Did the MoD broadcast military secrets to Argentina?

The raid on Pebble Island

A prominent news story covered by Radio Atlantico del Sur during its first night on the air (19-20 May 1982) was the British raid a few days earlier on Pebble Island, off the north coast of West Falkland. The Argentines had stationed ground-attack aircraft at the island's air strip. Members of the British Army's Special Air Service (SAS) were landed by helicopter on Pebble Island in the early hours of 15 May and attacked the aircraft. A British warship offshore shelled the air base. 

The raid was a success. All the aircraft were damaged, an ammunition dump and fuel stores were hit and an Argentine officer who led a counter-attack was killed (he was the only fatality on either side; the aim of the raid had been to destroy the aircraft rather than kill enemy troops).

A summary of RAdS's story on the raid is in the declassified MoD files on the station:

The attack on Pebble Island was carried out by the SAS, using 12 teams of 4 men each; 11 aircraft were destroyed, as well as a munitions dump. The SAS is an elite force drawn from the British Army, specialising in clandestine military operations. Recruitment is by a rigorous selection process - only 1 in 50 volunteers being selected.

The Guardian gave an account of RAdS's reporting of the SAS. In a 22 May article headlined "MoD beams in terror tactics, pop and propaganda", it said:

The next item appeared to be designed to instil a fear of the SAS in the Argentine garrison. It was described as an elite corps within the British Army that was hand-picked and specialised in clandestine military operations, with the clear implication that SAS units were already on the islands.

"Potentially embarrassing" 

As any British journalist who reports defence and security affairs will have spotted, RAdS's coverage of the SAS had a problem: it contravened D Notice guidelines.

The D (Defence) Notice procedure – now known as the Defence and Security Media Advisory (DSMA) system – is widely misunderstood, but it certainly covers, to use the current wording, "the inadvertent disclosure of classified information about Special Forces... including their methods, techniques and activities". This would have included reporting the deployment of the SAS in the Falklands in such a specific manner.

This breach of guidelines did not go unnoticed. At the very next day's (20 May) morning meeting between the Permanent Undersecretary at the Ministry of Defence, Sir Frank Cooper, and his senior staff, alarm was expressed that the previous night's RAdS broadcast had referred to the SAS. 

The meeting triggered a small flurry of memos which are now in a declassified MoD file. Sir Frank's private secretary, S. Webb, wrote to B. Miller, head of the MoD's DS6 (Defence Secretariat 6), to ask:

Whether the station should make public information that we are not prepared to release to the press... the reference to the SAS on last night's broadcast was quoted [at the meeting] as an example, though it was not clear whether this was just a report of UK press stories.

Webb added that there was also concern about how to answer questions that might be asked in Parliament and:

The detailed arrangements within MoD for settling questions of editorial policy and giving directions to the [civilian] station manager.

Miller replied the same day:

We are attempting to obtain a translation of what was actually said but we understand that the reference was one of a number of items culled from "various sources" and was clearly identified as such. Nevertheless the reference to the SAS by an MoD organ is unfortunately and potentially embarrassing for us in our dealings with the Press. I have therefore written to SPC/CDS to make it clear that the Station must in future observe the guidelines that we urge upon the Press when dealing with Special Forces. [1]

(SPC/CDS was the colonel who led the Special Projects Group (SPG), the MoD unit which had set up Radio Atlantico del Sur.)

Guidelines tightened

It appears that the incident resulted in the tightening up of the written editorial guidelines issued to the Media Assessment Team (MAT), the cover name for the group of journalists, editors and presenters who produced RAdS's programmes.

On the question of sources, the "Initial Guidelines" issued to MAT staff merely said:

[RAdS's] sources of information will be British and foreign [news] agencies. Argentine sources will only be quoted if compatible with our aim. No lies are to be told.

(The full text of the "Initial Guidelines" can be read in my post "No Lies are to be told" – see Annex A to "MEDIA ASSESSMENT TEAM DIRECTIVE").

This was later amended to:

The presentation of news must not conflict with the MOD press line for the day. MAT is to maintain close contact with PR to achieve this. News is to be attributed clearly to some overt source, preferably a media source. Under no circumstances is RAdS to lay itself open to accusations that it has scored a “scoop” over the UK media. Thus, if the editorial staff is keen to use a particular news theme which has not been announced through PR, OC [officer commanding] MAT is to attempt to influence the MOD news release staff to take steps which will permit use on RAdS.

"Secret the MOD told Argentina"

There seems to have been at least one further breach of the guidelines.

Under the headline "British radio told foe of the QE2's arrival", the New York Times of 14 June 1982 reported:

The Argentine garrison on the Falkland Islands heard about the arrival of the reinforcements aboard the Queen Elizabeth 2 four days before it was announced here [London], over the British Ministry of Defense's own radio station.

The daily summary of the output from Radio Atlantico del Sur, broadcast from Ascension Island, said that on June 1 and 2, ''arrival of reinforcements from the QE2'' was disclosed. [2]

Yet it was not until 6 P.M. on June 6 that the ministry announced in London that the Fifth Infantry Brigade had disembarked for the Falklands. Until then, the ministry had removed any mention of the troops arrival from the dispatches of correspondents in the field.

According to Valerie Adams, in her book The Media and the Falklands Campaign, the same claim was also reported in the 14 June edition of London's Evening Standard. In an article headlined "Secret the MOD told Argentina", the paper said that RAdS broadcast news of the "arrival of reinforcements from the QE2" on the night of 1-2 June. 

Adams noted: 

This was when the landings [of 5th Infantry Brigade at San Carlos] were still taking place, and was despite MoD's request to the press to keep silent on the subject. According to Sir Frank Cooper, Radio Atlantico del Sur only broadcast information already carried in the British media. But even if this was simply a report of speculation, specifically drawing the latter to Argentina's attention seems to have been at variance with MoD's policy.

Notes

[1] The memos written on 20 May 1982 by MoD officials Webb and Miller can be found in the National Archives in MoD file DEFE 25/502.

[2] Radio Atlantico del Sur's studios were in London but its signal was beamed to the Falklands from a transmitter on Ascension Island.

Disclaimer: I was employed by the BBC at the time of the 1982 war, and continue to be so.
However, this is an entirely personal blog post, reflecting only my views.

© 2018. Material may be reproduced if attributed to Chris Greenway and any original source.