Amidst New Scrutiny of Charles's Saudi Ties: British Royals Feel Heat Over Diana’s Assassination - Part 2 | WPN World People News

Enter the Al-Fayeds

That Diana’s view of the evil of the British Crown was deeper than merely a reaction to the flawed personalities of her husband and in-laws, was reflected in her 1994-97 correspondence with an EIR staff member, which began when she acknowledged receiving the Oct. 28, 1994 issue of EIR, “The Coming Fall of the House of Windsor.”

The first in a series later issued as an EIR Special Report of the same title, this feature documented, including from sources within the UK, that the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), co-founded in 1961 by Prince Philip and the notorious eugenicists Sir Julian Huxley and former Privy Council secretary Max Nicholson, was committing genocide in Africa through the deployment of mercenary units to stoke armed conflicts, in order to control the continent’s riches. It also showed that big-game hunter Philip and others of the WWF had contributed to the extinction of the endangered species they claimed to protect. In the final, March 1997 letter in the exchange, responding to documentation received on strategic issues (including the threat of world war arising from Russia’s devastation by “free market” reforms), Diana’s secretary wrote, “The Princess of Wales asked me to thank you for your letter of 19th February and the most interesting enclosures. The Princess was touched that you took the trouble to write following her visit to Angola [where she had been campaigning against land mines].... Your letter meant a great deal to the Princess, who has asked me to send you her sincere thanks.”

In July 1997, Diana accepted an invitation from Mohamed Al-Fayed to holiday with her sons at his villa in Saint-Tropez on the French Riviera. The Egyptian-born billionaire Al-Fayed had already incurred the Crown’s wrath himself, during a protracted struggle in the 1980s and 1990s for control of Harrod’s department store in London. His opponent in the battle for Harrod’s was Tiny Rowland, a longtime MI5 agent and head, since 1961, of the Crown-linked giant multinational firm Lonrho, specializing in the looting of Africa.

By the end of this holiday, during which she met Dodi Fayed, Diana had less than six weeks to live. Events unfolded rapidly. As the vacation ended, the Daily Mirror, alluding to leaks from the Royal household, wrote: “Speculation about Diana’s future, which is as strong at Buckingham Palace as it is in the Princess’s camp, comes as plans are made for the next meeting of the Way Ahead Group.... Top of the agenda at the forthcoming meeting is Diana.” Morgan suggests that that WAG meeting, held at Balmoral Castle on July 23, may have been moved up from later in the Summer, out of urgency. The Diana-Dodi relationship blossomed quickly, leading to a second Mediterranean vacation and exchanges of gifts and love letters. Diana had expressed a wish to spend time or even live in America (hoping to take her sons there), a desire that meshed with Dodi’s purchase of a house in Malibu, California.

On Aug. 30, Dodi and Diana flew to Paris from their cruise, and dined at the Ritz. That night they headed by car to Dodi’s apartment, but crashed in the d’Alma Tunnel. Dodi Fayed and Henri Paul died there, Diana at the hospital—where she was taken only nearly two hours after the crash. The morning of their deaths, Aug. 31, coincided with a second, now famous Mirror article, which reported: “At Balmoral next week, the Queen will preside over a meeting of The Way Ahead Group where the Windsors sit down with their senior advisers and discuss policy matters. MI6 has prepared a special report on the Egyptian-born Fayeds which will be presented to the meeting.... The delicate subject of Harrods and its royal warrants is also expected to be discussed.... A friend of the Royals said yesterday, ‘Prince Philip has let rip several times recently about the Fayeds.... He’s been banging on about his contempt for Dodi and how he is undesirable as a future stepfather to William and Harry. Diana has been told in no uncertain terms about the consequences should she continue the relationship with the Fayed boy.’ ” Morgan devotes many pages to documentation and analysis of the inquest coroner’s failure to allow either this report, or the minutes of the WAG meetings in question, before the jury.

Evidence Withheld and Testimony Not Taken

John Morgan has examined in detail all of the above events, and more: how Diana was treated at the crash scene and thereafter, the handling of her body after death, and the subsequent investigations. Many of his conclusions are necessarily in the nature of surmise (often prefaced by Morgan with “I suggest that” or a statement that the evidence “may point to” a given conclusion), but for each case, he provides the relevant documentation. That evidence is available to readers of Morgan’s books, but the amount of it that was not heard, and the number of interested parties who were not called to testify, in either Operation Paget or the subsequent RCJ inquest, are astounding. Two instances exemplify this pattern.

Movements of key British personnel. Morgan gives extensive citations from newspaper articles, testimony, and other sources on the relationship between MI6 and the Crown, which may operate through government channels, or directly, under the “Royal prerogative power” still held by the Queen. Then, in his Diana Inquest: Part 5 compendium, he has gridded the official staffing lists of the British Embassy in Paris around the time of Diana’s death, against the inquest testimony of MI6 officials identified only by numerical designations. He found evidence identifying the officer who testified as “Mr. 4,” the chief of MI6 in France, as Eugene Curley, posted under cover as a political officer at the British Embassy. Morgan then posed a number of questions concerning the man who arrived to succeed Curley at the Embassy apparently the very day Diana died—career diplomat and intelligence operative Sherard Cowper-Coles, whose autobiography recounts his training at the Foreign Office’s Middle East Centre for Arab Studies (MECAS) in Lebanon, dubbed by Egyptian President Nasser “the British spy school.”

And yet, Morgan points out, no testimony from Cowper-Coles was taken at the inquest, although presiding Lord Justice Scott Baker had announced that the involvement of British security services was a major topic for review. That omission is even more striking in view of Cowper-Coles’s relationship to the Anglo-Saudi Al-Yamamah arms deal, in which Prince Charles and Prince Andrew have both directly participated.

Motorbikes/paparazzi. The presence of “other, unidentified motorcyclists, who may have cut in front of [Dodi and Diana’s] Mercedes Benz, causing the crash,” has been part of the case from the beginning. The outrageous dismissal in September 1999 of all evidence concerning them, by the first French investigating prosecutor, who also dropped manslaughter charges against 10 identified paparazzi photographers who showed up at the scene minutes after the crash, drove Mohamed Al-Fayed to undertake the series of lawsuits resulting in the Paget and RCJ investigations. The latter, 2007-08, inquest jury ultimately went beyond the French attribution of all blame to “drunk driver” Henri Paul—it added that the “unlawful killing” of Diana and Dodi was also caused by the “grossly negligent driving of the following vehicles.”

There were genuine paparazzi following Diana and Dodi in Paris on Aug. 30, as there were wherever Diana went. But a handful of them were different from the usual photographers. They began swarming around Diana and Dodi as soon as they arrived at Le Bourget Airport that afternoon. The genuine paparazzi did not know the ones on powerful motorbikes, calling them “the fans.” Fabrice Chassery, one of the genuine paparazzi, told the French police that the newcomers “were behaving like madmen,” an observation buttressed by bodyguard Kez Wingfield, as reported by Morgan: “This was the first time in my experience that I had seen the paparazzi behaving so dangerously.” With six sections titled “Unidentified Motorbikes” and “Other Motorbikes” in his summary volume, Morgan presents all the testimony collected by various agencies about these suspicious vehicles. No law enforcement agency has ever followed up satisfactorily on their identity.

The CCTV cameras in the d’Alma Tunnel, which normally recorded 24 hours a day, were unaccountably turned off that night, but numerous eye-witnesses have testified to what happened as the Mercedes approached the tunnel. Daily Mail investigator Sue Reid, in her article, reminds about long-standing reports of “a powerful black motorbike, with no connection to the paparazzi,” which “emerged from a slip road and began chasing Diana and Dodi as their Mercedes was about to enter the tunnel. Fourteen eyewitnesses say it was the bike’s rider and pillion passenger who really caused the crash.” Continued Reid, “Some 15 ft. in front of the Mercedes, witnesses say, a fierce flash of white light came from the motorbike and shone straight into the eyes of Henri Paul. The Mercedes ploughed into the 13th pillar on the tunnel’s left side, instantly killing Paul and Dodi who sat in its front left and back seats respectively. Within seconds, the mystery motorbike had sped away and the two men on board have never been traced.” British and French police also claimed they had been unable to trace the white Fiat Uno, which witnesses said had bumped the Mercedes, although Morgan provides evidence that the French did trace it to photographer James Andanson, who a few years later was found dead inside a locked, burnt-out vehicle with two bullet holes in his head (the French police ruled it “suicide”).

Morgan’s books provide tables of potential witnesses, not called to testify in Operation Paget or the RCJ inquest, as well as item-by-item annotation of Paget evidence and testimony, withheld from the inquest jury. Lord Justice Scott Baker, presiding over the inquest, in his formal presentation of 20 topics for the inquiry, included the following two:
•Whether and, if so in what circumstances, the Princess of Wales feared for her life;
•Whether the British or any other security services had any involvement in the collision.

Despite their obvious relevance to both counts, no Royals were called to testify, only the Queen’s Private Secretary Robert Fellowes (Diana’s brother-in-law), who was later demonstrated to have lied his head off about his role in the crucial events of the hours and days following the crash.

Near the end of Keith Allen’s “Unlawful Killing” film, clinical psychologist Oliver James delivers his own verdict, one shared by many friends of Diana, as well as her high-powered enemies: that she “could have started a movement to end the monarchy.” Or, as Allen summed up, “The British Establishment think that they have got away with murder. But then, what’s new? They’ve been getting away with murder for centuries.” But, he concluded, with the murder of Diana, the Royals have gone one too far: “We may soon witness what the British Establishment fears the most—the end of the monarchy.”

Source: Executive Intelligence Review