1. The Man Who Never Was

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When Vivint Smart Security gives you a smarter way to protect, and its smart thermostats give you a smarter way to save, well, that's a smarter way to live. Get the smarter home system that just gets you. at Vivint.com. episodes will be released weekly wherever you get your podcasts but if you're in the UK you can listen to the latest episodes right now first

on BBC Sounds. And just so you know, the following podcast contains interviews that some listeners may find upsetting and some occasional strong language. Episode 1 The Man Who Never Was

Just got a phone call and was asked to come down to the office. I knew where the office was. We're in a solicitor's office in West Belfast. It's May 14th, 2003. I didn't know who I was going to be meeting there. It's not the first and it wasn't the last time that I'd got a cryptic message to be at a certain place at a certain time. Two people are sitting in a room.

Two journalists. They sit and wait opposite a desk and two empty chairs. They've no idea who they're meeting or why they've been asked to be there. I didn't know that it was going to be him. I didn't know who I was going to be introduced to when I went down there for this meeting. This is Ankhad Walader. She's one of the journalists, sitting there, waiting in the room. All I can remember is that I was asked...

to be at his office at three o'clock, I think it was, that afternoon. I didn't know who was going to be there. The door suddenly opens. Two men walk in. One is a solicitor, the other his client. It was a complete shock when Freddy Scappaticci walked in. I recognised him from photos in the newspapers. I know I shook his hand, and I did that completely instinctively.

Some of my colleagues were very critical of me shaking his hand. Somebody emailed me once. He said to me, what does it feel like to shake the hand of a man? who has stubbed cigarettes out in people's eyes. Freddy Scappaticci sits behind a table and faces the journalists. He's holding a piece of paper. For the last three days... he's been at the centre of a huge international media storm. And now Mr Scavitici has a short statement to read.

I don't think he met our eyes once. He looked at the piece of paper that he was holding or the piece of paper on the desk. At no stage did he look at anyone. my statement basically is that i am freddy scapatici i'm sitting here today with my solicitor i'm telling you i'm not guilty of any of these allegations

A man said to be Britain's most valued spy inside the IRA has had his cover blown. The man outed a steak knife. Codenamed Steak Knife. It is said that Steak Knife was a senior member of the IRA's internal disciplinary unit. Freddy Scappaticci was a notorious enforcer for the IRA's internal security unit. His job was to find, to interrogate and to kill suspected informers. The story which has been running since Sunday is that he was an informer.

All along. A crucial secret agent for British intelligence. So who is Steakknife? Security sources have now confirmed to the BBC that he's Freddy Scavaticci. This is Freddy Scappaticci, the man named at the weekend as having worked for British Intelligence. Well, he's said to have been at the top of the IRA for several decades and was involved in murders himself. The alleged agent was codenamed Steakknife.

The allegation is that this agent was allowed to murder with impunity and that innocent people were killed to keep him in place. Perhaps selecting certain people to kill and certain people not to kill. The British agent, known to have been working within the IRA and given the codename Steakknife, was one of its most senior and ruthless members. It's a tremendous coup for British intelligence, but at the same time they have a lot of questions to answer about why they allowed him to kill people.

A man said to be Britain's most valued spy inside the IRA has fled from Northern Ireland. He was warned about his security on Friday when it was clear he'd be named. He only left Northern Ireland early this morning. Security sources have told the BBC he left Northern Ireland yesterday.

I have not left Northern Ireland since I was challenged by reporters on Saturday night. Nobody had the decency to ask me if any of these allegations were true and why the police had not come to question me about these allegations. It's difficult to explain what Belfast was like at that time. There were rumours everywhere that X, Y or Z were informers. And you just didn't know who to believe and who not to believe. But at that stage, nobody knew whether he was genuinely an informal.

or whether he was one of the many people in West Belfast at that time whose names were being touted about as being informers, which is an incredibly dangerous thing to do. Mr. Scabattici, I'm Brian Nolan from the BBC. Why do you think this neighborhood steak knife has been attached to you? I don't know. Were you aware of this at all before the weekend publications?

No. I became aware of it on Saturday night. And just one final question. Your statement has said, the statement yesterday and it's repeated today, that you are not state night. Were you at any stage a member of the IRA and involved in the Republican movement? I was involved in the Republican movement 13 years ago. But I have no involvement since the past 13 years. And what about the allocations? That's just fine. That's just fine. You've got three. Okay. I think that's my dog.

Just like that, the press conference abruptly finishes. Despite her best efforts, Anne never gets to ask even one question. The only time he was animated was when he was... instructing the cameraman to turn off. Turn the camera off. Turn the camera off. The door closes.

And Freddy Scappatigi leaves the room. I just felt out of control. I felt the story was completely out of my control, that I was being used. I suppose I was being used. Both of us were. It seems the press conference worked in confusing people. Legal action was threatened against media outlets who named Scappaticci a steak knife.

The IRA and the Republican movement publicly backed him, whilst British security sources secretly insisted to journalists that Scappaticci was lying. But at the time, we didn't know. Because there were a lot of lies going around. The place was full of lies. The air was full of lies. And nobody knew where the truth lay.

The Man Who Never Was was the name given to an elaborate hoax by the Allies to deceive the Germans about their war plans. This afternoon, it was claimed that the man so confidently identified as the British Army's mole inside the IRA, Agent Steakknife, was also a man who never was. The man outed a state knife. Today, Freddy Scappaticci came out of hiding to protest his innocence. Steak knife or mistaken identity?

But Alan Murray in The Independent notes that he has taken the chance that Republicans will believe him. His life depends on it, he says. One thing is certain, that Freddie Scappatucci can hardly be a steak knife. For he would hardly have the nerve to stay in Northern Ireland in the glare of this publicity and in the obvious threat of retaliation from the IRA. Can you give me a tour of your office? Talk me through it. There's a lot of folders up top.

Oh no, that's nothing to do with work. That's nothing to do with work, okay. It's from the archive. From the archive, it's very good. These folders, I don't think these are archived particularly well, I'm going to say. This is Sylvia Jones, like Anne Cadwallader. an English journalist who covered the troubles in Northern Ireland. I'm meeting her at her home in the East Midlands of England. I don't see any filing system there. No, there is no filing system.

To honestly, when I was working in Northern Ireland in those days, you would forever have your room turned over by somebody. It was a maid working in the hotel or somebody else coming in and doing it. So I got into the habit of not... putting things where you'd expect to find them. So, if that makes sense. It makes a semblance of sense, for sure. It can create some headaches as well, I'd say. It does, it does, it does.

Can you hear it okay? Can you hear? Let me just check here. Sylvia has covered crime stories for decades. In fact, she was the Daily Mirror's first female crime correspondent in the early 1980s. She was watching the news the day of that press conference in Belfast in 2003. Okay, so here we go. Good evening. Welcome to the six o'clock news. First tonight, he's accused of being Britain's top spy in the IRA. And I recognised him from that, you know.

I'm sitting at home. The story said, it's Freddy Scappaticci. Codename steak now, been out here, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I think, ah. It was only when I saw his picture and I thought, oh, I know that man. And I think, ah, ah, ah. Then I remembered. what I'd got tucked away. Legal action to clear his name. We're about to listen back to a tape that Sylvia Jones had tucked away.

Ten years before Scappaticci's press conference, she was working in Northern Ireland with a TV programme called The Cook Report. It was an investigative current affairs series on ITV that ran for years. It was massive at the time. Can you hear it okay? Do you want me to stop when I want to say something? Yeah. And you can just press the spacebar here to stop it. Charge card. Please enter your account number. Sylvia was making a programme about Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness.

and his connections to the IRA murder of an alleged informer in 1986. 1993. And we were doing a programme on Martin McGuinness. The programme went out. We had an audience of over 10 million. So we were still in Ireland. mopping up and working out what we could do for the update. And then on the Thursday, there's a phone call to our production offices in Birmingham, Central Studios in Birmingham, from a man who called himself Jack.

One of those 10 million viewers got in touch with Sylvia and her colleagues on the production team, the journalists Clive Entwistle and Frank Thorpe. The decision was made to record the caller. Frank answered the phone and spoke to Jack. Yes, I heard that... Jack straight away says their knowledge of Martin McGuinness was nothing. Jack asks, do you understand the situation? It's very dangerous.

He called himself Jack. And here we have somebody who reckons they're close to McGuinness. We acted fast but with extreme caution. I would rather... The hotel is The Culloden. It's a five-star estate on the outskirts of Belfast. by anybody. And they arranged to meet that evening in, of all places, the open car park at the Culloden Hotel.

I'm not sure excited is the right word to say. Intrigued. But again, you know, it sounds too good to be true. OK. All right. So what would I call you, John or Jack? We don't know anything other than what he's told us. We had no way of checking. Jack clearly wasn't his real name. So you take him at face value, but he could be a complete fantasist.

As the 7pm meet-up time approached, Frank sat in the driver's seat of a grey car in the hotel car park. In another car, at the opposite end of the Clodden car park, was the other producer, Clive. Sylvia was back in the hotel room following proceedings, and she had someone with her. Clive was in the car opposite. Frank's car was on one side of the car park, Clive's car was on the other, so that Clive could...

see that Frank was okay. I was in the hotel room with the police liaison officer. We wanted to find out who this man was and whether the information he was giving us was accurate. Bang on 7pm, a car pulls into the Cludden Hotel. As the man parks up, Clive takes note of the car registration plate. We were doing things very fast. We had no time to...

to get in the best equipment, the real recording stuff. So, you know, the meeting was being recorded on a little tiny mini tape, shoved up Frank Thorne's sleeve. I mean, it was not exactly sophisticated stuff. A man gets into the car. I take it you're Jack, Frank asks. Looking through the windscreen, Jack's attention is instantly drawn to the car on the other side of the car park.

Just in case two people turned up, that was all. I can ring him and call him off if you like. Do you want me to ring and call him off? Asks Frankie. Aye, would you please? As soon as... Jack arrived in the car park. Clive Entwistle saw him, spotted him, saw him get into the car with Frank. And then... phoned the number through to me in the hotel room where I was sitting with our police liaison officer. So we passed the car registration number on.

And his job, he said he would find out who it was. As the call is being made... Jack says the man in the other car should come over and join them. And then Clive did actually go and move into the car. Clive had worked in Northern Ireland a lot, so he had a lot of background information. With the two producers now in the car, Jack begins to talk.

Jack says, let me be straight. I was at the heart of things for a long time. How close were you to McGuinness, asks Clive? So that's Clive testing him to find out whether he really does know what he's talking about or whether he's making it up. He's the type of person who don't get save the sabre. He's a very cold person. He doesn't have friends within the IRA. He has what he calls comrades, but he doesn't have friends as such. He's friends and woman Asian.

How interesting. He was remarkably confident, wasn't he? which is how I remember him. I mean, just listening to him again, you know, he wasn't, he certainly, bearing in mind he was talking to, he was talking to journalists, you know, whom he didn't know. had no background knowledge of. Extraordinary, really, isn't it? Jack's intent on further damaging the reputation of Martin McGuinness. He describes him as evil.

The man who gave the go-ahead for the execution of the informer. A man called Frank Hegarty. Can I ask you how you know that, Jack? Can I ask how do you know that, Jack? Jack is coy. There's a silence. The conversation moves to the issue of the interrogation of informers. Jack explains what the standard procedure is. Put them in a chair, facing the wall and go from there. Jack explains that they don't use physical violence. They use what he describes. is mental violence. Maybe the room is cold.

They make you all sorts of promises. Everybody has a breaking point, he says. They think they're going home, but they don't. Is there anything How would you check out some of the things I would tell you, Ask Jack? Jack says the things I'd be giving you will be people. Lives will be taken. The recording ends. They'd talked for over 50 minutes. Some of it is indecipherable. They agree to meet again. Jack says goodbye, gets into his car, and drives off.

It took a couple of minutes. It took a couple of minutes for the information to come back. Back in the hotel, Sylvia and the police officer are waiting for news on who Jack really is. The police liaison officer gets a call back. And this tall, ruddy-faced officer, as he listened to what was being said to him, his face turned from... Red to ashen green. I mean, he was quite stunned. The army were just absolutely gobsmacked. The police who'd had...

a relationship with us and knew that we were fairly safe hands at what we were doing. They took a fairly fast decision to tell us the truth. They told us who he was. His name called Scappaticci. He was a very senior, had a very senior role in the IRA. And then that he was the most important informant in Northern Ireland. He was handled by the army and he was a very, very senior and important informant. The police...

asked us to protect him and protect his identity. And we gave our word that we would not reveal his true identity. And we never did. I simply tucked it away. Put it in my secret store and forgot about it. I'll show you. Have a look at this. This is the... The news that will have come out. Good evening. Welcome to the six o'clock news. First tonight, he's accused of being Britain's top spy in the IRA.

But this evening, the man supposedly known as Steakknife has come out of hiding to protest his innocence. The importance of Steakknife didn't come until 10 years later. There'd been lots of stories coming out about Steakknife, but I didn't know that Steakknife was the person that met in the back of the car all those years ago. Rang some contacts.

To say, look, you know, I know that we gave our word that we wouldn't reveal anything about him, that we'd interviewed him or anything at all. But now he's been outed. Can we use our recordings? had a call back to say, yeah, why not? Really? Was this army contacts? A contact. I'm not going to say who. But they were content with it to go out at that point.

They thought now he's been outed, you know, there's no, you know, it could do no harm. Just a few weeks after that press conference in Belfast. Sylvia wrote a story. She explained how it was revealed to her in the Clodden Hotel that Freddy Scappettici was the British Army's most important informant. The story was published. The audio was leaked.

and Freddy Scappaticci's voice was heard. The next day, Scappaticci arranged to meet the programme makers. And Dennis joins us now live from Belfast. Well, Dennis, what's not in doubt is that there was an agent called Steakknife. Assuming the reports are correct. How do you assess the effects of straight knives naming? In some ways, a kind of positive sign that the dirty secrets of the troubles are sort of coming out.

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Because he will make a noise. He probably needs to go out anyhow. Come on, Putsky. Come on, let's get you out. We're back at the beginning of this story and that impromptu press conference in 2003. I'm back in the Belfast home of the first journalist we met, Anne Cadwallader. Now you go out and play with your little friend. He's an absolutely fabulous cat. I'll tempt him out.

With one of his treats. Now that I'm a little old retired lady, it's kind of compulsory that, you know, you become a mad cat lady at my age. Come on. Come on, here's your favourite. There you go. There's the good little cat. Right, won't be for long. The consequences of Sylvia publishing her story were immediate and undermined everything Scabatici and a solicitor had told Anne at the press conference.

Looking back on it, I think that was a vain effort by him to exculpate himself. Why he thought it would is beyond me. There were obviously all sorts of games being played in the background, not only by the security services, but there's also speculation now, and it is only speculation, that the Republican movement didn't want him to be exposed.

Mr. Scappatici appears here today to give the lie to continuing media speculation as to his whereabouts. The past three days have been very traumatic for Mr. Scappatici, who now intends to resume his private life. Freddy Scappaticci never resumed his private life. In fact, very soon, he was going to disappear. Mr Scappaticci, I'm Brian Nolan from the BBC. Why do you think...

This label, a steak knife, has been attached to you? I don't know. It was just horrible, the whole thing, the whole history and background and context of informers. agents, double agents, triple agents, people lying to their friends, their families, their community in order to protect their own skins and the state. taking advantage of that. I found that whole scenario repulsive. My brother was no informer. He knew nothing about the provisional IRA. My brother was never an informer.

The slaves, he's not, he never was an informer. He couldn't, he wasn't informing anyone. Just, my statement basically is that I am Freddy Scappatissi. I'm sitting here today with my solicitor. I'm telling you I'm not guilty of any of these allegations. The only thing proven after Sylvia published her story was that Freddy Scappaticci was steak knife.

Everything else, like how he was recruited, how many people he interrogated, how many he killed. No one knew anything for certain. Why was Scappaticci's name released when it was? How long did the IRA know about him? Who knew the truth? Nothing was proven. Who do you believe? I mean, people will say anything to save their own skins. So who do you believe? As a journalist, who do you believe?

And we now know you couldn't believe Freddy Scabattici. Were you aware of this at all before the weekend publication? No. I became aware of it on Saturday night. You could not believe the police. You could not believe the army. You could not believe the security services. They were all lying. They were all doing things they shouldn't be doing. And as a journalist, faced with that...

How can you take a stand? How can you expose the truth when everybody is lying to you? Everybody. Take yourself off. Fucking all that stuff on the TV and everything else about us. Now fuck off you on him. That's the worst time I've been here. I don't care. This is the last recorded audio of Freddy Scappaticci. captured by journalists outside his home in Belfast after Sylvia Story was released. Come on, fuck off. He's caused enough problems in this house. And take no more photos of this house.

Fucking scum yous are. Stories yous make up. Don't take any more photos of this house, I'm telling you now. Because if you do, I'll come out and I'll fucking do you. And you too.

Soon afterwards, he disappeared. He was flown out of Northern Ireland by his army contacts. There was a court injunction, despite being linked to double-figure murders. No one was allowed to publish where Freddy Scappatigi was. Because of a thing called the Official Secrets Act, which is legislation to protect state secrets and UK national security. No journalists were even allowed to approach him. including us at the start of this series.

A man said to be Britain's most valued spy inside the IRA has fled from Northern Ireland. He was warned about his security on Friday when it was clear he'd be named. He only left Northern Ireland early this morning. Security sources have told the BBC he left Northern Ireland yesterday He was given a new identity He was protected Who do you believe? And on the basis that you can't believe anyone and there is no evidence and everyone's lying and the law is being broken every day of the week.

by people who were supposed to uphold the law, who do you believe? If you've been affected by any of the issues forward slash action line You can contact the programme makers at cover at bbc.co.uk. If you have any information you'd like to share or if you or your family have been affected by the steak knife case or similar cases, that email again is cover at bbc.co.uk.

You can also stay up to date with this series and read more information related to this case by visiting the Steak Knife podcast website. That's bbc.co.uk forward slash steak knife. You'll also find the link there for series one of cover.

which is Where Is George Gibney? And that's a series we're very proud of. So you can catch an episode of that whilst you're waiting for the next Steak Knife, which is out on Friday, November 29th. Steak Knife is written and produced by me, Mark Horgan, and Ciarán Cassidy.

Editing and sound design is also by Ciarán Cassidy. It's co-produced by Paddy Fee. Our composer is Michael Fleming. Sound mixing is by Jeremy Donnell. And our theme tune is by Lancome. Assistant commissioners for the BBC are Lorraine Ocafuna and Sarah Green. And the commissioning editor for the BBC is Dylan Haskins. Steak Knife is a second Captains and Little Wing production for BBC Sounds. We'll talk to you soon. Well, now to a very special person tonight, George Gibney. Thank you very much.

He'd vanished. Mr. Gibney has denied the allegations of sexual abuse which were made against him. Mr. Gibney was apparently hiding in a nearby supermarket before being smuggled in. The greatest illusion perpetrated in sport ever. There was nothing about that man that was real.

So how has George Gibney escaped justice for so many years? Hey, look, look, look. There they are. Just keep your head down. Keep your head down. I retrace his steps across the US. I think George Gibney's in the front of that car. Okay, are you ready to do it? Yeah. Where is George Gibney? Listen on BBC Sounds.

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When Vivint Smart Security gives you a smarter way to protect, and its smart thermostats give you a smarter way to save, well, that's a smarter way to live. Get the smarter home system that just gets you. at Vivint.com.