When I fist received the email asking
if I would write a review of the book Stakeknife,
I was not keen. The books co-authors are People
journalist Greg Harkin and 'Martin Ingram', a former
member of the British Army in Ireland's Intel Unit,
the Force Research Unit (FRU), writing under a pseudonym.
Having already read the book I felt it contained little
that has not been placed in the public record elsewhere
and often in a far more interesting style. Although
to be fair to the two authors of this book, they themselves
have contributed a number of articles on this matter
in newspapers such as the People, Sunday Times,
Guardian, Irish News and Andersonstown News.
'Martin Ingram' is described in the book publisher's
blurb, as a whistleblower. Maybe, but for all the
accusations he makes in the book about informers,
the British Army, the RUC Special Branch and the British
security services that where running in the north
of Ireland during the post 1969 troubles, those he
makes concerning the man who has been publicly named
by him as Stakeknife, Freddie Scappaticci, can at
best, if we are to believe 'Ingram', be described
as tittle tattle, more often than not seemingly gained
second if not third hand. On what evidence does he
name Scappaticci as the informer Stakeknife? It would
have been easy to have concluded by much that has
been written in the media about the Stakeknife affair
that 'Ingram' himself was the Force Reaction Units
handler of the PIRA source codenamed Stakeknife. One
would however be mistaken in doing so. From the book
it seems that all 'Ingram' claims to know about Stakeknife
and his identity, he has learnt in conversations with
his former FRU colleagues, some of whom actually did
run Stakeknife, either in the office or in the Unit's
bars, whilst winding down over a beer, after a hard
day's work covertly organising murder and betrayal
throughout the north eastern counties of Ireland and
beyond via the agents/informers they ran.
As to 'Ingram's' professed motives for becoming a
'whistleblower', they seem to me pretty thin. He claims
in the book he was out shopping with his wife and
young daughter and he happened to wander into a bookshop
and began flicking through the book Killing Rage,
by former PIRA volunteer Eamon Collins. He brought
the book and when back home he read the chapter that
dealt with Collins' experiences with the IRA's Security
Department (SD), in which he relates he was present
when the then head of the said PIRA SD, John Joe Magee
joked with his deputy, a man Collins knew as Scap,
about the killing of an alleged informer. 'Ingram'
claims reading this left him feeling sick to the pit
of his stomach, as he knew the man named as Scap (full
name Freddie Scappaticci), aka Stakeknife, the most
important informer within PIRA then being run by his
former colleagues within the British Army's FRU.
To me this seems improbable not to say plain silly.
Soldiers of all armies are known for their gallows
humour; it often helps them through difficult situations.
For example amongst PIRA volunteers their security
department was known as the nutting squad, for obvious
reasons. Men and women who become whistleblowers sometimes
have a host of often complicated reasons for becoming
so. But I find it hard to believe that a professional
soldier who had served over ten years in the British
Army, the overwhelming majority of this time serving
alongside Special Forces such as the SAS, would have
a Damascus Road conversion against all he had held
dear, loyalty to the regiment/corp, etc., because
of a bit of banter the likes of which 'Ingram' would
previously have heard on an almost daily basis in
any British Army mess he visited for a drink. The
FRU's closeness to Special Forces and separation from
mainstream British Army Regiments is demonstrated
by 'Ingram' himself in the book, when he writes that
it is wholly sponsored and funded by the Director
of Special Forces. However having stated the above,
none of it makes what 'Ingram's' claims about the
true identity of Stakeknife untrue nor calls into
question anything else he writes in the book. It simple
questions his motivation for doing so and means the
reader should be wary and attempt to read between
the lines by, if possible, checking other sources.
This is not as difficult as it seems as I have previously
said little of what is in the book is new to the public
domain.
The more I read the book the more uncomfortable I
became with 'Ingram's' decision and his publishers
to allow him to write under a pseudonym. His real
name is known to a number of journalists who specialise
in writing about the north of Ireland, including Greg
Harkin, his co-author on this book, and his former
colleagues in the FRU and other sections of the British
Army, plus the securocrats from the likes of MI5 who
had a permanent desk within Force Reaction Unit's
offices throughout the north of Ireland. There is
also the UK police and members of the English and
Irish judiciary who 'Ingram' would have come into
contact with during various escapades, some of which
he mentions in the book. In addition, certain southern
Irish politicians who according to 'Ingram' championed
his claim to Irish citizenship. It is not too far
fetched to believe that as this list of people who
know 'Ingram's' true identity is considerable, that
a small number of very senior members of the Provisional
Republican Movement may also have a clue as to his
real name, although this is only speculation on my
part. Indeed the only thing one can conclude about
his true identity with any certainty is that the majority
of readers of this book will not be able to deduce
it.
It is all very well, some might say for me to condemn
'Ingram's' use of a pseudonym; 'Ingram' was after
all once a member of the FRU, whose task was to fight
an often vicious war over information with PIRA. Thus,
even with the current ceasefire and the Good Friday
Agreement seemingly at the fore of the Provisional
Movements strategy, would not the PIRA still target
and attempt to kill 'Ingram'? Whilst not doubting
their ability to do so if they so decided, I find
this doubtful. Leaving aside for a moment the GFA
and the political ramifications for the Adams leadership
if PIRA did kill 'Ingram,' we should not lose sight
of the fact that there is little evidence of PIRA
targeting former British soldiers once they have left
the island of Ireland and changed their employer.
Nor, come to that, is there a great deal of evidence
that PIRA spent much time targeting former members
who had turned and become informers but managed on
exposure to go abroad. Only when these individuals
have behaved recklessly after being relocated abroad,
like Marty McGartland, or returned home on a false
promise of amnesty from a senior Provo, as Frank Hegarty
appears to have done, do they find themselves going
on their last walk down a dark country lane with the
likes of Freddie Scappaticci walking a short step
behind them.
In recent years the two most powerful voices within
the media speaking out against the current Provisional
Republican Movement leadership have been left alone,
at least physically by PIRA. Despite both men having
made powerful critiques of the Adams leadership, Anthony
McIntrye in his twice weekly internet magazine The
Blanket, rages almost weekly against the Adam's
leaderships lies, pettiness and personal ambition.
The author of The Secret History of the IRA,
Ed Moloney, in his book completely exposed the Adams
leadership's manipulation of the IRA's Green Book
of rules that all volunteers of whatever rank must
abide by under pain of court martial and the political
chicanery they also used against their own membership
to enable them to force through the two ceasefires
of the 1990's and gain their movement's support for
the Good Friday Agreement. Indeed in the case of McIntrye
whilst the Provos would undoubtedly like to see the
back of him, it was the British State who eventually
attempted to shut down his magazine by raiding his
home and confiscating the means to produce the Blanket.
All to no avail as the tenacious McIntrye and his
closest supporter soon had the magazine back up on
the net.
Unfortunately for 'Ingram' a benchmark was set for
ex-securocrats who turn against their former masters
by the former CIA man Phil Agee in the 1970s. In his
book Inside the Company, Agee names all those
CIA agents he then knew to be working in Central and
South America, plus those he knew to be either CIA
informers or paid agents of influence. He also listed
many of the dastardly deeds, political coups and failed
workers struggles the Company had been behind by quietly
pulling the strings of their agents of influence,
many of whom Philip Agee by exposing their names had
consigned to the dustbin of history. Finally he names
some of those in positions of influence back at CIA
Centre in Langley, USA.
Contrast this with whistleblower 'Martin Ingram.'
He does publish in the book some photos of his ex
colleagues in the FRU, but their faces are all blacked
out so they serve little purpose. The only personnel
he does name is the likes of the FRU one time commanding
officer whose name has been in the public domain for
years. He cannot even bring himself to condemn the
overall work of his former employers, saying that
in his opinion over 99% of the FRU work was of value
and therefore presumably in his own mind on the side
of the angels. The only real conclusions one can draw
as to why 'Ingrams' became a self proclaimed whistleblower
is that one does not know; however I would bet my
measly state pension that someone back at the head
office of his former employers knows only too well,
as they probably originally transcribed much of what
went into this book, although without Harkin's knowledge,
it is only fair to add. Who gains is the big question
and even here the water is murky; however, one should
not overlook when dealing with the security services
the colour of the water often has relevance.
Does any of the above matter when one is judging the
truth of what Harkin and 'Ingram' write? Leaving aside
the identity of Stakeknife, most of everything else
in the book can be verified against other reliable
published sources. As to Freddie Scappaticci being
Stakeknife the evidence is circumstantial, but in
the north of Ireland circumstantial evidence has never
stopped people being sentenced to life imprisonment
nor having the back of their heads blasted off. What
is clear the day Scappaticci decided to speak to the
team from the TV programme the Cook Report and badmouth
Martin McGuiness (transcript of the conversation pp69),
whether he was an informer of the FRU at that time
or not his goose was truly cooked. Whatever his then
status with the British, he was an active high profile
PIRA player and the tape of that conversation was
bound to have passed over the desks of powerful people
in the British security establishment to be listened
to and marked, 'For future use.'
At the beginning of this review I wrote that I was
not keen to write it when first asked. What changed
my mind was that just after I received the email,
the British Defence Minister Hoon appeared on my TV
screen, pompously proclaiming with that smugness that
appears to come quite naturally to such people that
of course the British Army do things differently from
their US allies in Iraq. They have had after all 30
years experience of keeping the peace in the north
east of Ireland. What this means in reality is that
at this moment in Iraq, someone who looks and sounds
very much like 'Martin Ingram' or one of his former
colleagues from his days as a member of the British
army's FRU will be enticing some poor, possible stupid,
greedy or just plain gullible Iraqi to betray members
of his community, family, friends or fellow country
men and women. His reward for so doing will apart
for a handful of dinars, be a lifetime of fear of
exposure, relocation to a place without familiar faces
and those of loved ones, or if they are no longer
an asset and of use to their new masters, they will
be thrown away like any useless object to meet a brutal
death in a Basra back ally or on the road out of some
pipeline village. How I ask myself can 99% of such
work be on the side of the angels?
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