OTTAWA—Officials with the prime minister’s office got two separate briefings on operational security prior to Stephen Harper’s weekend trip to Kuwait and Iraq — and still published videos online that broke the rules by showing the faces of soldiers, the Star has learned.

And contrary to claims, the two offending videos were never vetted by defence officials, who say they never would have let the videos see the light of day because they risked putting soldiers’ lives in danger, a defence official said Thursday.

The prime minister’s office caused an embarrassing breach of security this week when it posted two in-house videos on the Internet showcasing Harper’s weekend visit with Canadian troops in northern Iraq and those serving at airbases in Kuwait.

Journalists who joined the trip had been given strict warnings by the military and the prime minister’s officials not to show the faces of soldiers serving overseas or those serving as Harper’s team of bodyguards.

And yet in two videos produced by Harper’s own staff, the faces of soldiers training Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq, air crews in Kuwait and members of Joint Task Force 2, the elite military team that protected Harper during his visit, are plainly visible.

When journalists raised questions about the images Tuesday morning, they were quickly taken off-line. But a senior government official told journalists that both videos had been pre-cleared by the defence department, said there were no “inappropriate” images in either one, and insisted they would soon be reposted.

But that story changed later in the day when Rob Nicol, Harper’s director of communications, said the two offending videos should never have been posted. “We regret the error and are reviewing protocols for such images,” he said.

A defence official said Thursday that the Canadian Armed Forces was never given a chance to view the videos before they were posted on the Internet.

“They were not screened through here because they would never have gone out,” said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Instead, it appears miscommunications between the prime minister’s office and the privy council office, which supports the PMO, caused someone to think the videos had been vetted.

“Multiple layers appear to have failed here,” the source said.

Gen. Tom Lawson, chief of the defence staff, said in a statement that risk from the breach appears low.

The screw-up has also stirred some anger among the families of special forces soldiers, who themselves have to carefully adhere to operational security guidelines, only to see the prime minister’s office run afoul of the rules, the source said.

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