Scottish spymaster Gordon Kerr was man behind Stakeknife

Twenty years ago, on the front page of this newspaper, I named Freddie Scappaticci as Stakeknife, the code-name for the highest-placed double agent working for British military intelligence inside the IRA. Scappaticci was a multiple murderer and torturer.

Scappaticci and other agents like him in both the IRA and rival terror groups like the loyalist UDA were run by officers from the British army’s Force Research Unit (FRU). Kerr commanded the FRU.

FRU agents were guilty of multiple murders while working for Britain. In order to maintain their cover, they had to keep operating as terrorists - that meant murder. FRU handlers knew exactly what was happening. In fact, sometimes, FRU handlers even colluded with agents in acts of murder. Innocents died.

I investigated the FRU for years. I spoke to handlers, and agents. Some years before I named Scappaticci as Stakeknife, I outed Kerr as the mastermind of what’s now called ‘The Dirty War’.

Kerr was rewarded for his work, later becoming the British military attache to Beijing. FRU officers told me reports detailing the unit’s work went all the way to Whitehall and Downing Street.

Last Friday, Operation Kenova - the police inquiry into Stakeknife’s activities - finally issued its report. But it was never going to bring justice for victims’ families. Nobody, we now know, will be prosecuted as a result of the report.

Hong Kong's Justice Secretary Elsie Leung (L) greets visiting British Brigadier Gordon Kerr (R) upon his arrival as China's Major General Wang Jitang (C-back), the PLA commander of the Hong Kong garrison, looks on in Hong Kong, 16 February 2004. (Image: free)

The fix was in for a long time. I don’t blame Kenova detectives for what’s happened. I believe they were genuinely doing their duty and trying to pursue justice. But the British state wasn’t going to let soldiers like Kerr land in court. He’d obediently done Britain’s very dirty work.

In intelligence terms, Kerr has ‘protezione’ - the Mafia phrase for ‘protection’. His connections go to the heart of the British establishment. He’s one of Britain’s favoured sons.

Just look at the running order of events. It was May 2003, when I named Stakeknife in the Herald on Sunday. Three years earlier, in 2000, I named Kerr as the FRU’s commander, and outlined the bloody business he and his outfit were engaged in during The Troubles.

Many years then passed and nothing happened. The British state just sat on this festering scandal. Finally, thanks primarily to victims’ families, Operation Kenova was launched in 2017. That’s a long time ago.

Six years went by. Then Scappaticci - who was given a new identity and resettled in England after I blew his cover - died in April 2023.

Prior to his death, Northern Ireland’s Public Prosecution Service (PPS) was considering whether to charge Scappaticci with murder and other offences, after receiving files of evidence from Kenova detectives.

Jon Boutcher - the former chief constable of Bedfordshire Police who headed up Kenova - would later be appointed chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, the successor to the RUC, in 2023.

In his Stakeknife report, Boutcher wrote that the files he sent to the PPS “contained strong evidence of very serious criminality on the part of Mr Scappaticci.

“We first attempted to submit these in October 2019 and it will never be known whether an earlier decision by the PPS would have resulted in prosecution and, if so, conviction.”

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The PPS decided not to prosecute anyone, including IRA members and former soldiers who handled agents.

The PPS said it didn’t “have sufficient resources to progress the Kenova decisions more quickly”.

Then in autumn 2023, the UK government passed the Northern Ireland Troubles legacy bill, which meant that nobody - including members of the British security forces - would ever be prosecuted for crimes during the conflict.

It’s game, set and match for Kerr. Stakeknife is dead. All hope of prosecution is dead as well. A double agent who killed repeatedly while working for British military intelligence can no longer speak; those who ran that agent, and others, are now guaranteed lasting ‘protezione’.

It was always going to go this way. Northern Ireland has consistently been treated as if it’s separate from British democracy.

Events can happen in Northern Ireland - the Dirty War, Bloody Sunday, take your pick from history’s rotten pages - which would cause governments to fall if they had occurred in England, Wales or Scotland.

Margaret Thatcher once said Northern Ireland was as “British as Finchley”. She was wrong. Imagine what the public reaction would be if I’d revealed terrorist gangs were being puppeteered by British intelligence in Finchley and killing UK citizens?

For that’s the truth of the Dirty War: the British state had agents high up in both the IRA and loyalist gangs.

So, I ask again, as I’ve consistently asked over the last 25 years: who was the terrorist? The IRA, loyalist paramilitaries, the British Army, the British government - or all of them?

Youths confront British soldiers minutes before paratroopers opened fire killing 14 civilians on what became known as Bloody Sunday on 30th January 1972 (Image: free)

The Dirty War forces us to question the very nature of British democracy.

An FRU officer once told me that this was the best way to understand the Dirty War: “Imagine the IRA and the UDA playing chess in a room. British intelligence goes into that room, turns off the lights and moves all the pieces to endgame.”

In a way, the final act of the Dirty War - the last chess move in that dark room - was the smothering of justice when it came to Stakeknife’s many crimes. The pieces were moved on the board in such a way that men like Brigadier Gordon Kerr and the officers who served under him will never be called to account.

Checkmate. I must take my hat off to Kerr. What he’s done throughout his life was morally repugnant, but he had all the moves, and he won the game. All my Dirty War investigations were, in the final analysis, just a hiccup in his career.

He can enjoy his retirement in Aberdeen now. But should he ever wish to clear his conscience, he knows where to find me. I’ve told every side of the Dirty War, apart from his. History deserves to hear Kerr’s voice.