Agent Stakeknife

Abstract Agent Stakeknife was a terrorist informer active within the IRA for over a decade, a remarkably long period of time. His role within the IRA was to root out fellow informers. Agent Stakeknife is the subject of the first chapter because his is a case that raises many of the key issues seen throughout the rest of this book. These issues are: handlers’ knowledge of terrorist informers committing offences; the value assigned to protecting informers’ identities; the value placed on protecting informers’ lives by reducing the chances of them being exposed as informers; protecting informers from prosecution for offences allegedly committed either in the course of their role as informers or outside of that; and retrospective investigations into these informers’ activities and therefore into the security and intelligence agencies that handled them.