Word: buckinghams
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...Elizabeth's bedroom three weeks ago, was brought into court for a bizarre 17-min. bail hearing. (Bail was denied.) At the same time, a Scotland Yard investigation of the affair revealed just how somnolent the Queen's protection had been during Fagan's peregrination through Buckingham Palace...
...Commons last week were harshly critical of palace security. Since the murder in 1979 of Earl Mountbatten, the Queen's cousin, by Irish terrorists, $3.5 million has been spent on electronic beams, microwave barrier fences, closed-circuit TV, remote-controlled locks, reinforced doors and other security measures at Buckingham Palace. Yet Fagan was able to move about at will. The worst failings, however, were human ones. "If police officers had been alert and competent," said Dellow's report sharply, "Fagan would have been apprehended well before he got close to the private apartments." Whitelaw called the failure "appalling...
WHEN AN INTRUDER sneaks into Queen Elizabeth's bedroom in Buckingham Palace and holds the monarch at bay for 15 minutes with a broken glass ashtray, nothing the United States could do--short of attacking the Cliffs of Dover--would distract the British people from their chagrin and outrage...
Britons were for once uniformly outraged. Thundered the Times indignantly: "So much for the guards at Buckingham Palace. The ceremony of changing the Guard will never seem quite the same again ... All that array of scarlet tunics, burnished brass and polished leather, and still an intruder could stroll into the palace and up to the Queen's bedroom without being detected...
...revealed three days later when a tipster alerted the Daily Express. The intrusion led to a bruising question period in the House of Commons. Home Secretary William Whitelaw, lamely blaming the incident on technical and human error, was badgered by opposition members when he stressed earlier security improvements at Buckingham Palace and declared that security is "still not satisfactory, and more needs to be done." At week's end three police officers were transferred away from palace duty, and one of them was subsequently suspended...