Editing King David Hotel bombing (section)

===Government and military usage===
In 1946, the Secretariat occupied most of the southern wing of the hotel, with the military headquarters occupying the top floor of the south wing and the top, second and third floors of the middle of the hotel.<ref name="times23Jul46">''[[The Times]]'', London, 23 July 1946.</ref> The military telephone exchange was situated in the basement.<ref name="tclarke81" /><ref name="bethell" /> An annex housed the military police and a branch of the [[Criminal Investigation Department (Mandatory Palestine)|Criminal Investigation Department]] of the [[Palestine Police]].<ref name="silver84" />

Rooms had first been requisitioned in the hotel in late 1938, on what was supposed to be a temporary basis. Plans had already been made to erect a permanent building for the Secretariat and Army GHQ, but these were cancelled after the [[World War II|Second World War]] broke out, at which point more than two-thirds of the hotel's rooms were being used for government and army purposes.<ref name="tclarke81" />

In March 1946, British [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour Party]] [[Member of Parliament (United Kingdom)|Member of Parliament]] (MP) [[Richard Crossman]] described activity at the hotel: "Private detectives, Zionist agents, Arab sheiks, special correspondents, and the rest, all sitting around about discreetly overhearing each other."<ref name="idiot" /> Security analyst [[Bruce Hoffman]] has written that the hotel "housed the nerve centre of British rule in Palestine".<ref name="bruce">{{Cite book|last=Hoffman|first=Bruce|title=Inside Terrorism|year=1999|publisher=[[Columbia University Press]]|pages = 48–52}}</ref>