The British Army has destroyed 90,000 copies of its own magazine, Soldier, after an article inadvertently revealed sensitive details about the SAS mission to free hostages in Sierra Leone.
The Ministry of Defence ordered the glossy copies of this month's edition be called back and pulped at a cost of more
than $210,000.
New copies were printed with the offending parts of the article, headlined "Tight security key to jungle rescue success," removed.
A ministry spokesman yesterday told the Herald the magazine's editors made a genuine mistake in breaching the hard-line defence policy of not publishing details of SAS or Special Forces operations.
The ministry says the ban is so soldiers are not put in any danger.
In the Sierra Leone mission, codenamed Operation Barras, the SAS freed six Royal Irish Regiment hostages from the West Side Boys militia.
The Special Forces troops swooped by helicopter for a 15-minute firefight on the edge of a swamp, Britain's Daily Telegraph reported on Saturday.
One SAS soldier, Brad Tinnion, was killed in the raid, and at least 25 West Side Boys died.
The gaffe comes as the British Government tries to stop a former SAS soldier, a New Zealander known as Mike Coburn, from publishing a book about his experiences in the botched Bravo Two Zero mission during the Gulf War.
Coburn has asked the High Court at Auckland to overturn a British interim injunction stopping him publishing.
Soldier did not, however, reveal any secrets about the SAS. In a section of the censored article headlined "Anatomy of a rescue," the magazine gave an outline of the dawn attack.
It said: "Armed helicopters took off from Freetown, carrying Special Forces and Paras into the jungle.
"They were flown by pilots from the Special Forces Squadron. Special Air Service troops on the ground, who had been observing the rebels' stronghold for more than a week, warned that the landing would have to be made under fire.
"The SAS snatch squad in a Lynx touched down long enough to get the hostages on board. L/Bdr Tinnion was fatally injured."
Between February 1997 and December 1998, 57 books were published about the SAS - 22 by insiders and vetted by the ministry.
The ministry has probably spent more than $1 million fighting Coburn's appeal.
