NSA To Deny Bugging Diana's Phone
Official Tells CBS News Agency Had Files On Princess Because She Came Up In Others' Conversations
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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)
-
Photo Essay Diana's Last Photos Portraits from the princess' last official photo session go on display at Kensington Palace.
Ken Wharf, a former bodyguard for Diana, told CBS Early Show co-anchor Rene Syler that the reported phone tapping did not surprise him in this age of high-tech spy agencies.
"It's part of 21st-century technology, and it wasn't life-threatening to Diana. It wasn't the searching of that information that killed her, it was her drunken driver and the incompetence of the security provided by Fayed that was the reason," Wharf said, referring to the millionaire father of Diana's boyfriend, Dodi Fayed.
MacVicar reports that the last call Diana was known to have made was from the private dining room of a London restaurant.
It seems just one more incredible story about the death of the princess. In nine years since she died with her boyfriend, conspiracy theorists have had a field day. The report, by Lord Stevens, a former police commissioner, is designed to get at the truth.
The official French investigation found that Diana and Fayed died after their driver, Henri Paul, drunk at the wheel, lost control of their car.
New DNA evidence proves the driver of Diana's car was drunk on the night of her fatal crash in a Paris underpass in 1997, British Broadcasting Corp. said Saturday.
The tests confirm that original post-mortem blood samples were from Paul and that he had three times the French legal limit of alcohol in his blood, the BBC said, quoting from a documentary it will screen Sunday.
Conspiracy theorists have claimed Paul was not drinking that night, contending the blood samples were swapped with blood from someone else who was drunk.
The BBC said a source with access to the French investigation reported that within the past year, French officials took a DNA profile from Paul's blood samples and matched it with his parents' DNA. It did not identify the source.
The driver, the 36-year-old princess and Fayed, 42, died when their Mercedes crashed inside the Pont d'Alma tunnel Aug. 31, 1997, while being followed by media photographers.
Rumors and conspiracy theories continue to swirl around the death of the former wife of Prince Charles, heir to the British throne, despite a French judge's 1999 ruling that the crash was an accident.
Martyn Gregory, author of "Diana: The Last Days," has written extensively about the deaths.
"One thing about the Internet is that it's an evidence-free environment and what Lord Stevens has done, I believe, is to be led by the evidence and that has informed his decisions," Gregory tells MacVicar.
"It was Henry Paul's blood — yes, he was drunk," says Gregory. "I think that Lord Stevens will find that he was going far too fast and that he wasn't qualified to drive the car. So if you put those three elements together, that's the key reason for the crash."
The evidence then still suggests a tragic accident that could have been avoided.
©MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
More From World
The secrets of tennis legend 
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- next
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 .....
---
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.
-------------------
"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...
---
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
---
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.
.
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
---
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.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- next
See all 75 Comments