David McCloskey

For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter, and discounted books, join the Declassified Club at therestisclassified.com.

How do you protect an undercover agent inside a group like the IRA?

And how do you decide who lives and who dies?

Well, welcome to The Rest Is Classified.

I'm David McCloskey.

And I'm Gordon Carrera.

And we are looking at Freddy Scappaticci, the agent known as Stakeknife, who has been recruited by British Army Intelligence, run by a group called the Force Research Unit.

He's the number two in the IRA's Internal Security Unit, the counterintelligence team.

that are interrogating suspected traitors.

They decide who lives and who dies inside the IRA during the Troubles.

But we left off last time, Gordon, I think with this massive question, which really I think it's the heart of this series, this examination of Stakenife and his role in this intelligence war during the Troubles of

How do you run a really, really valuable agent who's also doing absolutely despicable things?

And in this case, interrogating, torturing, and in some cases, murdering citizens of the United Kingdom.

And so we have this kind of question, I think, at the heart of things.

And steak knife, when we left off last time, is being run by the army in the middle of the troubles.

This episode is brought to you by HP.

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.