Military career
On 11 April 1981, Black was commissioned into the Welsh Guards as a second lieutenant. [3] He commanded a platoon in the Falklands War of 1982, surviving the bombing of RFA Sir Galahad, [4] and was promoted lieutenant on 25 January 1984, [5] captain on 11 October 1987, [6] and major on 30 September 1991. [7] He had three tours of Northern Ireland, where one of his roles was as an intelligence officer in Republican West Belfast, and he also served with the British Army of the Rhine and the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus. After attending the Staff College, Black specialised in intelligence. In the 1997 New Year Honours, he was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire for his Defence Intelligence Staff work in connection with the break-up of Yugoslavia. [8] [9]
Black was promoted lieutenant colonel on 30 June 2000. [10] He was on intelligence duty on the night of 11–12 September 2001, and retired the service on 1 July 2002, [11] his last posting being a secondment to the Cabinet Office as an intelligence adviser to the Prime Minister, the Joint Intelligence Committee and COBR (Cabinet Office Briefing Room). [8]
In the early 1990s, he and his Welsh Guards were the subject of a BBC television documentary by Molly Dineen called In the Company of Men. [8] In the course of that, Black said that if John Birt (then Director-General of the BBC) had been a member of his regiment, he would have had him sacked, [12] and one commentator described him as the "suavely telegenic star" of the documentary. [13]
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