Britain’s SAS Closes Book on Retirees’ Memoirs

Top Secret.

The British Defense Ministry is at war with the nation’s most decorated general and some of its heroic soldiers for kill-and-tell books they have written about the SAS, one of the world’s most elite and (formerly) hush-hush regiments.

For Your Eyes Only.

Like all SAS veterans who have sung regimental praises in print, retired Gen. Peter de la Billiere has been banned from entering SAS bases or participating in ceremonies of a regiment that he joined in 1956 and subsequently commanded.

The government action was triggered last week by official exasperation at a flood of books by former Special Forces officers and men--books that the Defense Ministry says could damage future SAS operations by stripping a necessary veil of secrecy from the regiment. “Halt! Who goes there, friend or author?” asked a cartoon SAS sentry in the Daily Mail.

Now, De la Billiere, who was deputy allied commander during the 1991 Persian Gulf War--and had explicit government approval for the contents of his two books--is fighting mad. He has a fair chunk of the British establishment in his trenches, but not all of the veterans of his beloved regiment. Some former SAS enlisted men have already felt the ministry’s wrath and think it is about time that officers suffered too.

Read Only in Safe Room.

The SAS, about 200 serving officers and men, retains the World War II name with which it was christened on Nov. 17, 1941, after a raid into occupied North Africa: Special Air Service.

Since then, it has undertaken small-unit, high-risk operations, often behind enemy lines. For decades, the SAS was legendary--and shadowy. There were many legends about it, but few facts.

In 1980, a television camera dramatically revealed the regiment’s anti-terrorist role when it pictured black-hooded figures abseiling down the outside of the Iranian Embassy building in London to free hostages from Islamic kidnappers.

“They were projected to stardom,” said a Defense Ministry spokesman who, under government rules, spoke anonymously.

Do Not Copy This Document.

The spokesman estimated that about three dozen insider accounts of SAS missions impossible have been published, including about 10 bestsellers. Books by De la Billiere and Gulf War SAS veterans writing under the pseudonyms Andy McNab and Chris Ryan have earned their authors hundreds of thousands of dollars.

For half a century, the regiment’s credo has been excellence, discipline, humility and no divisions based on class. Nowadays, says one critic, the SAS motto--”Who dares wins”--might as well be “Who dares writes.”

De la Billiere wrote first, publishing “Storm Command,” a personal account of the Gulf War, in 1992. He described inside-Iraq SAS derring-do and thanked the Defense Ministry for being “extremely helpful in correcting errors of fact.” The general apparently excised one chapter and made 300 corrections at the ministry’s behest.

Since he had written about the SAS with official approval, other veterans of war in the shadows reasoned, why couldn’t they? And so they did, in ever greater numbers, and with great success.

By now, the SAS is as familiar as the Swiss army knife. The books are everywhere: “Bravo Two Zero,” “Immediate Action,” “The One That Got Away,” “Looking for Trouble,” “A-Z of the SAS” and, for travelers, “The SAS Survival Manual.”

No Gossiping in Pubs.

The sanction against De la Billiere is only just, says onetime SAS Sgt. Harry McCallion, now an attorney. He says his book, “Killing Zone,” put him on a list of 45 banned former SAS noncoms pinned to the guardroom wall at the secret SAS headquarters in Hereford in western England.

“Within the SAS, there has been seething resentment over the different treatment meted out to former officers and regular soldiers who wrote books,” McCallion said. The ministry’s action, he said, belatedly “brings to an end a long period of double standards and hypocrisy in the way that SAS authors have been treated.”

Said the pseudonymous McNab, a former sergeant who led an abortive sortie against mobile Iraqi missile bases and became a millionaire author in the aftermath: “This will clear the air. . . . When a senior officer wrote something, it was treated as memoirs. If it was a trooper, it was treated as something revelationary.”

“You can’t have one law for the men and another law for officers,” said Lt. Gen Napier Crookenden, an ex-paratroop commander. Historian Michael Howard said, “If they imposed a ban, there would be an outcry if senior officers were excluded.”

David Clark, the opposition Labor Party’s shadow defense minister, called the ministry action “bizarre . . . staggering.” And De la Billiere is furious. “Both my books were cleared. . . . I am now informed that I am not welcome on Special Forces property except by invitation,” said the 62-year-old retired general, who is Britain’s most decorated hero since World War II.

Don’t Even Tell Mom.

Supporting the general, Conservative Member of Parliament Winston Churchill told The Times: “I understood why it’s being done . . . but in this case the ministry disapproval is heavy-handed and foolish. It could be said that Sir Peter’s books have come out with Ministry of Defense approval. I think the ministry is attempting to be politically correct.”

Neither does everybody agree that the SAS books endanger the regiment’s ability to act. Sergeant-turned-lawyer McCallion said that any country with money to spare can buy SAS training, “either from the SAS itself or from any of the major security firms who give highly paid employment to ex-SAS men.”

“The real point,” said retired army Gen. Ken Perkins, “is that they wish to keep the SAS secret, which I think is stupid, and the only way they think of is to close the door after the horse has bolted.”

In response, the Defense Ministry says the ban is intended to stop authors from acquiring new information in the easiest possible way: “What do old soldiers do when they get together? They swap stories and talk shop,” the spokesman said.

So the message is: No more books, no documentaries, TV shows or film treatments. Silence. Serving members of the SAS are being asked to sign a pledge that they will never tell secrets.

Who dares wins for the SAS--but he had better stay mum about it.

This message will now self-destruct. Maybe.