David McCloskey

In intelligence work, it's rarely the obvious problem that causes failure.

It's the overlooked detail or the flaw nobody quite solved.

The kind of vulnerability intelligence services look for.

The protection is built in.

Hardware level security working quietly in the background, helping reduce risk without creating more work.

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Just for the US comparison, to set that context for American listeners, the equivalent in the US would be if we had experienced double the deaths that we experienced during the Second World War.

It's essentially the combined casualty figure would equate to the entire population of North Carolina

all killed or injured inside a space roughly the size of Connecticut over a 30-year period.

So the numbers in absolute terms, maybe to American listeners may not sound massive, but when you scale it, this is a massive, massive conflict inside the British state that goes on for decades.

That's another part that will be returning throughout this four-part series.

Is this question of how do you actually investigate or bring to light some of the activities that occur inside the fairly dark recesses of the security state?

So we just talked about the issue of naming agents.

And as we'll see, the British state has continued to resist actually naming the individual codenamed steak knife.

And they're still fighting massive battles over this.

But we actually can say who he was or is, can't we?

Can I just say that there aren't going to be many moments of levity in this series because it is getting to some dark topics, but I was dismayed.

as we were putting this series together, to find that the star player in our first ever series set in Ireland, in Northern Ireland, is a guy named Freddy Scappaticci.

I know, which shows my ignorance about the fact that there is a sort of vibrant Italian immigrant community in Northern Ireland.