NSA To Deny Bugging Diana's Phone
Official Tells CBS News Agency Had Files On Princess Because She Came Up In Others' Conversations
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Play CBS Video Video Report: U.S. Bugged Di's Phone An official British investigation into Princess Diana's death claimed that she was under surveillance by a U.S. intelligence agency on the last night of her life. Sheila MacVicar has more details.
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Video U.S. Spied On Princess Di A British inquiry's findings on Princess Diana's death will be released this week, but some details are leaking out. It will reveal U.S. intelligence bugged her phone. Sheila MacVicar reports.
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Video Why Would U.S. Bug A Princess? CBS News RAW: Former British intelligence analyst Crispin Black explains two possible motives for U.S. spy agencies to conduct surveillance on the late Diana, Princess of Wales.
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Diana, Princess of Wales arrives at the Hilton Hotel for the Help the Aged Golden Awards on Nov. 6, 1995. Nearly 10 years after her death in 1997, the NSA is preparing a statement denying that it was eavesdropping on her. (Getty Images/Johnny Eggitt)
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Photo Essay Diana's Last Photos Portraits from the princess' last official photo session go on display at Kensington Palace.
An official British report into the crash that killed Princess Diana concluded that a U.S. intelligence agency was bugging Diana's phone without the approval of its British counterpart on the night of her death, according to British newspaper reports.
A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request was filed with the NSA in 1998, asking for any files the agency had on her, the official tells Martin. The response acknowledged that the NSA had files on her. However, the NSA will say it had files on her not because she was being monitored, but because her name was mentioned by other people in conversations that were being monitored.
British newspaper reports say 39 classified transcripts held by an unspecified U.S. agency contain no new information about how the princess died.
CBS News correspondent Sheila MacVicar says it's long been rumored that Princess Diana's work as an anti-land mine campaigner brought her to the attention of the CIA, and it's been widely reported that British authorities were monitoring her closely.
Crispin Black, a former U.K. government intelligence analyst, told CBS News there are two possible motives for the U.S. government to have interest in monitoring Diana.
The first is a simple request from the British government to keep tabs on a former member of the royal family who was stripped of her official security detail, but who they still felt obligated to keep safe.Photos: Remembering Diana
Why Would The U.S. Bug A Princess?
"Most likely we asked the Americans, 'Look, while she is traveling in America or while she is traveling in parts of the world where our electronic reach doesn't get to, could you keep an eye on her?' And if that is the case, that's interesting but not sinister," Black said.
On the other hand, he pointed out that the contacts in the world of international arms dealing, which Diana may have made in her campaign against land mines, or her research into a formerly legal weapon used by the Pentagon, could have been impetus for surveillance by U.S. agencies — with or without British consent.
Black said if the United States was, in fact, monitoring Diana's conversations without consent from a sister agency in Britain, it "will cause a bit of a spat, not a huge one, but perhaps discussions behind closed doors in Washington."
He added that the British government's response will be a bit more dramatic if it's discovered the U.S. was spying on Diana on U.K. soil.
It isn't know which U.S. agency carried out the alleged phone tapping in France, but Black said that across the American intelligence apparatus, "more than 1,000 pages" are held on the late princess.
But now, the reports of monitoring may become a diplomatic embarrassment, MacVicar reports. With both the British and the French likely to ask what the U.S. was doing and why, for conspiracists, it's given them one more reason to believe that Diana's death was not an accident.
©MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Michelle Obama tells how her role as the First Lady has changed her perspective.
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See all 75 CommentsThe blueballed posters continue to amaze me with their ignorance and one-sided thinking. For the love of god, can't you people think for yourself?? All the facts aren't even in yet... but Bush gets the blame. SOS, SOS .....
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Clinton either obtained warrants, or he did not-- if this is a matter of evidence, what is your basis for doubt? Yet you completely ignore the statements of your fearless leader, who by comparison is the GOP elephant in the room, concerning his freely-admitted, wholesale defiance of the rule of law in the NSA warrantless spying scandal.
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"As for the healthy economy, I don't know about you and your family but the economy was going into the tanker at a very fast rate when he left...
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Again, the rewriting of history seems to be your specialty. You do not deny the Clinton record, nor his budget surplus leaving office, so you are hard-pressed to conjure doom as Bush entered office. You are left to hand Clinton the detriment of your intuitive doubts, but that is not the same as evidence. Neither you nor Wall Street analysts can pin what happened under Bush entirely on the Dot-Com implosion, just as Bush cannot be given credit for the housing bubble (which recently burst).
And how apt the election crime of 2000 heralded the worst political criminal ever in American history. Stories about Bush corruption and incompetence started to come out as early as 2001, but reached floodtide by 2006. Of course, all this excites Bush boosters, who insist it simply cannot be true, and that all accusations should be bulldozed into the past. How convenient-- which is also called a state of denial.
Bush continues his reprobate character to this day. Bush freely admits wrongdoing with NSA warrantless spying, prohibited by law, explaining the AUMF gave him dictatorial powers proscribing Constitutional protections and balance of power. As The Decider, Bush dispenses with judicial review altogether. Bush violated the FISA law not a few times, but repeatedly over his years in office, and defied the courts or congress to do anything about his contempt for the rule of law.
Even had Clinton violated FISA with Diana, which is not proven, it bears no comparison to this scofflaw named Bush, the wannabe-president who pushes "democracy" and "freedom" everywhere but at home, and delivers neither
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Judging by your agitated shouting, you need a grip, and a life, too. Not to mention a dose of history. Because those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.
To deny an entire nation its choice for president is nothing short of a crime by any definition under law. Had all the votes in Florida 2000 been counted-- and thousands were lost/omitted in heavily Democratic precincts in an election prematurely declared over (Bush "ahead" by 537 votes!?) by GOP Secretary of State Harris-- Bush would never have blighted this nation with his incompetence and criminal behavior.
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SEE BELOW THE IDIOT'S COMMENTS....
"If the NSA acted so quickly to deny spying on Di, you know someone was standing on a bare nerve. Having to admit that your government is upside down isn't what you'd call being proud of your government. It's our fault for electing this bunch into power, or did we? Hanging chad, dimpled chad, invented chad, electoral college? Room for thought, reason for doubt? Your call. It is time we changed politicians like good people change underwear, daily, or like others, when it stinks. Give second thought to Ross Perot's accusation that our secret agencies threatened him and his family. Did you say no, before you said maybe/yes? Stay the course.
Posted by bobgraham4 at 02:02 AM : Dec 12, 2006"
SEE BELOW THE IDIOT'S COMMENTS....
"If the NSA acted so quickly to deny spying on Di, you know someone was standing on a bare nerve. Having to admit that your government is upside down isn't what you'd call being proud of your government. It's our fault for electing this bunch into power, or did we? Hanging chad, dimpled chad, invented chad, electoral college? Room for thought, reason for doubt? Your call. It is time we changed politicians like good people change underwear, daily, or like others, when it stinks. Give second thought to Ross Perot's accusation that our secret agencies threatened him and his family. Did you say no, before you said maybe/yes? Stay the course.
Posted by bobgraham4 at 02:02 AM : Dec 12, 2006"
SEE BELOW THE IDIOT'S COMMENTS....
"If the NSA acted so quickly to deny spying on Di, you know someone was standing on a bare nerve. Having to admit that your government is upside down isn't what you'd call being proud of your government. It's our fault for electing this bunch into power, or did we? Hanging chad, dimpled chad, invented chad, electoral college? Room for thought, reason for doubt? Your call. It is time we changed politicians like good people change underwear, daily, or like others, when it stinks. Give second thought to Ross Perot's accusation that our secret agencies threatened him and his family. Did you say no, before you said maybe/yes? Stay the course.
Posted by bobgraham4 at 02:02 AM : Dec 12, 2006"
"If the NSA acted so quickly to deny spying on Di, you know someone was standing on a bare nerve. Having to admit that your government is upside down isn't what you'd call being proud of your government. It's our fault for electing this bunch into power, or did we? Hanging chad, dimpled chad, invented chad, electoral college? Room for thought, reason for doubt? Your call. It is time we changed politicians like good people change underwear, daily, or like others, when it stinks. Give second thought to Ross Perot's accusation that our secret agencies threatened him and his family. Did you say no, before you said maybe/yes? Stay the course.
Posted by bobgraham4 at 02:02 AM : Dec 12, 2006"
DIA Princess Diana, Dodi Fayed, Henri Paul
NSA Princess Diana
NSA Henri Paul
LAPD Princess Diana
NYPD Princess Diana
CIA Diana, Princess of Wales
CIA Henri Paul
FBI Diana, Princess of Wales
FBI Dodi Al Fayed
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Clinton delivered a healthy budget surplus after eight years in office, which Bush promptly misspent to give tax breaks to all his buddies in the upper three percent of income distribution.
On another of your posts, you condemn Clinton for eavesdropping on Princess Diana, but in the above post you claim Clinton was asleep about bin Laden and Afghanistan. Had it occurred to you the Clinton who might have monitored Diana is the same Clinton who tracked bin Laden, and fired cruise missles at his assets in Sudan and Afghanistan?
Did you get all that from The Path to 911? Even the RNC says that is a work of fictional drama.
Electronic surveillance in some form not only was used to track bin Laden in Afghanistan, but was at least as aggressive in the MidEast and elsewhere as anything Bush did prior to the CIA insertion in late 2001.
The difference, if you recognize it as significant, is Clinton appears to have secured the necessary FISA permissions. (We will see what exception emerges with Diana, if any.) Bush, on the other hand, admitted wholesale, long-term and systematic defiance of the FISA requirement, claiming the AUMF made him virtual dictator, even proscribing operation of Constitutional protections and requirements.
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See all 75 Comments