SINKING CAUSES

After a tortuous and tortuous investigation into the causes of the sinking of the submarine ARA San Juan and the spying on the families of its crew members, the question is: Who is the enemy?

 

By Sir Charlattam

The surprising news that the Argentine federal justice system has decided to acquit former president Mauricio Macri and all his military and intelligence staff in the matter of spying on the relatives of the submarine “ARA San Juan” only confirmed the rumours that we already had in our possession barely a month and a half earlier, which had foreshadowed this possible outcome.

It comes as no surprise to those in this country who know how the rails of politics and federal justice move in parallel, making it clear once again that “power is still a sign of impunity”.

It can be said that silence is assured and no one will try to bring this matter up again, although that will have to be seen with the passage of time.

Those who are also breathing a sigh of relief are those in the Foreign Office and, of course, HM Royal Naval Staff who are involved in one way or another in the control of these waters. While MI6 was carefully and quietly following the course of this court case, relying on its internal sources within the state and whistleblowers in the media, there was little concern about any last-minute hiccups or hiccups. One of the concerns that was being taken into account was the witnesses proposed by one of the accused, Captain Claudio Villamide, who shortly after Javier Milei's election victory was announced, more precisely on 22 November last, withdrew this evidence and the proceedings were closed. Very curious, don't you think?

While it is true that these witnesses were going to talk about a hypothesis of “casualty” due to alleged technical issues of the submarine itself, a euphemism that was used to cover up what really happened, which was nothing more than an external attack involving a naval unit of the Royal Navy that was on that date in joint operations with the Chilean Navy and assistance from the US Navy at a time when a series of practices of new classified weapons systems were being carried out.

The Argentine Navy search party arrived at the exact spot where the submarine collapsed and clearly saw the remains of the vessel, such as the characteristic oil slick from the diesel engines and some floating debris adrift. Even the electronic intelligence station in Port Stanley monitored every operation of the Argentines and the communications that went out from that task force to their bases on the mainland. Of course, the Argentine admiralty, which translates into the government of the day, lied about not finding anything and did not lift a finger to ask London for reports on these activities.

This was a major headache for the Ministry of Defence of the then president Mauricio Macri, a friend of Britain who year after year endorses his presence at embassy cocktail parties and is trusted by the British establishment.

It was embarrassing that this inconvenience should arise at a time when there was a friendly government in Buenos Aires and auspicious moves to bring the issue of Falklands sovereignty under the table, but the material circumstances of the Argentine military's lack of with it the lack of electronic intelligence on their side that would have caught the moment of the coup and the lack of a political opposition equal to the circumstances that was not bought off, helped, on the advice of Naval Intelligence (DNS&ICP naval branch intelligence) or rather SIGINT and MI6, to disguise the affair as a maritime accident.

The families of those crew members did not buy this story and their lawyers began to scrutinise all the factual circumstances of that day. They did not just rely on what the navy was going to tell them. Moreover, they were not the dupes the government thought they were and realised themselves without the need for sophisticated electronic equipment that they were being spied on. Added to that, the already known collusions of the federal judiciary in this country with government agencies (especially intelligence) foreshadowed delays and several attempts to shut down the investigations. Hiding the truth from them would not be a problem unless other elements and unforeseen factors appeared that their reports could not explain with reasonable argumentation.

The communications and contacts that some of them had with the Russian naval attaché's office changed the perspective of the investigations and this made the Argentine military, who knew what had happened in reality, very nervous. But it made President Macri and his defence minister especially nervous, as they would see their image in the eyes of public opinion and, worst of all for him, with his friends in London, plummet.

For the Foering Office and the head of MI6, the most worrying aspect was Russia's involvement, which, contrary to what many bureaucrats in the Ministry of Defence (MoD) would have expected, could expose the truth of what had happened. Contrary to that prejudice, the Kremlin would attach importance to the relatives' requests to such an extent that they would send a special naval mission to help with the exploratory vessel “Yantar” ship.

For the British Admiralty and the Foreign Office, this threatened British interests.

Although the British intelligence community considers Argentina to be a low danger zone and without considerable risk to London's intelligence activities in the South Atlantic and on the continent, Moscow's meddling would for some translate into the FSB (Russian foreign intelligence) entering the garden of Anglo-American interests without the unwary Argentines realising it.

Macri was warned of this displeasure by London and on the advice of his security circle (close to MI6 and Mossad) he took the initiative to spy on the family members with human resources, interception of communications and especially of their private phones (with "Pegasus" software), despite the existing prohibition and the illegality of the method used for this purpose. To do so, he relied on the technology provided by Israel, even though he has continually denied it.

His advisors, especially those in charge of state intelligence, Silvia Majdalani and Gustavo Arribas, were the links that made this possible and for this they were prosecuted. Today, because of these things in this country, everything has come to nothing.

What happened with the submarine “ARA San Juan” was not an accident. It certainly had structural flaws as a result of the poor budget that the CFK government allocated for the maintenance of the fleet and in particular this vessel. In the “Whitehall” archives, there could be enlightening and very compromising documents of this event. It is likely that at the time of being pursued, failures in the underwater navigation systems prevented the immersion.

Even those failures would have forced it to surface and it was precisely at that time that it was attacked with an experimental plasma weapon system (microwave laser) which is nothing more than a variant of the existing land-based, aircraft-mounted ones. Perhaps this weapon only scorched the submarine's electronics or even its 44 crew members; or perhaps after disabling all seaworthiness they were finished off by surface torpedoes launched from a Chilean plane or from a British helicopter on board.

But however it happened, why was not a single body of the crew found?