Gordon Carrera

So their conclusion is more lives lost than saved.

But I think they also make one more, which I think is an important point, which goes back to your point about maths.

Even if you say a particular agent within a group did more good than harm,

the morality of letting them do any harm with the knowledge or on behalf of the state is a different matter.

So there's a kind of question there which is, is it as simple as just saying numbers, or do you have to consider what you are willing to let the state do?

and how far you're willing to let it go.

I think that's a different kind of interesting question beyond just the kind of 10 versus 12, you know, saved versus killed.

The context point is important.

Of course, the context now, we've had very fortunately peace in Northern Ireland with some violence, but nothing like what it was for many years now.

But the fact it was wartime, I think, or wartime, use the phrase wartime there, is part of the kind of question because people make different judgments in wartime.

And you see it in the Second World War about lives lost versus saved, about how you act on intelligence and what you do.

I guess what's complicated is the IRA would have said it was a war and that they were an army and it was a war, but the British state would have said, well, it's criminality and we're dealing with it in that way.

And so there's a kind of tension there about how...

the standards you apply and the context that you see and whether you do see it as a wartime and how far you change, to some extent, your metrics or your tolerance for certain activities if you do indeed see it as a war and how far you go.

I think it's hard.

I mean, there are still these questions, which I think are too hard to get into much detail about, which is, should there be culpability for those handlers who let him carry out murders?

And certainly some of the families of some of the victims of those killed by steak knife would like to see that, but there's no sign of...

of that happening, which I think, you know, I was talking about this with someone else, you know, saying it is, you know, when conflicts like this finish, it is one of the big questions, which is, do you have to, as a society, kind of have justice in terms of criminal prosecutions for people who went, who did things, or are there risks for that?

Because, you know, there's a fight in that in the UK, I think, at the moment about

you know, what that means and about opening up more prosecutions, whether it was kind of bloody Sunday, which we talked about in 1972 or steak knife and other incidents.