OPINION
An insider’s account of how the IRA informer and his handlers put their lives on the line
During the war in Ireland known as the Troubles, agents recruited from within the Provisional IRA were vital in thwarting plots and providing the British with intelligence. Now one of their handlers, writing under the alias Will Britten, has published an account of his work – The Deadly Game. Here he discusses one of the most controversial agents, whom he claims saved many lives but was also allegedly a senior terrorist within the upper echelons of the Provisional IRA.
I’ve wondered more than once about the process, before the days of computergenerated codewords and codenames, that dubbed the agent regarded as the crown jewel – the golden goose of the British Government’s fight against Republican terror during what we dismissively call the Troubles – Stakeknife. A random process, the result of an office ballot, or the personal whim of a staff officer closeted in a tiny cell-like office in the bowels of the Army’s HQ in Lisburn. Whatever, less prosaically he was also later awarded a source number in line with ever y other agent run by the Force Research Unit (FRU) – 6126 – only slightly more interesting than the genesis of the UK’s emergency service number, 999!
It’s a codename that resonates, and certainly one that is currently very much front and centre – Stakeknife, Steaknife, Steak Knife. Would there have been the same appeal if he’d been a Tea Spoon or Cake Fork or even Potato Peeler? Instead he’s serrated, sharp, highly functional and effective, and in the eyes of some, deadly. Stakeknife is a name that’s well-known to anyone with even the scantest passing interest in the history of Ulster and in the wider scope of modern asymmetric counter-terrorist warfare. It’s also probably true to say that the Stakeknife story is likely the final saga to be unfolded in the sorry tale of the Troubles; it continues to exact more interest and speculation than any other topic save perhaps the backstory to the ‘Disappeared’ and the final verdict on the true involvement of Gerry Adams in the evolution of the Provisional Irish Republican Army.
There is now a surplus of information and comment concerning who Stakeknife was, char ting his career within the Provisionals, not least candid comments made by a top British Army general captured on
