SAS witch hunt: is Britain betraying its own special forces?

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0:37Hello and welcome to Coffeehouse, the Spectator's politics show. I'm Tim Shipman, political editor of The Spectator, and I'm delighted today to be joined by Lieutenant Colonel Richard Williams, the former commanding officer of the SAS. And we speak, Richard, in a very interesting week for what really is a sort of explosion of lawfare against the armed forces in a quite astonishing way, all coming together in this week. It's a really good week to be talking to you. We've seen stories in the papers about SAS men being hounded for years for things they didn't do. On Tuesday, the House of Commons passed the third reading of the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill, which I think people say does not have the protections it needs for members of the armed forces.

1:24And we've seen this astonishing intervention by the SAS Regimental Association against the Troubles Bill. It now goes off to the Lords. You've got to hope that, as with a lot of other legislation recently, that they get to grips with it and polish off the rough edges. But just start by talking about the Troubles Bill. What's it going to do that you don't like? And, you know, there's been a lot of lobbying on trying to make this a better sort of thing. What do you want to see? Where are the weaknesses in this legislation at the moment? Well, before I answer that, I mean, let's just look at some of the facts that are affecting the SAS right now.

2:02There are over 250 SAS men under some form of investigation or being, you know, being ready to be called forward into something. And that's a very large number for an organization that roughly matches that. and the people concerned are all sort of honourable soldiers that have served in multiple campaigns on behalf of the country for a very long time. Many of them are in their 60s and 70s with respect to Northern Ireland and that's what the age bracket would be. And some time ago, the SAS became, the association, became very unhappy with the path of these investigations, particularly with respect to Northern Ireland.

2:48as related to the, you know, lifting of the old legacy bill and this government's wish to push forward the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill. And it put, as a result of that effect, the government on notice saying if the new Northern Ireland Troubles Bill wasn't going to protect the SAS veterans in the ways that the SAS felt was reasonable, then it was going to take the government to the high court. But this isn't just an SAS thing. I sort of look at the SAS and this particular discussion we're having now as a bit of a tip of an iceberg. Yeah, they're the sharpest point of the spear, essentially.

3:26And then sort of connected to the SAS is the wider serving army. And then connected to that are the retired members of the armed services. And then really importantly, below all of that, if you think of the iceberg analogy, are all those that are thinking about joining the armed forces. I find, anyway, one can quite quickly get down a technical rabbit hole. So bringing it back up to what we're practically talking about here is that there are very, very good laws that exist today. If somebody is, you know, there's good evidence that murder or some other thing that's happened, you don't need new sort of laws or bills.

4:02You know, if a soldier, you know, quite obviously has broken reasonable law or the application of reasonable law in a combat zone, well, they can be tried on that basis. And bluntly, that's been happening First World War, Second World War, all the way, you know. Forever. Forever. But, you know, there's always been a way of dealing with people who break the code, essentially. Perfectly good laws exist and perfectly good practices and rules exist. But what happened in the 90s, partly, actually, to enable the passage of the Good Friday Agreement, was the placing the human rights at the center of how legacy issues would be reviewed.

4:43And then the Human Rights Act came from that, and there was no carve-out. So what you have is in this extraordinary situation, keeping it, as I said, non-technical, you can be in a combat situation. That is, you're facing somebody who is trying to kill you or somebody else, and you are having to use lethal force to stop them. Objectively, there are no human rights between two armed combatants who are trying to kill each other on a battlefield. It's kill or be killed, evidently and sadly and tragically, that is the nature of that particular engagement. So if you start offering people the opportunity to speculate in that armed combat situation, whether the human rights of one party or the other has been violated as a result of their death, you're creating sort of never-ending chaos when it comes to the retrospective examination of combat actions.

5:37It doesn't work. From your own career, Colonel, did you have incidents where you were worrying about this in the back of your head as you were conducting operations? Or had it not really kicked in when you were at the sharp end? It's a very good question. I mean, the history of this is connected to the personalities involved. So Phil Shiner, the lawyer from human rights law primarily, who took on a series of cases in Iraq, started his activity against three paratroopers in Pristina in, I think it was 2000 or 1999. I can't remember precisely the date. And that was the first time it sort of appeared where you had a London-based human rights lawyer bringing cases against British soldiers who subsequently...

6:24And for those who don't remember, China has been massively discredited now. I think he's been struck off. There was evidence of using false evidence. That's right. And there are lots of many cases for that. I was just coming to in Iraq and then subsequently in Afghanistan. And it was proven that, as you said, that this was an opportunity for him, for whatever his agenda and his supporters' agenda, to persecute armed forces, not on the basis of legitimate stand-up legal cases, but on the basis of some form of choice that was deeply damaging. So one was aware of all of that, and me personally not involved in any of those pieces, although actions that were conducted in Iraq when I was there in 2003 were certainly subject to review under this big envelope reaction that the Ministry of Defence reasonably put in place called Operation Northmore, where they said, okay, there's a whole bunch of cases seemingly or accusations made when it's put a system together to review that.

7:28So I was on the sort of other side of that and things were dropped. In my particular case, we conducted, when I was commanding the SES, a very intensive period of nightly operations in Iraq, working with the Americans from May 2005 to when I handed over just before New Year in 2007. Daily operations costing the SAS a lot of casualties, but delivering alongside the Americans the collapse of Al-Qaeda's suicide bombing network. Incredibly successful. But over that time, not one single investigation. Not one. And this is one of the things we're good at, isn't it? I mean, you know, people like to argue about who's the best, but, you know, the SAS is there with Delta Force, with SEAL Team 6 from the Americans, a few others elsewhere in the world.

8:17We are, you know, at the top of our game here, SAS and SBS. It's one of the things Britain can leverage and contribute to any kind of conflict environment. It's one of the things that our allies, you know, want us to provide, and that's significant. Well, since its inception in the 1940s and there was a break at the end of the Second World War when it was temporarily disbanded, British Special Forces has aspired to be as excellent as they can be. And they've retained that through a lot of hard work and support, reputation. But on Delta Force and SEAL Team 6, there's a very important structural description I need to give with respect to the utility of Special Forces as a strategic asset when considering the transatlantic relationship.

9:06And you know the transatlantic relationship underpins NATO and underpins our own security. Britain produces eight squadrons of SAS and SBS America produces eight squadrons of Delta Force and SEAL Team 6 It's the only area of parity, numerical parity in the transatlantic relationship and where policy and targets align sometimes they don't you're able to pool those resources particularly when leveraging American technology which is significantly advanced from where we are because of resources and other energies, in ways that deliver significant security, not just for the UK, not just for the US, but for all those that would benefit from a counter-terrorist action against global lethal threats, be they weapons of mass destruction or whatever part of the terrorist or threat spectrum you want to touch on.

10:00It's the only area. So if you're sitting in Washington or on the basis that these guys operate in now, you're going to be watching what's happening and saying, is the British entity of that team, British part of that combined team, as reliable and as robust as it used to be? And is that which is affecting it, this lawfare, is that a reasonable adjustment that we'll all have to go to? I mean, don't think that the Americans just go and do their own thing irrespective of law, regardless of perception. That isn't the case. And if it's not, and it's judged to be some kind of, as we refer to it, sort of unnecessary act of self-harm, well, you become a less reliable partner.

10:45And as a less reliable partner, you will get less of the benefits of that strategic partnership. So it's materially damaging our strategic position, essentially. Well, I think, I mean, you know, I've been long-winded. You've been pretty precise. That's exactly what the issue is. Yeah. Let's look at this issue that was in the papers at the weekend. Gabriel Pogrand of the Sunday Times, you know, Britain's top investigative reporter, had all this stuff on a mission in Syria in 2022. Five SAS up against an Islamic State target called Bravo One. Two young men shot dead during the mission. And then the case is initially dismissed.

11:22And this is what makes this case particularly intriguing, is that Gwyn Jenkins, who's the head of special forces, then effectively says, no, no, we need to look at this again. And these guys then face three years of investigations. There are eventually no case to answer. They've all now left, which supports what you're saying. But this is a guy who's still very senior in the armed forces. It feels like even the sort of brass don't have the backs of some of these guys. because, you know, you endure three-year investigation into something that it's concluded that they made legitimate decisions on the battlefield, but they've all gone now.

11:58And Gwyn Jenkins is sitting there with a lot of braid on his shoulders, you know, hoping to be the next chief of the defence staff. This is a pretty rum state of affairs, isn't it? I mean, are there any particular lessons you draw from that case specifically? But also, you sort of, the cynical political observer in me thinks, well, some of these lily-livered, human rights-focused politicians might not have the backs of the chaps in uniform, but it's more disturbing when someone who's working in the special forces space appeared not to have either. He obviously needs to explain himself rather than me, but I'll give you some context and interpretation.

12:34When there is an action on the ground such as happened in Syria, the immediate boss of that, let's call it a squadron commander, a major, and the commanding officer of the SAS and others with advice from lawyers and elsewhere will conduct a review of the situation and decide whether, in the highly unusual case, there is a need for some kind of investigation. And those commanders would be most familiar with the circumstances on the ground. They would have recently been engaged in such things. And they would make a recommendation that this is perfectly legitimate to individuals. I mean, my understanding was these guys weren't armed, but they were working with ISIS and they were in the ISIS space where, you know, it was legitimate in the heat of battle to think that they were a threat, essentially.

13:30Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And then it gets passed up the chain for review. And then it got to then the Director of Special Forces, Major General Gwynn Jenkins, who, you know, obviously has Special Forces experience. And he decided, as the story goes, in the interest of transparency, to initiate an investigation. And only a few days, as I understand it, after a Panorama TV program created some doubt on the way in which special forces were operating in Afghanistan. start. So to me, this is controversial, it appeared to be much more of a public relations exercise than an exercise of military judgment, triggered by military judgment, forgive me, on whether they'd done right or wrong.

14:18So you ended up with five soldiers who were parachuted into Syria, into one of the most dangerous, if I'm not exaggerating, places on the planet for a British soldier to be, to attempt to detain an individual at the specific request of the British government, and then conducted a combat action to do what they needed to do to protect themselves in their judgment, being thrown to the investigative wolves for a PR exercise. That's what it appears to be.

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15:27And if it is a PR exercise, why didn't it last three months rather than three years? I mean, that also seems to be an astonishing kind of issue here. I mean, I'm like you picking up what I know from what's released, and I think you're very right in that. And the fact that these individuals were sent straight back into the combat zone while their houses were being searched, and they had seemingly the sword of Damocles, which had it branded upon it, double murder hanging over their head, And they hung in there with that. It is firstly a remarkable testament to their particular character and loyalty.

16:08But boy, it wasn't returned in any sense by the loyalty of the chain of command. So I think that's a pretty controversial issue. And so why, just hypothetically, why would it be that the commander of special forces would feel a propaganda exercise to reassure Whitehall and his bosses that they were taking this seriously needed to happen. Well, it's on the basis of a series of public challenges to SAS operations in Afghanistan that have led to Haddon Cave and elsewhere. Yeah. And we should say, I mean, look, no one in the SAS wants a whitewash. Totally. Everybody I've spoken to about Haddon Cave says that it will probably uncover some pretty difficult material and that has made this a more complicated issue than it might be.

16:56But that doesn't take away the need for a government to stand behind the people that it is asking to go into harm's way. Every circumstance needs to be looked at on its merits by those who know what they're doing. And if you find, which is an extraordinary thing, and again, but we all should be happy pretty serious professionals, I mean, to be tested under this, that the chain of command no longer trusts the judgment of COSES to be able to say whether his men in these actions did something sustainable, then you've chosen the wrong man. And there's a thing about this that runs through it all. I mean, there's a necessary modesty and humility to being a special forces operator because you have to be obviously alert constantly that your next decision could be a bad one.

17:50You can't just rest on your laurels. They're exceedingly serious professionals, and those that lead these troops are very, very carefully selected. Now, they do make their judgments available for their seniors, their peers, and really importantly, their subordinates to be examined. Did I do the right thing? I mean, this is almost a description of the chain of command. That's how the chain of command should work, isn't it? Everyone knows their role and they trust the people above them and the people below them. And the people left and right of them. And it feels like that's what's breaking down here.

18:25The judgment of, I mean, when you conduct these high-risk operations, the SES is like other special forces. There's a sort of collective commitment to risk and excellence that means that everybody has a say, if you like. Everybody's judgment matters. When David Sterling, the founder, I don't get too historical here, put in the concept of classlessness in the 1940s, it wasn't a societal statement. It was the fact that when we're conducting these operations where everybody's life is at risk, we must pool their experience, their commitment, their willpower in ways that defies the traditional chain of command.

19:03This is not hierarchical. And so if you find yourself on operations and an individual let you down, and letting you down in this circumstance would be panicking, shooting somebody unnecessarily. They haven't broken some code. They've broken a standard, and they're no longer acceptable. Your most harshest critics... It's a self-policing environment, essentially, is what you're saying. Your harshest critics as a leader in the SAS are the SAS. The standards they set themselves. And so what's happened is this perception, which, you know, it's awful, that they're this sort of rogue group that run around and make things up.

19:40Absolutely not. I mean, the chain of command between the SAS and the senior leaders in the country, political or military, is very short. The intelligence that they operate on is the best available. And a lot of the decisions to send them in will go to the prime minister. Absolutely, the cabinet office. So, I mean, this particular operation in Syria, I'm not aware of it, but I've obviously done a lot of these things myself. That would have been signed off at the cabinet level because they made the choice. do we deal with this terrorist individual that is known to the UK, intelligence services as a threat to the UK, by bombing him with a drone, which they had the rules of engagements to do?

20:21Or do we put our soldiers' lives in danger, skilled soldiers, by parachuting them in, sneaking them up to him and attempting to detain him, and bringing back to what we consider to be normal justice, non-combat justice? Well, that decision would have been made. at the cabinet office level and the prime ministerial level, potentially. I can't tell. But certainly the Secretary of State, essentially. Yeah, you're not throwing special forces into Syria, into an operation like that, without the senior political leaders of the country signing off on the race. And in the week we learn about this Syria mission to take down an ISIS leader.

20:56We also see a former ISIS man wandering around the co-op in Britain. What on earth does that make you feel like? You know, that the same human rights law, which is effectively undermining the chain of command in the SAS, is allowing someone to stay in Britain who was a member of a beheading group of ISIS people because we can't send him home because it might be dangerous for him. Well, you know, I'm not a human rights lawyer. I am an advocate of human rights. In fact, one of the reasons you fight for the country is for the human rights of your people and other parties and allies to be protected from threat and evil.

21:36But, you know, the law and the application of the law and the way it is used can protect some of those evil from the type of justice. I'm not talking lethal justice. I'm talking normal criminal justice that I would judge. I think any of this one sensible would judge is just completely inappropriate, inappropriate sort of euphemism for wrong. And so when you do have a, let's describe him as he is, a head hacking murderer wandering around Windsor, free and protected by arguments that make no sense to me, alongside in time the news that this investigation against five SAS men that conducted legitimately their operations on behalf of the government against such threats, and you're weighing up who is evil, I'm pretty sure it's the head hacker and not the British soldier.

22:30And this concept of are we the evil, after I've said this before on elsewhere, when you're reflecting back over your service, is a deeply disturbing challenge to your being as an individual and collectively too. Did I do things, was I motivated to do things that on reflection put me in the same box as a guy who deliberately hacks the head off a British citizen? Well, in my judgment, absolutely not. Something's gone very wrong, hasn't it? I mean, Dominic Cummings, former Number 10 guy, was at the House Lords Committee in the week And he said, Putin is a minor problem relative to the Ministry of Defence and the lawyers in the Cabinet Office.

23:14I mean, it's a facetious point, but there's something in that, isn't there? Well, with respect to this particular issue, you know, the threat is behind people as well as in front of them, I think. Well, if you want to dismantle, just say, I mean, look, again, with the greatest respect to the broad capability spectrum of the armed forces, But just say that, and again, this is obviously why we're talking, the special forces element of that is exceedingly vital for the country in the same way that nuclear deterrent or elsewhere would be. And you are an enemy of this country. And you found a way through lawfare, through the retrospective application of human rights and associated laws to combat, to cripple that organization.

23:53You've done more than the IRA ever did. You've done more than Al-Qaeda ever did. And you've done more than the Russians could ever do. By destroying the military jargon, it's the sort of moral component, the confidence that soldiers have to have, even highly trained professional, ultra professional soldiers like the SAS, you're crippling their ability to fight. My God, it's a gift to the enemies. So Dominic Cummings' point about where does this threat come from? I think it's exploited by Russia and our enemies. I can only imagine where the funding for such efforts comes from. But it's enabled within our own system.

24:33And it goes all the way back to the 1990s. This is something that's been embedded within or growing within the British military system over some time. where if somebody dies in the combat zone, it's not quite guilty until proven innocent, but it feels that way. And so that really weakens your ability to make good decisions. You don't want to have any fog in your head when you're fighting for your life. And then secondly, it affects how the leaders think about the utility of special forces. And if they suddenly go, well, actually, this is more trouble than it's worth, then my God, we've gifted Putin, whoever our enemy might be.

25:14I mean, we can pick Putin, but we can pick another enemy. We don't know who it's going to be. We've gifted them. And if you go back to the Northern Ireland thing, you know, which one of the thing, this was basically delivering peace to part of our kingdom in the face of threats that were bombing Downing Street and attempting to kill prime ministers and assassinating soldiers and policemen, but actually lots of civilians, vast amount of civilians in Northern Ireland. We brought that organization to its knees, which is why you had the Good Friday Agreement. Yes, I mean, people seem to forget that peace in Northern Ireland came about effectively because the IRA had been defeated on the battlefield and sued for peace.

25:53And so now you have those who are sympathetic to the Republican cause, perhaps seeking retribution, perhaps seeking bigger agendas, being able to deliver to the SAS a sucker punch that they could never have done on the field of, shall we say, battle, but on the field in Northern Ireland. Last one to finish, Richard. We've got a budget next week. One of the other things Cummings said was that people returning from Ukraine are not being allowed to feed in their knowledge of drones because that might contradict where the MOD is spending its money at the moment. The government have said we're not going to fund 3 % of defence until the autumn of next year.

26:32We talked about who the enemy is, Putin, whoever, but it does feel like one of the more dangerous episodes in recent sort of global, you know, kind of global relations. What would be your message then to John Healy and to the government about resourcing defence sort of more generally? They need to remove this legal threat and they need to chuck some money at these guys, don't they? You know, those are the two things. And so when you've got the defence secretary, the new defence secretary saying defence has to live within its means, that's just saying, OK, Treasury, just cut the budget, whatever you want, and we'll make do with it.

27:05and that's worrying. I mean, defense has to be realistic about the money that it can get from the current status of the economy, dependent, forgive me, as it is today. You can't wish things were different. They are what they are. So there's a degree of fiscal constraint on what defense budgets can be. But I think the Cummings point with respect to drones is very interesting. The latest revolution in artificial intelligence and drones and so on is the latest of many revolutions in military affairs or technology that have happened over time. And defense, because of long, slow programs and so on, can often, and cultural issues, can be slow to adopt these new technologies.

27:50And to be sitting here now and debating or listening to Dominic Cummings, quite rightly raising this and saying, well, I don't think defense is taking this as a seriously issue. This is not a new revolution. Drains we were bringing in for intelligence and targeting mechanisms in a very intense way through the, actually prior to Iraq, but that's 25 years ago. The fact that Ukraine has taken it to a whole new level, it's demonstrated how things, that, again, it's not this year, it's over the last few years. So to have people sit and say, well, we're not entirely sure, and Dominic Cummings is a well informed and should be listened to critic of this.

28:29I mean, you know, you listen to him quite a lot, I imagine, like we all have. I mean, he doesn't hold back. It's rare that a House of Lords Select Committee kind of catches fire, but this one did, really. Well, he makes a very good point. Why is defence taking too long to do this and holds the system to account? I imagine the current leaders of defence, not that my particular opinion, will cause them any concerns, should be being put on notice as to, well, hang on, if we've got to transform our defence forces to take account of this new technology? What is the plan? What are you doing about it?

29:02How much energy is going in there? Are you transferring the right resources? This is what one wants to see in the defence budget. Former ministers like Cairns and others will refer to this. And the Cummings point is the way he expresses himself is he attracts, I mean, he's chosen this way, the right attention. But the same message is being made by loads of other people. The fact that we're not adopting it aggressively from what it looks like from the outside should be a worry. So when we look at the defense policy from now, there is a resourcing issue, for sure. More money, the better, and made...

29:40And the quicker, the better, presumably, as well. But made hard because of what we understand, and it's, I imagine, top triple secret. It certainly was when I was serving. What is the status of a nuclear deterrent? Yes. The assumption that we want to be part of NATO and the assumption that we want a nuclear deterrent, okay, that'll cost. But in part of NATO, what contributions do we want to make that will ensure that this country is safe as a result of the alliance it has been in since effectively the end of the Second World War? And in there, what things can we, Britain, do better than we're currently doing?

30:16I mean, Britain's got great research and development and technology basis to its fabric. are we making the most of that? Or is it all being clogged up and locked into some arcane, that's a little bit rude and forgive me, you know, MOD processes that for years have not delivered the defense outcomes that we all hoped for. Now, there was a controversial, you know, the head of the army was talking about, you know, difficult conversations that the country has to have or whatever. And that's attracted some, you know, attention. I'm sure that's why he did it. And it's called in that. Now, I've always felt, actually, David Cameron's Conservative government in 2010 emphasized this, that expanding our reserve forces delivers significant utility, but also really importantly helps to bridge the high readiness, like professional full-time defense with the community at large across the whole country.

31:19And I'd like to see that as very much part of where we go. Because as the Ukrainians found, most of those Ukrainians were civilians before the Russians did their invasion. And the Ukrainians are civilians, properly armed, properly unleashed, properly supported, are holding the Russians, as far as we can judge it or as far as I may information, at bay and have done for a very long period of time. working out how we do that is I hope going to be less talk and more action. Richard Williams thank you very much and thank you to you for joining us today and if you are not boiling with rage having listened to all of that go and write a letter to whatever peers you know and hope that they can sort this out in the House of Lords.

32:07Thank you very much indeed. Thank you very much.

32:18Thank you.

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