September 15, 2003 EXCLUSIVE: Scappaticci interviewed
By Barry O'Kelly, © The Sunday Business Post, 2003

Freddie Scappaticci, the former IRA internal security officer accused of being the informant Stakeknife, has revealed he has become a virtual recluse and that he is afraid to leave his home after receiving death threats.

In an interview with The Sunday Business Post at his west Belfast home, a visibly nervous Scappaticci said: "I just don't leave the house anymore. The couple of times I have gone out, I've found people staring at me in the shops.

"People are looking at me because my picture's been everywhere. I mean, they're calling me a mass murderer. Now I can't go out to work. My life's been turned upside-down.

I'm not a religious person, but I've been in touch with the priests. It's for spiritual help."

Scappaticci (57) described as "ridiculous" the claims that he was the most significant IRA tout during the Troubles, betraying many of its operations while acting as deputy head of its internal security department.

Senior IRA figures have assured him that they know he is not Stakeknife, though the police are claiming his life is in danger.

Scappaticci said his windows have been broken five times and a pipe bomb was left in his garden. He said he was forced to get police protection after being told several times by the PSNI that it had information from credible sources that people were plotting to kill him.

See Full Interview below :
Freddie Scappaticci, who was named as Stakeknife, the IRA's most important informant ever for the British government, is living in fear in his West Belfast home and maintaining his innocence.

It's hard to believe that this is the Freddie Scappaticci, former top Provo, sitting in his front room, fidgeting, a scared, paranoid man, living day to day. A legendary figure in the republican movement in Belfast in the 70s and 80s. A former deputy head of the feared internal security department. A man who was alleged to have killed 40 informers.

Scappaticci, of course, has every reason to be scared. The one-time working class hero (among republicans) was named as the biggest British informant ever 14 weeks ago, a crime that carries only one penalty in his native west Belfast. Yet, he is alive and staying put, for the moment at least, with his wife and six children at their four-bed semi in Riversdale, an area that is also home to the IRA spymaster, Bobby Storey.

The republican movement says it believes Freddie's denials. Senior IRA figures have assured him that they know he is not Stakeknife. But in the paranoid world of paramilitaries and spook agencies, it's impossible to know what to believe.

Somebody was responsible for breaking his windows five times and planting a pipe bomb in his front garden.The police have repeatedly told him in recent months that his life is in serious danger, citing several allegedly credible sources. But it was also the police that leaked blatantly bogus stories about him.

At 57, Scappaticci is a small, squat man, barely 5ft 5in, looking ill at ease and noting his grim experience of "scumbag" journalists. He talks in short, nervous bursts to The Sunday Business Post. "There are people out there who are mixing it for me. I honestly don't know who's behind these threats... But I'm sure who was behind all this in the first place," he says.

This is a reference to the Sunday newspaper stories that appeared on May 11 last, identifying him as the notorious IRA informer. The People newspaper, the Glasgow Herald and the Sunday Tribune described him as the jewel in the crown of the intelligence services, who were prepared to allow an innocent Catholic, Francisco Notorantonio (66) to die instead of him.

"I mean this story went worldwide. It was like JFK was killed. It was coordinated. There's something smelly about it... It's the Brits. MI5, MI6, the British Army, take your pick. It had to be coordinated," he says.

The truth, he admits, will never be told to everyone's satisfaction. "Even if the British government had come out and cleared me, people would be saying, `they only cleared him because he's one of their own', it's Catch 22."

He agrees he made a fatal mistake in running from the story in the first 48 hours of it breaking. "I got advice and I was told the first 48 hours are crucial. But it's easier said than done. Once a lie gets a head start the truth has a hard time catching up."

The only forewarning he had was a call to the door of his home by Sunday People journalist Gregg Harkin on the Saturday night of publication.

"When all this exploded on the Saturday, I was just sitting on the sofa, looking after my grandson when this reporter called to the door.

"I invited him in, and he said, `No, I want to show you a story that's going to appear in the paper tomorrow, naming you as Stakeknife, the British agent.' He lured me outside, and a photographer took a picture of me from behind a hedge.

"He showed me a photocopy of the story and it said I was getting stg»80,000 per year as an informant. I didn't really believe it would be published it was so ridiculous. I went to bed early that night. But the next morning, when I went down to Creighton's (newsagents) and I saw all these photos of me, I just panicked. I didn't know how to cope with it."

Scappaticci took the default option that he resorted to whenever he was in trouble in the past. "I packed a small bag and took myself off to a friend's house," he says. He phoned his brother Michael that evening.

"We agreed the best thing to do was to contact Sinn Féin.We spoke to Alex Maskey (the then Lord Mayor of Belfast) and he advised us to get a lawyer. The people in Sinn Féin pointed out that the first 48 hours are vital. So we decided the next day to issue a statement, pointing out the facts."

The advice from Sinn Féin proved, tragically, to be correct. A lead story in the LondonTimes, and syndicated in the Irish Independent on the Tuesday, definitively reported that Britain's top spy inside the IRAwas under military protection at a former US airbase at Chicksands in Bedfordshire.

Those preparing to debrief Stakeknife were said to include Captain Margaret Walshaw, who handled the notorious loyalist agent Brian Nelson. Stakeknife was reportedly removed from his home in west Belfast on Saturday evening to a new location on "the mainland".

According to the Times report, he was located in a 12th century priory, an intimidating building, "said to be haunted by nine ghosts, including a suicidal baronet and a nun who was forced to watch her lover's execution before being sealed alive in a wall".

When Scappaticci turned up in person at a press conference the following Wednesday, at the Belfast offices of Michael J Flanigan & Co on the Falls Road, the damage was already done. Some of the follow-up stories speculated about how he managed to wing his way back to Belfast, simply ignoring the more obvious possibility that he had never left in the first place.

"If it wasn't so serious, it would be funny. I was supposed to be in Dover in a jacuzzi, in a safe house in Bedfordshire, in an MI5 hideout in London, being interrogated by John Stevens. And here I was still in Belfast, shellshocked."

Over the proceeding days, British security sources were quoted as saying he was behind virtually every major failed IRA mission over a 15-year period. He was supposedly the rat who betrayed the Gibraltar Three, the Eksund gun runners and the IRA men assassinated at Loughgall. These and other stories about Scappaticci's alleged exploits are dismissed by IRA sources.

Stakeknife, they say, is a mixture of informers and electronic bugs, a convenient pseudonym created to protect decades of spying and destabilise the enemy - the IRA - at the same time. A propaganda classic, for which Scappaticci is paying a heavy price.

"I have had several meetings with senior republicans, and they say, `As far as we are concerned, this whole Stakeknife thing is a policy, not a person'. It serves various purposes: it destabilises the peace process, and Sinn Féin in particular. It puts them on the back foot and it has directed attention away from the Stevens inqui r y i nto c ol lusion by the security forces in loyalist killings.

"This story goes back four years. The reports back then were about a Stakeknife who had the ear of Gerry Adams and who was deeply involved in the peace process. Now I have never had the ear of Gerry Adams and the first thing I knew there was going to be a ceasefire was a few hours before it happened when I bumped into a friend who told me."

The stories also focused on the disquieting claims about the murder of Notorantonio by loyalists in 1987. It was claimed that the killers were directed towards the elderly Belfast man - whose last involvement in the IRA was in the 1940s - by the security services in order to protect Scappaticci.

The huge mound of allegations prompt an obvious question: have you ever been in the employ, in any form or respect, of MI5, MI6, FRU or British Army or other branches of the security services?

"No. Absolutely not. But how can I prove it? It's just ridiculous. I wouldn't have the time to do half these things. I'd need to be an Ian Fleming character."

Scappaticci points out that the late loyalist double agent Brian Nelson, who was in a privileged position to know about the Notorantonio killing, never mentioned Scappaticci in his statements or jail diaries. The late Tommy Tucker, another agent, never mentioned him either. The loyalist UVF and UDA gangs were also at pains, in a recent statement, to claim that they had never targeted Scappaticci.

The statement received little media coverage. "It's not a great story. It's not the same as the one about Stakeknife, the jewel in the crown."

While various journalists claimed to have known months in advance about the Scappaticci claims, the IRA and residents in the sprawling village that is west Belfast were blissfully unaware of them. In the eyes of locals, he was a respected old timer.

His father Daniel came to the city in the 1920s from the Roman village of Casino and worked in his grandfather's chip shop and ice-cream van business. Freddie, one of six sons, grew up in the Markets area and was a noted soccer player.

The former Irish international Johnny Carey, of Manchester Utd fame, visited their family home in a bid to sign him for Nottingham Forest when he was 16 years old. His father resisted the idea because of his son's age, and after a three-week stint at Forest, the aspiring inside left returned homesick. He became a bricklayer instead. He has no regrets. "You can't wish your life away."

In 1970 he was arrested for riotous assembly during a police round up of republicans, and a year later, aged 25, he was interned without tr ial in Long Kesh. Among those interned with him were Ivor Bell, Adams and Alex Maskey.

"You got to know people and make contacts in there. It wasn't a case of, `I'm doing this for Ireland'. You just got on with doing your time and made the best of it."

He confirms that he joined the republican movement upon his release in December 1974. "It was a chaotic life," is all he will say about this period of his life. "I left the movement in 1990. It was for family reasons and other reasons. And I just wanted another life."

A statement by the informant Sandy Lynch that year is believed to have hastened his departure to Dublin for three years. Scappaticci was named in court as being present during the interrogation of the informer in a safe house in Belfast in 1990. The day after Scappaticci left the safe house, the police swooped. Sinn Féin publicity director Danny Morrison was arrested and later jailed for six years.

Scappaticci was arrested and interviewed in Castlereagh police station three years later. "Sandy Lynch gave a description of me and I did not fit that description. He's a liar." Lynch has since gone into hiding and been given a new identity in Canada.

Scappaticci faces a more worrying fate, although all the possible evidence available would suggest he was never a tout. "I have received numerous warnings from the police, saying my life is in danger, and eventually you have to take them seriously," he says.

The worry is there to see in his twitchy movements, his reluctance to stand for a photograph outside his house, the front door locked while he is being interviewed, his regular glances out the front window.

"I just don't leave the house anymore. The couple of times I have gone out, I've found people staring at me in the shops. People are looking at me because my pic-ture's been everywhere. I mean they're calling me a mass murderer. My family has been under enormous pressure.

"My wife finds it hard to take in. She's a very religious person. She says she wouldn't like to think that I did any harm to anyone. But what do you do with these sort of allegations? There's not one shred of evidence.

"And then when I eventually go to get protection, on the advice of the police, the People newspaper comes out with an editorial, saying it's a waste of police money protecting a mass murderer. They're the very reason I'm getting protection in the first place."

When various aspects of the story have been proven to be false, Scappaticci has found to his horror that new versions could be pasted on. "They said I had stg»2.4 million in a bank account in Gibraltar, that I was getting stg»80,000 per year. And then when it turned out that I was just a simple working man, they said I was a gambling addict and spent all the money, and that I had turned down the witness protection scheme. I have never been inside a betting shop in my life. And I was still in Belfast when all these stories appeared.

"At times I just feel it's not really happening. I just can't take it in. These faceless so-called security sources can do what they like. Not so long ago, John Reid and Tony Blair were complaining about them, so what chance have I got?

I'm a life-long republican and my reputation's destroyed. I'm just taking one day at a time. I couldn't tell you what I'll be doing in six months. I don't know what the future will hold, I'm only 57, I've another eight years before retirement. I'm just a working class man and now I can't go out to work. My life's been turned upside down.

"I'm not a religious person, but I've been in touch with the priests. It's for spiritual help... I'm talking now because stories keep appearing every week in the newspapers up here.

"I want to continue with my action against the British government [he's appealing a recent court ruling, refusing him an official government statement about the informant claims], because at the end of the day they are responsible for the security services, the people who are behind all this. But in the meantime the stories are getting more fantastic by the week."