David McCloskey

See you then.

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How did the British security forces recruit agents during the Troubles?

And how did the IRA try and hunt down those who would become informers?

Well, welcome to The Rest Is Classified.

I'm David McCloskey.

And I'm Gordon Carrera.

And last time, we left off with Freddy Scappaticci, number two in the IRA's internal security unit, its counterintelligence function.

It's the late 1970s.

he is in charge of some pretty dirty work interrogating and in some cases executing suspected informants who are working for the British state.

But we left off last time with the revelation that Scappaticci himself had become an agent for the British state.

And that angle to the story is what we'll be looking at in this episode.

Now,

Bit of context, last time we briefly looked at different parts of the British security establishment who are operating in Northern Ireland.

We have the RUC, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, or the police, which kind of has primacy in the area.

Its special branch is tasked with collecting intelligence.

Just to set a bit of the table here for what this conflict felt like, if you were a member of the security forces or the IRA during...

The late 70s and early 1980s.

Interpol data in 1983 showed that Northern Ireland was the most dangerous place in the world to be a police officer.

The risk was twice as high as El Salvador, which was the second most dangerous place at the time.