Stakeknife's Dirty War : The Inside Story of Scappaticci, the IRA's Nutting Squad and the British Spooks Who Ran the War

Freddie Scappaticci, the Belfast man widely alleged to have been the British agent codenamed Stakeknife, is at the centre of this Stakeknife book by Richard O'Rawe. Stakeknife's Dirty War also looks at the IRA's internal security unit, known as the Nutting Squad, and at how British intelligence ran its agents, including through the Army's Force Research Unit. It is for readers interested in informers, agents and the IRA during the Troubles.

O'Rawe drew on interviews with former IRA volunteers, many of them anonymous, and on his own experience. He estimates that Scappaticci was involved in 35 killings and argues that his handlers knew of killings in advance, claims the Irish Times and the Irish Echo present as his own. Scappaticci always denied being Stakeknife, and he died in England in 2023 without being convicted of any Troubles related offence.

O'Rawe is a former IRA member who was interned in 1973, spoke for the hunger strikers and later worked for Sinn Fein. He told the Irish Echo that his IRA past helped him gain the trust of former volunteers. His earlier books include Blanketmen, a prison memoir of the hunger strike.

Conor Lenihan, a former Irish government minister, reviewed it in Village magazine under the headline "Close as we'll ever get to the truth". Kevin Kiely gave it a strongly positive review in History Ireland. Since this Stakeknife book appeared in 2023, the Operation Kenova interim report of March 2024 found that Stakeknife probably cost more lives than he saved, without naming him. The final Kenova report in December 2025 did not confirm Scappaticci as the agent, because of the government's neither confirm nor deny policy, but said he had told his wife and an associate that he was.

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