And Now, Fortress Falklands

By Jay D. Palmer

An official--and independent--report vindicates Thatcher

When paratroopers and Royal Marine commandos stormed ashore in the Falkland Islands last May, it was to engage in Britain's first major war since Suez. Twenty-four days later, the Argentine army surrendered. But the cost to Britain was high: 255 killed, 777 wounded and an estimated $1.4 billion worth of ships and equipment lost in combat. In addition, nagging uncertainties about the war have remained. Was it preventable? Had Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher failed to anticipate the Argentine threat? Did the Foreign Office goof? Was the Intelligence Service at fault? Those questions, and others like them, have haunted British politics since the war and could have damaged Thatcher in the general election she is expected to call this year.

Last week many of the questions and most of the doubts were removed. After six months of deliberation, a blue-ribbon British inquiry into the causes of the war specifically exonerated Thatcher and her government from any blame for failing to foresee or prevent the Argentine invasion. Stressed the six-man bipartisan panel headed by Lord Franks, 77, an Oxford academic and former British Ambassador to Washington. "Our account demonstrates conclusively that the government had no reason to believe before March 31 that an invasion of the Falkland Islands would take place at the beginning of April."

While the inquiry was debating the causes of the war, Britain's military was discussing a Ministry of Defense post-mortem of the campaign, published last month. Overall, experts concluded, the conflict vindicated arguments that Britain should retain a strike capacity in addition to its role in NATO. A public relations shambles over press censorship came in for considerable criticism, as did the Royal Navy task force's lack of a credible early-warning system against low-level air attack. "Had the Argentine air force been equipped with more up-to-date systems," noted one general, "the war would have been a much more bloody affair." On balance, however, the navy was praised for overcoming the logistical nightmares of the campaign that, most agreed, provided a unique test of modern battle equipment. Potential improvements are "being identified."

The same happy consensus does not exist on the political front. The Labor Party's left wing was quick to condemn the 106-page report, particularly in light of a recently published book, Battle for the Falklands, by two journalists who fault successive Cabinets, British intelligence and Thatcher. In a brief preview of this week's full debate on the report, cries of "Whitewash!" were heard when Prime Minister Thatcher read the Franks report's exculpation of her government. Said she: "We now have no option but Fortress Falklands." Former Labor Prime Minister James Callaghan charged that Thatcher had bought "a short-term military victory and a long-term political retreat and dead end." The report, he later insisted, let the Prime Minister off "too lightly."

In fact, the Franks committee avoided turning up any scapegoats. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which many had expected would be heavily censured, was merely chided on a couple of minor points. The diplomatic service, the committee said, had underestimated the speed with which the crisis would develop and, in early 1982, failed to pay sufficient notice to the Falklands issue, despite a clear change of mood in Buenos Aires.

The lack of heavy criticism of the Foreign Office left one mystery. If the diplomats were blameless, just why had Lord Carrington felt the need to resign as Foreign Secretary immediately after the invasion? The report revealed that he had repeatedly warned during his three-year tenure of the dangers of diplomatic stalling. He had also disagreed with Thatcher's decision to withdraw the Royal Navy's survey ship H.M.S. Endurance from Falklands patrol, a move that some believe convinced the Argentine junta that Britain would not resist an invasion.

When the war began, Carrington chose to quit, he says, to "prevent recriminations about whether the Foreign Secretary at the helm was still to blame."

The Franks committee did not criticize Thatcher for ignoring her senior minister. Indeed, its only serious rebuke was aimed at the intelligence community, and even then Britain's Secret Intelligence Service escaped direct criticism. The panel argued that the Joint Intelligence Committee, a top-level coordinating body that analyzes information from all sources and advises the Prime Minister, had failed to carry out a full assessment of the Falklands situation in the months immediately before the invasion. It was, the report says, "too passive . . . to respond quickly and critically to a rapidly changing situation." But the panel also rejected press reports that the intelligence agencies had ignored invasion warnings from the British embassy in Buenos Aires, the CIA and the captain of H.M.S. Endurance. Such warnings, it noted, were never sent.

For the moment, Thatcher continues to ride the crest of her post-Falklands popularity; the latest polls show the Tories running 12 1/2 percentage points ahead of Labor. But any new confrontation in the Falklands could upset the present mood, and last week just such a possibility was reported. Though Argentine officials denied that they were planning fresh hit-and-run attacks on the Falklands, U.S. State Department officers expressed some worry over intelligence reports of troop concentrations and exercises in southern Argentina. "They are up to something," says one U.S. intelligence official. "It may just be to keep the British on edge, to make them spend a lot of money on defense. But if you are British, you have to assume they'll try something." Which may explain Thatcher's commitment to Fortress Falklands. --By Jay D. Palmer. Reported by Bonnie Angelo/London

With reporting by Bonnie Angelo This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.