neill signs off on it. Person successfully disposed of. That old phrase an ‘appalling vista’ leaps to mind.

Next chapter - Stakeknife and Snakeknife?

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