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They warned that, by boasting in his book Spare of killing 25 Taliban insurgents, the Duke of Sussex has elevated himself and his family into one of the world’s top security risks, alongside Russian president Vladimir Putin and former US leader Donald Trump.
SAS hero Andy McNab said Harry’s comments were “unwise”, adding “as we have seen for decades, extremists don’t care how they get to targets as long as they do.” And as a result, the Duke will face a bill of £5.5million a year for round-the-clock protection needed to keep him, wife Meghan, 41 and children Archie, three and Lilibet, 19 months, safe.
READ MORE: Prince Harry wanted to cancel tell-all book after visiting Queen
His comments about his kill tally as a combat helicopter pilot in Afghanistan have provoked outrage across the Middle East, sparking online death threats against him and other royals.
Harry, 38, writes in his bombshell memoir that killing 25 Taliban fighters was like “chess pieces taken off the board”. The Duke, who served two tours, claimed he did not see the enemy and did not feel pride or shame over the deaths.
Mr McNab, a former SAS soldier turned author whose identity since going undercover in Northern Ireland in the 1980s, said Harry was already a “high-value target” for his tours of duty in Afghanistan.
The 63-year-old Bravo Two Zero writer added boasting about his Taliban kills will not be forgotten by extremists – as was seen with the stabbing of Satanic Verses author Sir Salman Rushdie, 75, in New York last summer. That came 34 years after an Iranian fatwa calling for his death.
Mr McNab said: “They have long memories and they obviously have people in the US. Harry has made himself more of a target. The threats against him will have to be taken seriously everywhere now.”
READ MORE: Harry’s royal revelations baffle Montecito neighbours
Body language expert Judi James claims the Prince Harry we see now is “resolutely grown-up and full of serious concerns and responsibilities.”
She said before his move to the US, his uncanny ability “to drop the grown-up stuff and act like a child” made him the perfect representative, but now the former “playful, loveable young man” instead “lectures the world with the air of an expert or guru.”
Read Judi’s full analysis on the shift in Prince Harry’s behaviour here.
The Prince’s comments also angered military chiefs, with a general who commanded troops in Afghanistan branding them “ghoulish and completely unnecessary”. Col Richard Kemp accused Harry of “stabbing his fellow comrades in the back”.
He said: “Harry’s comments imply the Army conditions soldiers to see chess pieces to be taken out. The reality is that the Army does not train soldiers to perceive anyone on the battlefield as chess pieces. And it is a stab in the back to those who fought alongside him to say it.”
And Admiral Lord West, the former head of the Navy, warned Harry has jeopardised security at September’s Invictus Games. He told the Sunday Mirror: “The Games is very much labelled to him and so I would have thought the threat level there will definitely be higher. There will be serious security issues because of what he said.”
Security arrangements for the Sussexes could come into sharp focus when they next visit the UK, as the Duke is fighting a legal battle with the Home Office for his family to be granted automatic police protection.
Chris Phillips, a former Metropolitan Police chief inspector in charge of organising security for high-profile events, said: “Harry’s comments have ensured his family will require 24/7 security for the rest of his life and beyond because he has also placed a target firmly on the back of his children. We know Islamic extremists can be patient.”
Top US security expert Kent Moyer agreed, saying Harry has condemned his wife and children to a “lifetime of looking over their shoulders in fear”. The boss of the Beverly Hills-based World Protection Group said the Duke’s comments put his family in “immediate” danger at their five-acre mansion in Montecito, California. Mr Moyer said: “There are highly motivated people who will bide their time to launch an attack.”
Friends of William and Harry warned “loyalty works both ways” and they had plenty of dirt to dish out on the Duke of Sussex.
They said the Prince of Wales had “always been there to pick up the pieces for Harry” and does not have any hidden skeletons. But they say Harry has a history of getting pals to clean up his mess and once-loyal friends are now considering debunking his claims.
They said William was “a sitting duck as Harry knows he isn’t going to retaliate” and the onslaught in Spare was “cruel, cowardly and so sad for William”. While outwardly he was trying to follow the example set by his late grandmother, “inside he’s burning”.
A friend of the Royal Family told the Sunday Times: “I don’t know how you can do that to your brother, even if you don’t like or get on with him anymore. I can’t believe he’d stoop so low. It’s outrageously disloyal.”
Another said: “Harry is good at getting his narrative out there but we know so much, we’ve cleaned up so many messes over the years, there is so much we could say.”
Broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby – who interviewed Charles in 1994 when the then-Prince of Wales admitted to having an affair – said he was “perplexed” by Harry’s decision to publish Spare.
Mr Dimbleby, 78, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he imagines the King is “extremely pained” and “frustrated” by the ongoing spat, as well as “anxious to bring it to an end”.
He said of the memoir: “There are obviously revelations about how he lost his virginity, taking drugs and how many people he feels he might have shot down in Afghanistan from his Apache, but those are the kinds of revelations in part that you would expect…from a kind of B-list celebrity.”
And he said a “wise counsellor” may have told him not to go public with his feelings if he did want to reconcile with his family.
“The door is always open,” says Harry – but then he adds: “The ball is in their court.”
The more he spouts, the more he reminds me of Kris Kristofferson’s Pilgrim: “He’s a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction.”
A media frenzy is running amok, with TV news giving more air time to his fracas with William than to Pope Benedict’s funeral, attended by 50,000 mourners.
We will soon find out whether the interviews by Tom Bradby and Anderson Cooper are hard-hitting and probing. I fear the gloves will remain on.
If I were Bradby, I’d be seething with rage at how Meghan trashed his interview with her in Africa, saying that she had no idea it would go viral.
Really? No awareness of cameras, microphones and an ITN interviewer talking to her on the record?
Meanwhile, Mark Toth and Jonathan Sweet, both of whom have considerable experience in US and diplomatic communities globally, have highlighted the gravity of this couple’s actions.
They say the pair have trashed the Queen’s Commonwealth legacy as “an evil archetypical manifestation of racism and repression”, accusing them of “recklessly undermining UK national security and by extension the US and its allies”.
All this plays into the hands of the Russians and Chinese, with the latter actively pumping money into Commonwealth countries and the Overseas Territories in the Caribbean.
The Sussexes could both have done so much for the world instead of feathering their own nests. You can still access their Sussex website, which quotes the Queen: “The Commonwealth is a global family of 53 countries, bound by shared history and tradition, working to promote a future of peace, democracy and human rights for all.”
Harry used to serve his country. Now he slags off his family for quantities of money.
With Harry and Meghan’s recorded outpourings, via Netflix, podcasts and interviews, now numbering around 20 hours, they must have done a lot of remembering.
And that’s before we get to Harry’s forthcoming memoir Spare.
The final tranche of their Netflix series confirmed my worst suspicions. This was a study in jealousy dressed up as a romcom, a love story about a Hollywood actress who captured her prince and took him away from everyone and everything he knew and held dear.
They lost family and friends in the “process”, but hey, they’re happy in their multimillionaire lifestyle – as long as Harry sells out to the highest bidder and signs lucrative contracts to trash his heritage. All the time an extraordinary amount of money is sluicing away to maintain the mega-mansion, the army of assistants, attorneys and agents… and the lawsuits.
Harry is now at war on three fronts: with principal royals Charles and William, the palace households, and the press.
The central charge in the Netflix series is that Meghan was not accepted because she was bi-racial, which is untrue and should not pass into the historic record.
The colour I saw only too well in the Netflix series was green for envy. The star of Suits was never going to settle for being the fourth lady in the land and the main targets of their resentment were William and Catherine.
In a rare moment of honesty, Harry admitted he misses “weird family gatherings”, being part of the institution, the UK, and his friends. A line sprang up in my mind, the tile of a documentary on Bob Dylan: No Direction Home.
That’s your life now, Harry. Enjoy it while you can.
For the past 72 hours, I have been immersed in a steady drip-feed of the minutiae of a highly privileged man’s life.
Thanks to the multiple leaks of his long-awaited memoir, “Spare”, I now know how Harry lost his virginity, how sore his todger was when he got frostbite, how jealous he was of his brother and how mentally scarred he quite understandably is by his mother’s tragic death.
But when it came to the oft-repeated (and hotly disputed) row over a bridesmaid’s dress and then hurt feelings over whether William’s wife, Catherine, should lend Meghan her lip gloss, even I found myself mouthing “Harry, shut up!”
I don’t really care who was right or wrong. I don’t care that Harry and Meghan were upset they had to shop in Ikea when William and Catherine had classier stuff in their Kensington Palace apartment.
And I don’t care Harry felt that it was unfair he was given a smaller bedroom than his brother in his grandmother’s magnificent castle in Scotland.
To carry a lifelong chip on your shoulder because you were born the second child is, quite frankly, ludicrous.
The only positive note to come out of this sorry tale of woe is that, for the first time, we have heard Harry say he wants his father and his brother back.
That’s encouraging, even though he has accused Charles and William of rebuffing his attempts at reconciliation.
Harry, it would seem, wants an apology. Only then will he consider if he will attend one of the most important events in his father’s life: the Coronation.
Harry unbridled is proving both petty-minded and dangerous. Controlling his own narrative, without guidance or advice, is a risky game.
He is, it seems to me, now a man riddled with internal conflict and confusion.
Last year, on a visit to the UK, he called in on his grandmother, the Queen. He wanted, he said, to “make sure she had the right people around her”.
How ironic that now seems. Because we really need to know who is “around” Harry.
From the evidence of his book and endless round of interviews, this troubled Prince badly needs a safe pair of hands nearby.
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Prince Harry certainly has a colourful history – from becoming an accidental heartthrob, to very distasteful fancy dress choices, to falling in love with a Hollywood actress, to resigning as a senior royal.
All scrutinised under the microscope of the media.
Of course, one monumental event that also defines him is the loss of his beloved mother in August 1997, when he was 12.
From my clinical experience, outcomes from this type of tragedy include depression, anxiety, prolonged grief reactions and negative effects on self-image and self-confidence.
In some cases, it can lead to substance abuse. Harry admitted he found solace in alcohol and drugs to mask his emotions and to “feel less like I was feeling”.
He also claimed his family did not speak about Diana’s death and expected him to deal with the resulting press attention and mental distress. As I peer through my proverbial psychiatrist’s monocle, I note Prince William suffered the same trauma yet appears to have had a different experience. He has never made assertions of the Royal Family being unsupportive.
This is one of many examples of the difference between the brothers. You know which other family is riddled with tensions and squabbles between siblings and frosty receptions towards new members? All of them – as I’m sure Prince Harry knows. But few have the scrutiny of the entire planet, as he also knows.
Harry sees media chances as the only option for telling his truth. Wise or not, perhaps to him it was the only move.
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