Hoon was kept in dark over removal of marines leader

Admiral says the Defence Secretary did not need to know that Brigadier Lane was being moved a year early

Controversy grew yesterday over the British combat force in Afghanistan with the disclosure that Geoff Hoon, the Secretary of State for Defence, was not told that the commander, Brigadier Roger Lane, was due to be moved from his post a year earlier than expected.

The Chief of Defence Staff, Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, intervened to express his "absolute and total confidence" in the brigadier and attacked as "lies" claims by civil servants that he was facing the sack.

However, the episode left Mr Hoon in an embarrassing position because he had to defend Brigadier Lane against accusations over his leadership without his own ministry telling him that the officer was due to be replaced in the near future.

Other ministers said it was "extraordinary" that Mr Hoon had not been briefed by his officials before he appeared on television on Sunday after newspaper reports about criticism of Brigadier Lane. "It's a complete farce," one said.

Tony Blair's official spokesman said: "Geoff Hoon did not need this information before he paid tribute to Brigadier Lane." Later he added that Mr Hoon would not have been consulted about the new appointment.

There was further confusion and contradiction yesterday about precisely when Brigadier Lane would be replaced as commander of 3 Commando Brigade by Brigadier Jim Dutton.

The Ministry of Defence said that although this was originally meant to happen at the end of April, it will not take place now until the Afghan mission is over. A MoD spokesman said: "The changeover has been extended until the end of the operation, nothing will happen before that."

Just hours later, the affair took another twist when Sir Michael told a hastily arranged media briefing in London that if the operation carried on into the summer the changeover would take place when there was a "suitable pause". He said: "He [Brigadier Lane] is doing a first-class job. I have absolute and total confidence in him and have no intention of relieving him early".

He accused unnamed defence sources of "lying" when they said that Brigadier Lane was "out of his depth" and had lost the confidence of politicians, senior defence officials and his own officers. The Admiral said: "If I find out who the source is, I expect he will find his career somewhat disturbed."

He said Mr Hoon would not have known about the planned move when he defended Brigadier Lane on Sunday because ministers were briefed only about the most senior appointments.

However, Admiral Boyce acknowledged that the military was partly to blame for "unhelpful" and critical media reports which followed the failure of the biggest British combat deployment since the Gulf to fire a shot in anger. The Admiral said they had allowed expectations of pitched battles against al-Qa'ida and Taliban forces to be "ramped up", with the result that the marines felt "flat" and "disappointed" when there was no contact with the enemy. "I guess I am as responsible as anybody else," he said. "I am disappointed if they think they haven't done a good job."

Lieutenant General John Reith, the Chief of Joint Operations, said: "He may not have got it right in the media handling side of things – or the people doing it for him – but he is a straightforward soldier and he has done a really good job."

The Royal Marines were called into Afghanistan by the US after failures by American forces at Tora Bora and Operation Anaconda at Gardez. The first operation, called Ptarmigan, was little more than an acclimatisation exercise but it was accompanied by huge hype. It failed to find anything apart from some corpses left over from Anaconda.

In the next operation, a thousand marines, with artillery, helicopters and US air support, was deployed in the mountains of south-east Afghanistan, and were told they faced up a thousand enemy fighters. No enemy was found, although the marines found and destroyed nine caves full of arms and ammunition thought to belong to al-Qa'ida. A local allied warlord later came forward to say the arms cache belonged to him.

Brigadier Lane declared the operation a success and said the war against the Taliban and al-Qa'ida was all but over. This was hotly disputed by the Americans, including the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. A few days later, after the Australian SAS killed a number of gunmen in the mountains, Brigadier Lane again deployed a thousand men, saying "substantial numbers of enemy" who were present would be "engaged and destroyed". The Marines did not find any enemy forces and it is likely that the Australians stumbled into an inter-clan skirmish rather than engaged al-Qa'ida troops.