Gordon Carrera

Yeah.

And it's so interesting because NCND, as it's known, neither confirmed nor denied, has become quite a big issue, I think, for MI5 in the UK.

And Canova is basically saying this totemic status, as it puts it, has become an implacable dogma.

And the tension here is MI5 and others saying, you have to have it in order to be able to offer agents confidentiality and assure them you will never reveal their identity if they agree to spy for you.

That's their

argument, which you may have some sympathy for, we'll come to that.

But the Canova argument is, what if that becomes a license to break the law?

What if this agent is involved in murder?

There are other things, other interests and public demands, particularly when an agent's been involved in criminality, which should overcome the desire for NCND and never to confirm an agent's identity.

Because the Brits do place MI5 and MI6 quite a premium on saying, we will protect your identity.

I mean, it's why technically, so the madness of it sometimes, Gordievsky is still subject to NCND.

So even though everyone knows he was an MI6 agent, everyone knows the story of him smuggling him out, technically, the British state will not confirm that Gordievsky was a MI6 agent.

They really do try and stick to this.

But it gets them into kind of difficult situations when those agents are involved in criminality.

I mean, there's been another case recently in Britain, kind of Agent X, as he's known, as someone who was accused of using the fact he was an agent, an asset of MI5, to kind of beat people up and use it as a kind of free pass.

And again, there was a battle actually in that case between the BBC and MI5 about whether or not he could be named and whether or not the kind of public interest trumped the agent protection principles.

Yeah.

And just to finish off the NCND point, I mean, it's notable that February 11th this year, 2026, the Irish Taoiseach or the Prime Minister named State Knife as Freddy Scappaticci.

So, you know, he stands up in Parliament, in the Irish Parliament, and said, you know, that the identity of state knife was clear to everybody here.

And he should be officially named by the British government, particularly because of his close relationship with those who like to refer to themselves as the Republican movement.