When the official files are opened in 30 years time, we will see what series of
decisions led the government to send a helicopter-born SAS team into eastern Libya when they could have sailed in on HMS Cumberland, disguised themselves as reporters or rung up Mustafa Abdel
Jalil, Libya’s ex-justice minister who is said to head the “Transitional Government”.
But it is easy to see how it happened. The perfectly sensible idea of sending a British emissary to Benghazi to make contacts must have clashed with bureaucratic protocol and the FCO’s duty of care arrangements.
“What?” You can just imagine the officials exclaiming to the ministers. “You intend to send a single person to Libya. But what if he got killed? Or hurt? Or taken prisoner. Much better to do what we do in Helmand: get the SAS to escort him.”
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