Neither Confirm Nor Deny : British Intelligence, Lawless Agent Running and the Suppression of Truth

Set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, Neither Confirm Nor Deny by John Ware looks at how the British Army, MI5 and the RUC ran agents inside paramilitary groups, and the moral and legal questions that followed. It centres on two men, Brian Nelson, intelligence officer of the loyalist UDA who worked for British Army intelligence, and Freddie Scappaticci, the IRA man widely alleged to be the agent codenamed Stakeknife. The British government has never officially confirmed who Stakeknife was. The Irish Times review calls it a weighty but accessible study for readers interested in the Troubles, state intelligence and the ethics of espionage.

This neither confirm or deny book takes its name from the government's policy of not saying who was an agent, a stance the UK Supreme Court has upheld. Ware argues that governments and intelligence agencies repeatedly put gathering intelligence ahead of prosecuting crime, pointing to a 1981 MI5 decision that gave intelligence priority over criminal justice. He also covers Sir John Stevens's collusion investigations, the 2025 Kenova report, the 1989 killing of Pat Finucane and disputes over disclosure to bereaved families.

John Ware began in journalism in 1971 and was based in Belfast from 1974 to 1977. He worked for Granada's World in Action and became a long serving BBC Panorama reporter, covering Northern Ireland for decades. He received the James Cameron Prize for journalism in 2004.

Reviewing it in The Irish Times, Harry Higgins called it timely and important, rich in detail and new revelations, though not without flaws. He described the neither confirm nor deny doctrine as "less about protecting national security than preventing national embarrassment". In the Irish Examiner, Diarmuid O'Donovan predicted it will remain the definitive account until British intelligence files from the period are released.

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