The Queen has her knickers in a twist, not due to the actual bugging
that took pace, but she is upset that someone leaked recordings to
the media... the issue is not the bugging itself, but the leak of
what was supposed to be for her consumption only.
It would be akin to a U.S. President ordering the FBI to illegally
spy on a member of the public for political gain, and then getting
all hot and upset when someone at the FBI sent copies of the tape to
the Washington Post, and then screaming that the criminal charges be
brought against the person who leaked details of the illegal
intecept... oh, that's right, old news.
-jma
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23431591-details/Queen's+fury+at+'Squidgygate'+tape:+Palace+ordered+inquiry+over+the+leaked+call+between+Diana+and+her+lover/article.do
Queen's fury at 'Squidgygate' tape: Palace ordered inquiry over the
leaked call between Diana and her lover
Last updated at 03:07am on 10.01.08
Buckingham Palace ordered an inquiry into the notorious "Squidgygate"
telephone recordings of Princess Diana talking to her secret lover,
it was revealed yesterday.
The Queen was "upset" about the tape which revealed the passionate
phone call with James Gilbey, exposing the Royal Family to ridicule
and confirming the desperate state of Diana's marriage to Prince Charles.
Former royal protection officer Inspector Ken Wharfe told the Diana
inquest that the princess herself informed him that the Queen had
ordered an inquiry.
He also claimed that every member of the Royal Family was routinely
bugged by security services - and that the princess's mobile phone
call to the dashing Mr Gilbey was probably eavesdropped by GCHQ, the
security service listening station.
His evidence prompted a demand for the inquest to investigate whether
M15 ever carried out any inquiry.
Mr Wharfe, 58, who was Diana's bodyguard and trusted confidant for
nine years until 1993, was giving evidence for the first time in the
long-running inquest.
His testimony rekindled the sensation of 1992, when the Squidgy tape
was broadcast.
On it, Mr Gilbey addressed the princess as Squidgy and kept saying "I
love you". She told him he made her go "all jellybags", and referred
to her "other half" derisively as "His Nibs".
They thought they were speaking privately. But the passionate mobile
phone conversation was recorded by a radio ham and broadcast around the globe.
It blew open the princess's privacy and threatened to blacken her
name with supposed proof that she was having an extramarital affair.
But was it accidental that the radio ham simply stumbled across the
conversation on the airwaves? Or was it put deliberately into the
public domain?
Mr Wharfe told the inquest of his belief that the tapes were the
result of bugging by the British intelligence listening station GCHQ.
He said the conversation would have been broadcast on a looped tape
to give any listeners a better chance of picking it up.
The tender phone call was made on New Year's Eve 1989, while Diana
was staying with the Queen at Sandringham.
Her long-time friend Mr Gilbey, then a 35-year-old marketing manager
for Team Lotus, was at an undisclosed location on a mobile phone, the
inquest jury was told.
The couple were overheard by radio hams including Jane Norgrove and
Cyril Reenan. Mr Reenan, a retired bank manager, listened in on the
pair with a radio scanner and taped the conversation.
He always maintained he came across it by accident and taped it only
to prove to his wife that he had really heard Diana.
But he sold the tape to a national newspaper and transcripts were
published in 1992. They exposed Diana to equal measures of scandal
and ridicule. One tabloid even set up a phone line so readers could
ring in and listen for themselves.
In the conversation, the couple coo and giggle with each other for at
least 20 minutes. He calls her "darling" more than 50 times, and
repeatedly by his pet name for her - Squidgy, or Squidge.
They blow kisses down the line as they arrange a meeting. Diana says:
"Gosh. I hope Ken doesn't say No." Gilbey doubts that "Ken" will forbid it.
"Do you know what I'm going to be imagining tonight, at about 12
o'clock?" he asks. "Just holding you close to me. It'll have to be
delayed action for 48 hours."
Diana confides that her husband "makes my life real, real torture".
Expletives litter the conversation. At one stage the princess
describes how she "nearly started blubbing" at a particularly low
point during a lunch, adding: "I just felt really sad and empty. I
thought, 'Bloody hell - after all I've done for this f***ing family'."
Mr Wharfe, who came to know about many of Diana's flings and
heartaches, made a fortune from a book, Closely Guarded Secret, which
he published five years after her death.
He was questioned by Michael Mansfield QC, representing Mohamed Al
Fayed, whose son Dodi died with Diana in the Paris crash of 2007.
Palace ordered inquiry over the leaked love call
He replied: "It's my belief GCHQ at that time were monitoring members
of the Royal Family because of heightened IRA activity at the time."
Every member of the Royal Family was bugged, he said. "I am fairly
confident that this was routinely done."
Mr Wharfe said Diana even rang the newspaper phone-in line to listen
to the "Squidgy" tape.
"Diana was more concerned purely from an embarrassment point of view
that this was in the public domain," he told the hearing.
He said the Queen told the princess she was "unhappy" about the tape
and ordered an inquiry into the incident. But he did not know the
result of the investigation.
Mr Mansfield asked the coroner to find out what happened. He told
Lord Justice Scott Baker: "If the Queen asked for an internal
investigation by MI5, was this carried out? When was it carried out,
and what were its results?"
Although there was no formal public inquiry into the GCHQ bugging
claims, reports were issued which appeared designed to scotch them.
In his annual report of April 1993, Sir Thomas Bingham, Commissioner
for the Interception of Communications, said: "From time to time,
stories are published describing interceptions said to have been
carried out by GCHQ or by what are usually called MI5 and MI6. Such
stories are, in my experience, without exception false.
In another report, Lord Justice Stuart-Smith Commissioner for the
Security Service, referred to speculation that MI5 illegally
installed bugging devices, without a warrant. "It is my opinion that
such operations are not undertaken."
WE DO NOT APPRPOVE...
The Queen urged Diana to keep away from the "unpleasant" business of
charity work for Aids victims, the inquest heard.
During the late 1980s the princess was the first member of the Royal
Family to have contact with an Aids sufferer, sitting on his sickbed
and holding his hand.
At that time many still wrongly believed the illness could be
contracted through casual contact.
Mr Wharfe said: "The princess would go to see the Queen on a number
of occasions. Once she returned to the car distressed.
"I asked, 'What's the matter?'-and she said, 'The Queen doesn't like
me getting involved with Aids and said, 'Why don't you get involved
with something more pleasant?'.
"I think Diana was very angry and annoyed that the Queen could not
see what she was doing. Diana felt a member of the Royal Family
should be involved with campaigns to find a cure for Aids."
He added that the private secretaries to the Queen and Prince Philip
were "incredibly jealous" of Diana's popularity during the early
1990s. "They didn't like the fact that Diana was daily in the national media."
DEADLY GAME OF CAT AND MOUSE
Diana would still be alive if security hired by Mohamed Al Fayed had
not treated the paparazzi like the "enemy", Mr Wharfe claimed.
He blamed the bodyguards for playing a deadly game of "cat and mouse"
with photographers on the night of her death.
They should have let Diana make a "dignified" exit from the front of
the Paris Ritz, he said - she could have posed for a few pictures to
keep the photographers happy and to defuse any tensions.
Instead they attempted to sneak her out the back door of the hotel,
prompting a chase by a few members of the paparazzi who had been
alerted to the ploy.
A few minutes after setting off in the black Mercedes in the early
hours of August 31 1997 they crashed in a tunnel.
Mr Wharfe singled out Trevor Rees Jones, Diana's bodyguard who was
badly injured in the smash, for particular criticism for "alienating"
the photographers.
He said: "This cat and mouse game was, to me, the beginning of the
end. To play these sort of games with the media is a game that's sure
to be lost.
"It appeared to me that Trevor Rees Jones appeared to be preoccupied
by treating the media as the enemy rather than I did, as a friend.
"They certainly were not there with any motive to cause Diana or Dodi
Fayed any harm."
Mr Wharfe said when he accompanied Diana on holidays he would make
arrangements with the press to allow them organised photo shoots if
they agreed to leave her alone for the rest of the trip.
In 1993, soon after Mr Wharfe stopped working for Diana, she stopped
using royal protection officers apart from on official trips or when
she was with her sons.
A former Al Fayed bodyguard, Lee Sansum, told the inquest that the
Harrods owner would have known about the ill-fated plan to smuggle
Diana out of the back door of the hotel.
"I can tell you for certain there is no way that the plan to put a
decoy vehicle outside the front of the Ritz would have gone ahead
without the personal authority of Mr Fayed."
ENTER THE BUTLER
Paul Burrell is to take the stand at the inquest next week.
The princess's former butler will give evidence on Monday about their
friendship.
Burrell was one of Diana's closest confidants and would often help
smuggle her lovers into her Kensington Palace apartments in the back
of his car.
Five years after her death he was charged with stealing the
princess's property but the Old Bailey trial collapsed after it
emerged that the Queen had spoken with him about the possessions.
Burrell was later vilified for cashing in on his friendship with
Diana by selling his story and writing a best-selling book about his
role entitled A Royal Duty.
At the inquest he is expected to face questions about a letter from
Diana in which she described her fears that Prince Charles was
plotting to kill her so that he could marry their sons' nanny Tiggy
Legge-Bourke.
He is also likely to be quizzed over claims that the Queen had warned
him of "dark forces" at work in Britain after Diana's death.
HER FEAR OF A CRASH
Diana would frequently talk about dying in a car crash, according to
Mr Wharfe. She often raised the subject as they set out for a weekend
away in Highgrove on Friday afternoons.
"Diana would begin the conversation by saying something like 'Here we
go again, I suppose we could be killed in a car accident'."
He said her comments might have been prompted by what she was told by
tarot card readers and "crystal ball gazers".
But the princess never seemed serious when she discussed the
possibility of a crash with him. Instead she "laughed and joked about it".
He added: "It was very much a throwaway line of Diana's.
"In the nine years of working with Diana of working with Diana she
never ever, even once said to me that she thought that someone was
out to harm her."
Nor did she ever ask him for extra security.
Mr Wharfe told the inquest that Mohammed Al Fayed courted Diana's
company long before he introduced her to his son.
She would regularly visit Harrods unannounced - and he would be sure
to rush out and greet her.
"Once we had gone in through the door, Diana would say, 'How long do
you think it will be before Mr Al Fayed arrives?'
"And of course very soon thereafter, if Mr Fayed was on the premises,
we would get wind of his arrival because he would arrive in the
middle of what Diana later referred to as a trudging wedge that would
wend its way through the store.
"I think Mr Al Fayed enjoyed the company of the princess and openly
courted it."
Mr Wharfe said the princess began to act strangely in the year after
her split from Prince Charles.
"In 1993 it was a particularly difficult year I think for the
princess, who was, in her own words, going through a difficult period.
"I noticed a change in Diana that year, in her behaviour generally."
He described how during a shopping trip in Kensington High Street she
suddenly ran away after he parked the car.
"Diana's behaviour was somewhat odd, I have to say that. I eventually
met her at Tower Records where she had asked me for some money to pay
for some CDs.
"When we returned to Kensington Palace she was rather distressed and
started apologising for her behaviour.
"I said, 'Well, you know, this is completely out of character for
you, ma'am, why is this?'
"She said, 'I don't know'."
Mr Wharfe said he feared the princess's security would be compromised
if she continued to behave in this way.
It was at this point he decided to transfer to another royal protection unit.
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Received on Sat Mar 02 2024 - 00:57:28 CST