Gordon Carrera

So, you know, this is hard stuff, I think, you know, for, for communities and particularly, I think for, you know, families of victims of people who died in, you know, on all the different sides in this conflict.

Yeah, it's a good point.

It's interesting.

I was talking to people and they were pointing out that there's new legislation which is coming, I think 2021, about exactly this, authorising criminal conduct for MI5 agents and others, so that it's clearer what is being authorised and what is not being authorised.

But one interesting point with that is it deliberately, I remember looking at this at the time, doesn't say what the limits are publicly.

for what an agent could do.

Because it goes back to the part of the point with State Knife, which is you don't want to tip off a group that the state will never authorize murder, for instance, or something like that.

Because immediately, if you do say, as a public policy, we're not going to authorize an agent to commit murder,

then a terrorist group or any other group will use it as a test to see if someone's an agent.

You can imagine that within ISIS-like groups or other groups these days as well.

We've been talking about history on Northern Ireland, but I think you're right.

These are ongoing questions for intelligence agencies.

I think that's one of the lessons from this very dark tale.

is the need for a much clearer sense of what the boundaries are and what the authorizations are and what the policies are, because it just doesn't look like there was that with steak knife.

Good question.

I think probably people didn't know what he was up to, but it was never put on paper and people chose to turn a blind eye.

That's the first thing.

But the second thing is, I think at various points with bombs going off in England and prime ministers nearly being assassinated by bombs and the scale of violence in Northern Ireland on all sides,

I think people were willing to do things, which I think now look very questionable.

That's part of it.