Undisclosed MI5 intelligence was not deliberately withheld from a £40 million (€46.6 million) investigation into the activities of the British army’s top spy in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, a report has found.
A review was carried out between last October and January to determine how the failure arose after it emerged that hundreds of confidential files were not shared with the Operation Kenova team.
The seven-year Kenova investigation into the double agent, codenamed Stakeknife, who is widely regarded as west Belfast man Freddie Scappaticci, found more lives were lost than saved as a consequence of his actions.
Kenova’s interim report was published last March and a month later the MI5 documents came to light.
Owen Doyle: Chaotic cock-up cost Munster and it reflects badly on a number of people
Dublin-born Irish–American cardinal Kevin Farrell to run Vatican until pope elected
Pope Francis died of a stroke and ‘irreversible heart failure,’ the Vatican has said
New teachers will be fast-tracked into permanent posts to tackle staffing ‘crisis’
Mr Scappaticci, who died in 2023, headed up the IRA’s internal security unit or nutting squad, during the 1980s. He has been linked to at least 14 murders.
The head of Kenova, solicitor and retired chief constable Iain Livingstone, expressed “great concern” about the discovery of the MI5 material and wrote to Northern Secretary Hilary Benn last year. An external review was then commissioned by the director general of MI5 and carried out by a former assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Helen Ball.
On Thursday, an unclassified summary of the review was published on the Kenova website.
The report itself is classified due to the “sensitivity” of its information.
Intelligence documents ranged from a “very small number of paper files in one set to a large number of reports in another”, Ms Ball said.
They were discovered when MI5 digitised its Northern Ireland legacy archive.
About 20 MI5 members and five Operation Kenova investigators were consulted during the four-month review period.
[ Stakeknife: The inside story of IRA double agent Freddie ScappaticciOpens in new window ]
There was no evidence “of a deliberate attempt to withhold the material identified in 2024”, Ms Ball found.
“Therefore, I have concluded that none of the material was deliberately withheld from Operation Kenova at either an individual or an organisational level,” she said.
However, she said, MI5’s disclosure exercise drew on historic information management practices for Northern Ireland material which were not as strong in the past as those that MI5 had in place for its other material.
“This meant in some cases that material was not properly stored and indexed when it should have been, and in others that it was indexed in a way that meant its relationship to Operation Kenova’s remit was not recognised,” she said.
The brutal crimes of IRA double agent Freddie Scappaticci
MI5 did not conduct a broader assessment of its position concerning Operation Kenova’s investigative remit and the material it might hold, according to the review. Had this occurred and had MI5 maintained stronger relationships with the Kenova team, some of the material might have been identified earlier, the review said.
The review makes six recommendations, including advising that MI5 should create “an accurate timeline” of “knowledge and engagement” with those running Stakeknife.
But a lawyer acting for 21 families affected by the delayed disclosure dismissed the review as a “damp squib”.
Kevin Winters said relatives “can rightly feel insulted” by being asked to “buy into the notion” that filing and indexing issues caused a communication lapse between MI5 and Kenova.
“It is derisory to suggest that families have to wait to get a full chronology of the relationship between MI5 and Stakeknife,” Mr Winters of KRW in Belfast, said.
“What is key for us is the extent to which this hitherto unavailable MI5 material might have impacted on criminal referrals from Kenova to the PPS.”
Mr Winters has written to Kenova’s lead investigator to seek clarification on concerns arising from Ms Ball’s review.
The final Kenova report is expected to be published at the end of this year.
