Gordon Carrera

It just shows he's kind of, which I think is part of the point with Scappaticci, is that

They can't control him very much, which is one of the challenges all along.

I think he's his own guy.

You already get a sense of a guy who's difficult.

Yeah, that's right, because there have been lots of rumours about high-up informers in the IRA.

But the first public claim that there'd been a FRU agent, codenamed State Knife, operating within the IRA appears in articles by a journalist, Liam Clarke, in the Sunday Times in August 1999.

Clark Sauce, who's later going to emerge, is a former member of the Frou, who's then referred to as Martin Ingram, but later identified as Ian Hurst.

And it's interesting because Hurst hadn't handled Steakknife himself when he'd been in Frou, but he'd heard about an important agent because he remembered that there'd been one night when the phone had rung.

and someone had said they'd been arrested for DUI and suddenly all the top intelligence chiefs came in to work out how to bail this guy out from a driving under the influence of alcohol charge.

And Hearst had known then that there was someone really significant because the top people had come in.

So there's an injunction against Hearst and the Sunday Times in the High Court to not name him,

He's a disillusioned crew member.

And I think particularly the fact of what Scappaticci had done and what he'd been up to is something which he becomes kind of very focused on trying to get out.

But there's an injunction placed on him.

So actually then, the existence of someone called Steakknife is out, but it's going to be another four years nearly before...

Scappaticci's name becomes associated with it.

This is also fascinating because the link between Steakknife, the agent, and Scappaticci starts to appear 10th to 11th of May in news reports, 2003.

Irish media, US websites, finally in the UK media.

Scappaticci is still in Northern Ireland.

The next, I think, fascinating bit of the story, he decides he's going to brazen it out and just deny everything.