A massive security operation is underway in preparation for Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral in London on Monday. President Joe Biden will join King Charles III and dozens of world leaders at the funeral. With its intrinsic public ceremonial component, the funeral poses a daunting security challenge.
How will Britain try to keep everyone safe?
The first step has involved a significant diversion of intelligence resources to focus on counterterrorism, anti-monarchy, and fixated-individuals concerns. Led by Britain’s MI5 domestic security service, this effort has seen a ramp-up of monitoring against suspected terrorists and others who may pose a threat to the funeral proceedings. Before the queen’s death, MI5, various police forces, and their GCHQ signal intelligence service colleagues were monitoring hundreds of persons of significant terrorist threat concern and thousands of others of lower-order concern. Less than 100 people seen to pose the most serious prospective threat are kept under 24-hour covert physical surveillance. Until Tuesday, similar surveillance is likely to be extended to even more people.
Why?
Because Britain will fear that a lone wolf or organized group of people, who are either mistakenly assessed as lower risks or who have been able to plan an attack without attracting attention, may seek to make a name for themselves and their ideologies via disrupting the funeral. This means that British police forces must also protect funeral watch events around the country. That said, U.K. authorities have far greater legal latitude than their U.S. counterparts to conduct intrusive intelligence gathering. Consider, for example, that MI5 surveillance-intrusion warrants are authorized by the political Home Secretary (the rough equivalent of the Homeland Security secretary) rather than an independent judge.
What about the personal protection of VIPs?
The funeral will see a mix of visible and covert security measures. It will be held at Westminster Abbey in Westminster — London’s political heart and its equivalent of Capitol Hill. The roads around Westminster Abbey will be closed and police counter-sniper teams posted on the buildings above. Armed plainclothes police officers will mingle in the crowds. Yet, befitting the queen’s constitutional importance and the British tradition of a royal family that is at least nominally accessible to the people, members of the public will be allowed to line the streets surrounding the Abbey. The U.S. Secret Service dislikes this degree of public proximity but will at least take solace in the fact that Biden can travel to the Abbey in his tank-like limousine. Certainly, the Secret Service would never allow its protectees to travel in an open-windowed Rolls Royce a la King Charles. Other world leaders will travel to the Abbey in police-escorted buses.
What about the security measures for Biden, specifically?
Biden will stay at the U.S. ambassador’s Winfield House in central London when he arrives on Saturday. While Secret Service officers and agents will be armed when Biden is at this location, only a few agents closest to the president are likely to be armed when he is traveling around the British capital. This reflects the United Kingdom’s very strict gun laws and its rules on foreign dignitary protection details carrying firearms. (At times, the Secret Service employs a beastly way of skirting these rules.)
Biden’s Secret Service detail will be supplemented by armed counterparts from the Protection Command of London’s Metropolitan Police service. To compensate for the Secret Service’s Counter Assault Team being unable to carry their firearms, Metropolitan Police’s counterterrorism specialist firearms officers will escort Biden when he travels on Sunday to meet Prime Minister Liz Truss at Downing Street and King Charles III at Buckingham Palace. These officers will also travel with Biden to Westminster Abbey on Monday. Other dignitaries assessed as facing high threat levels, such as the Israeli president, will also receive this protection.
However, Winfield House is an ideal base camp for the president. Access to and visibility of the residence is limited. Police officers already ring its perimeter. Of little-noticed value, Winfield House Regent’s Park location also hosts Regent’s Park Barracks. Headquarters for a squadron of the British Army’s special forces 21st Special Air Service reserve regiment, these barracks also host a counterterrorism advance force of the standing 22nd SAS regiment, other elements of which are currently deployed to Ukraine. While this advance force is normally limited to around 16 SAS operators who provide a quick reaction troop for London, the funeral will see it supplemented with dozens more SAS personnel from the rotational counterterrorism squadron at the regiment’s home base. The SAS will be joined by their counterparts from the Royal Navy’s Special Boat Service special forces unit. Perhaps including exchange officers from the U.S. Navy’s Seal Team Six and the Army’s Delta Force, these units will stage in various areas surrounding the Abbey to respond to any critical security event.
Put simply, a lot of security and expense will go into making this funeral a success. Unfortunately, all it takes to ruin it is one unknown with a grudge.
