The revelations in 2003 that the head of the IRA’s internal security unit, Freddie Scappaticci, was a British spy, “traumatised” republicans, then-taoiseach Bertie Ahern and British prime minister Tony Blair believed.
The allegations about Scappaticci, better known by his codename “Stakeknife”, damaged the Sinn Féin leadership in the eyes of the wider republican movement, according to an official Irish briefing note.
The disclosure ignited “all kinds” of conspiracy theories about who was being protected and whether Scappaticci had been used ruthlessly to eliminate key republican opponents of the peace process.
A briefing note prepared for Ahern highlighted allegations that Scappaticci had been involved in the killing of Tom Oliver, a 43-year-old farmer tortured and murdered by the Provisional IRA in 1991.
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Officials at a meeting of the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference discussed the fallout of the Stakeknife affair at a meeting in London in May 2003.
Earlier that month, the British government passed the necessary legislation to allow for the postponement of the Stormont Assembly elections in Northern Ireland.
“The Secretary of State has discretion to set a date for elections prior to November 15th,” the file notes, adding that the Irish government wanted elections to be held that autumn.
[ Stakeknife: The inside story of IRA double agent Freddie ScappaticciOpens in new window ]
A note prepared by the Department of Foreign Affairs’ Anglo-Irish Division on May 19th, 2003, noted that the political landscape had been “overtaken by the Stakeknife revelations and allegations”.
The controversy had “convulsed” Sinn Féin, which was already rocked by the failure to meet demands for clarity about IRA decommissioning that led to the postponement of the Assembly elections.
The Stakeknife controversy and previous allegations that the IRA had gathered intelligence inside Stormont the year before had caused major damage, though the latter never led to prosecutions.
“Stormontgate means we have a traumatised Ulster Unionist leadership who find it difficult to proclaim trust in Sinn Féin, while Stakeknife means we have a republican leadership paralysed and damaged,” the Irish note said.
“The corrosive effects on the whole Gerry Adams/Martin McGuinness leadership are obvious, not just to them personally but to the project that they have constructed.
“Unless we stabilise the situation and give this leadership some traction, the corrosive effects will continue,” a note prepared for Ahern ahead of a meeting in London with Blair on May 20th, 2003, said.
Every action taken by Dublin and London had been designed to bring the IRA’s actions to an end: “The Adams/McGuinness leadership is the only one that can bring that about,” it went on.
The postponement of the Assembly elections, which eventually took place in November, had left the Sinn Féin leadership “for the moment, exhausted [in] its capacity to propel the wider movement in the right direction”.
Scappaticci, who died in England in April 2023, where he had been living in hiding, was a leading member of the IRA’s Internal Security Unit.
Better known, if brutally, as “The Nutting Squad”, it tortured and killed alleged IRA informants, dumping their bodies on the sides of Border roads. Some of the victims had been wrongly accused.
Eighteen deaths are blamed on Scappaticci, though the argument made previously was that Scappaticci saved scores of lives by tipping off British intelligence to IRA operations.
However, the Kenova inquiry led by now Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland John Boutcher, said more lives were taken than were ever saved as consequences of the actions of Scappaticci.
His death, aged 77, was announced a week after it had taken place, and only after he had been buried. His health had deteriorated because of a series of strokes.
