The story in a London newspaper that a forthcoming report states that the U.S. Secret Service was bugging Princess Diana’s telephone conversations (without the approval of British security services) in the hours before she was killed in a car crash in Paris is shocking but not surprising.
It was bad enough that driver Henri Paul was drunk on his arse while speeding through a Paris tunnel on August 31, 1997, with Diana, the 36-year-old Princess of Wales, and Egyptian playboy Dodi Al Fayed, 42, in the back seat.
Dark rumors and conspiracy theories began circulating almost immediately:
According to one theory, the lovers had stumbled into an underworld feud.
Or were killed by Freemasons because the tunnel was decorated with ancient masonic symbols.
Or rubbed out by a former Scotland Yard detective who planted an untraceable plastic explosive under their Mercedes limousine.
The most provocative theory (to me anyway) that the deaths of the princess and playboy were the result of a racist plot masterminded by Prince Philip and engineered by James Bond’s MI6, the British secret service – has long been endorsed by Mohamed Al Fayed, Dodi’s father and a longtime thorn in the side of the British establishment.
The forthcoming report from Metropolitan Police Commissioner Lord Stevens on the Secret Service surveillance states that U.S. has admitted listening to Lady Di’s conversations while she stayed at the Ritz hotel, but failed to notify MI6, its British counterpart. Stevens is said to have been told that 39 classified documents detailing Diana’s final conversations did not reveal anything sinister or contain material that might help explain her death.
The report again begs the question about why so many clandestine government organizations were so interested in Di and Dodi.
The thoughtful Captain Ed notes at Captain’s Quarters that earlier in 1997 the U.S. had suffered attacks by radical Islamists at Khobar Towers and the World Trade Center and Clinton administration officials have said that terrorism was their primary focus.
Asks the captain:
“So what the hell were we doing spying on Diana?
“This undercores the impression that America didn’t take security seriously in the 1990s. Diana had zero interest to our national security. The only interest America had in Diana was commercial; she sold truckloads of magazines. Besides her work opposing the use of land mines, which the US wants to continue using in certain situations, she had almost no impact on politics at all here, let alone security.”
With all due respect, there is a partisan leap of logic there that I’m unable to follow, but it’s still a helluva story, isn’t it?