Episode 2 Heroes and Villains

Two SAS operations, eight years apart, produced radically different legacies. The first made the regiment national heroes. The second sparked decades of controversy. In 1980, the world watched as the SAS stormed the Iranian Embassy in London to free its hostages. The daring assault brought the secretive regiment into the public eye – but what did that exposure cost? Eight years later, an SAS operation against suspected IRA bombers in Gibraltar ended with three people dead and questions that would haunt the regiment for decades. In this episode of SAS: The Shadow War, The Independent’s world affairs editor Sam Kiley revisits both missions and explores how the same regiment came to be celebrated for one operation and scrutinised for the other. Subscribe to The Independent All Access Membership https://www.independent.co.uk/Subscribeand unlock all eight episodes for just £1 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Car crashes injure over a million of us every year. Because? We're human. For over a decade, WeMo's been building a driver that's safer. Statistically, 10 times safer in the cities we serve. Not because humans aren't enough. But because they're everything.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Based on over a 94% reduction in serious injury or worse crash rates, learn more at weimo.com.

• 0:34Speaker 02

  Check engine, ABS or maintenance light on? Take the guesswork out of your warning lights with O'Reilly Veriscan. The service is free and provides a report with solutions verified by ASE certified master technicians. And if you need help, we could recommend a shop for you. Ask for O'Reilly Veriscan today.

• 1:12Sam Kiley?

  It was a few minutes after seven o'clock when it became obvious that something big was going to happen. A body was dumped on the doorstep of the embassy and two policemen dashed forward, covered by D11 snipers, to recover the corpse of the Iranian president who'd been executed by the gunman a few minutes before.

• 1:32Speaker 04

  That was a bomb.

• 1:34Sam Kiley?

  At the same time, the SAS men were already in position on the roof, ready for their assault on the rear of the building.

• 1:43Speaker 05

  So my role was to go in through the roof with the team.

• 1:48Speaker 05

  I actually smashed, I had a sledgehammer, so that was my primary weapon initially. Smashed through the skylight, cleared the glass around the edge, threw a ladder down. The lads went down. We then followed in.

• 2:09Sam Kiley?

  That was David, a former SAS soldier. He's never spoken publicly before about his role in those dramatic few minutes when he and his SAS colleagues stormed the Iranian embassy in central London live on TV one evening in May 1980. I'm Sam Kiley, world affairs editor at The Independent, and you are listening to SAS: The Shadow War, the story of the conflict in Northern Ireland, revealed for the first time by Britain's secret soldiers in their own words.

• 2:45Sam Kiley?

  In this episode, we're going to hear about two well-known operations. Both occurred because the state ran out of options and used the only tool it had left: the SAS. Both had very clear missions, but for each, the aftermath was very different. First, we're going to reveal the inside story of an operation that made the SAS into all two public heroes. Operation Nimrod is the most famous moment in SAS history. Seventeen minutes of intense drama which thrust them onto centre stage.

• 3:21Speaker 05

  Then the shooting started.

• 3:24Speaker 05

  There was a sense of comfort when the shooting started, since we've engaged.

• 3:29Sam Kiley?

  That was just after 7:20pm on the evening of May 5, 1980, at number 16, Princess Gate in London.

• 3:40Sam Kiley?

  Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had given the order to the SAS to storm the Iranian embassy because six armed Arab Iranian separatists had burst in, seized staff and visitors, and instantly transformed a quiet diplomatic street into a corner of global crisis. Television cameras rolled continuously as negotiators struggled to find a deal. The militants demanded independence for an oil-rich Arab region of Iran. Tehran's government said no. So they murdered a hostage and set off a chain reaction that would kill them.

• 4:20Speaker 02

  A hostage was assassinated by terrorists just 20 minutes earlier, so the Home Secretary gave the soldiers authority to take action.

• 4:27Sam Kiley?

  Why the SAS? Counter-terrorism traditionally falls to the police and security services. But by 1980, the Special Air Service had become the world's only military unit to specialise in hostage rescue.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  I had no alternative therefore but with the approval of the Home Secretary for the SAS to take action.

• 4:49Sam Kiley?

  The order to storm the embassy was six days in coming, but its effects have been felt for years, up to today.

• 5:00Speaker 05

  It was a very good day and a very bad day all at the same time.

• 5:04Sam Kiley?

  David was an SAS soldier in his early twenties when he got the call to deploy in London in the counter-terror team.

• 5:11Speaker 05

  The way that all happened, we'd only been on the team, I think it was my third time on the team and I was a team sniper. So I was multitasked. I was a sniper as a primary role and secondary role, I could join the assault team in any areas where required to support the assault, which I did actually on the embassy. And I was based at that time because we're doing the extra training. So I was actually down in Ashford doing some what are called methods of entry training when the pages went off.

• 5:49Sam Kiley?

  The three Arab gunmen holding 20 hostages in the Iranian embassy in London have had their demands turned down by Iran.

• 5:58Speaker 05

  So we weren't actually far from London, but we were told to sit and wait. So we were sitting down there, calling up Hereford, saying, can we come up? Can we come up? And everybody in Hereford was getting together, getting together. All these things we'd rehearsed.

• 6:12Sam Kiley?

  The SAS is based just outside Hereford, in a camp called Stirling Lines. It's named after their founder, David Stirling.

• 6:22Speaker 05

  We'd been preparing for this time, for the potential. The one thing that's very good about special forces to survive as a special forces unit, you have to be able to predict what is coming, where's the risk going to come from next? So you can start preparing for it before, hopefully before it actually has emerged.

• 6:42Sam Kiley?

  The SAS are the most highly trained and expensive, best equipped of all military units. But when it comes to the day-to-day realities of their jobs, fact turns out to be more humble than fiction.

• 6:58Speaker 05

  So we got called up eventually and then rushed up in our, we had a beat-up old Bedford van, which chugged up to London very slowly, not as glamorous as the team was going down into London.

• 7:10Sam Kiley?

  David describes how when they arrived in London, they had to scale the walls of nearby buildings to be able to get to the embassy undetected. But as soon as he began the job, he realised something was missing.

• 7:23Speaker 05

  And then I started to look for my weapons. But apart from my gas discharger, my sniper rifles, my MP5 and my 9mm pistol had been taken by somebody.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  Somebody in the unit had helped themselves.

• 7:39Speaker 05

  Yes. Oh yeah, they've been redistributed because I wasn't there. So, you know, out of sight, out of mind, they will be these, get them out. So I was told to, as everybody was mulling around, they're getting immediate action prepared, and someone told me, Dave, get yourself a Browning, get yourself a 9mm, you're going to be on the reception committee.

• 8:03Sam Kiley?

  The reception team would be responsible for getting the hostages out of the building. That's after the two assault teams had dealt with the gunman.

• 8:11Speaker 05

  I managed to get Browning and I got myself a couple of magazines and I was ready and I was being briefed to be on reception. And that's how it stood. I don't remember how long it stood for until the word came out that they're probably going to need coaches, just in case, for the coach option.

• 8:33Sam Kiley?

  The coach option was a plan that needed a different kind of talent. So surveillance operator Liz, who was only 20 years old, was flown over from Northern Ireland five days before the SAS stormed the embassy. Liz was from the Armed Forces' most secret unit, known as 14 Intelligence Company, the detachment, or the DED. It was established in Northern Ireland to be the eyes and ears of the military. Its operators were trained by the SAS and worked hand in glove with them. She was told that if the terrorist demands were met, she would have to drive them and the hostages away from the embassy in a coach.

• 9:17Sam Kiley?

  But she wasn't told the rest of the plan. I can vividly remember my colleague, female colleague, was, we went into Princess Gate, but to a building close by. Well, it was next door in fact, but she was sat opposite me.

• 9:34Speaker 02

  And I could see her face because we were just in civilian clothes. And either side of her were SAS soldiers, but they they were all kitted up. So they had masks on and the the gas masks and everything.

• 9:48Sam Kiley?

  Very unusual to be able to speak to anybody from 14th Intelligence Company, the D E T, what is now the S R R, Special Reconnaissance Regiment. Because by their very nature, you are the kind of most secret of the secret in or should be, I guess.

• 10:07Speaker 02

  The the personalities or the characteristics for the debt were a different beast from from, say, two two special air service. I can remember many very small, usually Scotsmen, who would look like a wino. They probably, you know, they weren't six foot four and pistachio moustaches. So they had to blend into that environment.

• 10:30Sam Kiley?

  By the time Liz arrived at the house next to the embassy, David had already been involved in planning the assault, but neither of them knew that it would be all over in just a couple of days.

• 10:41Speaker 02

  So we were in the building next door, being briefed on what was happening within the Iranian embassy.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  But then we would go back to Regent's Park barracks and somebody was assigned to us. And we were driving these buses. And now, again, I did not, A, have any understanding of SAS tactics of a house assault, because we didn't do house assaults at that stage, you know. And but they were old army buses and we had to park them with utter precision.

• 11:14Speaker 02

  And, you know, he stalled it. It was almost like going back to sort of being on a parade scale. Somebody, for fuck's sake, you know, you've got to get this right. Again, no understanding at the time of the imperative to park these vehicles correctly.

• 11:28Sam Kiley?

  You now know what you were training to do on those buses and what happens.

• 11:31Speaker 02

  I now do, yes.

• 11:32Sam Kiley?

  Yeah.

• 11:33Speaker 02

  The better option for them would have been the bus option, because then.

• 11:37Sam Kiley?

  What was the bus?

• 11:38Speaker 02

  The bus option would have been to say to the terrorists, right, we'll give you buses and we'll give you free passage to the airport of your dreams and we'll give you a plane to take you to the country of your dreams and you can all go home and and be happy and safe. And but of course, the buses would never have left the front of the Iranian embassy because I say, I only know this in retrospect, we didn't have that understanding at the time. But it was a favoured option because it was a much better option than than doing a house assault. So we were going to be posing as Metropolitan Police Women, dressed in Metropolitan Police Women's uniforms. And we would have driven the buses. And again, I can remember being quite being on the training team a few years afterwards with one of the snipers.

• 12:22Speaker 02

  And he explained in no uncertain terms that the terrorists would have come out, they would have had a pistol to our heads and say, drive down wherever it was.

• 12:35Speaker 02

  But we all know that they wouldn't have, I wouldn't have needed to know the way because we wouldn't have been going anywhere. And then the buses, I presume, because I'm not into SAS tactics, but were rigged with explosives. So as soon as somebody said, go somewhere, the bus would have probably been made inert and and explosives and flashbangs would have gone off. And the SAS troops would have stormed the buses instead of the building as they did.

• 12:58Sam Kiley?

  And what would have happened to you?

• 13:00Speaker 02

  Well, if I'd survived. If the sniper had been good, then then.

• 13:05Sam Kiley?

  That would have been fine.

• 13:06Speaker 02

  That would have been fine. But if the sniper, well, who knows what happens? Yeah. So, yeah.

• 13:14Sam Kiley?

  Back in the building next to the embassy, one of the SAS team was sent out on an unusual task.

• 13:21Speaker 05

  So one of the lads who was on the assault and was was taken away to go and get his haircut and looked like a coach driver. So when he did that, I picked up his weapons and I moved into his.

• 13:35Sam Kiley?

  Did you give him back?

• 13:37Speaker 05

  No way. No way. So I ran myself on the assault team and I was with the team that entered into the roof of the embassy after the six days. And there's also something else that's worth noting here, that it was, although the terrorists didn't know this, it was like they were playing off one of our playbooks from all the training and all the weekend exercise we'd done with Met Police, West Midlands Police. It it went that way, although we didn't spread it over six days, the process of negotiations, getting the immediate action together, then expanding on that immediate action while negotiations

• 14:19Speaker 05

  continue, while deadlines, preparing to meet deadlines, and then build up onto that immediate action as we have more time, we get more intelligence and more information about what's going on in the embassy. The immediate action became the deliberate and that's the way it happened.

• 14:39Sam Kiley?

  This was the type of assault they'd trained for. The six day run up made the whole operation much easier.

• 14:45Speaker 05

  You couldn't have asked for it to be done any better in a sense. And it certainly would have been a hell of a mess if the immediate action had had to go in in a rush.

• 14:58Sam Kiley?

  And go in they did.

• 15:03Speaker 04

  That was a bomb.

• 15:05Sam Kiley?

  At the same time, the SAS men were already in position on the roof, ready for their assault on the rear of the building.

• 15:12Speaker 05

  So my role was to go in through the roof with the team. I actually smashed, I had a sledgehammer, so that was my primary weapon initially.

• 15:24Speaker 05

  Smashed through the skylight, cleared the glass around the edge, threw a ladder down. The lads went down. We then followed in, cleared the top floor and then we held there until we could see what was going on.

• 15:41Sam Kiley?

  It's seven twenty three P M on May the fifth, and after six tense days, they know there are nineteen hostages and six gunmen within the building, but not exactly where.

• 15:52Speaker 05

  If any of the other entrance points had failed, which they nearly did, we saw the the fire in the back, because we didn't know this, what was going on or we knew what we had to do. There was some chatter on the radio. There's always too much talk on the radio. The bosses always want to know what's going on and you're in the middle of this. Just don't want to keep hearing that. And and then as soon as the, and it was very quiet initially. We got in and we got into that top floor and there was nothing. There was some bangs, but no shooting. So I made you wonder, is it going, what's happening? And and then we held at the top of the stairs, which was barricaded. And and then then the shooting started.

• 16:37Speaker 05

  There was a sense of comfort when the shooting started, since we've engaged, we we needed to subdue the terrorists. The lads who went into the main floors where the terrorists and hostages were expected were the assault team. They were the full time assaulters who worked five days a week, practicing their skills.

• 16:59Speaker 05

  And and then we would, then we joined them. We were able to get through the barricade and join the team in the lower levels of the floors to the rooms where the hostages were in preparation of removing the hostages from the building.

• 17:15Sam Kiley?

  The plan involves two assault teams at three entry points. The blue team to enter through the basement and work their way up to the ground floor, where most of the hostages are. The red team to be split into two groups. One, to abseil down the walls and smash through the windows onto the second floor, where the gunmen are.

• 17:37Sam Kiley?

  The second red team with David is to punch through the skylight. Within the first few minutes, five of the gunmen are shot dead.

• 17:48Speaker 05

  I got to the door of the the room where the hostages were held. And when, and we're all starting to line up then to prepare to receive the hostages to get them out. So as the door was opened, I was passed quite vigorously. This is the way we rehearsed it and it was the only real way to do it because the terrorists, the hostages were in shock. They don't know what's going on. The gas filled the place. I mean, my, my backside was just burning with gas. We put so much gas in there. So the hostages must have really been feeling it.

• 18:22Sam Kiley?

  It made your bum sting.

• 18:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, did it ever.

• 18:27Speaker 05

  And it just penetrated. Could we just add things like that, regular, regular overalls, wouldn't have any special clothing or nothing, thanks. And we were past the hostages and I passed them on to the next person and they were passed down. Now, one of those terrorists actually got past me. I didn't recognize him at all. The terrorist had the, were changing clothing, they were changing jackets, they were changed with hostages. And he had managed to conceal himself in the room where the other terrorists were taken out. And he got out with the hostages partially down the stairs, where someone saw that he was carrying something, identified him. And then he was taken out. I believe he was carrying a grenade. It's a high risk he could have used that.

• 19:13Speaker 05

  Or even if he had a pistol, it would have been deadly. So once we started to get them out and before one of that happened as well, we had to get one of the lads out who was, his leg was badly burnt getting into the, getting into the embassy. So we had to get him out as well. And once they were then all out, we then filed on down to the bottom to the ground floor. When I got to the down at the bottom of the stairs, one of the lads said to me, Dave, Dave, watch him, because there was a terrorist was dead, he was lying on the floor on his back. And he said, watch him. Well, we do this all the time is you always cover the body, even if it's dead. And this lad was very dead.

• 19:57Speaker 05

  Away one of the lads goes to the front door and pulls the curtains down, lets the light in so we could see what's going on. And and the hostage was clearly, clearly dead.

• 20:10Sam Kiley?

  While all this is going on, the stun grenades have set fire to curtains and it's spreading.

• 20:16Speaker 05

  The place was starting to burn already by then. The fire was out of control. There's no way we could have done anything to, to about that. So we were told then the hostages were out. We were told then to file out and we left the building and went straight next door to the holding area and got inside the holding area very, very quick. I think it's about fourteen minutes.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  The reasons behind the decision to storm the embassy were given at a news conference tonight. It was attended by the senior Scotland Yard men responsible for the operation, together with the Home Secretary and the Metropolitan Police Commissioner.

• 20:57Speaker 02

  What we can say and will say is that the operation, and I would have thought the people of this country and many in the world will think so, was an outstanding success, and it showed that we in Britain are not prepared to tolerate terrorism in our capital city. And that is something which has to be learned by everybody.

• 21:17Sam Kiley?

  For the SAS, this publicity was pretty unwelcome.

• 21:21Speaker 05

  When I saw the media the next day, I thought, Christ, this is like winning the World Cup. Except we knew on the way back, we'd never ever get a chance to do this again. So we'd have to rethink everything. But yeah, that's the sad part of it. It really compromised everything. All those years of preparation, all those years of training, people not really knowing what we're doing, what our methods were, or what we were actually there for,

• 21:57Speaker 05

  saw everything one go. All the terrorist organisations saw it. There's no way I was ready for what came afterwards, no.

• 22:08Sam Kiley?

  But it's interesting to me that your focus immediately there was, well, we've blown that system, you know, what people call their TTPs, tactics, techniques and procedures. I mean, all of the tricks of your trade had to be chucked out the embassy window and you had to start again.

• 22:27Speaker 05

  Yes, but you couldn't really start. It's not like you could really just start again, but you had to refine and change things slightly, especially the media. Actually, the big thing that was going to change was, we'll never get six days again to... If anybody knows that we're outside waiting for them, they're not going to give us six days to prepare. Because we were still all the time refining how we were getting into buildings after that. So we had to change the way we looked at it and try to refine it, which was a little...

• 22:59Sam Kiley?

  Five terrorists were killed and one was captured. A hostage died in the crossfire, but the rest were freed. The operation was broadcast live around the world. Masked men swung through windows, explosions rocked the building, and Operation Nimrod worked visibly, decisively, and to much public applause. But it also created an illusion that such clarity would always exist, even in the shadows.

• 23:30Speaker 00

  Car crashes injure over a million of us every year because we're human. For over a decade, Waymo's been building a driver that's safer. Statistically, 10 times safer in the cities we serve. Not because humans aren't enough, but because they're everything.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  Based on over a 94% reduction in serious injury or worse crash rates. Learn more at Waymo.com. At Humana, our Medicare Advantage plans are easy to understand and easy on your wallet, like offering more benefits than you'd get from original Medicare alone, and including dental, vision and hearing coverage in every plan. And the best part is, every plan has a $0 or low monthly plan premium, which makes it easier to save, too.

• 24:19Sam Kiley?

  So this Medicare planning season, plan well with Humana. Learn more at gethumana.com. Humana is a Medicare Advantage HMO and PPO organisation with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.

• 24:36Sam Kiley?

  Within a decade, the reputation of the SAS was to take a very public knock on Operation Flavius in Gibraltar. On March 6, 1988, three IRA operators were planning to set off a bomb beside a British Army band in the sleepy British outpost next to Spain. They were shot dead by an SAS team before they got the chance. There was a media outcry. It transpired that the IRA operatives were unarmed when they were killed. There were allegations of death on the rock. Some said that this was proof of a state-sponsored

• 25:17Sam Kiley?

  shoot-to-kill policy. The SAS commander in charge of that operation is with me now. He has never spoken publicly before. We can't use his name or show his face, and we've also had to disguise his voice. He still risks retribution from the IRA, but now he also faces legal reprisals under new legislation from a British state that he fought to defend. He's putting his side of the story to put his actions in context.

• 25:51Sam Kiley?

  You were the tactical commander in the incident in Gibraltar, when a number of IRA operatives were killed by the SAS. Can you set the scene, the background, for what was going on in Northern Ireland and what led to that operation? And why indeed it had any kind of military imperative behind it at all?

• 26:15Speaker 02

  Absolutely. So we go back to March 8, Northern Ireland, as a campaign, as per the troubles, as they euphemistically called, was very much going on. It was some years before the Good Friday Agreement, and the IRA were extremely active when they were busy killing people. And very relevantly, not many months before this, there'd been the Enniskillen bomb on Remembrance Sunday, which was, relevantly, a timer device. And that led to such a large number of innocent people being killed, that the IRA explicitly expressed regret about what had happened, which was, and I digress now slightly, but very relevantly, why the very strong and very reasonable assumption was that this particular

• 27:00Speaker 02

  bomb would not be a timer. But I'll come on to that. And so the information which had been received through intelligence and through surveillance was that there was going to be a spectacular bomb, which was going to be mounted against the band and the guard of the Royal Angan Regiment, who was resident at Tann in Gibraltar, who every week habitually had done a guard mounting on the Tuesday of the week outside the convent, which is the residence of the British governor of Gibraltar. And information had been received about those three people in detail, who they were, what they were going to do, and in the end, when they were going to do it, because there was nearly a big crest and mark over the last of those things.

• 27:43Sam Kiley?

  Those three people were all known to be frontline IRA operatives: Shaun Savage, Daniel McCann and Moraid Farrell.

• 27:55Sam Kiley?

  And were they followed all the way from Northern Ireland to Gibraltar? What was the sort of surveillance picture? And when did you, as the SAS, get involved?

• 28:07Speaker 02

  We knew, we'd been briefed that there had been and was surveillance, not all the time, but part of the time in Spain, against these three members who made up the Accusative Service Unit for the IRA. And then we were told at very short notice that they were going to mount the operation in the following days. And in fact, a really critical item, therefore, in the chronology was a briefing at which not only us, but also the surveillance operators, the technical people, the ATO, who's the Andesian Technical Officer, the sort of bomb person in the British military who was with his team, and indeed,

• 28:51Speaker 02

  very importantly, the Gibraltar Police, the Police Commissioner were all there on the night of the 5th, 6th of March, midnight briefing, quite close to the convent. And it is that the final picture was put together about what was expected to happen. And I need to say also, that was based on firstly, very good firm intelligence, but secondly, because of course, the intelligence picture is never fully complete for these things. Secondly, alongside that, to fill in the gaps, very, very well-finded assumptions. One of those assumptions was that this bomb, which was going to be set off against the band and the soldiers, and would have a massive implications for civilians in the area, would

• 29:32Speaker 02

  therefore be done on a remote control device. So the IRA would be able to time it...

• 29:38Sam Kiley?

  So that they could focus as much as they could on a purely military target?

• 29:43Speaker 02

  Well, you basically can't, because I mean, next door to this assembly area where this is going to happen before the band and the soldiers marched a very short distance to do the guard mining directly in front of the convent, is a school, and also an old people's home, and lots of passes by. You'd have lots of spectators, because this is a sort of spectator support for Gibraltarians. So whatever way you cut it, there would definitely have been a lot of innocent casualties, men and children.

• 30:21Sam Kiley?

  So when was the bomb meant to go off? How much time did you have?

• 30:25Speaker 02

  We knew that the guard mining was going to take place the following Tuesday, so a couple of days after that. And that was when this bomb was going to be detonated. We were told a number of other things, partly based on firm intelligence and partly based on assumption. The timer aspect is really important. The possibility of a timer device, which is to say, a bomb which is initiated on a sort of partway timer set to detonate at a certain time, was completely discounted because of Enniskillen not many months before, and the embarrassment the IRA had suffered.

• 31:06Sam Kiley?

  At Enniskillen in Northern Ireland, the IRA killed 12 people. 11 of them were civilians, by leaving a bomb on a timer that detonated without the usual IRA warning and the remote control trigger that militants used to control the scale of civilian casualties. 63 people were also wounded at the Remembrance Day bombing on November 8, 1987. These random killings caused a huge republican backlash against the IRA, who subsequently admitted that they'd made a mistake. Their intended targets were British soldiers only.

• 31:47Speaker 02

  We were told that the three people who'd be carrying out the operation, a guy called Dan McCann, who was a very well-known killer, murderer, based in Belfast, who had not only killed, murdered a number of people already, but was anticipated... Through good intelligence to have people on his list who he would have subsequently killed had he not been killed. So that was a key man who was basically in charge, a known shooter and a known bomber. And then you had this woman called Mairead Farrell, who'd already done done time in prison for the bonning of the Conway Hotel in Belfast, who was a close associate in the CAMs. And then the third person was Shaun Savage,

• 32:30Speaker 02

  who was a known and then bon maker. Those are the three people who made up the so-called Active Service Unit, ASU. And and further points on them, which are very relevant, is that it was considered that there was a high likelihood that at least one, if not more of them would be armed with weaponry of one sort or another, and that at least one, if not more, would be equipped with the so-called button job to detonate what we anticipated through well-funded assumptions would be a radio-controlled device.

• 32:59Sam Kiley?

  The button job is literally a handheld switch to detonate a remote-controlled bomb.

• 33:05Speaker 02

  And also, we've been told that they that all the reconnoiscences they, the IRA, needed to carry out before this event had been carried out. And therefore, we were told that the car which we brought in would be, the actual car containing the bomb.

• 33:22Sam Kiley?

  So the first time you were likely, or they, that the Brits would pick them up was when they came in from Spain to Gibraltar, at least in that section of their journey.

• 33:29Speaker 02

  As it happened, a very sharp surveillance operator based on the frontier saw McCann and Farrell, just for a very short time, one or two seconds, going in front of the window.

• 33:41Sam Kiley?

  The surveillance operators are out to identify the three IRA members as they enter Gibraltar from Spain. So what was your plan?

• 33:51Speaker 02

  We had three options. And the first option was to arrest them as they came across the border. The second option was to arrest them as as they got out of the car or while you were in the area of the car in the assembly area for the Royal Engines. And the third option, men, which of course what happened, was to arrest them or try and arrest them as to have come to that before they went anywhere where we could admit longer arrest them. The orders to us were absolutely as a priority to work in support of the police and arrest them if at all possible. But at the same time, the orders also to us were very clear that if it was necessarily for the protection of life and if it was constant withdrawals and engagement,

• 34:36Speaker 02

  we had authority to use weapons in order to use lethal force to protect life.

• 34:43Sam Kiley?

  The rules of engagement for British soldiers were written down on what was called the Yellow Card. It laid out when a soldier could open fire. He could shoot only when his life or the lives of others were immediately threatened.

• 35:03Sam Kiley?

  So the operation there, you've you've got the briefing, how does it, how does that the next 24 hours unfold?

• 35:09Speaker 02

  So we deployed the

• 35:13Speaker 02

  the two pairs of soldiers with single policemen in attendance

• 35:18Speaker 02

  in various places around the Rock of Gibraltar, around Gibraltar. And again, in company with surveillance operators who were quite numerous and based in different places. And so the brief was, once the surveillance operators had confirmed the identity of the three IRA members, and and once the police had passed control because they were happy with that confirmation of identity, then we, as the military, in particular the pairs of soldiers, would go in and if at all possible, effect an arrest.

• 35:55Sam Kiley?

  So explain to me how it all unfolded.

• 35:57Speaker 02

  So what happened was, we saw the, we had, or the surveillance operators had sight of all three of the three terrorists. Because while Savage had parked the car up in the assembly area, and he had been joined by the other two people who had walked across. And I think very importantly, from our point of view, they were seen to give a really hard look at the car before they left it, looked inside, et cetera, et cetera. So again, confirming, we felt the

• 36:33Speaker 02

  the assumption that that we had that this was the actual bomb. And and therefore, they looked at it in such a way that it seemed that they were sort of in their minds going through, this is all prepared. And then they walked away. And because of the route they took, which was not a straightforward route back across the front, it was coming and going. At one stage, they split and then came back together again. And because the police were concerned about where was, had the identities really been confirmed, they gave us, they gave me as the military commander on in charge of the people on the ground, authority to get on and effect an arrest.

• 37:08Sam Kiley?

  The police deemed it too dangerous for them to make the arrests, so they handed control in writing to the SAS. At this point, around 3pm, SAS Commander Ed is in the temporary operations room close to the governor's residence, just under a mile from his team. He's communicating with them by radio, but his command is conditional.

• 37:32Speaker 02

  But twice, the police took back control because the commissioner of the police, sitting with me and other people in the joint operations room, wanted to be certain, sure that they really were who the surveillance operators had said they were. Before, for the third time, control was passed finally to us.

• 37:51Sam Kiley?

  They were in different parts of the town. They weren't, this, the, these were, the three IRA operators were themselves no longer in that location, but but walking around elsewhere. So there were two, two occasions in which the police sort of lost faith in in a sense, in in terms of the identification process, so that they they put, they called you off. I mean, that's a fascinating detail in terms of the minute by minute evolution of how these, these, these operations.

• 38:19Speaker 02

  I would say, forgive me, I say the choice the worst is very important. It's not that they'd lost faith. They just wanted to be double sure, because of course, being blunt about it, you don't, I mean.

• 38:28Sam Kiley?

  You want to kill an innocent person.

• 38:30Speaker 02

  Well, bad enough to arrest the wrong person because you could miss a big chance, but worse still, if it came to to kill the wrong person, would be, would be awful.

• 38:41Sam Kiley?

  So you've got these three people being tailed, you've got Savage doubling back in order to tail the tails and try and reveal counter-surveillance or conducting counter-surveillance. What are your team wearing? What are they armed with? And how many of you got out on the ground?

• 38:58Speaker 02

  All the soldiers were armed with nine-millimeter Browning High-Palate pistols, containing magazines, which each had 12 rounds in them, and rank civilian clothes. And in each pair of soldiers, one had a concealed radio which was on my net, if you like, the military radio net. And the other soldier had a radio which was on the surveillance operators, the watchers met. So we were completely joined up.

• 39:28Sam Kiley?

  So they're being tailed. At what point is a decision taken to to move in, to go for the arrest? Because presumably, that also has to be coordinated, particularly if they're not, if the targets are not in the same place.

• 39:42Speaker 02

  So the soldiers were located in such places that they could, they could respond under my direction to whatever was appropriate in terms of who was tailing who, because you can't, you know, you have to, and and this is why you need to use trained soldiers in this particular case, because there's a limit to what you can direct. They have to use their initiative in terms of how they move, how they interface as as pairs.

• 40:06Sam Kiley?

  It's around 3pm, and the three IRA operatives are walking together down Limewall Road, followed by two SAS soldiers, C and D. Between them are the British watchers, dogging their every step. David, a former SAS major, narrates what happened next.

• 40:27Sam Kiley?

  Shortly after that, the terrorists stopped, began to kind of converse together. And more or less at the same time as that, emerging from a place called the Lamport Tunnel, which is a, which is a tunnel with a rock, which is a kind of alternative way into Gibraltar itself, emerged a.

• 40:44Speaker 02

  And B, soldiers A and B, who then could look down onto the kind of vista ahead of them. They could also see the three terrorists standing together. So I think at that point, you had two, you had four soldiers, but all with eyes on the three terrorists, who at that point were static and were sort of conversing and talking in the roadway.

• 41:02Sam Kiley?

  And at that point, is that, that is kind of, at this point, you've handed effectively, I mean, obviously, you've got command, but the decision making is going on by the people on the ground. This isn't like in the, we see in the movies now where there's a live feed from their helmet camera or a button hidden in their underwear that means that you can watch them live and start issuing instructions, right?

• 41:24Speaker 02

  And so you have the two soldiers who came through the tunnel, who were called Andy and Bert. They-

• 41:30Sam Kiley?

  I'm pretty sure they weren't.

• 41:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, anyway, that's what they're called now, Andy and Bert. And Andy was the senior man on the ground.

• 41:37Sam Kiley?

  Just for clarity, A and B are the soldiers that David refers to as Andy and Bert. C and D are Charlie and Derek.

• 41:48Speaker 02

  So, so what happened was that as Andy and Bert walked down the hill towards the three terrorists and as Charlie and Derek walked along the road towards the three terrorists, the terrorists split up and Savage began to walk back up the hill towards Andy and Bert.

• 42:08Sam Kiley?

  Aware that they might be being followed, Savage doubles back.

• 42:12Speaker 02

  And in fact, Savage actually brushed against Andy as he walked past him. So Andy and Bert carried on walking, they couldn't obviously change direction, they were too suspicious, carried on walking down towards where the other two terrorists were, which is by then it was Farrell and McCann, who had by now started walking themselves to go north up towards the border.

• 42:34Sam Kiley?

  What happens next happens in seconds. SAS soldiers Andy and Bert are catching up with Farrell and McCann, while SAS soldiers Charlie and Derek are going after Savage.

• 42:46Speaker 02

  And the first, the first soldiers to make contact, if you like, with the terrorists was Andy and Bert, who caught up with Farrell and McCann as they were walking down Winston Churchill Avenue and as they drew adjacent to a shell garage on the right of the, on the right of the road. And Andy, as he got close to him within abouts of a metre or two, opened his mouth to give a warning, but he says at that point that McCann saw him, looked over his shoulder, saw him and moved his hand abruptly across his body as if he was going for a weapon or going for a button or what have you.

• 43:23Sam Kiley?

  The button triggers a remote controlled bomb. British intelligence had assessed that the IRA would not use a timer, not after the Ennerskilling disaster. The bomb, the SAS was told, was likely in the car that they had seen Savage park at around 1pm.

• 43:40Speaker 02

  Andy then shot McCann, single round in the back. He then saw out of, out of his corner of his eye that Farrell was also reaching into her bag, she was carrying a handbag. He shot her a single round and then he fired three more rounds into, into McCann, who fell down. And in the meantime, his oppo, Bert, had fired a number of rounds, I can't remember exactly how many, into Farrell, I think three into Farrell. So within a, within four or five seconds, both had been shot and both had fallen on the ground beside a low wall that's outside the shell garage. And meanwhile, up the hill about 80 metres away, or less than 100 metres anyway, Savage is walking up towards the Lampour Tunnel that leads back into Gibraltar. He's out of line of sight, but within earshot.

• 44:23Speaker 02

  And coming up quickly behind him are the other two soldiers, Charlie and Derek. Savage hears the shots that have just killed Farrell and McCann and turns around quickly. Charlie issues a warning, shouting, stop, but Derek has to move a civilian woman out of the way so he can get a clear view of Savage.

• 44:40Sam Kiley?

  There are lots of people around.

• 44:41Speaker 02

  And as Savage is challenged, he again appears to make a move for a weapon or whatever. He's wearing a jacket as well as his light clothes and he's shot. Both soldiers shoot him several times and they describe him as corkscrewing as he falls to the ground and then he's dead too. So the shooting is over in two separate parts, but within about five seconds, 10 seconds perhaps maximum.

• 45:04Sam Kiley?

  Ed says that they started to shout a warning, the start of a challenge like stop or hands up, that there is some confusion here.

• 45:12Speaker 02

  So, I mean, Andy, isn't clear whether anything actually came out, he's quite honest about it. He said he opened his mouth to shout and as he opened his mouth to shout, McCann turned around and saw him and began to move, at which point Andy fired. And, and he's, he's clear in cross examination, he was asked, did you actually say anything? He says, I'm honest, I can't remember. I'm, I meant to say something, I was getting it out when the guy, when the guy went for either of his gun or his button and I shot him. Whereas Charlie issued beginnings of a challenge and said, stop, at which point Savage appeared to be going for a gun or a button as well and was shot.

• 45:47Sam Kiley?

  You know, what people are going to say is, is sort of convenient about this narrative and that is, in every case, somebody who's not armed appears to be going for a weapon or a, or a button. And if you're a seasoned terrorist and you're not armed, you do know that you're being surveilled, you do know that you're likely to come up against of all people, the SAS, and therefore looking like you're going to try and shoot somebody and you haven't got a weapon is suicidal.

• 46:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:14Sam Kiley?

  So do you actually buy the idea that these people appeared to go for a weapon that they weren't carrying?

• 46:19Speaker 02

  Personally?

• 46:20Sam Kiley?

  Yeah.

• 46:21Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 46:22Sam Kiley?

  Because you know them or because it, it doesn't sound credible to me, I'll be honest.

• 46:27Speaker 02

  I think that, I mean, what's-

• 46:29Sam Kiley?

  I mean, it doesn't sound incredible.

• 46:31Speaker 02

  Well, what is interesting, I mean, what is interesting, reading the statements, I've read all the statements, I've spent a long time reading all the statements, but this is the soldiers being cross examined by their own counsel, but also by hostile counsel for the, for the other side. So the same story is being told in different ways, is that they are all consistent and there's nothing in them that tells me that they're lying. And there are a number of bits in them which are authentic in terms of, and to me, they lend credibility to the statement because they're not necessarily advantageous to say. For example, you know, A, Andy could have said, I issued a challenge, but he admits he doesn't actually know where he did admit it, did issue a challenge.

• 47:13Speaker 02

  He said he meant to issue one, he began to issue one, but events overtook him and he shot, he, he, he shot McCann. If he was lying, I think he would say he did issue a challenge. All of them, interesting enough, report a curious phenomenon of being in kind of action, which is you often don't hear what's going on around you. So none of the soldiers report hearing any of the other soldiers firing, despite the fact that they're right beside each other. Charlie talked about shooting Savage and he was asked, was Derek shooting too? And Charlie says, I can't remember, I didn't hear him. Now, if you're standing as close as we are, firing a pistol, you'd think that was a pretty loud noise, but they didn't hear it because they were so kind of focused on the task they had. And that's the kind of authentic detail that you just wouldn't add in if you were trying to fabricate statements.

• 47:57Speaker 02

  So what I'm saying is that there's nothing in these statements that would lead me to be suspicious. And you know, often the simplest answer is the right one. I think they were telling the truth. I think that one important thing regarding the immediate aftermath is straight away, as soon as the news was broadcast that the three of them had been shot, straight away, the IRA themselves, or spokesman for the IRA, said back in Northern Ireland, the three

• 48:24Sam Kiley?

  had been killed, quote unquote, on active operations. So that was a straightforward admission that they weren't just three IRA people who happened to be tourists, genuine tourists in Gibraltar, which of course, might have been plausible at the mostly official level. Two or three days later, the actual car bomb was found in Spain and it was found to be a timer initiated device with all sorts of shapnel and nuts and bolts and, and, and ammunition with food, of course, absolute carnage. The inquest took 19 days, interviewed 79 witnesses and at the end of it, ruled by a majority of nine to two, that the shootings were lawful.

• 49:09Sam Kiley?

  Seven years later, the European Court of Human Rights found no evidence of a government shoot to kill policy and accepted that the soldiers believed that they were preventing an imminent bomb attack. However, it ruled that the operation had not been planned and controlled in a way that sufficiently minimized the need to use lethal force. For the soldiers and others involved, Gibraltar never really ended. The shooting may have lasted a few seconds, but the arguments have lasted nearly 40 years. In the next episode, we'll hear details of life in the shadows of Northern Ireland,

• 49:54Sam Kiley?

  where months of covert work in hedge rows and back alleys can end in a burst of gunfire.

• 50:00Speaker 02

  And then he just walked along in front of us and covered the hedge row in what was now obviously petrol, because we're sitting there and his petrol's running down our face, it's all over us and we're thinking, this is going to get quite ugly. And his lad throws the match into the hedge on our right and then-

• 50:18Sam Kiley?

  The Shadow War is an Aura Studios production for The Independent, hosted by me, the world affairs editor, Sam Kiley. It was produced by Will Aslett, edited and sound design by Keith English, and the line producer was Claire Cotrell. Executive producers were Mark Popkovitz for Aura Studios and Olivia Foster and Rod Ardhali for The Independent studio. Thanks for listening to this episode of SAS The Shadow War. Want to hear all the episodes without waiting?

• 51:03Sam Kiley?

  Then join Independent membership today for just a pound for your first six months. To join, head to independent.co.uk forward slash subscribe.

• 51:14Speaker 00

  Car crashes injure over a million of us every year because we're human. For over a decade, Waymo's been building a driver that's safer. Statistically, 10 times safer in the cities we serve. Not because humans aren't enough, but because they're everything.

• 51:46Speaker 01

  Based on over a 94% reduction in serious injury or worse crash rates, learn more at waymo.com. Network freedom and flexibility, that's what you want in a healthcare plan. With a Humana Medicare Advantage PPO plan, you can see any doctor in the country who accepts Medicare, including specialists. No referrals, no kidding. Learn more at gethumana.com. See any doctor who accepts Medicare and is willing to build Humana. Humana PPOs may not be available in all areas. Benefits and costs share may vary. Humana is a Medicare Advantage PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.