Light was fading on the warm, wet August evening when the security
services' most important IRA agent pulled into the hotel car park for a
secret meeting.
Freddie Scappaticci - alias Stakeknife - was used to the danger - he
thrived on it.
But this time things were different. He wasn't going to meet his Army
handlers, he was there to meet journalists from a high profile television
programme.
And he wanted to dish the dirt on the most feared man inside the IRA -
Martin McGuinness, the man the programmed dubbed a terrorist godfather.
That meeting took place on Thursday, August 26, 1993, and for the last ten
years those journalists - myself, TV director and producer Clive Entwistle
and award-winning ex-Daily Mirror reporter Frank Thorne - kept a promise to
police not to reveal his true identity.
Top brass in Army intelligence and Special Branch were furious that
Stakeknife had compromised his position in what they considered a foolish
way.
A senior officer in the then RUC warned us in the strongest terms that
everything possible should be done to protect Scappaticci because even the
slightest slip could put his life in danger and threaten their most
important source of intelligence.
But now that his cover has been blown, we are free for the first time to
tell the full truth about the extraordinary meetings we had with Stakeknife
and the lengths we went to in order to conceal his identity and protect the
job he did for British intelligence.
Two nights before our first meeting, the popular investigative ITV
programme The Cook Report, had broadcast a hard hitting expose on
McGuinness - who would later become Northern Ireland's Education Minister -
in which he was accused of being one of the most senior leaders of
Provisional IRA and involved in ordering executions.
But Stakeknife thought the programme did not go far enough and was prepared
to put his life on the line to give us more detailed information about
McGuinness and other top terrorists.
In an amazing breach of security, Scappaticci rang The Cook Report main
office at Central Television in Birmingham calling himself 'Jack' and
claiming he was an IRA insider.
There had been many calls in the wake of the shockwave caused by the
McGuinness programme, but there was something about Scappaticci's voice
that made production manager Pat Harris take careful note.
She rang us at the Culloden Hotel just outside Belfast and Frank took down
a contact telephone number and rang it. Scappaticci answered and made
arrangements for a meeting in the hotel carpark.
We had no idea then who Jack was and made plans for Clive to be on hand as
a security measure. For all we knew 'Jack' could have turned out to be a
McGuinness supporter wanting revenge.
Clive and Frank were in place early, sitting in separate cars parked facing
each other, noting the registration number of each vehicle that arrived.
I was in the hotel having a meeting with a senior officer passing on
information for the police investigation launched into the serious
allegations made in The Cook Report.
I was waiting for details of the meeting to check out the potential new
informant. The policeman wanted to know whether the mystery man would end
up being a crucial witness for his inquiry.
'Jack' arrived on time, driving his own car. He parked and got out to join
Frank.
Before he got into front the passenger seat, Frank and Clive both noted
that he had a stocky build, about 5ft 9ins tall, with shortish black
straight hair that was receding, and was aged mid to late forties with
swarthy skin and hairy arms.
As he got in, there was a discussion about Clive sitting in a nearby car.
'Jack' accepted this security precaution and agreed for Clive to join them
after being reassured that no photos were being taken.
"Basically, I felt, see, the programme itself, it didn't go deeply enough,"
he told us in his strong Belfast accent. "If you want to take in Martin
McGuinness, you have to take in a couple of other people."
For the next 50 minutes, Stakeknife launched into an astonishing
who-did-what expose of the workings inside the IRA.
He named names, telling us about the Army Council, how the IRA was
organised and those responsible for operations, including atrocities in
England.
Scappaticci admitted he had served on the IRA Northern Command alongside
McGuinness and had known him for 20 years.
He also claimed that McGuinness had lured Frank Hegarty, a man the IRA
suspected of being an Army informant back to Derry from a safe house in
England.
Hegarty had betrayed the locations of secret Libyan arms.
McGuinness, determined to get Hegarty back, had befriended Hegarty's
family. and promised his mother that her son would be safe with him if he
returned.
Hegarty did return and eventually agreed to meet IRA leaders in Donegal to
'clear things up'. He was driven to the meeting by his sisters.
They never saw him alive again.
According to Scappaticci, Hegarty was interrogated by McGuinness and others
and then shot in the back of the head.
No-one has ever been convicted of his murder.
Our first meeting with Scappaticci ended at 7.50 pm and a second meeting
was arranged for the next day, in Belfast city centre.
By this time, I and the senior RUC officer had checked the registration of
his car.
When the number was fed into the police computer, alarm bells rang in every
security intelligence office in Northern Ireland.
When the officer was called back with the information, his normally ruddy
complexion faded with disbelief as he realised just who we were meeting in
the carpark.
There was a stunned silence as he worked out what to tell us - and more
importantly how much to tell us.
But when he knew the kind of details Stakeknife had divulged, he then told
us his name was Freddie Scappaticci and that he was indeed the IRA man he
claimed to be and was in a position to know a lot of information about
McGuinness.
In an extraordinary co-incidence, the hotel carpark was at the time of
meeting being scanned by security police in preparation for a dinner
appointment at the hotel that night for the then chief constable Hugh
Annesley.
Whether they spotted the senior IRA man having a covert meeting is not
recorded.
The officer asked for a further meeting after we had transcribed the tape
and shorthand notes and urged us not to discuss this with anyone until we
had talked again.
By the next day, the officer had taken advice and told us that Scappaticci
was a 'very, very important' informant and that it was vital for his safety
and the continuation of his work as a top agent that we protect his
identity at all costs.
The security services knew they could not stop us using the material, so
they took a calculated gamble to trust us. But they warned: "One slip
could cost him his life."
We were urged not only to use an actor to speak his words, but that it was
even necessary to change Stakeknife's distinctive phraseology to prevent
him being identified by the fellow IRA comrades he was betraying.
We gave our word.
By this time, we were due to have our second meeting with Scappaticci, but
he was not answering his phone to fix the final details.
Unbeknown to us at that time, Stakeknife's handlers were giving him a
ferocious rollicking for his freelance activity at the Culloden Hotel.
They wanted him to stop all contact with us.
But Scappaticci seemed to be a man who liked to live on the edge, and he
eventually arranged to see us again.
We met at 10 am the following day, Saturday August 28 at a carpark, this
time on the rural outskirts of east Belfast.
Scappaticci was there when we arrived, me driving, Clive beside me and
Frank in the back wearing his tape recorder in the right hand pocket of his
shirt, covered by his jacket.
Scappaticci was distinctly nervous as we drove off.
We didn't blame him. Now we knew who he was and what he did, we were
anxious, too. We were in a strong, Protestant area and here we were with a
top IRA terrorist in our car.
His conversation this time was more difficult and he gave us little new
information. But we went over all his earlier details.
But his handlers had done their job and he wasn't going to open up.
By this time, the car was heading towards Newtownards, another Protestant
stronghold, but we were all concentrating on Scappaticci's words instead of
taking much notice of where we were going and what was ahead.
It was Scappaticci himself who saw it first and shouted "Christ, turn left.
Quick, quick."
It was the marching season in Northern Ireland, and we were heading
straight into an Orange March, complete with banners, pipes and drums.
I turned left and sped away with the noise of the march ringing in our
ears.
The realisation of what might have happened if we had been caught with
Scappaticci in the back made us all panic - but Stakeknife most of all.
The sweat poured off him as he slumped back in the seat.
