By the end of 1976 he had returned to the Provisional IRA, operating as a Belfast Brigade Intelligence Officer, but had also resumed work in the building trade, working alongside members of the Official IRA from the Markets area in a tax scam involving the misuse of 715 tax exemption certificates.
In 1977 he was arrested by the RUC fraud squad and threatened with prosecution and the real possibility of going back to prison over the tax scam, which seemingly terrified him. Significantly, others were compromised in a similar vein by the British security services after they had been released from the cages of Long Kesh, so Scappaticci was certainly not on his own.
After agreeing to work as a spy for the RUC, providing them with low level intelligence on the IRA, Scappaticci became uncomfortable as he believed the RUC to be a sectarian force, so simply walked into the heavily fortified British army barracks in Royal Avenue, Belfast, the former Grand Central Hotel, and offered his services to them instead.
When the Provisional IRA commenced the total overhaul and restructuring of its units in 1977, cell structure, the ' Green Book' and a new 'Internal Security Unit' ( ISU) were included in the overhaul. Once the British army became aware of this, they set their sights on infiltration of the Internal Security Unit, as it was like' honey to a bee'.
The British army pushed for their man, Scappaticci, to enter the ISU, while at the same time the RUC 's Special Branch were using their best endeavours to get their agents into the same unit. As it turned out both security agencies succeeded when the IRA' s Internal Security Unit was eventually activated in the Autumn of 1978. Ironically, the head of the ISU, a former member of the British army's Special Boat Service ( SBS), had already been a Special Branch agent for years previous. Scappaticci became his second-in-command. As for the others, most from D company, Lower Falls, Belfast, they were compromised IRA Volunteers with a few exceptions.
The Internal Security Unit, whose remit was to root out informers, brief new recruits, investigate botched IRA military operations etc was heavily infiltrated from its inception. Furthermore and disgracefully, there was no rotation of personnel which meant prolonged and sustained damage could be inflicted on the IRA, blunting its overall capacity to win the war against the British. The Provisional IRA would not be defeated in the field, but a policy of containment ensured that a military victory was unachievable.
In 1977 he was arrested by the RUC fraud squad and threatened with prosecution and the real possibility of going back to prison over the tax scam, which seemingly terrified him. Significantly, others were compromised in a similar vein by the British security services after they had been released from the cages of Long Kesh, so Scappaticci was certainly not on his own.
After agreeing to work as a spy for the RUC, providing them with low level intelligence on the IRA, Scappaticci became uncomfortable as he believed the RUC to be a sectarian force, so simply walked into the heavily fortified British army barracks in Royal Avenue, Belfast, the former Grand Central Hotel, and offered his services to them instead.
His first army contact was Sergeant Peter Jones from the Devonshire and Dorset Regiment, on a four month tour of duty in Ireland from January to May 1977. After their assessment of Scappaticci the army decided to 'poach' him from the RUC and groom him into becoming a member of their Special Reconnaissance Unit (SRU), part of 39th Brigade of the British Army. For his part Scappaticci loved the attention and gradually seen himself as a British military officer in an elite group, convincing himself and being convinced by his handlers, that the IRA was a blight on the Nationalist population of the North and had to be defeated. The fact that his blood monies would reach around 80,000 pounds per year, directed into a bank account in Gibraltar, also played a role in his conversion to work for the other side.
Fundamentally, Scappaticci did not possess a moral compass but had a dissociative identity disorder (DID), which allowed him to switch sides in the war for his own self interest and material gain. Again, it must be stated that he was not unique in this regard, as other IRA Volunteers did the same, including people close to him, self preservation taking precedence over ideological loyalty.
When the Provisional IRA commenced the total overhaul and restructuring of its units in 1977, cell structure, the ' Green Book' and a new 'Internal Security Unit' ( ISU) were included in the overhaul. Once the British army became aware of this, they set their sights on infiltration of the Internal Security Unit, as it was like' honey to a bee'.
The British army pushed for their man, Scappaticci, to enter the ISU, while at the same time the RUC 's Special Branch were using their best endeavours to get their agents into the same unit. As it turned out both security agencies succeeded when the IRA' s Internal Security Unit was eventually activated in the Autumn of 1978. Ironically, the head of the ISU, a former member of the British army's Special Boat Service ( SBS), had already been a Special Branch agent for years previous. Scappaticci became his second-in-command. As for the others, most from D company, Lower Falls, Belfast, they were compromised IRA Volunteers with a few exceptions.
The Internal Security Unit, whose remit was to root out informers, brief new recruits, investigate botched IRA military operations etc was heavily infiltrated from its inception. Furthermore and disgracefully, there was no rotation of personnel which meant prolonged and sustained damage could be inflicted on the IRA, blunting its overall capacity to win the war against the British. The Provisional IRA would not be defeated in the field, but a policy of containment ensured that a military victory was unachievable.
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| Seamus Kearney is a former Blanketman and author of No Greater Love - The Memoirs of Seamus Kearney. |
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