Conclusion

Abstract The book’s Conclusion directly addresses the themes that are central to the book’s analyses. These themes are evident throughout the activities that involve terrorist informers: from recruiting them, to meeting and collecting intelligence from them, to decisions relating to the use, exploitation, and management of their intelligence, to decisions regarding whether to arrest, charge, and prosecute them for alleged offences, to regulation of their use, and finally to the establishment and conduct of investigations into their use. Secrecy surrounding intelligence practices and intelligence itself, variety amongst terrorist informers, and cooperation between the security and intelligence agencies are recurring themes. So too is the relationship between the intelligence prism and the law and order prism through which terrorist informers in Northern Ireland can be viewed.