Say Nothing: a True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Correction StatementThis article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.Notes1. Brian Rowan, “Stakeknife: Truth about our dirty war just too shocking to ever be revealed”, Belfast Telegraph, 22 October 2015.2. Scappaticci, who died in 2023, denied being the agent codenamed Stakeknife – who successfully infiltrated the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) whilst working for the British Army’s Force Research Unit (FRU). It has been claimed that Stakeknife worked for the security forces whilst arranging for the murder of several dozen ‘informers’ by the PIRA’s Internal Security Unit (the ‘nutting Squad’). The British, meanwhile refrained from interfering in such activities in order to maintain Stakeknife’s cover. Media reports identified Scappaticci as Stakeknife in 2003 – causing him to move to England. Although arrested in 2018, he was never prosecuted. Scappaticci died in April 2023 maintaining his innocence to the end. Rory Carroll, “Man suspected of being Stakeknife, Britain’s top spy in IRA, dies,” The Guardian (London), 11 April 2023. On Stakeknife, see Greg Harkin and Martin Ingram, Stakeknife: Britain’s secret agents in Ireland (Dublin: O’Brien Press, 2004).3. Patrick Radden Keefe, “Letter from Belfast: Where the Bodies Are Buried Gerry Adams has long denied being a member of the I.R.A. But his former compatriots claim that he authorized murder,” The New Yorker, 9 March 2015.4. See, for example, Mark Urban, Big Boys’ Rules: SAS and the Secret Struggle Against the IRA (London: Faber and Faber, 1993), 26; Peter Taylor, Provos: The IRA & Sinn Féin (London: Bloomsbury, 1997), 140; Ed Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA (London: Penguin, 2002), 140; Richard English, Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA (London: Pan, 2003), 110.5. BBC News, “Boston tapes: Q&A on secret Troubles confessions”, 17 October 2019, Accessed July 7, 2023. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-272387976. Commanded by Pat McClure. Patrick Radden Keefe, Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland (London: William Collins, 2019), 103–4.7. BBC News, “Boston College project: PSNI get Dolours Price interview transcripts,” July 7, 2013, Accessed 7 July 2023. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-23216615Additional informationNotes on contributorsBrendan SomersBreandan Somers is originally from Mullingar, County Wexford, in the Republic of Ireland. He worked in Dublin for many years as a party-political adviser and print journalist. He is now retired and lives in Aberystwyth in the UK.R. Gerald HughesR. Gerald Hughes from Rhosneigr, Ynys Môn, is Reader in Military History and Director of the Centre for Intelligence and International Security Studies at Aberystwyth University. His publications include ‘Carl von Clausewitz and his Philosophy of War: The Evolution of a Reputation, 1831-2021’, History, 105/368 (2020): 773-805; ‘Journeys back along the roads to Mandalay, Imphal and Kohima: recent contributions to the history of the Burma theatre in the Second World War’, Intelligence and National Security, 37/1 (2022), 126-144 (with Stephen Hanna); 'Timely memoirs and the ‘British invasion’: two trends in the historiography of the CIA', Journal of Intelligence History, https://doi.org/10.1080/16161262.2022.2051920 (2022, with Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones); Germany and the Cold War: The Search for a European Détente, 1949–1967 (2007/2014); and The Postwar Legacy of Appeasement: British Foreign Policy Since 1945 (2014). His edited books include: The Cuban Missile Crisis: A Critical Reappraisal (2016, with Len Scott). R. Gerald Hughes is a member of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS).