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Currently,
Cryptome
is carrying a report made by "a technical
surveillance countermeasure (TSCM) professional, who
analyzed the alleged Freddie Scappaticci (Stakeknife)
secret
recording."
The
Technical Analyst (T.A.) merely confirms what was
already known about the tape; the speculation tagged
onto the end of his analysis doesn't bear up with
what is known or has been in the public domain.
For example, s/he notes the "hissing" noise
added onto the tape afterwards, presumably to obscure
details.
John Ware, writing
in the Sunday Times on the eve of his Panorama
special regarding the existence of the tapes, said:
"when the then RUC Special Branch discovered
whom the researchers had met, officers asked them
to remove any wording from the transcripts that
might betray his identity as his position was sensitive."
Sylvia
Jones, who was one of the Cook Report team at the
time of interviews with Scappaticci, writes
in the People:
"The
officer asked for a further meeting after we had
transcribed the tape and shorthand notes and urged
us not to discuss this with anyone until we had
talked again. By the next day, the officer had taken
advice and told us that Scappaticci was a 'very,
very important' informant and that it was vital
for his safety and the continuation of his work
as a top agent that we protect his identity at all
costs. The security services knew they could not
stop us using the material, so they took a calculated
gamble to trust us. But they warned: "One slip
could cost him his life." We were urged not
only to use an actor to speak his words, but that
it was even necessary to change Stakeknife's distinctive
phraseology to prevent him being identified by the
fellow IRA comrades he was betraying. We gave our
word."
It
is not an illogical leap to connect the "hissing"
sounds with the need to obscure the interviewee as
described by Jones and Ware.
The T.A. finds it hard to believe that the tape was
made by the British Government or a "professional
spy" and s/he is correct. It was not. The original
listing on the Cryptome website wrongly identified
the recording as one made by British Intelligence
rather than what it is, the recording made by Clive
Entwhistle and his team.
Further, when existence of the Cook Report recordings
came to public light, it was suggested that Scappaticci
approached the Cook Report after their special on
Martin McGuinness at the behest of his handlers, who
wanted to sink McGuinness further at the time. Scappaticci's
own hostility towards Martin McGuinness, documented
in the book Stakeknife, would have made him
more than willing for the task; combined with his
risk-taking nature it would have appealed to him and
accounts for what the T.A. notes as Scappaticci's
cadence of "recalling details told to him".
However, there is no doubt, as T.A.'s report suggests,
about Scappaticci's role in the IRA. No doubt he was
indeed recalling details told to him, those details
his handlers wanted to be sure made it to the Cook
Report. Making a few mistakes - such as his details
of the A/C - would give him cover, and perhaps he
did not want the Entwhistle team to know how high
up in the IRA he actually was. It is a strong possibilty
he did not think they would know who he really was,
both as an IRA member and as an informer, and his
performance during the interview was his veil of shadows.
This is more likely than T.A.'s speculation of "something
fishy" i.e. Scappaticci not being Stake Knife
or an informer, and/or not being at the level in the
IRA that he was.
The value of T.A.'s report is that it confirms the
tape to be what it is reported as being - a tape made
by a reporter in a car parking lot without the knowledge
of the interviewee.
For more detail on the tape see pages 67-82 (previously
referenced on Cryptome) of Harkin and Ingram's
book "StakeKnife".
Scappaticci claims to have left the IRA around 1990;
Harkin and Ingram in their book have him being "stood
down" in 1996 or thereabouts (Harkin and Ingram,
pg. 249), however reports are surfacing that he had
an active role in the IRA up to as recently as 2000.
It is clear that, having not been openly discovered
until last year, Scappaticci's ties to the Republican
Movement remained active well after he claims they
ceased. In addition, the Republican Movement's curious
behaviour towards Scappaticci and the Stake Knife
story indicate that their cover-up also has roots
that go back further from when Scappaticci was publicly
exposed.
As far back as 2001, the Andersonstown News
had public ties to Martin Ingram, one of the authors
of "StakeKnife" now often referred
to by senior republicans in the Sinn Fein camp as
a "nameless and faceless source" when they
want to discredit him. The paper endorsed him - a
"trump card" - by running not just an article
he submitted to the paper but with a personal introduction
by the editor, Mairtin O'Muilleoir:
"For
the Finucane family and the other victims of FRU
agent Brian Nelson, Ingram is their trump card:
an insider who saw his Army colleagues use loyalist
paramilitaries to murder those deemed enemies of
the state. Ingram's detailed account of Army collusion
with loyalist gun-gangs is truly shocking to anyone
who believed the British were here to uphold the
rule of law. [...] The determination of former FRU
officer Martin Ingram to blow the whistle may yet
expose the awful truth about Britain's dirty war."
When
Scappaticci was exposed, according to StakeKnife,
he went to Alex Maskey, former Mayor of Belfast and
currently a City Councillor for Sinn Fein, who advised
Scappaticci to get a solicitor. He is represented
by Michael Flanigan, the legal counsel for the West
Belfast based newspaper, the Andersonstown News,
a paper that is heavily sympathetic to Sinn Fein and
is commonly regarded as the party's mouthpiece.
At a time when Scappaticci's handlers wanted as much
confusion as possible - "the FRU strategy - to
create tension and confusion amongst republicans,
and to keep Scappaticci alive in the process"
(Harkin and Ingram, pg. 247) - the Andersonstown
News was all too willing to help, coincidently
enough given the shared solicitor.
The Andersonstown
News ran an exclusive interview with Scappaticci
conducted by Robin Livingstone. It was a whitewash.
Later, when John Ware's Panorama special was
broadcast, the paper was forced to admit its readers
would "come to their own sad conclusion"
about Scappaticci and the Stake Knife affair.
Mairitin O'Muilleoir - Managing Editor of the Andersonstown
News - wrote at the time:
"Time
will tell (and perhaps a very short time at that)
whether Freddie Scap was or wasn't a Branch agent,
though there's no getting away from the fact that
the majority of our readers, who have been given
the full story, are starting to reach their own
sad conclusion."
With
the availability of the tape made possible by Cryptome
and UTV's Insight public broadcast of them,
the Andersonstown News itself came to its own
sad conclusion:
"Former
republican Freddie Scappaticci's statement to Insight
this week on his role in `briefing' journalists
about the IRA exposed him as a pathetic individual."
Finally,
recall this excerpt from an
article written by Robin Livingstone of the Andersonstown
News at the time of his exclusive interview with
Scappaticci:
"The
Andersonstown News scoop was the first authoritative
piece of journalism to have appeared in print since
the Stakeknife madness first erupted. And because
of that simple, inescapable fact, even the most
cynical journalist has been effectively barred from
churning out baseless nonsense because now, finally,
one of the protagonists has put his cards on the
table.
The
Freddie Scappaticci interview ran for 2,500 words
and the hard questions were put. He said:
- He
never worked for British intelligence
- He
never got a penny from British intelligence
- He
never left the country with British intelligence
- He’ll
meet the families of the people the media said he
killed and tell them he didn’t do it
- He
left the republican movement in 1990
You
don’t have to accept or reject the veracity
of any of the above, all you have to do is to acknowledge
that the man came out and said them. Freddie Scappaticci’s
source is Freddie Scappaticci – that is the
only source in all of this that we have seen or
heard.
It
is to be hoped that when this affair is over that
a reckoning of sorts will take place among newspaper
readers, because there will be none among newspaper
writers. Wouldn’t it be nice if readers, when
they came to the dread words ‘security sources’
or ‘republican sources’, instead of blithely
reading on, stopped for a moment and thought a bit.
Thought about how certain journalists and their
‘sources’ have performed in this particular
matter and whether anything we hear from them from
here on in is worthy of any other than the deepest
scepticism."
Indeed,
some newspaper readers are stopping and thinking about
certain journalists and their 'sources', specifically
their performance in this particular matter; yes,
some readers are most certainly questioning whether
anything they read or hear from them is worthy of
anything other than the deepest scepticism.
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