CENTRAL VIEW for Monday, April 17, 2017

Precedent: Wire tapping in high places

Tipped off by GCHQ, the British mid-wife of our National Security Agency (NSA), the Obama Administration’s Intelligence Community may have monitored the electronic communications of members of the Trump campaign staff and the communications of the Trump transition team. Now we learn there is a British precedent for government electronic surveillance -- even of Britain’s Royal Family.

According to an article by Peter Stanford in the April 10, 2017, edition of "Financial Review," in early 1936, an ailing King George V learned that his son, Edward, Prince of Wales, was consorting with the pro-Nazi, Oswald Mosley, and the pro-Hitler U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James, Joseph P. Kennedy. Moreover, that the Prince of Wales spent $11.5 million dollars on jewels for the American divorcee, Wallis Simpson, who was also suspected of sleeping, not only with the Prince of Wales, but also with the German ambassador to Great Britain, Joachim von Ribbentrop.

Alarmed, King George V turned to Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin. Baldwin tasked MI-5 to monitor communications between the King’s heir and Mrs. Simpson. Initially, MI-5 director, Sir Vernon Kell, refused, just as current NSA director, Admiral Michael S. Rogers, is presumed to have resisted orders to monitor Candidate Trump.

Apparently, Roger’s resistance prompted then Secretary of Defense Carter and then CIA director Brennan to ask President Obama to fire Admiral Rogers. On November 17, 2016, (nine days after the election) Admiral Rogers had a private meeting with President-Elect Trump inside Trump Tower. Note: Admiral Rogers has been retained by President Trump as his NSA director. Carter and Brennan have been replaced. We report. You decide.

During the first weekend of December, 1936, MI-5 agent, Thomas Robertson, tapped the telephones inside Buckingham Palace and recorded the newly enthroned King Edward VIII telling "Bertie," his stuttering younger brother and future King George VI, that he, Edward, was going to abdicate and marry the twice-divorced Mrs. Simpson. Upon assuming the throne, King George VI made his brother, Edward, and his bride, Wallis, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

In 1940, after Germany, France, Poland were at war with Germany, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were given a tour of the Maginot Line by French General Maurice Gamelin (whose additional military blunders belong in the Guinness Book of Records). According to Charles Bedaux, later revealed as the Nazi’s agent handler for the Duchess, she reported to Bedaux the major weak point of the French defense. On May 10-14, 1940, that was exactly where the Nazi forces poured through, defeating the French and British forces in just six weeks.

According to Rob Evans and David Hencke, writing in the "UK Guardian" of June 29, 2002, Prime Minister Winston Churchill was aware of the duplicitous Duchess. Churchill arranged for the Royal Couple to be posted to the British Bahamas where the Duchess complained the natives were "lazy N-words." When the Royal Couple visited Florida, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had them followed and their communications monitored.

If former President Obama needed a precedent for spying on high-profile Americans, he needed to look no further than was done by King George V, Prime Ministers Baldwin and Churchill, and by FDR.

Nationally syndicated columnist, William Hamilton, is a laureate of the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame, the Nebraska Aviation Hall of Fame, the Colorado Aviation Hall of Fame, the Oklahoma University Army ROTC Wall of Fame, and is a recipient of the University of Nebraska 2015 Alumni Achievement Award. He was educated at the University of Oklahoma, the George Washington University, the U.S Naval War College, the University of Nebraska, and Harvard University. For more, see: www.central-view.com.

©2017. William Hamilton.

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