Over the weekend, about a full day after Prince Andrew volunteered to relinquish his royal titles and honors, the Mail reported that Andrew asked one of his royal protection officers to dig up information about Virginia Giuffre. Andrew had gotten ahold of Virginia’s date of birth and Social Security number, and he passed the information along to the police officers guarding him. He bragged about all of this to Ed Perkins, who was then Queen Elizabeth II’s deputy press secretary. No one knows if Andrew’s RPOs actually looked into Virginia. But what is known is that many people around Andrew AND QEII knew that Andrew was trying to dig up dirt on her. Well, at the same time Andrew was ordering his RPOs to do this, the head of royal protection was a man by the name of Peter Loughborough. He’s currently known as Lord Peter Rosslyn, Lord Steward and Personal Secretary to King Charles and Queen Camilla.
A current senior member of the King’s household was the head of royal protection at the time Prince Andrew allegedly asked one of his police officers to dig up dirt on Virginia Guiffre, Sky News has discovered. Lord Peter Rosslyn, who is now Lord Steward and Personal Secretary to the King and Queen, was head of Royalty and Diplomatic Protection between 2003-2014.
It is not clear if Lord Rosslyn – known at the time as Commander Peter Loughborough – was made aware of Prince Andrew’s request. However, it reportedly happened in 2011 when it’s claimed Andrew wrote in an email that he passed the date of birth and confidential social security number of his accuser, Virginia Guiffre, to one of his close protection team to find out information about her.
At the weekend, the Metropolitan Police said it was “actively looking into the claims made”. Sky News approached Lord Rosslyn for comment, which was passed to Buckingham Palace.
A palace spokesperson said: “As you may or may not be aware, Lord Rosslyn works for The Royal Household and thus this issue has been referred to me. However, since this matter relates to his time in service with the Metropolitan Police, they would be the appropriate body to approach with media enquiries of this nature.”
The Met Police had nothing further to add. Police sources have told Sky News the officer (CPO) involved would have been expected to escalate this request from Andrew to his superiors.
While there may have been other members of senior staff between the CPO and Lord Rosslyn, the request should have been considered serious enough to be referred to the top of the Royalty and Diplomatic Service. Those with knowledge of the royal household tell us Lord Rosslyn is one of the King’s closest and most trusted members of staff. His role as Lord Steward involves managing all aspects of the King’s personal affairs, and the non-state business of the monarch.
While I’m not expecting to hear much more about this investigatory avenue, I think it’s interesting that royal reporters are at least doing some bare-bones straight reporting. They’re looking into who was part of the royal protection unit in 2011, who might have received Andrew’s information about Virginia, and whether the officers did anything about it, including “inform their commanding officers that a prince wanted them to dig up dirt on an American trafficking survivor.” If we had an FBI worth a damn, I’m sure they’d like to know if British police were actively investigating and dirt-digging on an American citizen/survivor as well. It would certainly be interesting to know if the king’s current Lord Steward has any recollection of the king’s brother ordering RPOs to look into Virginia. It would certainly be fascinating to see Ravec deal with this quandary too, especially since members of the royal households sit on the committee which assigns royal protection. It’s not so much a Venn diagram as much as it is just one big circle.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.
