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Bed of (Irish, well, British) Lies
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Josh and M review the third series of the podcast 'Bed of Lies', which deals with what the British were doing during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The answer is 'They were up to no good', but what kind of 'no good' was it?
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Transcript
Introduction and Greetings
00:00:00
Speaker
This week, on the podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy, Josh and I will be doing Michael Smiley impressions. Michael Smiley being, of course, an Irish actor with a Northern Irish accent.
00:00:10
Speaker
Now you might remember him from his role in Space, playing a bike courier on drugs. Or his role in Kill List, where he plays a hired killer. Or from various other roles. The man is a versatile actor and a perfect role model for the Belfast accent.
00:00:26
Speaker
Right, time to warm up. Don't you tell me to warm up. Don't you fecking tell me to warm up. I'll warm you up, I will. There's nothing warm about me. Your man needs warming. Is that what you want from me? Okay, I think you're ready to record.
00:00:39
Speaker
Don't you tell me when I'm ready or not ready to record. I've been recording all my fucking life. I was born recording. And while Em slips deeper into an accent they cannot escape from, the credits. I'll give you the credits, you fucking...
00:00:57
Speaker
The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy. Brought to you today by Josh Addison and Em Dentis.
00:01:17
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the podcast is going to the conspiracy in Auckland, New Zealand. i am Josh Addison and in Guangzhou, China for now, it's Dr. Ian Mare Extendis. Oh Josh, you're giving spoilers away. actually, have we, have we, actually we have mentioned on the podcast. I think you have been on Jotago for a month. So yes, but actually it is basically the next time we record will be after i am back in Aotearoa, New Zealand, but Effectively, being an island away, the same kind of distance.
00:01:47
Speaker
Sorry, aing after after another event that I believe is coming up next week. Oh, you mean the ageing? The ageing, yes. You've timed it so you'll actually be in the country around your birthday, which means I will have to get you a birthday present.
00:02:01
Speaker
This was your plan all along, wasn't it, you crafty individual? It's true. i actually started the PhD with this in mind all those many years ago on the notion that with hard work and graft, I'd eventually go to Romania and then all the way back to the Waikato and then all the way to China in order that for the advent of my 48th birthday, i would be in my home country a few days after my birthday, and thus seeing you a month after that, thus forcing you to give me a gift of some kind. It has been a cunning plan, and it has taken years and years of work for basically no benefit.
00:02:44
Speaker
The culmination of all your efforts. That's true. So anyway, that's so that's what you're going to be doing. When exactly do you... So there's one of these things. i I'm catching a midnight flight.
00:02:57
Speaker
So I go to the airport on a Friday evening, but I leave the country... in a Saturday morning and then I arrive back home on a Saturday evening and then fly to Dunedin on a Sunday morning.
00:03:14
Speaker
Travelling internationally is confusing, time zones make it even more so. Yes, and New Zealand is far from everywhere. So, that's ah that's your personal circumstances out of the way. i have no personal circumstances. My life is dull and grey at all times.
00:03:31
Speaker
so we should Just like Auckland's weather. Well, at this time of year, yes. Anyway, we we have an episode.
Overview of 'Bed of Lies' Series Three
00:03:38
Speaker
It's about a topic that has nothing to do with with books, probably. No, although does...
00:03:44
Speaker
It's, I mean, as we go as we're going to get into after we play The Sting, it's the kind of thing which we probably could spend several episodes discussing, but that would be kind of pointless. Because we're talking about a podcast, and you can just go and listen to that podcast. Exactly.
00:04:03
Speaker
yes So without any further ado, let's stop tramping about the bush, pervaricating like a prehistoric monster, some other analogy about wasting time, and let's get to it.
00:04:16
Speaker
Yes.
00:04:22
Speaker
Yes, because this is, I mean, it's not a book review, but I guess it is a podcast review. We are today going to be talking about series three of Bed of Lies by Kari Laguna. Now, caddy listeners will realize we talked about series one of Bed of Lies back in March of 2021, and that was a telegraph podcast.
00:04:44
Speaker
podcast yes telegraph podcast podcast from the telegraph in the uk this podcast as they will hereafter be known which means we have now to change the name of our of our recording we have the podcast is kind to the conspiracy Talk to the graphic artist, yep. God, this is going to be massive. And we have to tell every other podcaster out there that actually they're podcrasts now. Actually, I think maybe, and I realise this is stunning reversal, I think we should go back to the old way of pronouncing the word and call them podcasts.
00:05:22
Speaker
Ah, I've almost forgotten how, but yes, okay. So it's a podcast. Yeah, it'll take us a while, but we'll get used to it. It's a telegraph podcast. The first series was looking at basically the police infiltrating left-wing activist groups in the UK and getting up to all sorts of no good, including...
00:05:43
Speaker
going into long-term relationships with activists in order to use them as sources, and in some cases, almost getting married to some of those activists, which was a really interesting gambit, because the men who were almost getting married to the activists were already married themselves.
00:06:01
Speaker
Yes, it was a very dodgy affair. So um you can, this podcast is available, presumably wherever you get podcasts. So you can go back and listen to it yourself. Or if you want to hear our summary, as Em says, as you can go look at our episode 305 from March 2021. Now, we never did series two. i started listening to it and it seemed a little more, a little more dry, i guess. I don't know. Yet at the same time, more depressing.
00:06:25
Speaker
Yeah, so the second series was looking at a blood contamination scandal that was occurring both in the US and the UK. So effectively, hemophiliacs were getting blood products that were infected with a variety of diseases, includ including h i v And essentially there was a cover-up going on not just in the United States where the blood products were coming from, because the UK was importing cheap blood products from the United States that mostly came from the US prison system.
00:07:01
Speaker
but also the British government was covering up the fact that they knew these blood products products were infected with things like HIV, and yet continued to supply people with them, not just for weeks or months, but in some cases, years approaching a decade or so.
00:07:20
Speaker
And so it's a it's a rather depressing story because a lot of people died of AIDS as a consequence. of the blood product scandal and it is something which is still being litigated through the courts in the UK to this day where the basic argument is how much does the government actually know they admit they knew some of it but they're not willing to admit they knew as much as it appears from the records they should have known it yes but series three The series that we're going to talk about today actually does have a fairly high body count as well, really.
00:07:55
Speaker
um But it is about the use by the police and the army and MI5 of agents inside paramiar paramilitary organisations in Northern Ireland during The Troubles.
00:08:08
Speaker
and So this series, ah did we say at the start, the Bed of Lies series is a series by investigative reporter Cara McGugan. She's done all three series. um and So it's her looking into this.
00:08:19
Speaker
Yes, nine episodes long, which comes to must be at least 10 hours worth of podcast. um So we're we're going to sum up the main points. There's a lot we're not going to talk about. because yeah yeah Now, I'd like to point out, I told Josh that we should cover this podcast after I had listened to all nine episodes.
00:08:39
Speaker
And so Josh has been listening to Bed of Lies series three over the last month or so. and compiled a quite astounding and very detailed list of events that occur in each individual episode.
00:08:55
Speaker
And over the course of the last week, I've managed to condense this down into a storyline that we can discuss on this podcast in probably less than an hour.
00:09:06
Speaker
hope The 10 hours of the podcast goes into incredible detail as to what shenanigans, and shenanigans really seems like a very quaint and not disturbing way to describe what was going on during The Troubles,
00:09:24
Speaker
It does sound kind of Irish. It does a wee bit, but at the same time, kind of Irish mocking, in a way. yeah But and what we're going to be discussing here really is quite, quite conspiratorial, and it's a conspiracy being led by, if not governments, arms of the British government.
00:09:44
Speaker
Yes. So we're talking about the Troubles.
Historical Context: The Troubles in Northern Ireland
00:09:47
Speaker
Yeah. um the The Troubles, the the euphemistic title for the period of, what would you call it? what the It's not civil war.
00:09:56
Speaker
um It's very much not civil war because the the various parties were not armies. They were paramilitary organisers. Civil unrest, civil conflict. Well, i mean, that's kind of why they called it The Troubles. It wasn't a good name for it. because Effectively, at one stage, Ireland belonged to the Irish, and then the British decided they were going to take Ireland over because they wanted it for themselves.
00:10:22
Speaker
And eventually, the Irish got most of it back, apart from a little segment in the north, which is quaintly called Northern Ireland. And certain Irish people went, actually, should we kind of want all of our Ireland to be united, and certain other Irish people going, no, we don't. We want to maintain our ties to the United Kingdom.
00:10:49
Speaker
And these two sides operating within Northern Ireland caused an awful lot of bother for the British government to the point where they they felt they found it to be a troubling situation and they called it the Troubles.
00:11:05
Speaker
yeah So it was went from the late 1960s and officially ended in 1998 following the Good Friday Agreement. It was a period of ah rather a lot of violence, mostly in Northern Ireland, but obviously there were famously IRAs bombing campaigns in Britain, which is the reason why, as far as I'm aware, there are still no public trash receptacles in London. Is that still the case?
00:11:28
Speaker
Oh, that is a good question. I'm now going, have I seen one in London since 2006? It isn't the kind of thing I go around looking for, truth be told, although I'm always annoyed by the lack of public trash receptacles in Guangzhou, but that's because it has a very different attitude towards rubbish than we're used to back home.
00:11:49
Speaker
The other thing to note is the whole North Head Tunnels conspiracy theory thing is very much indebted to the Troubles because John Earnshaw was living in London and after a car bomb went off in his street, decided to emigrate to Aotorau, New Zealand and became interested in the North Head story because as a documentarian, he was looking for a story to make in his new home.
00:12:16
Speaker
So the Troubles are also the reason why we have books like Tunnel Vision. Well, how about that? twist So, I mean, it's it's an incredibly complex situation, but the I guess the the the salient points that you need to know if you don't already, ah that on the the two sides were basically the Catholic anti-British Republicans who wanted Northern Ireland to become part of the Republic of Ireland,
00:12:40
Speaker
versus the Protestant pro-British loyalists who wanted Northern Ireland to stay part of Great Britain. And it's, yeah, bit of, I mean, there's more to it than that, isn't there? Well, yeah. So the reason why you have a kind of sectarian divide in Northern Ireland is that when the English decided to take over Ireland, they created what is called the Ulster Plantation. Plantation is just another name for colony. Yeah. in Northern Ireland, because that was taken to be the less populated and less occupied by the Irish part of the northern part of Ireland.
00:13:18
Speaker
And so the the English imported a lot of Presbyterian Scots to live on the Ulster Plantation. So when you have this kind of Catholic versus Protestant conflict...
00:13:32
Speaker
What you have are Irish-Irish Catholics and Scottish-Irish Presbyterians who are basically having a conflict over colonization.
00:13:45
Speaker
And it just happens to be that the two sides in this particular debate, the Irish-Irish and now the Scots-Irish, are conflicted ah along religious lines. But it's not the religion which is driving the conflict.
00:13:58
Speaker
It's the colonization which is driving the conflict in the first place. Yeah. so during the Troubles, these illegal paramilitary, I think we can call them terrorist organisations, formed on both sides.
00:14:11
Speaker
ah Most famously, the Irish Republican Army, the IRA, on the Catholic Republican side, and on the Protestant slash loyalist side, you had organizations like the Ulster Defence Association, the UDA, and the Ulster Volunteer Force, the UVF.
00:14:26
Speaker
And one one of the things that makes the um podcast a little confusing is you have all these three-letter acronyms, including the official forces there at the time. So they all as well as the UDA, which is the illegal paramilitary organization, you have the UDR, the Ulster Defence Regiment, which is the name for the the Army Regiment that's actually there ah in in in Northern Ireland.
00:14:48
Speaker
And also the RUC, which is the Royal Ulster Constabulary, which are the local police. And the RUC are often just referred to as the RUC. Yep. So the series, kind of at the core of the series, which is introduced in the first episode, are three murders of innocent civilians, which which were three among a great many, but they're sort of sort of representative of the whole. um These three people are Michael Power... who was a Catholic taxi driver who was murdered in 1987. He was shot in his car while driving his entire family church. It was essentially drive-by shooting with a shotgun.
00:15:24
Speaker
Yep. And fortunately, I mean, fortunately is not the right word, I suppose, but that that they were only trying to kill him, and he was the only one who died, although his family was injured. His daughter, I think, had to undergo horrific-sounding surgery to to remove shrapnel from her eye and stuff like that, but the rest of them survived. Then there was the murder of Pat Finucane in 1989. He was a Catholic lawyer, but who was married to a Protestant and had a reputation for being willing to represent anyone, Catholic or Protestant.
00:15:54
Speaker
He was shot in his own home. gun Gunman burst into the house and and shot him in front of his family. His son is now actually an MP in Northern Ireland. And it it seemed like of these three cases, his is the one that got looked at the most, I think, because he was possibly the most prominent of the three. Yes, I mean, as you say, he was a lawyer who was known for being willing to represent anyone Catholic or Protestant.
00:16:17
Speaker
And so his death was a particular shock because it wasn't hard to pin him as being sectarian in any particular way. And then the final murder was that of a man called Lachlan McGinn, who, similar to Mr Finucane, was killed in his home in 1989. Again, gunman gunmen burst into the house and murdered him while his his kids were in bed upstairs.
00:16:39
Speaker
So all three of these people were killed by members of the UDA, the UDA.
Brian Nelson and UDA's Information Leaks
00:16:45
Speaker
Paramilitary force as opposed to the actual regiment. And their motive the the motiveive was that supposedly all three of these men were IRA members, so these these were hits on the the enemy. Now, there's no as far as we can tell, there's no evidence that suggests any of them were actually ira members. as They appear to have just been innocent people.
00:17:05
Speaker
civilians as it were but their murders become central to to most of what goes on in in all nine episodes of the podcast um well in part because the claim that they were ira members as justification for their killings is the kind of question of well if they weren't why were they targeted exactly so It appears they were targeted by a man called Brian Nelson, who was the head of intelligence for the UDA.
00:17:35
Speaker
um And so McGugan talks about how he would he would gather all this information, which would either be stolen from the army or the police, or in some cases leaked to the UDA by...
00:17:46
Speaker
because remember the uda it's It's this weird situation. They're illegal. the The army and the police are supposedly out to stop them, but they're also loyalists, which means they're sort of quote-unquote on the same side as the police. They're essentially the vigilantes. So they're the Batman of Northern Ireland's Gotham City. Okay, they go around and they do extrajudicial killings sometimes. They shoot people in the kneecaps a lot, yes. But they do.
00:18:16
Speaker
They do it for the right kind of cause, and thus we we tolerate them. We tolerate their murders. Yeah, so so yeah, I mean, this this isn't a universal attitude, but yeah some people within the police and the and the army want to get rid of these people because they are a bunch of psychos running around killing and abducting and torturing.
00:18:32
Speaker
But some people were sympathetic to them, and so information would get leaked from the army and the police to them. and So Nelson would gather up all this information. He'd he had he hadd put together sort of dossiers on people who targeted...
00:18:44
Speaker
and then hand these off to to kill teams, essentially, who would then go and and do the murders. And we know some of this because the UDA would publicise this after the fact, because they they want people to know that, A, you know, don't mess with us, we we we will kill our enemies, we we are a force to be reckoned with, but B, we're not like... if if if If you're on the IRA side, you're our enemy. But if you're not, we want you to like us. you know this is this is There's a propaganda element to it as well. So they they were very sure to actually publicize, hey, look, these people we killed were in the IRA, right? We're not just nutcases whacking innocent civilians. we We are, in our own minds at least, you know waging war on the enemy. Possibly listen to still fear in yeah IRA members going, well, look, we can track you down and we can get you anywhere. You are not safe.
00:19:31
Speaker
So so this this leaking was sort of what raised eyebrows, among other things. But before we get to that, with the important fact is that Brian Nelson was, for one thing, just a complete bastard. She she goes through the various things he'd done, the the various cases of assaults and murders and and torturing and what have you over the years. And as well as that, he was an agent, it's specifically Agent 6137,
00:19:56
Speaker
for the the Army's Secretive Force Research Unit, or the FRU.
Freddie Scappaticci: Double Agent Intrigue
00:20:01
Speaker
The yes. So he was passing information back to the Army. he was He was an agent of the Army within the UDA. You know who else was a complete bastard, but also an agent?
00:20:12
Speaker
Freddy Scappaticci. Also as Scat. He was the head of the IRA's Nutting Squad, which is a very unfortunate name for a squad, given that nutting is a euphemism for wanking. Well, these days it is. Back then, your nut was your head, and then it referred to the fact that they shot people in the head a lot. But um yes, um mean it also kind of makes them sound like adorable squirrels, to be honest. ah But they were not.
00:20:39
Speaker
They were not adorable squirrels. They were nasty, violent pieces of work whose job it was to um get rid of what they called touts, which was the word for informants, basically. So anyone who was suspected of informing on the IRA would be abducted, tortured for information, and then probably executed. And of course, what makes Scappaticci interesting is that because he was an agent of the Fru, the head of the IRA's anti-informant squad was himself someone who should have rooted himself out as being an informant.
00:21:13
Speaker
He sure was. And I have to say, one of the few, possibly the only bright spot in the whole podcast series was hearing lots of people with thick Belfard accents say the name Scappaticci.
00:21:25
Speaker
I assume he was of Irish descent or something but he's hearing the name Scapatice Scapatice you have to take your pleasures where you can get them and we're going to be talking a lot about Scab because Scab's eventual fate is really quite audacious at least in some sense it sure but before we go into the details of Nelson and Scab the question is how do we know all of this and in large part It is because of the Stevens Inquiries, which get a lot of time in the podcast series.
The Stevens Inquiries and British Agencies' Role
00:22:00
Speaker
and we're And we're saying inquiries here because there's not one, there's not two, but there are three of them. Yes. So they're called the Stevens Inquiries because ah British detective John Stevens, who nowadays is Lord Stevens, went to Northern Ireland in 1989 in the middle of the Troubles to lead an investigation into these murders and into the the leaking of the information.
00:22:22
Speaker
that had they'd been involved with. So his initial inquiry, I assume what was originally just called the Stevens Inquiry, was looking into these murders by the UDA, such as the murders of Power, Finucane, and Lachlan McGinn, I think.
00:22:36
Speaker
I think there was the murder of Lachlan McGinn was sort of the inciting one that got them out there, but but but but there was this whole series of them that looking at. But then when they found out that the Frew was involved, and indeed found out that the Frew existed, the the second Stephen inquiry, Stephen's Two, looked into them and And then as the investigation went on there was more more information about the Finucane case, because again, as we as we said, his was the one that was sort of, that he was the most prominent figure and his was the murder that's been looked into the most. And information coming out about that then resulted in in the Stevens III inquiry. And I believe all up, it was the longest running inquiry in and in British sort of policing history.
00:23:18
Speaker
Yes, it hasn't had much in the way of an effect Given that the British government has been reluctant to enact any of the recommendations of Stevens 1, 2 or 3. Now, it's worth pointing out, Josh notes that Stevens' inquiry didn't know about the existence of the Fru.
00:23:37
Speaker
Despite having dealt with the army. Yes, because the Fru was very secretive. And the only time they became kind of aware the Fru existed was when the offices they were using for the inquiry burnt down suspiciously.
00:23:57
Speaker
Very suspiciously. And and so... The Stevens inquiry was about to move on Nelson, so they felt they had kind of enough information to go, look, Nelson is out there. On the UDA in general, I think. Yeah, but Nelson in particular as being the kind of target one.
00:24:13
Speaker
And then their officers just burned down, and that's when they start to get whispers of, yeah, that was probably the fru that did that. Yeah, so this yeah the day before, Stevens is flying back to Belfast,
00:24:27
Speaker
the night before all of this is going to go down and gets there to find out his office is burned down. and And then there was the whole thing with the reporters, wasn't there? he's He's flying into Belfast to undertake the secret operation and notices on the plane there are a couple of reporters going to Belfast on the same flight as him to report on the operation, the supposedly secret operation. yeah So yeah there had been a leak of information which indicated that...
00:24:54
Speaker
Either they were being tapped or people within the inquiry were passing information along to people like Brian Nelson. Yeah, so the official explanation was, and I believe still remains, that it was an accidental fire.
00:25:09
Speaker
But some people at the time said, oh, this this seems like the sort of thing the Fru might have done. And the steves Stevens and his team were basically like, sorry, the the who? what what What is the Fru? And this is kind of how they found out about them.
00:25:20
Speaker
um And it certainly seemed, whoever was responsible for this fire, assuming it wasn't an accident, seems to have been trying to to to destroy their case against Nelson and the other UDA members.
Brian Nelson's Trial and Confession
00:25:31
Speaker
fa i mean yes But Stevens was a very canny investigator. So not only did they have copies in their offices in Belfast, they were sending copies of all their evidence back to the UK on a daily basis. So they would have duplicates both in Northern Ireland and also, i think, back in London.
00:25:56
Speaker
So Stevens, even though he wasn't aware that the building was going to burn down, was at least aware that you needed to have documents. backups of all your files. So burning down their offices was a setback in a certain sense, but it didn't destroy the evidence.
00:26:11
Speaker
No, and it certainly wasn't enough to put them off their operations. So fire or no fire, the next morning Stevens and his crew went around and arrested a whole bunch of yeah UDA members that they had been gathering this evidence on.
00:26:22
Speaker
And at first they had trouble finding Brian Nelson. And but apparently they basically, they had to go to the army and say, look, do you know, do you know where this Brian Nelson is? And he ended up threatening to have people arrested for obstruction before Nelson finally showed up and they were able to arrest him.
00:26:39
Speaker
And once they arrested him my goodness, he he basically fessed up to everything and then spent, do you remember how long they said he spent? He spent days upon days writing down.
00:26:50
Speaker
I can't remember how many things it was, but I mean, had to be several days because he writes 170 page documents as to what he did, detailing on a day by day, if not sometimes hour by hour basis.
00:27:06
Speaker
things that he had been doing. And this gets known as Nelson's diary. It's meant to be private, so it's meant to only be accessible to members of the inquiry.
00:27:19
Speaker
But eventually it does get leaked and people are spreading it around. Although, once again, we're talking back here in the 90s or so. So it was commonly accessible and known 30 years ago.
00:27:34
Speaker
When it comes to Cara McGugan trying to get a copy of the diary, it turns out actually it's very, very the hard get hold of now. Yes, but she does eventually get it. I think to begin begin with, she gets paid to the in gives the entire document.
00:27:51
Speaker
And so this diary gives the full story of Brian Nelson, his operations within the UDA, and his operations as a spy or a double agent for the army. Although it so it is written in a style which indicates that he's kind of blameless.
00:28:06
Speaker
Yes, he he basically denies any responsibility for anything. He was just a bang orders, Josh. He was just a bang orders. As far as he's concerned, you know, he he he told the army all about whatever the um whatever the UDA was going to get up to. And if and of they didn't stop it...
00:28:25
Speaker
Then it's their fault. Yeah, even if he was giving orders directly to have people killed the army knew that was going to happen.
00:28:36
Speaker
Yes, so he he he very he makes a point of distancing himself from the gunman who did the killings gunman who supposedly did the killing sort of if not on his orders then using his information having been pointed towards their targets by him And specifically in the case of Michael Power, he claims that he didn't know who Michael Power was at the time and did not order his killing. And Kara McGurgan points out that, you know, this this is all his words and it's entirely self-serving. And she she does not find that convincing at all. She figures he must have known because he was the guy who was who was sending people out.
00:29:10
Speaker
But yeah, the interesting bit is which is is his version of how this all came about. So he says he was in the army, in the Irish army, until the late 1960s, 69, I think.
00:29:21
Speaker
He then left the army, but then joined to the UDA. But then he was in the UDA. He went to prison after an incident where he abducted and tortured someone who they suspected of being in the IRA or something and would have killed him had the army not shown up.
00:29:35
Speaker
and stopped them and then he went to prison. Then after he went, after he'd been in prison in 1984, he then went off to the army and offered them his services and his words to help stop the killings.
00:29:49
Speaker
And he says that the army then told him, okay, go back to the UDA, know rejoin the UDA and act as our spy within them. Now, one thing that that that people sort of weren't sure about there is that, again, after the diary leaked and a bunch of people got to look at a bunch of people who were familiar with the circumstances of some of these things he was talking about, they pointed out that that that that abduction and torture case that he got and sent to prison for, he did actually seem to get off so surprisingly lightly terms of what happened to him. what happened to him compared to other people who had done similar, it turned out he got a very light sentence indeed, which is why people ended up thinking maybe been an army asset the entire time. Yes, he claims he started in 1984, and yet there he is in this case in where he's supposed seemingly getting special treatment.
00:30:48
Speaker
So McGugan said that people have offered other theories and notes that there's no actual evidence for this, but some people believe that he never left the army at all, that his discharge in 1969 was just faked.
00:31:01
Speaker
I cover stories because he was going to become a spy for the army working within the UDA. Yeah, other people suggest, well, maybe that that bit of it's true, but then and when he got picked up in 1973, maybe that's when he became an agent.
00:31:15
Speaker
and suggested that maybe he wasn't in sweetheart deal. So essentially, look, you could have a pretty harsh prison sentence here, but we know you're a good man, essentially. mean, used to work for the army.
00:31:26
Speaker
Only of the most honourable, best people in the world are trained killers. So therefore, why do you come and work for us instead? Yeah. So, but but again, we we don't know for sure. We have his word, and his word is not and entirely reliable, and but but that's all we have. So having confessed to a whole bunch of stuff,
00:31:45
Speaker
Nelson went on trial. He pleaded guilty to 20 charges, including five charges of conspiracy to commit murder. And again, this was not like, I'm pretty sure Stevens inquiry reckoned they could link him to over 100 murders or assaults or torturings. But these are sort of representative. In particular, though, he was not charged directly.
00:32:04
Speaker
with the murders of Michael Power, Pat Finucane or Lachlan McGinn. They were not among the representative charges of them. In the trial, are Colonel Gorton Kerr, who's the header who was the head of the FRU, he gave testimony as a secret witness to argue for leniency. He basically argued that um he admitted...
00:32:24
Speaker
that some of Nelson's handlers did think he went a bit too far sometimes, but said that part of their problems and you know one of the reasons for the way things happened with them is that they didn't actually have any regulations. like it's it's ah It's a bit weird. They basically point out that according to the law at the time, it was illegal for them to have agents...
00:32:44
Speaker
to have informants at all. Just simply dealing with people who were in the UDA was against the law. But they needed to do that. So there wasn't, you know, there there was no no way they could do that that was entirely kosher. So he sort of argued, you know, what else could we do?
00:33:00
Speaker
ah In particular, he argued that Nelson's, in for you know, the whole thing that they used to justify all of us, at the end of the day, the information we received from him saved lives. Brian Nelson allowed us to save lives, and that's why you should go easy on him.
00:33:14
Speaker
I mean, he may he may have killed some people, he may have led to the murders of a lot of people who weren't in the IRA, but there's an undisclosed number of lives that were saved due to the information that Brian Nelson provided us, and thus that justifies everything that we did.
00:33:32
Speaker
Yeah, and the judge gave weight to the the fact that he had supposedly saved a bunch of lives, even though he had also done a bunch of horrible things. And so his his one over 100 years worth of sentences would be served concurrently, which meant he only served 10 years in prison.
00:33:47
Speaker
And he eventually got out and died in 2003. So it's certainly, you know, from all you hear about Brian Nelson, it certainly sounds like he was basically given free reign.
00:33:58
Speaker
um there There didn't seem to be any attempt to for them to say, hey, maybe but don't do some of the stuff you're doing, even though you're telling us about it. Some people suggested it was more like he ran his handlers in the army rather than his handlers running him.
00:34:11
Speaker
And on top of that, he may have been actually given extra information by the army so that he could target these IRA members better. And all of this then starts to sound quite familiar when you look at the way things worked out for Freddie Scappatici.
Freddie Scappaticci's Exposure and Denial
00:34:26
Speaker
Tell me about that. Yeah, we're now, well, because yeah, we're now moving away from the Ulster Defence Association to the Irish Republican... army, where it turns out the Fru was also running an agent at that particular time.
00:34:42
Speaker
So yeah, so here we're looking at Cappatici, and like Nelson, seemed to have been given free reign to do whatever he wanted and be protected by the state, that's the British state, as much as possible after what had happened became uncovered.
00:35:01
Speaker
And the weird thing about this is that Scappaticci isn't even on the Stevens' inquiry radar until Scappaticci's identity is outed by a journalist.
00:35:14
Speaker
So back in August of 1999, the Sunday Times in Ireland published a story about how the IRA had been compromised by the Fru and had agent whose codename was Steakknife in their upper leadership.
00:35:29
Speaker
Now, steak knife is an interesting name for an agent of any particular guy. And it's worth noting that the steak is S-T-A-K-E, so it's not even actually and the name of an implementing steak. knife a steak, it's steak knife.
00:35:46
Speaker
so So again, remember, this is 1999, so it's after the Good Friday Agreement, so now the troubles are sort of officially she yes of afterwards So Scabaticci has been basically living in Belfast. Ten years after the Stevens Inquiry started, but 98 was the Good Friday Agreement, so it's not too long after that. but Yeah.
00:36:03
Speaker
ah but but But, yeah, so now now that all the stuff's over, suddenly stuff like this starts coming out. And people start asking who is Steakknife. And, of course, the big question has been asked by ira members, which God, so there was an informant in our leadership working for the British,
00:36:25
Speaker
Which one of us was it? So it actually causes quite a lot eruptions within the IRA, which of course is at this stage reorganising itself as a political party, since it's going to be involved in democratic elections in In the Northern Irish Parliament and so the IRA are going who is steak knife?
00:36:47
Speaker
We want to know who steak knife is and so in 2003 Scappatici's identity as steak knife is altered by an army whistleblower and this is where things get a little bit crazy So Scappaticci immediately leaves belt but Belfast, going, well, you know, it's not safe for me to be here with all this baseless speculation about my being steak knife, so I'm just going to go away for a while to let things cool down.
00:37:19
Speaker
Now MI5 had offered to relocate him and basically give him a new identity in the United Kingdom. But Scappaticci decides that he's going actually brazen it out.
00:37:31
Speaker
He returns to Belfast and denies everything. And so he goes around telling everybody he wasn't an agent, in part, the podcast suggests, because if he admitted to being an agent, there are still para ummi paramilitary aspects of the IRA post the end of the troubles who'd be quite happy to put a knife and stake knife's back.
00:37:57
Speaker
So he call he has to maintain he wasn't the agent. He actually was in order to preserve his life. And it's also, I think, there's also the fact that the IRA was was kind of happy for him to not be steak knife because it would make them look bad. it Yeah. you eventually the sting High up enough in the IRA was actually an agent. you know what yeah Anyone could have been. Kara McGugan ends up interviewing a senior member of the ah of Sinn Féin and
00:38:30
Speaker
and They say, look, we actually had, once the information came out, pretty good reason to think that Scappaticci was steak knife, but we weren't going to tell anyone that because there were elements of the IRA who were so sympathetic to Scappaticci.
00:38:47
Speaker
that they would think that we were the informants trying to make a good man look dishonourable, because they were never going to believe that he was a dishonourable man in the first place.
00:38:58
Speaker
So there was a really interesting political game going on here as to what people could say as opposed to what they wanted to say. Anyway, we're going all the way back to 2003. He returns to And he says, look, I'm not an agent, and I'm going to ask the British government to confirm that fact.
00:39:18
Speaker
I want a judicial review proving absolutely that I am not steak knife. Yes, I have to say, listening to some of this stuff, you do kind of think the balls on this guy. Yeah, absolutely.
00:39:33
Speaker
as As we've just said, there were a bunch of circumstances which meant people were willing to believe that he wasn't one. And so he goes to the government and says he tries to force the British government to publicly say Freddy Scappaticci was not an agent when both he knows that and they know but that's a lie. he he yeah tries to get the government to lie publicly. so well He would have to lie under oath.
00:39:58
Speaker
and then the That's not going to bother you at all. And then the government would be forced to make a false statement. So basically either they would lie under oath, or if they went before a judge, have to go...
00:40:12
Speaker
Yes, Scappaticci was steak knife. Sorry, I didn't quite hear that. Could you say that louder for the st stenographer? Yes, Scappaticci was steak knife. Louder, please. Scappaticci was steak knife. So the British government was kind of in a bind.
00:40:26
Speaker
Well, yes. So, I mean, their official policy at the time, they had this whole neither confirm nor deny, NCND. was their official policy. So, you know, ku obviously che people said, so so what's was Scabatici's steak knife? And they're like, well, we can either confirm or deny. This is a security matter sort thing. And so Scabatici brings this case to force them to break their policy and make a statement either way. And yeah as you say...
00:40:49
Speaker
Their choices are lie under oath or admit that they were you know working with the British government, was working with a high-ranking member of the IRA.
00:41:01
Speaker
So this this wasn't a great situation. And the ideally the ideal situation for the government would be if the judge ruled, no, you don't have to break your neither confirm nor deny policy. You don't have to say whether or not he officially is.
00:41:16
Speaker
And they figured it would be more likely for the judge to rule that way if he knew that Scab was lying, right? Because ah if if the judge believed that Scab wasn't an agent, then he probably he might be more motivated to say, yes, you should you should clear this man's name, government. You should make an announcement.
00:41:35
Speaker
But if the judge believed that Scab was secretly an agent, then you think, oh, okay, the government you know if I force the government to say something, I'm going to be forcing them to make an embarrassing admission. so Maybe I should say, yeah stick with the NCND. So to make sure that things went that way, they went and told the judge, the British government or whoever it was, went to the judge and said, yep, when Scap says he wasn't an agent, he's lying. He was an agent for us.
00:42:00
Speaker
ah So just take that into consideration when you make your ruling. And they told Scap that they were going to do this. and he was like, yep, that sounds like a good idea. And so sure enough, the the ruling went that no, the government does not have to break the NCND policy. They don't have to say whether or not SCAP was an agent. So the government got what they wanted.
00:42:16
Speaker
But this also worked out for SCAP because he's like, yeah, see, they wouldn't, you know, they though they didn't say I'm an agent. You know, there's no, nobody's got any proof that I was an agent. So there you go. Yeah, so he ends up not being charged with anything whatsoever.
00:42:31
Speaker
Yeah, the the um the Stevens inquiry, yeah like she talks to various members of the inquiry team, and you can see how frustrated they were that they would keep building these cases against him and other people, and it would go off to the prosecutorial service, and they would just come back and say, no, we don't think there's a case for prosecution. yeah Not necessarily because, you know, they not only does he do things saying, no, your evidence isn't good enough, but just, you know, no, the whole security aspect of it all means we think, no, it's not in the country's interest to prosecute this guy.
00:42:58
Speaker
And yet, eventually, he decides to take up MI5-1 with the witness protection angle. So he moves to the UK, he changes his name, and dies in 2023 in witness protection.
00:43:12
Speaker
Much to the surprise of his neighbours when he dies and it gets out of that, oh, yeah, Steakknife just died. You were neighbours with Steakknife. What was he like? So, yes, in 2024, because as we're gonna as we'll we will we'll say we we'll see in a little while, there are investigations ongoing to this day around this sort of stuff. The Stevens Inquiries, I think, finished up and issued their final reports, but operations are still going, in particular one called Operation Canova, which was an investigation that kind of came out of the Stevens Inquiry. I think, again, it was it might have been one of the ones that was looking at the
00:43:47
Speaker
Oh, no, it wasn't if it was talking about steak. Anyway, there were a whole bunch of them was the thing. But 2024, Operation Canova issued a sort of ah a provisional report. It wasn't their final report, which concluded that steak knife...
00:44:02
Speaker
definitely cost more lives than he saved. But even in 2024, even after Freddy Scappaticci was dead, they still weren't allowed to officially say on the record that Steakknife was Freddy Scappaticci. So they say, you know, Steakknife was this agent.
00:44:19
Speaker
Steakknife was a psycho who killed a whole bunch of people, and the information he got definitely didn't um balance out the lives, the deaths that he was responsible for. But MI5 had refused to allow them to say... And by the way, Steakknife was pretty scapegygy. Who knows who Steakknife is? I mean, there's a lot speculation in Ireland that Steakknife was a particular person named by the media, but MI5 are saying we can't say their name. So really, who was Steakknife?
00:44:47
Speaker
Maybe steak knife was the friends we made along the way. Maybe there's a steak knife in all of us. Well, there's a thought. But so, I mean, the podcast spends a lot of time talking about Brian Nelson and Freddy Scappaticci because we basically know the most about them. Nelson had his diary and Scappaticci had been investigated a lot.
00:45:06
Speaker
um But they were from the sounds of things, there were a hell of a lot of others. um Yeah, it wasn't just there were two bad eggs, one on either side of the aisle. It seems that the Frew were running a lot of bad eggs. They were a bad egg hatchery. Yeah, so and like like later on the podcast goes over various other cases where...
00:45:29
Speaker
would would basically be ah person was involved in a particularly nasty crime, murderers or what have you, and then kind of got away with it suspiciously lightly. And they're all cases where we don't have any proof, but simply the fact that these people got away with stuff that you would expect them to have gone to prison for a long time for, then people would suggest maybe they were also agents and were therefore protected by the army and, you know, we were kept out of prison so the army could continue using them as an asset. The army or the police or MI5. Yeah, I mean, there's seven points out...
00:46:03
Speaker
Of the 210 loyalists they arrested over the sevens, one, two, and three, only three of them weren't being run as agents by some other agency. So you some people like it's it seemed as though that there were so many people who were actually agents for the army or the police.
00:46:25
Speaker
It was almost like the army or the police was actually just running terrorism. And so you know the majority of some of these organizations seem to be actually, being run by the army yeah or if not the majority of the organization the majority of the upper echelons of the organizations were agents for the british government or at least working with the british government Yes, which brings us to the question of collusion.
Collusion and Ethics of British Involvement
00:46:52
Speaker
the Parts of these investigations were also, was the army actually army or the police actually colluding with loyalist paramilitaries? So not just turning a blind eye or or making sure the the system goes easier on the when they get caught for stuff, but actually helping them to do the things that they did.
00:47:12
Speaker
So indeed, like as we said before, nelson Brian Nelson always claimed that it was um soldiers in the Ulster Defence Regiment who pointed out Michael Power was an IRA member. He reckoned the the reason why Michael Power was targeted was because the army had said, hey, this is a guy you should look into.
00:47:30
Speaker
And similarly with Pat Finucane, people had claimed that the police had encouraged the UDA to target them. And then there was a whole thing, i didn't actually note this bit down, but there was ah there was an episode, wasn't there, where Yeah.
00:47:46
Speaker
someone actually brought it up in parliament that people like this guy pat van lucan are working for the ira like the the the government is essentially painted a target on his back yeah And so so Nelson claimed that um after Michael Power was killed and then it turned out, no, this guy wasn't in the IRA, he reckoned his like his bosses, the people he worked for, were were outraged. They were like, you know, we like like I said before, they did not want to be in the business of killing innocent civilians because it made them look bad. Yeah. And they yeah had a propaganda law to win as well as a... Murder. They were just against the idea of murdering the wrong people. Yeah, because the whole thing is, you know, they they think they want what they think is best for Ireland, and it's hard to maintain that claim if you if you're murdering innocent Irish people. There's there's an extra little bit, with especially with the case um of Michael Power, where there's the claim that the police had actually approached him to become an informant, and he had said, no, I don't want to be one.
00:48:45
Speaker
And there was another case, they mention guy called Joe Fenton, who was one of the victims of the Nutting Squad. He had been picked up by the IRA and murdered by them. And there was apparently Michael Power had known Joe Fenton and the police perhaps thought he knew something about Fenton's murder.
00:49:02
Speaker
And so we're trying to bring him in as an informant to sort of keep him quiet about that. But then when he said no, then the that's when they had him killed. ah One thing that was mentioned right at the start was the fact that every day they drove through an army roadblock, every week they drove through an army roadblock at the end of their street on the way to church, and yet on the day that he was killed, the roadblock was not there anymore. Just Just disappeared.
00:49:25
Speaker
And indeed, just just to just the icing on the cake was that supposedly the detective who had tried to recruit Michael Power as an IRA ended up being in charge of his murder afterwards and the investigation, surprise, surprise, went from nowhere. Yeah.
00:49:38
Speaker
Sorry, I'm from the other side in charge of his murder, I guess, no, murder investigation. but yes Although, I mean, you could yeah make a case for that as well. Well, yeah, and that's the worrying thing, because what we do know is suggestive of so much more.
00:49:55
Speaker
Yeah. And so then at the end of the day the question they keep asking is but Like, why? ah there were deal i mean, there there's the question all the way through of was the state, you know, were people literally getting away with murder? And it certainly looks like in some cases they were. And so then the case is what, like, what's the point? is They're supposedly getting all this information.
00:50:14
Speaker
And yet they're not using it to stop the hell of a lot. why what why Why do this in the first place? Well, I mean, the uncharitable view is that they were leaking information to get rid of the people they didn't like.
00:50:32
Speaker
Yeah. So, I mean, for example, you have, if you're passing information on to the UDA, then, of course, you're eradicating IRA members and people who might be sympathetic to the IRA. I mean, they're going to be people who are kind of on the cusp, so we should get rid of them as well, just in case.
00:50:53
Speaker
And, of course, if you're running the person who heads the nutting squad, then of course could also get rid of some of those awkward IRA members who might suddenly be coming aware there's something weird going on there. So the uncharitable take is, you know, you run these agents so you can basically...
00:51:13
Speaker
control what's going on. Yes, there does seem to be. But of course, the official, like yeah what once again, the official justification for all of this is that the intelligence supplied by these agents saved lives. That's what they'll always say.
00:51:26
Speaker
There are various, other one thing and we didn't talk about was at one point it mentions there was a ah book written under a pseudonym by a member of the Fru, who called unsung hero in which he talks about how he went along with, with, with UDA people was they were shooting innocent people and so on.
00:51:42
Speaker
This was the sort of heroics he was involved in. But, but again, he's always kind, you know he basically says he sleeps easy at night because his actions saved lives. But, um, Other reports into it, at least in the case of people who we know were were were full-on psychos like Nelson and Scappaticci, came to the conclusion that they definitely killed more people than they saved. um So that like as we said, back in Brian Nelson's trial, Colonel Kerr came along and said Nelson saved lives. The Ministry of Defence apparently officially said that his information had saved 217 lives.
00:52:16
Speaker
And i they they don't give any justification that my ah assumption is that he gave them 217 pieces of and of information and they were counting everything he told them as a life saved or something like that. But like a later inquiry reckoned they could name three individuals whose life is one of them.
00:52:34
Speaker
No, it wasn't him. It was one one one of the lives that Brian Nelson saved or Brian Nelson's information saved was Jerry Adams. the oh nice and the ira because basically they're actually yeah i said before why didn't they why didn't they say maybe don't do that but yeah the one case we do know of where brian now said hey we're planning to do a hit on jerry adams and the army's like no don't do a bloody hit on jerry adams that's gonna you know killing what killing one of the top guys like that is really gonna gonna gonna throw the cat among the pigeons that'll destabilize everything so no don't do that so yeah yes that That was the the one case we know of where a life was saved, and it was one of the heads of the IRA.
00:53:14
Speaker
um But again, and as I said just before, the Canova report said that Scappaticci had definitely killed more people than he saved. um And then that's on top of that, in terms of your sort of yeah yeah your value proposition of the whole thing, is that the fact that these agents were protected, it often...
00:53:30
Speaker
worked in favour of their associates even when they weren't agents because there were cases where... but They talk about one case where Brian Nelson was involved in ah in an abduction and a torturing sort of situation and the army basically cooked up an alibi to get him out of it. But this these dodgy goings-on ended up weakening the cases of the other people who were involved in this and they ended up getting their cases thrown out. So in the end, you know, they protected Nelson but he ended up... um seeing a whole bunch of people get off from the same crime.
00:54:01
Speaker
And the one that I thought was very interesting is at one point, Cara McGugan gets an interview with Johnny Mad Dog Adair, who was one of the the the leaders of the UDA, who who worked with Brian Nelson. um And in his words, he says that if he had known Nelson was an agent at the time, he would have, quote, wrapped him in cotton wool.
00:54:19
Speaker
um He would have done everything he could to protect the guy because Nelson's immunity rubbed off on them. He reckoned that Johnny Adair reckoned he never got arrested for anything he did with Nelson when he had been charged and arrested for other things.
00:54:35
Speaker
um And similar you yeah similar things happened with other UDA members. so you know, in terms of the good that was done versus the bad that was allowed to happen, does seem hard to make a case that the good outweighs the bad.
00:54:49
Speaker
Yeah, and this is a case of infiltration and conversion, which is ah conspiracy, if not by the British state, by elements of the British state in the form of a secretive part of the British army operating in Northern Ireland.
00:55:11
Speaker
And as the podcast kind of ends, there really haven't been any consequences.
Lack of Consequences for Conspiracies
00:55:18
Speaker
no No, So the the podcast doesn't really end on a definitive note because the fact is there are still inquiries going on. There are there are various sort of... Well, I mean, the Stevens' inquiries, the government has never enacted most of the recommendations. No, and there are various various sort of court cases going on for people who are just just trying to get information out of the government... There's a whole bunch of ongoing stuff. So, you know, as we say, the Michael Powers family, Michael Powers murder has never been solved, essentially. No one's ever been charged with his murder. And there are all various cases being brought by families of people who were killed who basically just want the truth is all. that then You know, they but they're pretty sure they know
00:56:01
Speaker
who killed the... Maybe not their specific individuals, but know basically what happened, but just want to know the facts, the the actual facts behind it all. And still, in in the year of our Lord 2025...
00:56:13
Speaker
What's that, 27 years after the Good Friday Agreement, this stuff is still going on Yeah, it's all kind of sad. Yeah. And, I mean, which is kind of the point of all three series of Bed of Lies.
00:56:27
Speaker
The first one is the police were infiltrating activist groups, getting up to no good, and virtually no consequence to those police officers. Yeah. The second one is, yeah, they were giving people infected blood in the UK and they knew about it, but once again, no actual real consequences to it.
00:56:46
Speaker
And the third series is, oh, you won't believe what the British government was up to during the Troubles. And you also won't believe the fact there are no consequences. Yes. So there you go. So, i mean, we've been talking about this for about an hour, and the the series itself is about 10 hours long, so we've only we've only sort of touched a tenth of it. And I would recommend, if you actually listen to that series, it's very captivating.
00:57:11
Speaker
It is, although, as Em said at the start, I wrote a ridiculous amount of notes while listening through this. i didn't start I didn't do that to begin with, but after I listened to the first couple of episodes, it it does kind of jump around a lot. It introduces people, sometimes only in passing,
00:57:27
Speaker
And then a little while later, it becomes significant who they were and what their deal was. So I eventually realized I just kind of had to write down every single thing that happened in each episode so that I could then, when when they came up again, I'd be able to go back and and refer to it. So I think I wrote...
00:57:43
Speaker
16 pages of notes. of notes, which we condensed down into one hour. So I think that's that's not bad going. But definitely, yeah, if you want all the detail. And again, like I say, we left out a bunch of a bunch of side stories, a bunch of extra things.
00:57:57
Speaker
So if you're interested, I definitely recommend listening to Bed of Lies Series 3 by Cara McGugan. This is not a paid endorsement. This is not a paid endorsement. We just think it was good. Yeah. And obviously incredibly conspiratorial.
00:58:10
Speaker
So it's good photo for us. Yeah. And it is a very nice example of the fact that states get up to things that a lot of people just don't realize. So one of my recurrent issues with a lot of generous philosophers It's like, oh, yeah, no, lots of conspiracies and things going on in the early 20th century and the mid 20th century. But, you know, hasn't been that much bad stuff going on since then.
00:58:38
Speaker
And then you go, yeah, what about this example? Oh, well, that's that's a one-off. Oh, what about this example? Oh, that's also a one-off. You just keep presenting them with more one-offs. And this is another example of, no these things are going on all the time.
00:58:53
Speaker
Yep. So there you go. So that's the end of this episode. But of course, there is a bonus episode for our beloved patrons to record. And I have no idea what's in it.
00:59:05
Speaker
No, because we're we're doing ah we're doing the return of What the Conspiracy, but just a mini one, just so just a short little aperitif of What the Conspiracy I'll be presenting him with a story that hopefully they have not heard before, but um you never know.
00:59:20
Speaker
If that turns out to not be the case, then we can just discuss it. Is it the curious case of the dog who barked in the night? No, i can I can guarantee you it is not that. So if you want to hear exactly what it is I'm going to tell him about and find out whether or not it's something they've heard of before, you'll need to be one of our patrons. And if you are not currently one of our patrons, ah you can go to Patreon.com go search for The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy and sign yourself up.
00:59:45
Speaker
And you too will be count yourself among the ranks. Sorry, you too is going to count itself among the ranks. So Bono and If they sign up, hey, I won't turn anyone away. You too can sign up as well. in They are Irish. This is probably an episode that they they would have been interested in.
01:00:02
Speaker
Yeah, but but any individual who who signs themselves up as a patron, mean, even members of REM could sign up for this podcast if they really wanted to. There's nothing to stop them.
01:00:13
Speaker
And though though they will then become the the greatest and the shiniest and the sweetest smelling of all human beings. It's a scientific fact. I mean, there are some rock stars. If they sign up, they're actually not going to become sweet or shiny creatures. There are limits to our power. But we do what we can.
01:00:29
Speaker
So, I think until next time, are your travels going to put a kink in our recording schedule? I suspect we may have to organise around exactly when and where you are. Yeah, so we may may we may need to change the recording day, in part because I'm not quite sure what my schedule in Otago is going to look like.
01:00:51
Speaker
Although evenings, I think, are probably going to be fine. Now, of course... When I'm back home in Aotearoa, New Zealand, my expectation is that Josh comes to me to record, which means that Josh will need to fly down to Dunedin on a fortnightly basis for recording of the podcast.
01:01:07
Speaker
And then that may change the timetabling ever so slightly. Yeah, we'll see how that works out. But until our next episode, I mean, I guess you could drive, but I wouldn't i wouldn't be s super reliant on the fairies at the moment.
01:01:21
Speaker
No, no. We'll see what we can work out. Yes. Until our next episode, whenever that turns out to be, i'm just going to say conspiracy. See you later. see i was go should i Should I do something something in my bad Belfast accent?
01:01:37
Speaker
And the answer is no. no i i can't i have trouble with the Belfast accent. I have to say the only Belfast accent I ever really and encountered was my parents listening to Van Morrison albums.
01:01:49
Speaker
So all I talk about is the moonlight on your face. But that's... I'm just thinking of Corky and the Juice Pigs with their Van Morrison reference, which is pretty good.
01:02:05
Speaker
Yes, look that up as well once you've listened to Bed of Lines. So I'll just sign off by saying I'm the only gay Eskimo. The only one I know. Truth.
01:02:20
Speaker
The podcaster's guide to the conspiracy features Josh Addison and Associate Professor M.R. Extentis. Our producers are a mysterious cabal of conspirators known as Tom, Philip, and another who is so mysterious that they remain anonymous.
01:02:34
Speaker
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01:03:02
Speaker
And remember, according to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, a stranger is just a friend you haven't met.