Ever since that situation last year, with the “paparazzi” swarming the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in New York, I’ve wondered if British intelligence agencies are monitoring the Sussexes in America. There are still so many open questions about just what went down in NYC last year, that’s all I’ll say. Well, funny story. Prince William made a curious, unannounced visit to MI6 on Thursday. MI6 is Britain’s spy agency. William has made these kinds of visits before to MI5 and GCHQ (which is Britain’s version of the NSA), and they’re almost always unannounced and done somewhat quietly. I would assume that this was probably just an in-person briefing, not only for William’s safety, but a general rundown of what MI6 is working on at the moment, cough cough.
The Prince of Wales has made a private visit to MI6, with the details shrouded in secrecy. Prince William met with the Secret Intelligence Service, which deals with foreign intelligence and protects the UK from risks abroad, on Thursday afternoon.
The visit was not publicised in advance and only appeared afterwards in the Court Circular, the daily list of official royal engagements, which is published the next day.
It is not known whether the prince met MI6 boss Sir Richard Moore, codenamed “C”.
The entry in the Court Circular read simply “The Prince of Wales this afternoon visited the Secret Intelligence Service” with no location or additional details given. Kensington Palace declined to provide further information on the visit.
William, as the Duke of Cambridge, made a similar visit in 2022, and went to the MI6 headquarters in London with the now-Princess of Wales in 2012. In 2019, he also spent three weeks working with MI5, MI6 and GCHQ to learn how the UK’s security and intelligence agencies work.
I doubt this briefing was even that highly classified, because I just don’t see the spies believing that an angry, compromised egg can keep a secret. But it is curious… a wife who hasn’t been credibly seen in public in six months, reports of the Princess of Wales being out of the country, the feeling that Britain’s intelligence community is monitoring the Sussexes in America, and William about to travel to Germany next week. I imagine there was a lot on the agenda for this briefing.
This year especially, there’s been a lot of talk – in a purely hypothetical way – about whether a hypothetical Prince of Wales could actually be charged with a crime. While the king or queen cannot be criminally charged in the UK, it seems like everyone else in the royal family could be. Like, on a technical level, there’s no mechanism or law preventing a senior royal from being charged and prosecuted and even imprisoned. That being said, British society’s upper classes have a culture of abuse cover-ups and lawlessness. It would be difficult to believe that in practice, a law-enforcement agency would actually investigate or charge anyone titled with a serious crime. My point is that William is not being treated like a target or persona non grata by high-level law enforcement or intelligence agencies. He’s being treated like an insider who is untouchable.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images.