Secret agent Stakeknife who saved 200 lives during the Troubles could be a woman

27 January 2024 , 20:04

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Grand Hotel in Brighton was destroyed after the IRA blast in October 1983 (Image: Mirrorpix)

It was 1983 and the IRA had just killed six people in London by exploding a bomb outside Harrods.

In Northern Ireland, 38 members of the Republican terror group escaped from the Maze Prison, killing three prison service guards. And the second anniversary of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands’ death in the jail had just passed.

That same year – the middle of the 30-year conflict known as the Troubles – Will Britten became the youngest-ever member at 23 of a top-secret unit set up to recruit terrorists as double agents. And Will suggests that the most notorious of them all – codenamed Stakeknife – could have been a woman. “Why not?” he says.

Stakeknife not only saved his life but that of about 200 others. “Stakeknife was the sort of gold-plated example of what can be done,” says Will.

“You cannot do the job unless you are recruiting tried, trusted, tested terrorists. Clearly she was one of those. We once did a rough calculation and we reckon the information passed on by Stakeknife saved in the region of 200 lives. You can’t do more than that.”

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Will – who cannot reveal his true identity – worked for the Force Research Unit, set up in the 1980s by British Army intelligence to infiltrate Republican and Loyalist terror groups.

Secret agent Stakeknife who saved 200 lives during the Troubles could be a woman

Escorts for the coffin of hunger striker Bobby Sands are pictured (PA)

As well as members, the FRU targeted relatives, colleagues, boyfriends and girlfriends. But within weeks of starting his undercover role, an office junior’s blunder compromised Will’s identity and that of his latest signing.

Paperwork containing their real names was mistakenly binned, rather than incinerated, and passed to the IRA. Luckily another agent, thought to have been Stakeknife, found out in time. Stakeknife has been widely rumoured to be IRA man Freddie Scappaticci, who died in his 70s last April, but both he and the British Army denied it. Scappaticci was head of the IRA unit known as the “nutting squad” responsible for torturing and killing informers.

It was a fate shared by many – known as touts – suspected of passing information to the British. Will – who served 27 years in the Army and became a senior intelligence officer “because it resonated with my interests in life” – said cash was their main, but not their only, motivator.

Casualties hobble out of the wreckage after the IRA bomb Harrods (Mirrorpix)

Will, who details his exploits in a new memoir, says: “Life was hard in West Belfast and South Armagh, so money goes a long way but it was never, never the sole reason.

“There are a whole gamut of reasons to go against your history, your culture, the people, the organisation. It could be simply because, as a teenager you were beaten up by some hoods on Saturday night and you have that burning resentment.

“We had older agents worried about the future of their kids and grandchildren. People were sick of the Troubles, they wanted a better future.” Inevitably, some agents paid the ultimate price, like IRA quartermaster Frank Hegarty who passed on information about a cache of arms. After being exposed, he was whisked to safety with a new identity but persuaded to return by late IRA and Sinn Fein chief Martin McGuinness. There’s a tape recording where you can hear McGuinness and it’s pretty chilling stuff,” says Will.

A soldier searches a man after a gun battle in Belfast in 1971 (Mirrorpix)

“At that point we weren’t able to do anything for him. His body was found at the side of the road. Our number one rule was that nobody should die because of what we were doing. We’d never have sacrificed a third-party life to save an agent, and if an agent was under threat, we’d pull them out, which happened a few times.”

Their intelligence even saved the other side – when Will and his colleagues discovered that loyalists planned to assassinate former Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams. With hindsight, thank God we did save Adams, because he was instrumental to the peace process. We did wonder if it was a good move, but he was a member of the public, he was threatened and he gets to be warned. It was the right decision,” says Will.

But they weren’t always able to prevent attacks. In October 1984, Will and his team had been on an exercise in Brighton the day before an IRA bomb exploded in the Grand Hotel, targeting Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet at the Tory conference. Five people were killed and 31 injured.

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The then Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness and Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams are pictured in 2016 (Getty Images)

“It’s pure coincidence that we were in Brighton,” says Will. “Nobody knew that was going to happen. When anything happens people say it’s another intelligence failure. Terrorists just have to be lucky once, we have to be lucky every single time.

“The fact there are so few security incidents in the UK at the moment really is testament to the work that Special Branch and the security services are doing. But there will always be times when the bad guys get one over.” Adams has accused the FRU and Special branch of passing information to “loyalist death squads” in the 1980s.

But 40 years on, Will says he is proud of what he did and wrote his book to put the record straight, partly for his children. Will explains: “There are a lot of conspiracy theories – that we were burning down police stations or colluding with loyalist paramilitaries. We weren’t, nor could we ever. We damaged the IRA but we forced them into a position which has only been good for them. Sinn Fein is the biggest party in the province, which is unbelievable. One of our great achievements as an organisation is that we helped create a situation where the peace process took hold.

“A lot of people lost their lives, but equally, we were able to save a lot of lives and that gives me a feeling of great pride.”