De ambtenaren van de intelligentie zien een ongekende openbare nauwkeurig onderzoek onder ogen aangezien zij de tribune bij inquest in de dood van Diana van de Prinses nemen om eisen dat te ontkennen de veiligheidsdiensten haar op de orden van de koninklijke familie doodden.Hun vroegere werkgever heeft reeds een fascinerende glimp in de duistere wereld van spionage gegeven - maar dit is niet allen over betoverende 007 cijfers. Theirs zijn een mondainere wereld van bureaucratische controles en saldi.

Met zijn dodelijke serie van kanonnen en gadgets, heeft James Bond een Vergunning in zijn constante slag Te doden om schurken tegen te werken die wereldoverheersing in kaart brengen.

In werkelijkheid, zou de beroemdste spion van de wereld een Klasse Zeven vergunning nodig hebben die door zijn superieuren wordt goedgekeurd en die persoonlijk door de Minister van Buitenlandse Zaken wordt ondertekend.

De vroegere spion belangrijkste Richard gingerly Dearlove hief het deksel op deze geheime wereld op toen het geven van bewijsmateriaal aan inquest in de sterfgevallen van 1997 van Diana en haar minnaar Dodi al-Fayed in een de autoneerstorting van Parijs.

„Zijn verklaring maakte de veiligheidsdiensten meer als een firma van accountants correct dan een bos van 007s,“ de Dagelijkse besloten Telegraaf.

Nu is het de draai van 10 dienend en vroegere intelligentieambtenaren voor het gerecht te verschijnen - maar hun identiteiten zullen worden beschermd en zij zullen enkel bedoeld worden als getallen of letters.

Het hof zal van de media en het publiek op Dinsdag worden ontruimd wanneer zij beginnen om bewijsmateriaal te geven, dat door audioverbinding met een bijlage zal worden door buizen geleid. 

In een ongekende beweging door de Geheime Dienst van de Intelligentie (SIS) zij gaan openbaar om beweringen van de vader van Dodi te ontkennen, luxe storeowner Mohamed al-Fayed, dat de veiligheidsdiensten het paar op orden van Prins Philip, de echtgenoot van Koningin Elizabeth en de vroegere schoonvader van Diana doodden.

Dearlove verwierp de beweringen van al-Fayed „volkomen belachelijk“ en ging in een uitvoerige beschrijving van de bureaucratische hoepels echte James Bond onder ogen zou zien.

„Toen de administratie werd voltooid - en dit zou op een initiatief overzee zo veel in verband met één ontwikkeld binnen hoofdkantoor toepassen - het weg langs worden ondertekend, zeggen, de hogere regionale ambtenaar,“ hij zei.

Maar de controles houden niet daar op.

“It would come to me for further signature and then it would go down restricted channels to the Foreign Secretary,” Dearlove told the court.

Renegade British spies have in the past accused British intelligence of hatching plots to assassinate Serbia’s President Slobodan Milosevic and Libya’s Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

But both these allegations have been officially denied and Dearlove was adamant when asked in court if he was ever aware of the Secret Intelligence Service ever assassinating anyone during his 38 years with the organisation.

“No I was not,” he told the jury which now faces a week listening to the evidence of 10 intelligence officers who could offer further intriguing insights into just how spies operate.

© Reuters 2008

By Robert Barr

ASSOCIATED PRESS

The former head of MI6 denied yesterday that the British intelligence agency killed Princess Diana and her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, in 1997.

Sir Richard Dearlove, who was MI6’s director of special operations at the time of Diana’s death in Paris, told a coroner’s inquest that MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service, didn’t assassinate anyone between 1994 and 1999, when he was director.

He also denied that MI6 mounted any operations against her or Fayed, including surveillance or bugging.

Dearlove also testified that an operation by rogue agents would have been impossible.

Fayed’s father, Mohamed Al Fayed, has accused MI6 of engineering the death of his son and the princess at the behest of Prince Philip, husband of Queen Elizabeth II.

As director of special operations, Dearlove said it was his responsibility to sign off on any operation that would otherwise be illegal. The operation would then have to be approved by the foreign secretary, a senior member of the government.

Al Fayed’s assertion that Philip directed MI6 was “utterly ridiculous,” Dearlove said. There was no formal relationship between the agency and the prince, although Philip had visited the agency with the queen, he said.

Daily Mail

Former spy Richard Tomlinson revealed that the crash that killed Diana was bore and ‘eerie similarity’ to an MI6 assassination plot

A former spy told the Diana inquest today he believed the Princess could have been murdered by MI6 officers.

Sacked secret agent, Richard Tomlinson, said he realised there could have been a conspiracy to assassinate Diana after seeing a documentary alleging there was a flash as her car entered a Paris tunnel.

The ex-MI6 officer said that after watching the film he had remembered an MI6 training session in which he was shown how a strobe gun could be used to kill targets.

He also spoke about MI6 plans to assassinate a top Balkan leader in a way that was almost identical to Diana’s fatal crash.

Speaking via videolink, Mr Tomlinson, understood to be in Marseille, spoke about a secret agent named only as “A” who had drawn up the Balkan plan.

The court heard that Mr Tomlinson, who was recruited by MI6 in 1991 after studying at Cambridge, told a Scotland Yard team investigating Diana’s death: “MI6 do have a capacity to stage accidents whether by helicopter, aeroplane or car and also that the strobe light was shown to us by the SBS at Poole during our training.”

He explained that drunk driver Henri Paul would have been the “first choice” for MI6 to recruit and that one of the paparazzi following the princess may also have been in the pay of the service.

Mr Paul died in the Paris crash that killed the princess and her lover Dodi Fayed on 31 August 1997.

Mr Tomlinson, who was jailed for a year in 1997 for breaking the Official Secrets Act, said he became aware of a possible assassination bid in mid-1998.

Richard Tomlinson claimed that MI6 could have used a strobe light to kill Diana in a car crash

He said: “I happened to see a thing on TV about it and that made me wonder whether something that I had seen within MI6 when I was working there might have been relevant.î

He told the inquest that a colleague, referred to as “A”, had shown him a document proposing the assassination of Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic.

Mr Tomlinson claimed in his book The Big Breach - published after his dismissal from the service - that the options outlined included staging a crash in a tunnel involving a blinding flash of light from a strobe gun while Mr Milosevic was at a peace conference in Geneva, the court heard.

But the jury was told that in an earlier draft of the book he had spoken instead of a drive-by ambush.

He admitted during his evidence today that he could have become confused about the details of what was in the document but said such specifics were a “distraction” from the central issue of whether MI6 was ever involved in assassination attempts in principle.

He told the inquest it would be difficult but “not impossible” to assassinate somebody.

He also said he had read documents alleging there was a French source at the Ritz hotel. “There is no doubt that Henri Paul would have been of interest to the intelligence services. If you wanted to recruit one person within the Ritz hotel to work for you it would be a security officer. He would be your first choice,” he said. The inquest continues.

James Sturcke and agencies

The Queen’s former private secretary today said he could not have helped to “murder” Princess Diana because he was in a rural church hall listening to a talk by the creator of Rumpole of the Bailey.

Lord Fellowes, Diana’s brother-in-law, told the inquest into her death that he was not in Paris on the night she died, but was listening to John Mortimer in Norfolk.

The Harrods owner Mohamed Fayed - who is convinced the car crash, in which his son, Dodi, and Diana were killed, was an MI6 murder plot - believes Fellowes was involved.

He claims Fellowes helped co-ordinate the “conspiracy” by commandeering a section of the British embassy in Paris to send messages to GCHQ shortly before the crash.

Fayed also says Diana “feared” Fellowes, who is married to her sister, Lady Jane Fellowes.

Ian Burnett QC, counsel to the Diana inquest, told him: “It had been suggested, particularly in a letter from Mr Fayed, that it was said you had been present in the British embassy at 11 o’clock on the evening of the 30th of August 1997, commandeering the communications centre to send messages to GCHQ.

“In other words, it was being suggested that you were intimately concerned in the murder of your sister-in-law. You understand that that was the allegation?”

Fellowes nodded. Asked whether he had been in Paris that night, he replied: “No.

“We were in Norfolk that evening, we had people to stay, we went to an entertainment by Mr John Mortimer in Burnham Market church.”

He also told the inquest, being held in London, that rooms at Buckingham palace were regularly swept for bugs by MI5.

He said the security service conducted the sweeps in rooms used by the Queen and her private secretary to conduct business to provide “reassurance”.

The detail emerged during questioning about the “Squidgygate” and “Camillagate” tapes - recordings of telephone calls involving Diana and the Prince of Wales.

Fellowes told the court how the recordings - which were revealed in the press - prompted high level meetings and correspondence involving the heads of MI5 and GCHQ, the government’s listening station, in early 1993.

It was also revealed that the then home secretary had blocked a full security service investigation for fear that such a move would leak out and be misrepresented in the press.

AP

The former head of Britain’s foreign intelligence agency said Monday he will testify that his organization had nothing to do with the death of Princess Diana when he appears at her inquest later this month.

Mohamed Al Fayed, whose son Dodi died with Diana in a car crash in Paris on Aug. 31, 1997, blames Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service for killing the couple to prevent them marrying.

Sir Richard Dearlove, who was chief of the agency also known as MI6 from 1999 to 2004, said in a statement that he welcomes the opportunity to “refute the allegations of SIS involvement in the accident which led to the deaths of the Princess of Wales” and Dodi Fayed.

Dearlove, the agency’s operations director at the time of Diana’s death, will testify on Feb. 20, Britain’s Foreign Office said.

French authorities blame the crash on driver Henri Paul, who was shown by blood tests to be over the legal limit for alcohol. Paul also died in the crash.

A British police inquiry concluded in 2006 that the three deaths were a “tragic accident” and that allegations of murder were unfounded.

The inquest into Diana’s death - required by British law when someone dies unexpectedly, violently or of unknown causes - began last year after a 10-year delay due to exhaustive investigations by French and British police.

On Monday, Britain’s former ambassador in Paris denied Al Fayed’s claim that he ordered Diana’s body to be embalmed to cover up a pregnancy.

“You are aware that it has been suggested that you personally ordered the embalming of the body of the Princess of Wales on the instructions of MI5 to conceal the fact that she was pregnant with Dodi’s child?” asked Ian Burnett, a lawyer for the coroner.

“There is no truth in this allegation whatsoever,” the former ambassador, Michael Jay, replied.

Jean Monceau, an embalmer who was called to the hospital, has said he told the British consul-general in Paris that the body should be embalmed. Other witnesses at the inquest have disputed Al Fayed’s claim that Diana was pregnant when she died.

Jay also denied Al Fayed’s claim that Diana’s brother-in-law, Robert Fellowes, had been in Paris on the night of her death to coordinate a murder plot initiated by Prince Philip. Fellowes, who is married to Diana’s sister Jane, is scheduled to testify on Tuesday.

Al Fayed was also due to testify next week, Lord Justice Scott Baker said.

© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy.

An MI6 team was operating at the British Embassy in Paris at the time of Princess Diana’s death, her inquest has heard.

But former ambassador Lord Jay told the High Court hearing he had no reason to believe their presence had anything to do with Diana’s death in a car crash in the French capital.

Lord Jay - then known as Sir Michael Jay - said that the first he was even aware of her presence in Paris was when he was awoken with news of the crash just over an hour after the smash in the early hours of August 31, 1997.

Mohamed al Fayed, whose son Dodi Fayed was also killed in the Alma Tunnel, is convinced the crash was staged as part of an MI6 murder plot to eliminate the couple to prevent them marrying.

Mr al Fayed believes spies based at the Embassy were operating at the behest of the Duke of Edinburgh.

Asked by counsel to the inquest Ian Burnett whether the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) - better known as MI6 - had a presence at the Embassy in 1997 he confirmed that it had.

He added that there had also been a representative of the Security Service MI5 working there at the time.

He agreed with a passage from his earlier police statement which said: “There was such a team at the British Embassy in Paris staffed by members of the Secret Intelligence Service and one member of the Security Service.”

He explained: “It’s to liaise with the French authorities on issues such as counter terrorism, anti-drugs work, security issues and to share intelligence on matters of foreign policy.”

Asked if he had to be kept informed about MI6 operations in Paris he said: “Yes, if it had been a major operation which was likely to raise particular sensitivities then I would expect to have been told.”

Mr Burnett continued: “You have indicated that you would have been aware of anything significant going on, was there anything significant going on of which you were aware?”

He replied: “No”.

Mr Burnett said: “You are aware that it has been suggested that you personally ordered the embalming of the body of the Princess of Wales on the instructions of MI5 to conceal the fact that she was pregnant with Dodi’s child.”

Lord Jay replied: “There is no truth in this allegation whatsoever.”

Mr Burnett: “It has also been suggested that Lord Fellowes, who was at the time the Queen’s private secretary and also a brother-in-law of the Princess of Wales, was in Paris on the night of August 30 and had commandeered the operations room in the Embassy essentially to oversee and organise the murder of his sister-in-law. Was he in Paris?”

Lord Jay: “No. He was not.”

Earlier, the inquest heard that Mr Fayed had hinted that he and Diana were engaged.

Just days before the fatal crash, the 42-year-old rang his father’s legal adviser, Stuart Benson, to tell him he had “very exciting news”, which the lawyer interpreted to mean that the couple had decided to get married.

No other details were given during the brief call made as Mr Fayed and the Princess cruised around the Mediterranean on a luxury yacht.

But Mr Benson was asked if he was free the following Monday to discuss issues arising from the news.

The inquest has already heard that a ring was bought for the royal by Mr Fayed at the Repossi jewellers hours before their deaths on August 31, 1997.

© Independent Television News Limited 2008.

Bodyguards for Princess Diana and her lover Dodi Fayed had calls for extra security rejected during their fateful trip to Paris, the inquest into their deaths has heard.

Trevor Rees, who was one of two bodyguards assigned to the couple, said he believed Dodi and Diana should have had four security guards protecting them from hordes of photographers and onlookers in the days before their fatal car crash in the French capital.

Photographs of the couple had been splashed across newspapers around the globe as they holidayed aboard Dodi’s yacht in late August 1997.

By the time they arrived for a one-night stopover in Paris on August 30, dozens of photographers were waiting to track their every move.

In the early hours of the next day, Diana, Dodi and their driver Henri Paul were killed after their Mercedes crashed in an underground tunnel after apparently being pursued by photographers. Mr Rees was the only survivor.

Making his second appearance at the inquest, Mr Rees told how he and his fellow bodyguard Kes Wingfield repeatedly contacted top security chiefs for Dodi’s father, Harrods billionaire Mohamed Al Fayed, in London pleading for extra help during the couple’s holiday but none ever showed up.

“At that stage, it (the relationship between Diana and Dodi) was in the open, in the media, and the attention both from the paparazzi and general public would have been a lot higher,” he said.

“I would have expected, or I would have thought, it would have been good to have a four-man team, the same as would have been with Mr (Al) Fayed.

“We didn’t get any extra security. I believe at one stage we got an extra crew member to help the crew on the yacht, but we didn’t get any extra security.”

Mr Rees suffered extensive injuries in the crash which claimed the lives of the princess, Dodi and their driver.

He has rejected recent media reports suggesting his memories about the crash were gradually returning.

The inquest continues.

© 2008 AAP

The only survivor of the crash that killed Princess Diana is scheduled to testify Wednesday at the inquest into her death.

Trevor Rees, formerly known as Trevor Rees-Jones, was the front-seat passenger in the Mercedes that carried Diana, her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, and their driver, Henri Paul. He sustained serious injuries in the Aug. 31, 1997 crash.

Rees has said he has no memory of the crash. The last thing he remembers that night was the car pulling away from the Ritz Hotel in Paris, he has said. His next memory is more than a week later, in his hospital bed, when his parents told him everyone else in the car was dead.

At the time of the crash, Rees was a bodyguard employed by Dodi Fayed’s father, Mohamed Al Fayed. He was assigned to guard the younger Fayed and, because she was Dodi Fayed’s companion on the trip, the princess as well.

Rees suffered major injuries to his lower jaw, the base of his brain, and his pulmonary system and has had several surgeries and hospitalizations, some of which Al Fayed paid for.

He no longer works on Al Fayed’s security team, and Rees has said what was once a good relationship with his former employer has broken down.

In an interview with CNN’s Larry King Live in 2000, Rees said he left because Al Fayed pressured him to support conspiracy theories about the crash.

“I felt my level of trust was breaking down” in the Al Fayed organization, Rees said. “I was informed by my solicitors that if I continued at work, they felt they could no longer represent me. That I was just being seen as a mouthpiece for whatever theories were being chucked up. And I made the decision eventually to leave.”

In 2000, Rees published a book, “The Bodyguard’s Story: Diana, the Crash, and the Sole Survivor,” offering his account of the events surrounding the crash. He said Al Fayed tried unsuccessfully to stop the book’s publication in England.

Rees told CNN he wrote the book to give a definitive account of what he remembered and knew, but also to counter Al Fayed’s accusations that his unprofessionalism caused the accident. Rees also said proceeds from the book helped pay his legal bills.

Rees, a former soldier, was not wearing a seatbelt at the time of the crash, but he has said that was routine for his work as a bodyguard because it meant he was free to move around.

Rees has said he wasn’t happy with the Ritz departure plan on the fateful night, and that Dodi Fayed hadn’t given him or the driver enough advance notice of their destination.

The plan to leave the Ritz by the back door, Rees told CNN, “was not the plan that I was happy with.” He also didn’t approve of Dodi Fayed’s plan to travel in a single vehicle — the Mercedes — with no security following behind.

Other former bodyguards have testified at the inquest that Fayed rarely planned his schedule far in advance and was often eager to get to his destination quickly.

Source

The procedures used by French medical experts to collect samples from the body of Princess Diana’s chauffeur suffered “inconsistencies”, the inquest into her death was told on Monday by a leading British toxicologist.

French and British police investigations have both concluded that Diana and her lover Dodi al-Fayed died in a high-speed Paris car crash because chauffeur Henri Paul was drunk.

But Dodi’s father, luxury storeowner Mohamed al-Fayed, alleges that her son and Diana were killed by British security services on the orders of Prince Philip.

He has also questioned the results of the tests taken on Henri Paul’s body after his death.

Professor Robert Forrest, who reviewed all the medical reports into Paul’s death, ran through them again in meticulous detail for lawyers at the inquest.

The court was told that important blood samples from Paul were originally thought to have come from the heart but in fact came from his chest cavity, a much less reliable measure.

Forrest said Dr Gilbert Pepin, responsible for the French toxicology tests, believed they were heart samples.

“I was there when Dr Pepin was told it was not cardiac blood, it was chest cavity blood. I still have a vivid recollection of the way that his face changed when he was told. He looked surprised,” Forrest told the court.

There was also confusion over just how many samples of blood were taken and when exactly they were taken.

“There are unresolved incompatibilities — inconsistencies I should say rather than incompatibilities,” Forrest said.

He told the court: “The interpretation of samples is only as good as the samples themselves,” he told the court.

“It doesn’t matter how sophisticated the analysis is, if you don’t have good material to work with, you have to qualify the interpretation of the data your laboratory generates,” he said.

Reuters

Steven Swinford and Jon Ungoed-Thomas

BRITAIN’S biggest energy companies have stifled competition to raise prices and make record profits of more than £4.5 billion, a Sunday Times investigation has found.

The six companies that control Britain’s gas and electricity are now facing demands that they be referred to the Competition Commission.

Executives in charge of the six major companies were last week confirmed to be holding confidential meetings at least every two months to discuss market strategy. Smaller rivals are excluded.

The new disclosures come as a YouGov poll for The Sunday Times reveals that more than eight out of 10 customers believe they are being “ripped off” by the energy firms. Alistair Darling, the chancellor, is to meet Sir John Mogg, the head of regulator Ofgem, tomorrow for an explanation of the latest round of price rises.

Industry insiders said they are ready to give evidence about how the “big six” have driven up prices and boosted profits by:

- Keeping each other’s prices in step by raising and lowering tariffs within a few weeks of each other.

- Denying smaller rivals fair access to energy from their own power plants at affordable prices.

- Charging loyal customers significantly more than those who switch, so keeping up profits.

- Stifling competition by supporting laborious and expensive accreditation for new companies.

Allan Asher, chief executive of Energywatch, the consumer watchdog, said: “The problem with the energy market is that it’s lazy, complacent and uncompetitive. It has been able to drive out the possibility of any vigorous challenge to the prominence of the big six energy suppliers.”

The companies enjoyed a “bumper year” in 2007, profiting from a dramatic fall in the wholesale price of gas amid allegations they failed to pass on savings to householders. Analysts believe the companies are now poised to report record annual profits of more than £4.5 billion.

The companies last week confirmed that they were meeting regularly under the auspices of the Energy Retail Association. The association says market-sensitive issues are never talked about and pricing policies are discussed only in the context of a public debate about best practice. Rival energy companies say the association is a “closed shop” for the dominant companies and the minutes of meetings should be published.

The Sunday Times YouGov poll found that 85% of customers felt they were being ripped off by the energy firms. This compares to 76% of people who felt they were being ripped off by the railways; 74% by the petrol companies; and 59% by the banks and financial service industry.

By John Catalinotto

In an attempt to limit political damage and protect the highest officials, the new U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey has ordered a special investigation of the decision in 2005 to destroy tapes of CIA interrogations made in 2002 of two alleged high-level Al-Qaeda officials. The investigation is limited to how the decision was made and who made it. It is not supposed to probe the content of the tapes, which are said to show brutal interrogations using torture.

Washington often claims to be the champion of “human rights” and uses an alleged lack of human rights to attack or impose sanctions on those it considers its enemies. Since the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, however, Washington and especially the CIA have become identified with torture of prisoners, from Baghram in Afghanistan, to Abu Ghraib in Iraq, to Guantánamo on the U.S.-occupied eastern tip of Cuba.

Since torture is illegal within the U.S.—at least on paper if not in practice—the CIA has even outsourced interrogations to client states, a process called “rendition.”

The tapes destroyed involve hundreds of hours of interrogation of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. Both were captured in 2002 and are now being held at Guantánamo Bay among the 275 remaining prisoners of the 800 who had been held there since 2001. Zubaydah was captured in a firefight in Pakistan in March of 2002 and interrogated then at a CIA safe house in Thailand. Al-Nashiri was captured in the United Arab Emirates.

Zubaydah confessed to being a high-ranking al-Qaeda official. Al-Nashiri said he planned the 2000 attack against the USS Cole in Yemeni waters, which blew a hole in the side of the guided-missile destroyer and killed 17 sailors. The U.S. authorities classified both as “enemy combatants.”

Since U.S. interrogators admittedly used extreme sensory and sleep deprivation, along with waterboarding—and who knows what else—to get these confessions, it is possible that in 2002 the two prisoners told their interrogators anything they believed might stop the punishment. Both have since challenged the confessions, saying they were obtained under torture.

By the end of 2002, the CIA says it stopped taping interrogations. For the next three years, CIA legal counsels, CIA heads George Tenet and Porter Goss, discussed among themselves and with White House counsel whether or not the CIA could get away with destroying the tapes. Jane Harman of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, wrote a letter advising the CIA not to destroy the tapes.

Bush gang promotes torture methods

Despite legal advice that destroying the tapes might interfere with future investigations, the CIA kept pushing to destroy the tapes. The Bush administration, whose Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez had provided a legal defense of brutal interrogation techniques (while refusing to call them torture), at the very least failed to order the CIA to desist from destroying the tapes.

In June 2005, U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy ordered the Bush administration to safeguard “all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment and abuse of detainees now at the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay,” which would include the above tapes. Nevertheless, in November 2005, the CIA destroyed the tapes, under orders from Jose Rodriguez, who headed the National Clandestine Service.

The CIA claimed it destroyed the tapes to protect the safety of the interrogating officers from retaliation from al-Qaeda. Other observers said it was also to protect these officials’ careers.

But most suspect the CIA destroyed the tapes with the blessing of the White House because public exposure of the torture would make Washington even more hated than the Abu Ghraib prison scandal did.

The New York Times wrote: “Interrogations of Abu Zubaydah had gotten rougher, with each new tactic approved by cable from headquarters. [U.S.] American officials have said that Abu Zubaydah was the first al Qaeda prisoner to be waterboarded, a procedure during which water is poured over the prisoner’s mouth and nose to create a feeling of drowning. Officials said they felt they could not risk a public leak of a videotape showing [U.S.] Americans giving such harsh treatment to bound prisoners.” (Dec. 30)

Mukasey, while being questioned by Congress before his appointment as attorney general, refused to say if he believed that waterboarding was torture. The tapes would leave no doubt that it is.

While the Justice Department is attempting to limit the investigation, a popular revulsion against the Bush administration makes it possible that the probe will go further than expected. Already, progressive organizations of attorneys like the Center for Constitutional Rights—which has taken the lead in organizing legal defense of the prisoners in Guantánamo and elsewhere—have raised protests against the Bush gang’s attack on constitutional rights and have called on Congress to act. The last word on the CIA tapes is yet to be spoken.

British intelligence was spying on Princess Diana and recording embarrassingly private conversations, which were later leaked to the world, three years before she separated from the heir to the throne, her former bodyguard has said.

Ken Wharfe, Diana’s former bodyguard, told the long-running inquest into her death that the infamous “Squidgygate” tapes of Diana talking in an intimate fashion to an alleged lover were recorded by the British intelligence listening station GCHQ.

They were later deliberately leaked to embarrass the Princess, he said, in a damaging suggestion the royal family was “jealous” of Diana’s “popularity” and aides to the British Queen and her husband were “sharpening their knives” against her.

The revelation, splashed as the front-page lead story of the traditional and generally monarchist Daily Telegraph newspaper, has transfixed royal-watchers. Many believe it gives ballast to 10-year-old conspiracy theories about Establishment involvement in Diana’s death in Paris, alongside Dodi, the playboy son of Egyptian millionaire grocer Mohammed al-Fayed.

But Wharfe, the beefy, thickset, veteran royal protection officer who formerly cashed in on his association with Diana by writing a book about the six years he served her, added the caveat that British security services also regularly bugged other members of the royal family and cabinet ministers in the 1980s and 1990s, ostensibly to help protect them against assassination by the IRA.

On the ‘Squidygate’ tapes, which were relayed to a prurient world three years after Diana’s 1989 conversation with childhood friend and alleged lover James Gilbey, the man is heard repeatedly telling her “I love you”. The half-hour conversation had Gilbey, heir to the eponymous gin empire, calling Diana “Squidgy”, a pet name, 53 times.

The allegation that the tapes were made at the British government’s top secret monitoring station had Wharfe claiming that “Diana Diana did say to me on a number of occasions she felt she and other members of the family were being monitored.”

Wharfe’s account is seen to square with long-held suspicions the tapes were leaked to smear Diana at a time her relationship with Prince Charles was at its most acrimonious.

Barely a year after the tapes were leaked, Diana hired electronic surveillance experts to sweep her apartments for bugs, the bodyguard claimed.
Cover Up Section has more related reports

By Nick Allen

Diana, Princess of Wales believed she was going to be “bumped off” by MI6 because of her high profile campaign against landmines, the inquest into her death has been told.

Her friend Simone Simmons said the Princess was about to “name names” and publish a dossier called Profiting Out of Misery.

	Diana, Princess of Wales, ‘believed M16 were out to kill her’

“Top of her list of culprits was the Secret Intelligence Service which she believed was behind the sale of British landmines that were causing so much misery to so many people,” Miss Simmons said.

On one occasion the Princess sent her a note which said: “If something happens, MI5 or MI6 will have done it.”

Miss Simmons said the Princess gave her the landmines dossier, which was up to six inches thick, and she kept it for several months under her mattress along with the note.

Later, she burned them. She said: “I was more than nervous. If I had the material, I might have been bumped off as well.”

At Kensington Palace in February 1997, the Princess asked her to listen into a phone call she was on in which she was threatened over the landmine campaign, Miss Simmons said.

“This person was saying to her that she shouldn’t interfere in matters she knew nothing about,” she said.

The caller told the Princess “Well accidents can happen” and she was “very pale” after the conversation.

Miss Simmons said the Princess told her the caller was Conservative MP Nicholas Soames.

Mr Soames, the grandson of Winston Churchill, has previously told the inquest that the suggestion was “grotesque and preposterous”.

According to Miss Simmons, the Princess had secret meetings with Tony Blair in the months before he became Prime Minister about becoming a roving ambassador in relation to landmines.

“That’s what he promised her and she thought he was going to announce it when he was elected.

“She was very disappointed,” Miss Simmons said.

The testimony of Miss Simmons, who describes herself as an “energy healer”, provided an insight into the world of the Princess, including her belief in alternative therapies.

From 1993 she went to Miss Simmons up to three times a week at a complementary medicine clinic.

They later became friends and she would go to Kensington Palace up to five times a week and was teaching the Princess how to be a healer herself, Miss Simmons said.

The Princess’s flat had “bad energy” which Miss Simmons had to clear it of in an “exhausting” procedure.

The two women once spent 10 hours on a single phone call to each other, the inquest heard.

“We talked about everything and if she was upset I would calm her down reassure her,” Miss Simmons said.

“I believed her calls were being listened to and every time there was a click on the phone she used to say ‘hello boys, time to change the tape’.”

In November 1996 she had a premonition the Princess would be one of four people in an accident in a Mercedes.

When she told the Princess, she replied: “Oh my God, Charles”.

The inquest also heard about an “Arab conspiracy”.

Miss Simmons said: “She wasn’t paranoid, somebody had told her there was a fatwa on her head because the Arabs liked Charles.”

The inquest continues.

Britain’s former top policeman Lord Stevens was paid £1,000 a day for taking charge of the inquiry into the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.

Documents released exclusively to The Mail on Sunday under the Freedom of Information Act reveal he was being paid double what he would have earned in his former role as Met Police Commissioner.

The payments, for his part-time role in charge of Operation Paget, are among a number of lucrative deals that Porsche-driving Lord Stevens has secured since he retired two years ago.

Critics have asked why a senior detective, already employed by the force, could not have overseen the inquiry.

While he was at the Yard from 2000 to 2005, Lord Stevens was paid £150,000 a year, the daily equivalent of approximately £420 – less than half the fees for his two-and-a-half years’ work on the Diana probe.

The FOI reply from the Met’s Directorate of Professional Standards – which took almost a year to be answered – discloses that between February 28, 2005, and September 30, 2007, his company Stevens Consultancy raked in £276,125 for Operation Paget.

He was also reimbursed £26,550 for accommodation costs away from home – mainly in London hotels. And he received £13,599 for travel costs plus £97.51 for meals, making a total of £316,000.

Fears: Diana suggested in a letter that the Prince was plotting ‘an accident’

Lord Stevens – known by former Yard colleagues as “Captain Beaujolais” because of his love of fine wines – insisted last night that the payments were “justified”.

He said: “If you look at my commitment over two-and-a-half years, it’s been a continuous commitment since I left as Commissioner.

“I don’t get all of that money, because it goes into the consultancy to help run that.”

Lord Stevens confirmed his daily rate was £1,000. Asked about his other business interests, the peer said: “These figures are not the vast sums that people think.”

Lord Stevens receives £30,000 a year as non-executive chairman of Quest, the security consultancy for whom he has led the Football Association probe into soccer transfer “bungs”.

He gets a further £25,000 annual fee as a non-executive director of the Mercer Street business consultancy and is a non-executive director of airport operators BAA, currency exchanger Travelex and analytical services provider LGC.

Scroll down for more…

Happy times: Diana relaxing on holiday with Dodi shortly before their deaths

The former police chief refused to divulge how much he is paid for his other directorships, but said they were “similar figures”.

He also receives fees for speeches on leadership and policing.

Richard Barnes, a Tory member of the Metropolitan Police Authority, last night described the Operation Paget fee as “ludicrous”.

Scotland Yard would not add to its FOI statement and was unable to say why it took almost a year to provide a reply.

Source

PA News

The police watchdog is expected to announce that no officers will face disciplinary action over the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) will reveal its decision despite demands from the innocent Brazilian’s family for a delay until after the coroner’s inquest.

Eleven of the 15 officers scrutinised by the IPCC have already been told they are in the clear.