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Reports: Exposed spy flees Ireland
LONDON, England (CNN) -- Britain's top spy inside the Irish Republican Army has fled Ireland after being exposed, according to several newspapers in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. The reports say the IRA's head of northern command security, Alfredo Scappaticci, was for 25 years a British spy codenamed "Stakeknife" who is suspected of being allowed by an army intelligence unit to get away with up to 40 murders. The revelations have provoked debate about how British security services infiltrated the IRA -- and the role of paid informers. CNN's Senior International Correspondent Nic Robertson said: "For the British government it means not just the loss of a top agent but possibly the beginning of trouble accounting for what one well-placed security source told me could be at least 25 murders Scappaticci was responsible for." Scappaticci was also among the top tier of the IRA's so-called "Nutting Squad," which had the job of tracing informers. He had been head of its northern command security for almost two decades, several newspapers reported Sunday and Monday. According to reports, he was paid about £80,000 ($128,000) a year to be an informer. The identity of a suspected mole within the rebel group -- which has waged a 30-year campaign against British rule in Northern Ireland -- has been the subject of speculation for years. A Northern Ireland Office spokeswoman refused to discuss the disclosures. "We wouldn't comment on anything of an intelligence or security nature," she said. Scappaticci has lived at addresses both in Belfast and Dublin. Some newspapers say he is now in a safe house in England. Accused by several IRA members and security sources of killing to save his own cover, Scappaticci, from Belfast, is reported to have risen quickly during his decades as an informer to the upper echelons of the organization. "His name was tremendously well known and it did inspire fear, so leadership's enforcer was how he was known," former IRA commander Sean O'Callaghan told CNN. A former British undercover agent in the IRA -- who prefers to be called Kevin Fulton to protect his identity -- said Stakeknife had access to vast troves of information. "He was one of the leading members of the IRA internal security unit," said Fulton. "He would have had access to people all over Ireland. He would have interrogated anybody north or south that the IRA thought were handing over secrets." Fulton said this position gave Stakeknife power over life and death. "He would have been able to save many lives -- there is no doubt about that but he would also have been able to take lives or redirect pressure from one agent or make someone else look like an agent and basically get them executed." Security sources said it was these killings that made Scappaticci a target for an inquiry by Sir John Stephens, the British police officer investigating allegations of murder and malpractice by the British Army's force research unit that ran agents. Fulton denies he tipped the newspapers off to Stakeknife's identity. CNN's Robertson added: "Whatever the truth, the implications of this latest revelation go beyond Fulton's and Scappaticci's immediate safety." • A "small incendiary device" packed in an envelope sent to the Ulster Unionist Party headquarters in Belfast exploded but injured no one Monday, police said. The padded envelope, addressed to Ulster Unionist Party leader David Trimble, was being opened by Trimble's secretary when the device went off, police said. Police say the blast was weak and the bomb did not completely explode. An Army bomb disposal unit was called to the scene to remove the device. No one has claimed responsibility for sending the envelope to the Trimble's office. -- CNN Senior International Correspondent Nic Robertson contributed to this report
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