David McCloskey

And the level of the organization that's got to sign off on that waiver gets higher and higher to, you know, based on what kind of laws the agent is breaking.

I think this point is really the critical one is

At some point, these questions stop becoming intelligence questions and they become policy questions.

Yeah.

It becomes a policy of the state that, in this case, we are going to permit the deaths of certain UK citizens...

in pursuit of this intelligence war against what we see as a terrorist organization.

That's not something that individual low-level handlers of a source should have to sort of figure out, right?

That is a policy question of the British state.

Do you think that had everybody inside the security forces known exactly what was going on at the time, do you think that given the context of the conflict that

any different decisions would have been made about how he was handled or whether he was handled?

And I think that is the place to leave it.

We hope that even though it has been complicated, difficult, dark at times, that you've

enjoyed this exploration of i think a really compelling kind of and dark corner of what it means to run agents inside you know complicated tough paramilitary slash depending on your point of view terrorist organizations how do you do that how do you manage the risk and reward i think really you know a fascinating compliment to so many of the stories that we've done on this pod

on agent running and we do hope that you've enjoyed it you can get early access to all of these series as a provider if you go to the rest is classified.com and join the declassified club also get access to the bonus episodes uh that we do every week and we've got some we've done some i think some really interesting bonus episodes uh linked to this series on steak knife haven't we gordon

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.