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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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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