Prince Harry could ask for security boost from U.S. after boasting about killing Taliban fighters, ex CIA official says

PRINCE Harry could turn to authorities in the US for extra security after boasting about killing 25 Taliban fighters while he served in Afghanistan.

The Duke of Sussex, 38, was widely slated for making the astonishing comments in his new memoir Spare, with some saying it had put him at greater risk of an attack.

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Now former longtime CIA counter-terrorism officer Bruce Riedel has told The U.S. Sun that Harry may be able to request official protection in America if he has heightened concerns about his safety.

Mr Riedel, who spent 30 years in the CIA and now works as a senior fellow for the Brookings Institution think tank, said: “Harry can make a case for security protection as a distinguished foreign guest.

“Some ambassadors are given special protection. It would help if the British government weighed in.

“He has taken a risk in his statement about killing 25 Taliban but it is not a big risk.

“The Taliban do not have an international reach and especially not in the United States.

“In twenty years of war with America they never operated in the US.

“An angry Afghan American acting on his own might be a threat but most of the Afghan American community is against the Taliban.”

Harry’s security arrangements have been a matter of controversy since he and his wife Meghan, now 41, decided to quit as working royals and leave the UK in 2020.

Harry has said that the royal family cut off money for his security protection in the first quarter of 2020 and that he used his inheritance from his mother Diana instead.

The couple first went to Canada, where the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were obliged to provide them with security as they were still recognized as Internationally Protected Persons until they ceased being active royals on March 31 that year.

When Harry, Meghan and their young son Archie relocated to California in March, then President Donald Trump commented that the U.S. government would not pay for their security.

The Sussexes responded by saying that at the time they had “no plans to ask the U.S. government for security resources.”

Elite private security firm Gavin de Becker and Associated was hired to provide security for the couple.

Last year Harry was granted permission to bring a High Court challenge in Britain against the country’s Home Office and London’s Metropolitan Police over his security in the UK.

He wants a review of the decision to not allow him to pay for police protection for himself and his family while visiting from the US.

In November last year, outgoing Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner Neil Basu said that Meghan had been subject to multiple “disgusting” threats against her life in the UK.

Asked whether they were credible, Basu told Channel 4 News: “Absolutely, and if you’d seen the stuff that was written and you were receiving it … the kind of rhetoric that’s online, if you don’t know what I know, you would feel under threat all of the time.”

He added: “We had teams investigating it. People have been prosecuted for those threats.”

The U.S. Sun previously reported how retired military officer Colonel Richard Kemp said Harry’s comments in the memoir betrayed comrades he fought alongside and he blasted the prince for saying that he didn’t see his Taliban victims as people.

He said: “He is suggesting the British Army trains people, including him, not to see the enemy as human beings, which is very far from the truth.

“The Army is extremely careful to differentiate between innocent civilians and fighters on the battlefield.”

Colonel Tim Collins, known for a pre-battle speech he made in Iraq, said Harry’s conduct is “not how we behave in the Army”.

He told Forces News: “Harry has now turned against the other family, the military, that once embraced him, having trashed his birth family.

“Amongst his assertions is a claim that he killed 25 people in Afghanistan.

“That’s not how you behave in the Army; it’s not how we think.

“He has badly let the side down. We don’t do notches on the rifle butt. We never did.”

Harry’s memoir Spare has broken records to become the fastest-selling non-fiction book ever with over 1.4 million English language copies sold in all formats since it was published on January 10.

He served in the UK Army for 10 years, rising to the rank of captain and serving two tours in Afghanistan.

In the book Harry revealed that he knew precisely how many enemy combatants he had killed and felt it was vital not to shy away from the number.

He wrote: “So, my number: Twenty-five. It wasn’t a number that gave me any satisfaction.

“But neither was it a number that made me feel ashamed.

“Naturally, I’d have preferred not to have that number on my military CV, on my mind, but by the same token I’d have preferred to live in a world in which there was no Taliban, a world without war.”

The U.S. Sun has reached out to the Sussexes for comment.