8. The General and the Agent

We return to the solicitor’s office in West Belfast as Mark meets three crucial people to discuss the end of Scappaticci’s time in the IRA and his eventual uncovering as the agent Stakeknife.CreditsReporter: Mark Horgan Produced and written by: Mark Horgan and Ciarán Cassidy Co-Producer: Paddy Fee Editing and Sound Design: Ciarán Cassidy Composer: Michael Fleming Sound mixing: Ger McDonnell Theme tune by Lankum Artwork by Conor Merriman Assistant Commissioners for BBC: Lorraine Okuefuna and Sarah Green. Commissioning Editor for BBC: Dylan HaskinsStakeknife is a Second Captains & Little Wing production for BBC Sounds.

In 1990, a man called Sandy Lynch was tied up, blindfolded and interrogated by Scappaticci. He survived to document his experience. Marks speaks to an IRA man who “guarded” Lynch.CreditsReporter: Mark Horgan Produced and written by: Mark Horgan and Ciarán Cassidy Co-Producer: Paddy Fee Editing and Sound Design: Ciarán Cassidy Composer: Michael Fleming Sound mixing: Ger McDonnell Theme tune by Lankum Artwork by Conor Merriman Assistant Commissioners for BBC: Lorraine Okuefuna and Sarah Green. Commissioning Editor for BBC: Dylan HaskinsStakeknife is a Second Captains & Little Wing production for BBC Sounds.

Episode 7 is available on Friday, January 3rd on BBC Sounds.

Orla and Kevin Coyle tell the story of their father who was killed as an alleged informer by the IRA. The profound shadow cast by their father’s death has lasted almost 30 years.CreditsReporter: Mark Horgan Produced and written by: Mark Horgan and Ciarán Cassidy Co-Producer: Paddy Fee Editing and Sound Design: Ciarán Cassidy Composer: Michael Fleming Sound mixing: Ger McDonnell Theme tune by Lankum Artwork by Conor Merriman Assistant Commissioners for BBC: Lorraine Okuefuna and Sarah Green. Commissioning Editor for BBC: Dylan HaskinsStakeknife is a Second Captains & Little Wing production for BBC Sounds.

Brendan Hughes wants to question Joe Fenton and find the “main mover.” Is Stakeknife suspected? We meet the former IRA man who interviewed Hughes and whose hero was Scappaticci.CreditsReporter: Mark Horgan Produced and written by: Mark Horgan and Ciarán Cassidy Co-Producer: Paddy Fee Editing and Sound Design: Ciarán Cassidy Composer: Michael Fleming Sound mixing: Ger McDonnell Theme tune by Lankum Artwork by Conor Merriman Assistant Commissioners for BBC: Lorraine Okuefuna and Sarah Green. Commissioning Editor for BBC: Dylan HaskinsStakeknife is a Second Captains & Little Wing production for BBC Sounds.

Mark tells the story of a man called Joe Fenton and how he was connected to Stakeknife. We learn there was a hierarchy of agents, where some were saved and some were not.CreditsReporter: Mark Horgan Produced and written by: Mark Horgan and Ciarán Cassidy Co-Producer: Paddy Fee Editing and Sound Design: Ciarán Cassidy Composer: Michael Fleming Sound mixing: Ger McDonnell Theme tune by Lankum Artwork by Conor Merriman Assistant Commissioners for BBC: Lorraine Okuefuna and Sarah Green. Commissioning Editor for BBC: Dylan HaskinsStakeknife is a Second Captains & Little Wing production for BBC Sounds.

Mark meets two former members of the FRU, the secret army intelligence unit that ran the agent Stakeknife. How did they recruit people? How was Scappaticci recruited?CreditsReporter: Mark Horgan Produced and written by: Mark Horgan and Ciarán Cassidy Co-Producer: Paddy Fee Editing and Sound Design: Ciarán Cassidy Composer: Michael Fleming Sound mixing: Ger McDonnell Theme tune by Lankum Artwork by Conor Merriman Assistant Commissioners for BBC: Lorraine Okuefuna and Sarah Green. Commissioning Editor for BBC: Dylan HaskinsStakeknife is a Second Captains & Little Wing production for BBC Sounds.

Mark speaks to the brother of one of the first people interrogated by Stakeknife. We follow Seamus’ journey as he retraces his brothers steps in the days before he was murdered.CreditsReporter: Mark Horgan Produced and written by: Mark Horgan and Ciarán Cassidy Co-Producer: Paddy Fee Editing and Sound Design: Ciarán Cassidy Composer: Michael Fleming Sound mixing: Ger McDonnell Theme tune by Lankum Artwork by Conor Merriman Assistant Commissioners for BBC: Lorraine Okuefuna and Sarah Green. Commissioning Editor for BBC: Dylan HaskinsStakeknife is a Second Captains & Little Wing production for BBC Sounds.

A man flees Northern Ireland when he’s named as Stakeknife. At a surprise press conference a few days later he denies the charges but a forgotten tape comes back to haunt him.CreditsReporter: Mark Horgan Produced and written by: Mark Horgan and Ciarán Cassidy Co-Producer: Paddy Fee Editing and Sound Design: Ciarán Cassidy Composer: Michael Fleming Sound mixing: Ger McDonnell Theme tune by Lankum Artwork by Conor Merriman Assistant Commissioners for BBC: Lorraine Okuefuna and Sarah Green. Commissioning Editor for BBC: Dylan HaskinsStakeknife is a Second Captains & Little Wing production for BBC Sounds.

In Northern Ireland from 1978 to 1994, the IRA killed over 40 alleged informers; people accused of passing information to the police and the British Army. But the man who often found, tortured, and sometimes killed these men and women was himself an informer, a secret British Army Agent with the codename Stakeknife.Using secret recordings, reporter Mark Horgan traces the astonishing double life of Freddie Scappaticci. Why was he protected? How did he walk the tightrope between the IRA and British Army intelligence for so long and when murders, often of entirely innocent people, were sometimes allowed to take place despite state security force surveillance, who gets to play God?This series is about far more than just one man; it’s about the state structures that protected him. From the production team behind the international award-winning ‘Where Is George Gibney?’, Stakeknife tells the story of one of the most-contested and darkest episodes of the Troubles. When neither side wants the story of Stakeknife to come out, how does society try to reconcile the truth about what happened? CreditsReporter: Mark Horgan Produced and written by: Mark Horgan and Ciarán Cassidy Co-Producer: Paddy Fee Editing and Sound Design: Ciarán Cassidy Composer: Michael Fleming Sound mixing: Ger McDonnell Theme tune by Lankum Artwork by Conor Merriman Assistant Commissioners for BBC: Lorraine Okuefuna and Sarah Green. Commissioning Editor for BBC: Dylan HaskinsStakeknife is a Second Captains & Little Wing production for BBC Sounds.