SAS: The Shadow War

By the mid-1980s, intelligence had become one of the British state’s most important weapons in Northern Ireland, with covert surveillance teams working the streets of Belfast knowing discovery could prove fatal.

In episode four of SAS: The Shadow War, The Independent’s world affairs editor Sam Kiley meets ‘Bob’, a veteran surveillance operator, and ‘Liz’, a pioneering former female intelligence operative speaking publicly for the very first time. They reveal how secret teams shadowed suspects, navigated anti-surveillance traps and operated alone in hostile territory.

From a stolen submachine gun to the murder of Corporals Derek Wood and David Howes, the episode reveals how a single mistake could have deadly consequences, and asks why so much of Britain’s intelligence war remains secret.

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For days at a time, SAS operatives lay hidden in freezing hedgerows and fields, watching and waiting. Discovery could mean capture – or death.

In this episode of SAS: The Shadow War, The Independent’s world affairs editor Sam Kiley enters the covert surveillance war between British Special Forces and the Provisional IRA. One former soldier recalls a terrifying encounter in South Armagh, when a farmer soaked his hiding place in petrol and told his young son to strike a match.

As the IRA adapted its tactics and the conflict intensified, the dangers extended far beyond the men concealed in the undergrowth. Through first-hand accounts, Kiley reveals the risks of a war fought largely out of sight – and the toll it took on those caught up in it.

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Four miles south of Omagh, at the height of the Troubles, the SAS launched an ambush against an IRA unit suspected of carrying out a series of deadly attacks on soldiers.

In the first episode of SAS: The Shadow War, The Independent’s world affairs editor Sam Kiley meets ‘George’, the former SAS ground commander who led the operation at Drumnakilly. He reveals how the mission unfolded – and the decisions made when it mattered most.

But decades on, the battle over what happened in Northern Ireland is far from over. As former soldiers face renewed legal scrutiny, the episode asks: where does the duty to protect lives end, and the demand for accountability begin?

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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.

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For decades, the SAS has operated beyond public view, its missions shaped by secrecy and its reputation burnished by the rare moments when that secrecy has fallen away.

In SAS: The Shadow War, The Independent’s international affairs editor Sam Kiley traces the regiment’s covert campaign against the IRA in Northern Ireland, from the surveillance operations and ambushes of the Troubles to the hard questions that still endure today. Along the way, the Iranian Embassy siege and a deadly operation in Gibraltar reveal how the SAS became both a celebrated and a contested force.

Drawing on rare and previously unheard first-hand accounts from former operatives and those who witnessed the conflict up close, this eight-part documentary series explores a war fought largely out of sight – and the legal battle now being waged over how its actions should be judged.
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