Conspiracies: The Facts * the Theories * the Evidence (25 page)

Al-Fayed, and the Royal Family wanted to avoid a

genealogical connection to a Muslim family. This view

has been robustly promoted by Mohamed Al-Fayed,

but friends and witnesses have cast doubt on this, with

some pointing out that their relationship was fairly new,

and maybe not that harmonious, with Diana having only

recently broken up from a serious two-year relationship

with another Muslim, Pakistani heart surgeon Hasnat

Khan. The Royal Family had apparently shown no

public disapproval of Diana’s connection with Khan, so

why would Fayed present a problem? Others, of course,

contend that what the Royal Family says and what it real y

thinks are two completely different things.

• Diana was pregnant with Dodi Al-Fayed’s baby and,

similarly, the Royal Family could not tolerate a Muslim

bloodline entering the lineage, this time in a rather

permanent way. Although this is a view widely subscribed

to, official test results on Diana’s body ruled pregnancy out.

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Truthseekers hardly consider the word of officialdom to be

failsafe, however.

• Prince Charles wanted Diana removed to grease the path

to remarrying without adverse publicity, as intimated by

the Princess in her letter to Burrel . There is no question

that Diana’s absence did help Charles gain more acceptance

of his eventual marriage to Parker-Bowles, although the

Legge-Bourke conundrum remains unresolved in this

picture. That this is the view Diana clearly subscribed to

must obviously be taken into serious account, yet some of

the less hardcore theorists find it hard to believe that the

likes of Charles would support such a scheme. Those who

see the Royals as blood-drinking reptiles natural y differ in

this view – see below.

• The Queen’s husband, Prince Philip, took matters into

his own hands over and above Charles’s authority, and

plotted Diana’s death for some of the above reasons or

more, believing her revelations were bringing the Royal

Family into disrepute. This view was heavily promoted

by Mohamed Al-Fayed in his courtroom attempts to

convict the ‘killers’ of his son and Diana, but was, perhaps

predictably, rejected by the British courts.

• Diana’s growing campaign against the use of landmines

and other questionable military devices was becoming a

threat to influential arms manufacturers concerned about

the effect of her work on their reputation. Diana’s close

relationship with Dodi Al-Fayed could have created an

embarrassing problem too close at hand for some, given

that Dodi’s mother had been Samira Khashoggi – sister

to the Saudi billionaire arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi.

Diana’s campaign had certainly been successful in

galvanizing public support and was gaining ground at the

time of her death.

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• The New World Order was also concerned about Diana’s

growing prominence, given her inside knowledge of the

British Royal Family and its links to various intelligence

agencies, things which the Princess had begun to al ude

to in her candid interviews and published letters. In

this view, NWO operatives took her out before further

damage could be done, adding secret society symbolism

into the mix to make for something of a ritualistic death.

Similar claims have been made over Dealey Plaza, where

JFK was shot – that site has several occult inferences in

its layout, as does the whole of Paris, which is rich in

Masonic relics and subliminal patterns. The fact that

Diana’s car crash took place directly beneath the ‘Flame

of Liberty’ monument above the underpass, a potent

mystical symbol, has been seen as significant. It is also a

place claimed to have once have been the site of a burial

chamber of Merovingian kings and/or a Roman temple to

the goddess . . . Diana.

• Diana was a direct descendant of Jesus and Mary

Magdalene, and/or carried the bloodline of Merovingian

kings and the Stuart dynasty, rivals to the House of

Windsor. As such, she risked becoming a saintly figure who

might reveal too much hidden history and unsettle the

established power-bases.

• The Royal Family is in truth a mask for a race of dominating

extra-terrestrials (
see
chapter 7) and they did not want

certain bloodlines mixing with the ET genes.

The list could continue, covering everything from the theory that Diana was executed on the orders of a jealous Hil ary Clinton,

who had heard that the Princess was due to be forcibly ‘married’

to her own husband Bill in a secret occult ceremony, to the notion that Diana didn’t real y die at all and that the whole event was a set-up to enable her to live a secret life as a recluse, presumably in 153

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the same quiet paradise where Hitler, Elvis and Jim Morrison all

shipped up at one time or another (
see
p. 26).

Some of the above possibilities appear, at first glance anyway, to be more reasonable than others. But in a world where big lies are told so often, is anyone in a firm enough position to real y be able to make fun of one above another?

Diluting Credibility

One difficulty that presents itself in terms of Diana conspiracy

theories being taken seriously is the nature of those promoting

them. It is perhaps unfortunate that the not entirely unreasonable ideas concerning royal resistance to Muslim bloodlines have come

to be indelibly linked with the claims of Mohamed Al-Fayed, who,

unfairly or not, is rarely portrayed by the media as a credible figure.

His exuberant and outspoken manner has perhaps allowed genuine

grief at the loss of his son to translate into often-unguarded and unverifiable accusations. Fayed’s insistence that Prince Philip gave orders to stage the crash – an allegation unlikely to be well received in a country which has never much favoured republicanism – has

enabled the press to sideline him as an eccentric. By association, the subsequent ridicule has been used to denigrate the potential

significance of the undeniably odd anomalies around Diana’s death.

Fayed is far from the only person to be concerned about the truth, as the pol s demonstrate, but more sober questioners have too often been eclipsed by the gaudier aspects of the circus around it.

This effect was not helped by the
Daily Express
, which kept numerous Diana conspiracy stories on its front covers for years.

Each was promoted as another nail in the coffin of the official

account, only for none of them to come to anything in the final

inquiries, whereafter the sensational claims, often with good

points buried within them, were quietly dropped, never to be

discussed again. Some truthseekers believe this was in itself a

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coordinated strategy of a long-established kind. Sensing from

the public mood that the mainstream was not going to be able

to avoid discussing conspiracies this time around, maybe the

powers-that-be consequently
chose
to saturate the population with multiple theories, some sensible, others wild, until all of them sank from view under the weight of their own confusion. History

records that this tactic general y works; the public sigh, turn the page and put the kettle on, knowing that something isn’t right, but having neither the time nor the energy to pursue it further.

Thus the Diana theories have already become, like the

Kennedy conspiracies before them, just another part of a dark

and extraordinary saga, a story doubtless set to become one of the Grimm-like fairytales of future centuries. Yet, if the conspiracy view is correct, and the official conclusion wrong, the fact is that the people who helped take the Princess’s life are probably still alive and influencing our world today.

Certainly, several years on, the public’s propensity for believing that public executions were still continuing, albeit in a different guise to that of times past, was showing no signs of diminishing.

iii) Dr DaviD kelly

The Iraq Gambit

As we saw in the previous chapter, spring 2003’s devastating allied invasion of Iraq took place largely on the strength of an intelligence dossier which claimed that the country’s leader, Saddam Hussein,

was preparing weapons of mass destruction that could be

deployed against the world within 45 minutes. The war resulted in thousands dead and much greater influence for Western powers

in the Middle East – but none of the alleged weapons was found.

This was no surprise to the diplomats and insiders who had tried

to call attention to their absence before the guns started firing.

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Prominent among these was the former microbiologist and UN

weapons inspector Dr David Kel y.

With impressive credentials, having worked for the British

Ministry of Defence in such places as the controversial secret

research laboratories at Porton Down, Kel y was an important and

informed observer of potential weaponry accumulation, chem-

ical, biological and conventional. Perhaps someone should have

listened to his quiet concern, therefore, that the war against Iraq was being rushed into without serious forethought or evidence,

but it was blatant that the decision had already been made and so the wheels of war rolled on regardless. Even as early as February 2003, Kel y, who had himself contributed information to the

crucial dossier published just six months before, was voicing the fact that there had been ‘a lot of pressure’ put on its compilers to make a more robust case for war than was truly honest.

When the initial wave of the invasion ended and the smoke

cleared to reveal no weapons of mass destruction, by May 2003

Kel y could contain his views no more and expressed them

– as an off-the-record source – to the BBC radio journalist

Andrew Gilligan. Sensing an important story, Gilligan used this

information, along with other views he had gathered, to make the

(then) sensational claims on the Radio 4
Today
programme that the dossier had been deliberately ‘sexed up’. Kel y’s name was not mentioned in the report, but his anonymity would not last long.6

Official Fury

The response to the BBC story from Tony Blair’s government,

led from the front by press secretary Alastair Campbel , was one

of blind fury, perhaps at an injustice, but more likely because it touched a raw nerve in an area where it knew it was weak. Gilligan’s report was slammed as a ‘lie’ and, in an unusual y touchy move,

an apology was demanded from the BBC. With the press baying

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to know who the main informant was, the Ministry of Defence

and Blair’s aides soon, albeit by subtle but inexorable
means, allowed it to become clear that Kel y was the man at the core. This highly irregular move (the state normal y protects its own staff) appeared to be a vengeful act designed to load as much shame on

one man as possible, seemingly in an attempt to distract from the information itself by demolishing the source’s reputation. When

government spokesmen began referring to Kel y as a ‘Walter

Mitty’-like character (James Thurber’s fictional Mitty being a day-dreaming fantasist), the denigration of a man who, until only a

few weeks before, had been regarded as one of the best in his field had firmly descended into cheap personal attacks.

Besieged by journalists and government intimidation, Kel y, a

gentle and private man, was understandably taken aback by the

furore which had suddenly erupted around him. Called to give

account of himself before Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee

on 11 July 2003, Kel y was harshly grilled in an apparently punitive public interrogation, an experience that was undoubtedly stressful and difficult.

All of that might explain why, just a week later, on 18 July, Kel y’s body was found in woodlands near his home at Harrowdown Hil ,

Oxfordshire. He had apparently died from a self-inflicted gash to one wrist and had several (nearly) empty packets of co-proxamol

painkillers on him; it appeared that the pressure had become too

much for Kel y, resulting in a sad, suicidal exit. The ingratiating expressions of grief from the likes of Blair and Campbel , as patron-izing as they were, reinforced the emphasis that a man had ended

his life in tragic circumstances of his own making. But had he?

Public Doubts

With memories of Diana’s traumatic departure and all its

unanswered questions still lingering, the British public was

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perhaps quicker to think twice about David Kel y than it once

might have been. Almost immediately, suspicions were raised

among the general populace, even before all the questionable

details were revealed. Kel y’s demise seemed too conveniently