Britain: And Now, Fortress Falklands

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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 12½ 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