Wed 25 November 20267pm Doors, 7:30pm Start
Tickets: £9 / £25 (Admission and Pre Order book)
Former BBC Correspondent John Ware will be In Conversation with Author and JournalistPhilip Stephens about his new book “NEITHER CONFIRM NOR DENY - British Intelligence, Lawless Agent Running and the Suppression of Truth”.
In this startling new book, award-winning former BBC journalist John Ware examines the hidden moral and legal compromises at the heart of the British state’s war against political violence during the Northern Ireland conflict. With major new revelations, Neither Confirm Nor Deny tells the inside story of two of the most notorious agents ever run by the state – Brian Nelson and Freddie Scappaticci – and the deadly consequences of prioritising intelligence gathering over criminal justice, and sometimes even human life. Drawing on first-hand experience, previously undisclosed evidence and decades of reporting, the book exposes how agents implicated in murder operated beyond the law while governments and
intelligence agencies worked to conceal the truth.
‘The State is assassinating people.’ These were the chilling words said to have been sent to Tony Blair in 1999 in a damning note bluntly summarising one of the consequences of Britain’s decades-long intelligence war in Northern Ireland.
Neither Confirm Nor Deny explores the legal and moral compromises inured by the British state having decided to fight political violence in the Northern Ireland conflict by prioritising intelligence gathering from human sources – who
were recruited on an industrial scale – over criminal justice, and
even human life itself.
Ware seeks to explain these life-or-death dilemmas through a forensic examination of the way that two notorious agents, Brian Nelson (codenamed 6137) and Freddie Scappaticci (codenamed 6126), were operated by their military handlers.
It is a story told truly from the inside, with new and important revelations about how
they were recruited, handled and especially the decisions by the state in prioritising
their survival at all costs in their rival Loyalist and Republican organisations, over the
lives of others, even fellow agents.
Between them, both agents were collectively involved in some two dozen killings, and even more abductions, tortures and attempted murders. For years, they operated well outside any legal framework.
In the words of a former special branch officer, good intelligence on terrorists ‘doesn’t come from milkmaids. If asked to plant a bomb, you can’t say, “I’ll make the tea, but I don’t do bombs.”’ It was precisely this kind of moral and legal dilemma that so often confronted the British state itself in its war against terrorism in Northern Ireland.
Neither Confirm Nor Deny is Published by Merrion Press. Copies of the book will be available to buy at the ICC on the night of this event. Following the event John Ware will do a book signing. To buy the book in advance go to www.irishacademicpress.ie/imprint/merrion-press/
Event venue
5 Black's Road, Hammersmith, London, W6 9DT Hammersmith, United Kingdom
Tickets
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