Conspiracies: The Facts * the Theories * the Evidence (24 page)

several quarters, with many claims that the sample was either

accidental y or deliberately switched with that of a suicide victim brought into the hospital that same night. While acknowledging

that some confusion had at one point crept in, the authorities have insisted that later checks made against Paul’s DNA and eye fluid

confirm the high level of alcohol in his system that night. On the other hand, one of the blood samples apparently showed levels

of carbon monoxide that should have rendered Paul more than

unfit for duty that night, yet nobody described him as seeming

unwell or behaving oddly, which again cal s either the sample or

the analysis procedure into question.

Indeed, one of the main problems which presents itself over

Paul’s condition is the observation that at no point in either CCTV

footage or in the recollection of most witnesses did he show the

slightest signs of inebriation. The bar bill shows he had apparently had just two drinks at the Ritz Hotel before leaving with Diana, Dodi and bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones, but seemed sober and calm. It is curious to note that Lord Stevens, leading the UK’s 2006 Operation Paget inquest into Diana’s death, directly informed Paul’s parents, in a meeting with them, that their son had
not
been drunk, yet just five weeks later his own report stated the exact opposite, with no reason given for the sudden turnaround. The parents maintain that evidence showed no excessive drinking had taken place. The fact

that Paul (who had just qualified as a private pilot) had no history of heavy drinking and that the Fayed family had employed him for 11

years without a single disciplinary blip suggest that driving under the influence would have been out of character.

Questions have been raised about Paul’s true identity. He was not one of Diana’s usual drivers, and had known links to the French

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that he may also have been working with MI6, which doesn’t have

a good track record on moral actions, having reportedly mounted

a number of shady assassination attempts against leading political figures, including a failed one on Libya’s former ruler Colonel

Gaddafi.4 This has led the less restricted fringes to consider more Manchurian candidate theories, whereby Paul might have been

subjected to a suicidal mind-control programme. This is perhaps

not so impossible, given the successful demonstrations of similar techniques by celebrity hypnotists such as Derren Brown. Paul was also found to have been in possession of a small fortune in his bank accounts, with no clear explanation of where the funds came from.

It seems unlikely he was paid to kill himself, but, hypnotism aside, it is not entirely improbable that he could have been manipulated into participating in some kind of chase set-up which he never

suspected might include his own death.

The details of the accident itself have been the subject of much

confusion, some of which has already passed into modern legend.

Tales of a bright flash seen just as Diana’s Mercedes entered the Pont de l’Alma tunnel, and reports of a white Fiat Uno, which,

paint samples demonstrate, did clip the limousine (or the other way around) have fuelled the speculation that the crash was deliberately engineered. Dazzling people with bright lights is a technique known to be used in combat. It has been suggested that the light may have been shone either from the Fiat or another car, blinding Henri

Paul, while the brief collision sent the Mercedes hurtling into a roof support pil ar before spinning and rebounding to a halt.

Critics of the blinding scenario contend that reports of the

flash are tenuous and contradictory. They also point out that the fatal driving manoeuvres leading to the crash had already begun

before Diana’s car entered the tunnel, and that timing the claimed calculated events and positions so precisely at high speed would

be very difficult. This said, running cars off roads into fatal crashes
is
a long-established assassination technique among various intelligence agencies, notably the CIA.

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The Fiat itself has never been properly identified, although

Dodi’s father, entrepreneur and then owner of Harrods, Mohamed

Al-Fayed, asserts that it belonged to a French photographer known as Jean-Paul James Andanson. Given the much-boasted capability

of modern police forces to track down stolen vehicles, and the

preponderance of security cameras across Parisian streets, it is

indeed strange that the French authorities, despite investigating over 4,000 white Fiat Unos, never managed, official y, to identify the mystery car. Indeed, no salient CCTV footage was apparently

available to cast light on any aspect of the crash, with the tunnel cameras not being operated at that time of the night.

When inquiries showed that Andanson had – he claimed, at

least – not used his own white Fiat Uno for several years before

the events at the Pont de l’Alma, cynicism about the role of the

other vehicle crept in. However, when he was then found dead in

a burned-out BMW in 2000, just as accusations were mounting,

suspicions were raised again as yet another potential y important figure in an ongoing intrigue met an untimely and peculiar end. In the vehicle, Andanson’s head was found detached from his body

– an extremely unusual effect from a fire – and there was a small round hole in his skull (although no gun was found anywhere in

the vicinity, nor indeed car keys); yet neither of these puzzles were in any way seen as anomalous by authorities. A verdict of suicide by self-incineration was recorded. The failure of this curious

episode to come under scrutiny at any of the following inquests

ensured, unsurprisingly, that truthseekers decided to hold their

own views on the matter.

Aftermath of the Accident

The condition of Diana in the crashed Mercedes immediately

following the impact has also been called into question. As a

morbid reminder of the importance of road safety, none of its

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occupants had been wearing seatbelts; only Rees-Jones survived,

albeit with substantial head injuries, while Dodi Al-Fayed and

Paul appeared to have died almost instantly. Reports vary as to the condition of Diana herself. As paparazzi photographers, almost

incredibly, continued to take pictures, some witnesses say she was alive but unspeaking, bleeding from the ears and nose. However,

the first doctor to tend to her (one who happened to be passing

by) stated she had no visible injuries and was murmuring in

shock. Either way, it is general y agreed that Diana was alive when removed from the car around 35 minutes on, but that she went

into cardiac arrest shortly after, dying a few hours later.

One story which has not received the coverage it may deserve,

perhaps because others fear for their lives, is that at least one of the French surgeons at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, where

Diana was tended to, privately claimed that expectations for

her survival were apparently good when she was brought in.

However, when a British medical team arrived at the hospital,

local staff were relieved and ordered from the room – and Diana

was unexpectedly pronounced dead by the replacement doctors

shortly thereafter. This has led some to speculate that someone

was quietly making sure the Princess would never recover. It

is rumoured that the surgeon was planning to reveal this in a

book, but that he himself then died in a car accident, his wife

disappearing soon afterwards. Conspiracy paranoia? Maybe.

But it is clear, from some of the foggier elements present in the overall details of the Diana case, why so many people continue

to have doubts about the official verdicts.

Premonitions and a Wider Plot?

Maybe all of the conspiracy allegations could be dismissed were

it not for the fact that the Princess herself had provably feared for her life, to the point of giving a chillingly accurate prediction of 148

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her own fate. In a letter written to her former butler Paul Burrell in October 1996, Diana, who had made references elsewhere to

dark forces afoot within the royal establishment, wrote:

This particular phase in my life is the most dangerous – my

husband is planning ‘an accident’ in my car, brake failure

and serious head injury in order to make the path clear for

him to marry.

Interestingly, this disturbingly candid distress call goes on to

name Tiggy Legge-Bourke, controversial nanny to Princes

William and Harry, as Prince Charles’s intended new wife –

not the expected Camil a Parker-Bowles (now the Duchess of

Cornwall), who is referred to in the letter as ‘a decoy’. Whether Diana was confused here, or whether it was felt, with the wide

publication of this communication after her death, that it would

have been too damning to go ahead with a marriage to Legge-

Bourke, is unknown. But it is very plain that the Princess had been tipped off by someone, somewhere, that a plot was being mounted

against her. The Legge-Bourke allegations are another fascinating seam of the Diana conspiracy theories; there was certainly an

acknowledged rivalry between the two of them, with Diana

apparently jealous at Legge-Bourke’s closeness to both Charles

and her sons following the break-up of their marriage.

Neither did Legge-Bourke and Camil a Parker-Bowles have

much love for each other, according to varied sources. With this

in mind, some believe there was also a failed plot to kill Camil a, just weeks before Diana’s death. Evidence for this is provided by the mysterious car crash Camil a experienced in June 1997 on a

country road, where she fled the scene after hitting another car

at high speed. She said she had run away for ‘security’ reasons.

It has been suggested that perhaps her brakes ‘failed’, or that she had herself been driven into the other vehicle by some means and

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off. It is curious that the other victim of the incident, who was left trapped in her car, tipped into a ditch by the impact, never pressed charges against Parker-Bowles, nor did the police pursue the case, perhaps in the hope that it would be quickly forgotten, as indeed it was.5

In this scenario, having bungled an attempt to remove one

pawn from the board, but later having succeeded with Diana,

could it be that Camil a was spared because
two
fatal accidents in connection with Charles would seem too obvious? Whatever

real y occurred with Legge-Bourke, Camil a plainly got the upper

hand in the end, or at least everyone was firmly ordered to play

new parts in a hastily rewritten script to avoid a wider scandal.

Who was writing that script, though, and why? Maybe, as Diana

wrote in her letter, they were ‘all being used by the man [Charles]

in every sense of the word’. Others, however, believe that higher powers may have stepped in to intervene without even Charles’s

knowledge or consent. It should be noted that Diana believed the

1987 motorcycle death of Barry Mannakee, her bodyguard and

possibly a lover during her marriage, was also staged.

As for the content of Diana’s letter to Burrel , backed up by very candid statements made to her solicitor Lord Mishcon, if it was

just a coincidence that her life ended in the way she had envisaged, then it was a major one. Typical y, the mainstream has allowed

this surely crucial letter to fall into the background, not helped by the later antics of Burrell himself, who was accused of perjury at the subsequent inquests and went on to seek fame for light

entertainment purposes, demeaning him in the eyes of an already

hostile press. Despite this, it is accepted that the letter is genuine, but it is too often sidelined as being the ramblings of a stressed and emotional woman. But then it could be somewhat stressful to

hear that one’s own murder is being planned, as Apollo 1’s Virgil Grissom, journalist Sean Hoare and weapons inspector Dr David

Kel y – all of whom seemed to have similar intimations of their

own fates – might have attested.

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Why Kill Diana?

All this begs the question that
if
Diana’s death was deliberately arranged, as so many British people believe, then why?

As it happens, there has been an array of not implausible

reasons put forward to explain why several factions may well

have been queuing up to find ways to marginalize Diana (some

believe MI6 was behind the release of the damaging ‘Squidgy’

tapes, for instance). Maybe the Princess wouldn’t have lived for

long even without the underpass incident. There have been all

manner of theories put forward to account for the need to remove

her entirely, but the main hypotheses usual y boil down to one or a combination of the following, all with their own strengths and

weaknesses:

• Diana was soon to be engaged (or already was) to Dodi