Squidgygate
Encyclopedia
Squidgygate refers to the pre-1990 telephone conversations between Diana, Princess of Wales
and a close friend, James Gilbey, and to the controversy surrounding how those conversations were recorded. During the calls, Gilbey affectionately called Diana by the names "Squidgy" and "Squidge". In the conversation, the Princess of Wales likens her situation to that of a character in the popular British soap opera
EastEnders
, and expresses concern that she might be pregnant.
In 1992, The Sun
newspaper publicly revealed the tapes' existence in an article entitled "Squidgygate", which is a cultural reference to the American
Watergate scandal of the early 1970s. The publication of the tapes was a highpoint of the "War of the Waleses" that accelerated the separation and eventual divorce
of The Prince
and Princess of Wales.
It is thought that the Princess's relationship with Gilbey was at its peak in 1989, suggesting that the tapes had existed for a number of years before publication. There is conjecture that Diana, knowing of the existence of the tapes, instigated contact with the journalist Andrew Morton
, resulting in the publication by Morton of the book Diana: Her True Story, and the start of the "War of the Waleses".
. In fact, subsequent events proved that this was not the whole story.
railway station, six miles from his home in the town of Abingdon, Oxfordshire
.
Cyril Reenan, a 70-year-old retired manager for the Trustee Savings Bank
, regularly listened in on non-commercial radio frequencies for amusement with his wife, in much the same way that some people listen to police frequencies using household radio sets (a practice illegal in some jurisdictions). Reenan was also a generous organiser of trips for disabled youngsters, and had previously been the recipient of a modest award from the Princess of Wales's Charities Trust. Reenan played them excerpts from a tape without having previously told them what he had recorded.
Two days later the journalists were shown round Mr Reenan's home-made eavesdropping studio, which they described as follows: "Above the scanners was a 1960s-style tape recorder with a microphone dangling down above the scanning equipment so that the couple could tape 'interesting' conversations".
Reenan was quoted as saying he was "so nervous I just want you [the reporters] to take the tape away." "I didn't know what to do with it once I'd got it. I was stuck with it, and I was frightened of it," he was quoted as saying, claiming that if the paper had told him that "the tape was 'dangerous', I would have burned it or scrubbed it out."
Reenan claimed that he had been so worried by the evident security breach that he had first thought of attempting to gain an audience with Diana: "I could have used a code-word, perhaps the nickname Squidgy... I was trying to save her face in a way." However, having thought on it "for a day, at least", Reenan decided that he "would not get to see Diana." So he "rang the Sun instead."
fortune. Gilbey, who initially denied The Sun's charges, was a 33-year-old Lotus
car-dealer who had been a friend of Diana's since childhood. Their conversation, which took place on New Year's Eve
1989, was wide-ranging. A special phone line allowed thousands of callers to hear the contents of the 30-minute tape for themselves, at 36 pence per minute.
The tape begins in mid-conversation, with the man asking: "And so, darling, what other lows today?" To which the woman replies: "I was very bad at lunch, and I nearly started blubbing. I just felt so sad and empty and thought 'bloody hell, after all I've done for this fucking family...' It's just so desperate. Always being innuendo, the fact that I'm going to do something dramatic because I can't stand the confines of this marriage [...] He makes my life real torture, I've decided."
The conversation covered topics as diverse as the BBC
soap opera
EastEnders
, and the strange looks that Diana received from the Queen Mother
: "It's not hatred, it's sort of pity and interest mixed in one [...] every time I look up, she's looking at me, and then looks away and smiles." Additionally, in view of a fascination with clairvoyance
that was later to become well-known, Diana was also heard explaining how she had startled the Bishop of Norwich
by claiming to be "aware that people I have loved and [who] have died [...] are now in the spirit world, looking after me."
Diana expressed worries about whether a recent meeting with Gilbey would be discovered. She also discussed a fear of becoming pregnant, and Gilbey referred to her as "Darling" 14 times, and as "Squidgy" (or "Squidge") 53 times.
In January 1991, after sitting on the tape for a year, Norgrove approached The Sun. The paper made a copy of her recording, and offered her £200 for her time: Norgrove refused the money, claiming that she "got scared and didn't want to know about it any more." Norgrove claimed: "I wanted to speak out now to clear up all this nonsense about a conspiracy [...] I'm not part of a Palace plot to smear the Princess of Wales." The Sun had initially published the opinions of "a senior courtier
[who] claims the tape is part of a plot to blacken Diana's name" and the verdicts of other anonymous Palace staffers, who said that the tape was "a sophisticated attempt to get even by friends loyal to Prince Charles after Diana's co-operation with the book Diana: Her True Story, by Andrew Morton."
Such speculation had not been confined to tabloid newspapers
: William Parsons, of anti-surveillance
consultants Systems Elite, remarked that the technical and atmospheric requirements for such a recording to be possible (both halves of a cellular telephone
call, with equal clarity, when the callers were over 100 miles apart, in different network cells), were so improbable as to arouse suspicion: "My money would not be on somebody accidentally picking it up [...] There is more to this than meets the eye."
Jane Norgrove was adamant: "It was just me, recording a telephone conversation in my bedroom. Nothing more and nothing less than that."
and Duchess of York
had separated months before, and now all eyes were on the next King
and Queen
, whose marriage had been the subject of rumour for years.
Speculation in the media—and in court circles—reached fever pitch. In his memoirs, Diana's private secretary Patrick Jephson recounts a fraught game of media one-upmanship
by the feuding couple: secret briefings to friendly journalists, open collaboration with TV documentaries, and separate appearances at different public events on the same day were just some of the many strategies with which Charles and Diana attempted to force each other out of the limelight. Jephson recalls that the atmosphere at Kensington Palace
at the time was "like a slowly-spreading pool of blood leaking from under a locked door."
Throughout 1991 and into 1992, Diana had been involved in secret co-operation with a previously little-known court correspondent called Andrew Morton
. The result of this liaison was the book Diana: Her True Story, which—although obviously biased because of the close involvement of the Princess—revealed in graphic detail the previously hidden disaster that the Waleses' marriage had become. Diana's bulimia, suicide
attempts and self-mutilation were spelt out unambiguously, as were Charles's relationship with Camilla Parker-Bowles, and the intrigues of Palace officials in attempting to contain the disintegrating Royal marriage.
published the findings of an analysis of the "Squidgygate" tape, commissioned from Corby
-based surveillance
specialists Audiotel International.
Audiotel concluded that the presence of data bursts on the tape was suspicious. Data bursts ("pips" at intervals of approximately 10 seconds, containing information for billing purposes) would normally be filtered out at the exchange before Cellnet transmission. That these "pips" were present at all was therefore anomalous, but they were also too fast, too loud, and exhibited a "low-frequency [audio] 'shadow'," implying "some kind of doctoring of the tape," said Audiotel's managing director, Andrew Martin, in his firm's report. "The balance of probability suggests something irregular about the recording which may indicate a rebroadcasting of the conversation some time after the conversation took place."
Within a week of the Timess announcement, a further independent analysis was carried out for the same newspaper by John Nelson of Crew Green Consulting Ltd, with assistance from Martin Colloms, audio analyst for Sony International. Their analysis demonstrated convincingly that the conversation could not have been recorded by a scanning receiver in the manner claimed by Mr Reenan. Amongst several relevant factors, there was a 50 hertz
hum in the background of the "Squidgygate" conversation together with components in the recorded speech with frequencies in excess of 4 kHz. Neither could have passed through the filters of Mr Reenan's Icom receiver or indeed have been transmitted by the cellular telephone system. The 50 Hz hum was consistent with the effect of attempting to record a telephone conversation via a direct
tap on a landline
.
Since Gilbey was known to have been speaking from a mobile phone, inside a parked car, this left Diana's telephone line at Sandringham
as the source of the recording. Nelson's analysis, written after a visit to Mr Reenan and an examination of his unsophisticated receiving system (which consisted essentially of an Icom wideband scanning receiver and a conventional television antenna), showed that the recording was most likely to have been made as a result of a local tapping of the telephone line somewhere between the female party's telephone itself, and the local exchange. Furthermore, narrow-band spectrum analysis
showed this 50 Hz "hum" to consist of two separate but superimposed components, possibly indicating a remixing of the tape after the initial recording. The spectral frequency content of the tape was demonstrably inconsistent with its supposed origin as an off-air recording of an analogue cellular telephone channel but quite feasible if the recording had been made via a local-end direct tap.
As well as the strong technical case he made against the recording, Nelson established two other salient points. The first was that Gilbey's mobile telephone was registered to the Cellnet network. Secondly, the Cellnet base-station transmitter site in Abingdon Town, the data channel of which was the only one receivable on Reenan's receiving system at the time of his visit, was not in service at the date of the alleged telephone conversation; it was first commissioned on 3 March 1990. It was therefore not possible that the purported recording could have been made off-air by Reenan or Norgrove in December 1989 or January 1990 (see below).
With regard to the data-bursts that had aroused the suspicion of Audiotel International, Colloms and Nelson stated: "We are forced to conclude that these data-bursts are not genuine, but were added later to the tape. They originated with a locally-made recording, and show that an attempt has been made to disguise a local tap by making it appear that it was recorded over cellular radio."
Telecommunications company Cellnet admitted that it had automatically conducted its own internal investigation after publication of the "Squidgygate" transcript, because Gilbey had been speaking on a Cellnet phone. "It is a very sensitive issue if a cellular network has been bugged," said Cellnet spokesman William Ostrom: "We wished to satisfy ourselves exactly what happened." Cellnet's inquiry, claimed Ostrom, had "replicated" the findings of Colloms and Nelson: Cellnet announced that it was "completely satisfied that we can dismiss this as an example of our network being eavesdropped."
In other words, three independent expert analyses of the "Squidgygate" tapes showed beyond any doubt that the recorded conversation had been the result of a direct tap on Diana's landline. Since Sandringham, like all the Royal Palaces, has its own exchange, the person who installed the tap must have had access to the premises. The person or persons responsible had then edited and remixed the fruits of their eavesdropping, doctored it to look like a live transmission by adding data bursts, and had then rebroadcast it, four days after the recording, in the vicinity of a locally-known snooper's 20ft aerial. Unfortunately the perpetrator did not realise that Reenan's receiving installation was much less impressive than it looked to a layman and the media.
: "It has been the biggest mistake of my life. To all those who have felt upset and disturbed by my stupid actions, may I say I am so sorry." The Sun, he said, had attempted to get him to give them the tape for nothing, and had told him he could be prosecuted for the recording: "I thought 'blimey, I've dropped myself right in it'. I was in a bit of a panic then."
Obviously Reenan held firm and finally received his money—although The Sun seems to have got the upper hand by using a classic tabloid "cloak-and-dagger" tactic to ensure that their unwitting subject was not initially available for further comment after the story broke: "For four days we were walking around in the dark because the Sun advised us to draw our curtains and not to touch our mail or newspapers." Jane Norgrove was also reported by the Mail to be "in hiding."
From references made in the taped conversation, it was clearly evident that Diana and Gilbey were talking on New Year's Eve, 1989, the time at which The Sun claimed both Reenan and Norgrove had recorded it. However, Reenan informed the Mail that he had recorded the tape on 4 January 1990. This was reported without comment by The Mail, directly contradicting the by-now nationally-known version of events.
The next day, an energised Reenan made more surprising admissions, telling The Oxford Mail that certain parts of the "Squidgygate" conversation had been left out by The Sun. The Sun confirmed this to The Mail, saying that they had not made public certain sections of the recording, "for fear of damaging Diana irreparably." "All the reporters in London seem to know what's on that tape," complained Reenan, "and they've all been to me to confirm it. Both my wife and I have said we can't remember, but we know what was in there." Reenan hinted darkly that there was "a lot about that tape" that had never been made public: "And I'm damn glad that it wasn't."
The Mail also issued a correction: the previous day, Reenan had claimed that he had been paid £1,000 by The Sun. He now admitted it was £6,000, and he would be giving it to charity. The glaring anomaly of the date of the recording, 4 January 1990, was conspicuously not corrected.
The national media, however, were racing ahead with their coverage of the developing royal split, and had already dropped Reenan. The Oxford Mails article alleging press harassment, censored recordings, and a revised date, were ignored. The Guardian
quoted a Sun spokesman as saying that: "Our interest in the royal story has moved on from Mr. Reenan."
Months after the story had broken, Reenan spoke to non-Sun reporters, expressing his anger over his treatment by The Sun: "When I read the transcript of the conversation between the princess and the man, there were large chunks which I knew had not come from my tape." The Sun, it seemed, had produced a hybrid of Reenan's tape and Norgrove's, Reenan's tape having run out before the end of the conversation. As for the date of the recording: "I did not understand it. I know when I heard that call, and it was 4th January. I was not even at home on New Year's Eve."
in America, which had already published excerpts from the "Squidgygate" conversation on 20 August 1992. The Sun knew it could be about to lose a major scoop
, and judged that the collapse of the Waleses' marriage was already common knowledge, and so published the "Squidgygate" transcripts on 24 August. At this time, the original recordings by Reenan and Norgrove were still in a safe vault as property of Rupert Murdoch
's News International corporation
.
Jane Norgrove, in her efforts to dispel "all this nonsense about a conspiracy," simply raised new concerns when she claimed that she had wiped her tape after giving a copy to The Sun: "I want to make clear that the Enquirers tape was nothing to do with me [...] I thought I'd better speak to the Sun again, in case people thought it was me."
Who, then, sent the Enquirer a third copy of the conversation remains unknown. Furthermore, a fourth tape was sent anonymously to Richard Kay of the Daily Mail
, in a plain brown envelope with a central London postmark
, during the same period.
. The letter, on Buckingham Palace
notepaper, suggested countering Morton's book by leaking material, damaging to the Princess of Wales, to another Royal biographer, Lady Colin Campbell
. It also mentioned that Andrew Morton's telephone was bugged (after publishing leaked details of the separation of the Duke and Duchess of York in March 1992, Morton had been warned to "watch your phones." Ten days later his office was burgled.). Buckingham Palace denounced the letter as a fake.
(then John Major
MP
) had been informed, and that she would be given her own copy of the tapes in due course. A sympathetic courtier confirmed to Diana that the tapes did indeed exist. But the day after the meeting, Diana was told that the tapes could not be used against her. She was advised that she should forget about them.
Diana's careful efforts to make sure that Morton's revelations were not traceable directly to her—which included using a friend, James Coldhurst, to run Dictaphone
recordings to Morton—had paid off. Even Jephson was unaware of her actions till much later, stoutly defending her against whisperers: even though, as he adds, many in Palace circles went "half-mad" trying to prove her involvement.
Andrew Morton's own speculation on the alleged tape-recordings of Diana's "damning" calls was added to the 1993 reprint of Diana: Her True Story: "Was Diana's telephone really bugged—and if so by whom—or was it an elaborate bluff aimed at extracting a confession from the Princess about her rumoured complicity in the preparation of my book?"
Jephson himself recalled that he had heard "a vague rumour about some tapes" before, but had "dismissed it as just another among so many ghastly whisperings, gobbets of disinformation and black propaganda that were by then my daily diet. This time, however, the rumours were true and 'Squidgygate' burst upon us."
. Home Secretary
Kenneth Clarke
said: "The security services are strictly controlled in their telephone tapping, and I know of no evidence whatever to indicate that they were involved." Such suggestions, he added, were "wild" and "extremely silly." This was a rather surprising statement, since the incident had not, as far as is known, at this stage been investigated in any official capacity.
On the same day as these remarks, members of the Commons
all-party Home Affairs Select Committee
had their first meeting with Dame
Stella Rimington
, director general of MI5. Committee member John Greenway
MP (Conservative
) remarked that the recent "Camillagate" leak "strengthens the case for a parliamentary committee to have responsibility to oversee or scrutinise the work of the security services [...] I suspect that colleagues will want to ask how true the allegations [of MI5 complicity in the 'Camillagate' leak] are, and I suspect that she [Rimington] will refuse to tell us." No record exists of matters discussed at the meeting.
The first major "Establishment" figure to question the official line on "Squidgygate" was Lord Rees-Mogg, the arch-conservative chairman of the Broadcasting Standards Authority
. He had proved an early proponent of the "rogue spies" school of thought in January 1993, when he used his Times column to accuse elements within the British security services
of engineering the leaks. "All those tapes were made within a month," he wrote. "The most likely explanation is that MI5 did it to protect the Royal Family
at a time of danger from the IRA
. I don't think there was any sense of wrong-doing, but once they were made there was the danger of a leak."
Examples of such eavesdropping and leaking follow.
A former Canadian Security Intelligence Service
officer, Mike Frost, has told how Canada
's listening capabilities had been utilised by Margaret Thatcher
, when Prime Minister, to spy on two unnamed cabinet colleagues. "She wanted to find out not what they were saying, but what they were thinking," he said. Government Communications Headquarters
(GCHQ), the government's listening post in Cheltenham
, Gloucestershire
, was to have been used to carry out this surveillance, but they approached the Canadian intelligence services, because the operation was too politically sensitive. The spying was organised from the offices of Macdonald House
in Grosvenor Square
, London
, the home of the Canadian High Commissioner. The Canadian officer who led the spying operation personally drove to GCHQ to deliver the fruits of the snooping: tape-recordings of the ministers' communications over a three-week period. Frost did not know, or perhaps simply did not say, what use was made of these tapes.
During the "Spycatcher
" controversy of 1987, the British Conservative government sought to suppress the Australia
n publication of the memoirs of Peter Wright
(a former deputy director of MI5). Labour Party
leader Neil Kinnock
suddenly found himself accused by the Conservative Party of talking to Wright's lawyers. Kinnock had indeed done so, via international telephone, but with a general election looming, Kinnock apparently did not want to be seen as some kind of "security risk", and so he declined to ask publicly how the Conservative Party had come to know the contents of his private phone calls.
was known to be attempting to sell a complete copy of the original tape, asking price £50,000. The re-ignition of the controversy over "Squidgygate" had been instantaneous: the date of the "Camillagate" recording was known to be 18 December 1989—just weeks before the "Squidygate" tape had been recorded.
Kenneth Clarke
told the House of Commons: "There is nothing to investigate. [...] I am absolutely certain that the allegation that this is anything to do with the security services or GCHQ [...] is being put out by newspapers, who I think feel rather guilty that they are using plainly tapped telephone calls."
The Labour Party, then in Opposition
, accused Kenneth Clarke of irresponsibility, issuing a statement: "He has to show that he is taking these allegations seriously, otherwise he will be perceived as being unable to control an organisation for which he is responsible."
's government eventually published two reports, both of which cleared MI5 and MI6
of involvement in the "Royalgates" tapes. One of these was the annual report of the Interceptions Commissioner, Lord Bingham of Cornhill, who oversaw the intelligence-gathering practices of the security services. Excerpt follows: "[Lord Bingham] was impressed by the scrupulous adherence to the statutory provisions [against misconduct] of those involved in the [intelligence-gathering] procedures." In a clear reference to the "Squidgygate" affair, he commented on "the stories which occasionally circulated in the press with regard to the interceptions by MI5, MI6 and GCHQ," stating that such stories were, in his experience, "without exception false, and gave an entirely misleading impression to the public both of the extent of official interception and of the targets against which interception is directed."
Conservative MP Richard Shepherd
called the official reports: "two old buffers saying that in their opinion the security services act with integrity." The National Heritage Secretary Peter Brook
gave MPs "a categorical assurance that the heads of the agencies concerned have said there is no truth in the rumours."
The "Camillagate" tape showed no signs of suspicious treatment, and appeared to be just what it was claimed to have been: a recording, "from air", of Charles and Camilla talking privately on 18 December 1989.
Chance interception of high-level communication is not unknown: during the 1982 Falklands conflict
, a radio ham in London had intercepted and taped a conversation between the then-Prime Minister
's press secretary Sir Bernard Ingham
and the Assistant Director-General of the BBC, in which the BBC
was pressurised into sharing war footage with commercial rivals ITN.
The "Squidgygate" tape showed clear signs of having been doctored and rebroadcast on 4 January 1990; four days after its initial interception on New Year's Eve, 1989. However, there is overwhelming evidence to suggest that it could not have been recorded off-air in the manner claimed by Reenan and Norgrove.
was so disturbed by the "Squidygate" episode that she requested that MI5 conduct an investigation to discover the culprit or culprits. Since the motive could not have been financial, said the investigators—the only winners were the radio hams and the press—it must have been political. Home Secretary Kenneth Clarke admitted he was the one who blocked a full scale inquiry into the tapes because of his fear that it would be uncovered that the tapes did in fact come from the Secret Service
In 2002, Diana's former Personal Protection Officer
, Inspector Ken Wharfe revealed that the investigation had "identified all those involved, but for legal reasons I cannot expand further, and nor is it necessary to do so." Wharfe added, however, that: "It does [...] lend credence to the Princess's belief, so often dismissed by her detractors, that the Establishment was out to destroy her." This directly contradicts the statements of Home Secretary Kenneth Clarke, and conflicts with the statements of Lord Bingham of Cornhill—a Privy Councillor since 1986—whose report claims that the interception services behaved properly. Wharfe later admitted this was just speculation on his part but that he did believe the royal family was being bugged by the GCHQ in order to protect them from the IRA. The GCHQ denied this allegation.
Diana pulled up a carpet in an upstairs room at Kensington Palace, to show Jephson what she believed was evidence of bugging: fresh sawdust and disturbed planks: "She pointed silently at the sawdust, and nodded significantly." Jephson tried to reassure her that this was simply the result of the rewiring of all the Royal palaces, following the 1992 fire at Windsor Castle
, but Diana, after gesturing for him to remain silent, was evidently unconvinced.
The tabloid Sunday Mirror
carried the story of how Palace courtiers were ready to press the Queen to let the Royal Warrant
s for Harrods
lapse: "It would be a huge blow to the ego of store owner Mohamed al-Fayed
—and would infuriate Diana [...] but the Royal Family are furious about the frolics of Di, 36, and Dodi Fayed, 41, which they believe have further undermined the Monarchy... Prince Philip
, in particular has made no secret as to how he feels about his [former] daughter-in-law's latest man, referring to Dodi as an 'oily bed-hopper'."
After noting that MI6 had prepared a report on the Fayeds, which would be presented at an early September meeting of the Royal policy think-tank, The Way Ahead Group, the paper quoted a friend of the Royals as saying: "Prince Philip has let rip several times recently about the Fayeds: at a dinner party, during a country shoot, and while on a visit to close friends in Germany. 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. Options must include exile, although that would be very difficult, as—when all is said and done—she is the mother of the future King of England [sic]."
Mirror columnist Chris Hutchins could not have been aware that events later that night would mean his words would be read in a very different light. He had written in the paper's "Confidential" feature:
Hutchins concluded: "I must remember to take it up with Diana next time we find ourselves on adjacent running machines at our West London gym."
The second "Squidgygate" tape disappeared from the media without trace, before it had even had a chance to appear, with no further information on its contents, origins, or on its sudden surfacing in private hands after a gap of some seven years.
Freedom of Information Act
request. The news agency's request for documents on Diana, held by America's National Security Agency
, had been rejected, but the rejection notice itself revealed that a total of 1,056 pages of documents is held by the National Security Agency
(NSA), Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA), State Department
, and the Defense Intelligence Agency
(DIA). APB quoted John Pike, an intelligence expert from the Federation of American Scientists
, as saying that the NSA was "insatiably curious, and monitors everyone of interest outside the US."
A spokesman for the NSA, which holds 124 pages from "39 NSA-originated and NSA-controlled documents", declined to answer further questions about the documents, as did a spokeswoman for the CIA, which has at least two documents.
When asked why the Defense Intelligence Agency might be holding documents on Diana, Lieutenant-Colonel James MacNeil said he had "no idea why. All of our stuff is on military [matters]. Obviously she wasn't in the military."
After a Freedom of Information Act request filed by The Guardian
newspaper in 1999, the NSA told the paper that it was—and is still—holding reports under both "secret" and "top secret" classifications, and that: "these documents cannot be declassified because their disclosure could reasonably be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security." The agency said it also needed to protect its sources: "The reports contain only references to Diana, Princess of Wales, acquired incidentally from intelligence gathering. It is neither NSA policy or practice to target British subjects in conducting our foreign intelligence mission. However, other countries could communicate about these subjects; therefore, this agency could acquire intelligence concerning British subjects."
U.S. journalist Gerald Posner
was played innocuous extracts from the NSA tapes of Diana's conversations in early 1999.
Diana, and other international figures including Pope John Paul II
and Mother Theresa of Calcutta
, were all listened in on by the Echelon monitoring system, a world-wide monitoring network capable of processing millions of messages every hour. "'Anybody who is politically active,' said Madsen, 'will eventually end up on the NSA's radar screen.'"
In December 1998, the French magistrate who investigated Diana's death, Hervé Stephan, wrote to the American secret services to request the 1,056-page dossier of transcripted calls. This request was refused a month or so later.
royal editors, Clive Goodman
and Glenn Mulcaire
, were charged with having accessed voicemail messages on eight occasions between January and August, 2006, and conspiring to intercept communications.
Complaints by staff at Clarence House
, the official residence to the Prince of Wales, prompted the investigation that led to the arrests.
Diana, Princess of Wales
Diana, Princess of Wales was the first wife of Charles, Prince of Wales, whom she married on 29 July 1981, and an international charity and fundraising figure, as well as a preeminent celebrity of the late 20th century...
and a close friend, James Gilbey, and to the controversy surrounding how those conversations were recorded. During the calls, Gilbey affectionately called Diana by the names "Squidgy" and "Squidge". In the conversation, the Princess of Wales likens her situation to that of a character in the popular British soap opera
Soap opera
A soap opera, sometimes called "soap" for short, is an ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on radio or as television programming. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble,...
EastEnders
EastEnders
EastEnders is a British television soap opera, first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC One on 19 February 1985 and continuing to today. EastEnders storylines examine the domestic and professional lives of the people who live and work in the fictional London Borough of Walford in the East End...
, and expresses concern that she might be pregnant.
In 1992, The Sun
The Sun (newspaper)
The Sun is a daily national tabloid newspaper published in the United Kingdom and owned by News Corporation. Sister editions are published in Glasgow and Dublin...
newspaper publicly revealed the tapes' existence in an article entitled "Squidgygate", which is a cultural reference to the American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Watergate scandal of the early 1970s. The publication of the tapes was a highpoint of the "War of the Waleses" that accelerated the separation and eventual divorce
Divorce
Divorce is the final termination of a marital union, canceling the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage and dissolving the bonds of matrimony between the parties...
of The Prince
Charles, Prince of Wales
Prince Charles, Prince of Wales is the heir apparent and eldest son of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. Since 1958 his major title has been His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales. In Scotland he is additionally known as The Duke of Rothesay...
and Princess of Wales.
It is thought that the Princess's relationship with Gilbey was at its peak in 1989, suggesting that the tapes had existed for a number of years before publication. There is conjecture that Diana, knowing of the existence of the tapes, instigated contact with the journalist Andrew Morton
Andrew Morton (writer)
Andrew David Morton is a former British Fleet Street journalist, a notable writer and biographer.Before moving into a career in journalism, he attended grammar school, then studied history at the University of Sussex....
, resulting in the publication by Morton of the book Diana: Her True Story, and the start of the "War of the Waleses".
How the tape came to be published
The tape was published after it was accidentally recorded by a retired bank manager who was an amateur radio operatorAmateur radio operator
An amateur radio operator is an individual who typically uses equipment at an amateur radio station to engage in two-way personal communications with other similar individuals on radio frequencies assigned to the amateur radio service. Amateur radio operators have been granted an amateur radio...
. In fact, subsequent events proved that this was not the whole story.
First eavesdropper: Cyril Reenan
In January 1990, two reporters from The Sun newspaper met Cyril Reenan in the parking bay of DidcotDidcot
Didcot is a town and civil parish in Oxfordshire about south of Oxford. Until 1974 it was in Berkshire, but was transferred to Oxfordshire in that year, and from Wallingford Rural District to the district of South Oxfordshire...
railway station, six miles from his home in the town of Abingdon, Oxfordshire
Oxfordshire
Oxfordshire is a county in the South East region of England, bordering on Warwickshire and Northamptonshire , Buckinghamshire , Berkshire , Wiltshire and Gloucestershire ....
.
Cyril Reenan, a 70-year-old retired manager for the Trustee Savings Bank
Trustee Savings Bank
The Trustee Savings Bank was a British financial institution which specialised in accepting savings deposits from the poor. They did not trade their shares on the stock market and, unlike mutually held building societies, depositors had no voting rights nor the ability to direct the financial and...
, regularly listened in on non-commercial radio frequencies for amusement with his wife, in much the same way that some people listen to police frequencies using household radio sets (a practice illegal in some jurisdictions). Reenan was also a generous organiser of trips for disabled youngsters, and had previously been the recipient of a modest award from the Princess of Wales's Charities Trust. Reenan played them excerpts from a tape without having previously told them what he had recorded.
Two days later the journalists were shown round Mr Reenan's home-made eavesdropping studio, which they described as follows: "Above the scanners was a 1960s-style tape recorder with a microphone dangling down above the scanning equipment so that the couple could tape 'interesting' conversations".
Reenan was quoted as saying he was "so nervous I just want you [the reporters] to take the tape away." "I didn't know what to do with it once I'd got it. I was stuck with it, and I was frightened of it," he was quoted as saying, claiming that if the paper had told him that "the tape was 'dangerous', I would have burned it or scrubbed it out."
Reenan claimed that he had been so worried by the evident security breach that he had first thought of attempting to gain an audience with Diana: "I could have used a code-word, perhaps the nickname Squidgy... I was trying to save her face in a way." However, having thought on it "for a day, at least", Reenan decided that he "would not get to see Diana." So he "rang the Sun instead."
Publication
Published in The Sun on 23 August 1992, "Squidgygate" (initially called "Dianagate") was the front-page revelation of the existence of a tape-recording of Diana, Princess of Wales talking to a close friend, who later turned out to be Gilbey, heir to the eponymous ginGin
Gin is a spirit which derives its predominant flavour from juniper berries . Although several different styles of gin have existed since its origins, it is broadly differentiated into two basic legal categories...
fortune. Gilbey, who initially denied The Sun
Lotus Cars
Lotus Cars is a British manufacturer of sports and racing cars based at the former site of RAF Hethel, a World War II airfield in Norfolk. The company designs and builds race and production automobiles of light weight and fine handling characteristics...
car-dealer who had been a friend of Diana's since childhood. Their conversation, which took place on New Year's Eve
New Year's Eve
New Year's Eve is observed annually on December 31, the final day of any given year in the Gregorian calendar. In modern societies, New Year's Eve is often celebrated at social gatherings, during which participants dance, eat, consume alcoholic beverages, and watch or light fireworks to mark the...
1989, was wide-ranging. A special phone line allowed thousands of callers to hear the contents of the 30-minute tape for themselves, at 36 pence per minute.
The tape begins in mid-conversation, with the man asking: "And so, darling, what other lows today?" To which the woman replies: "I was very bad at lunch, and I nearly started blubbing. I just felt so sad and empty and thought 'bloody hell, after all I've done for this fucking family...' It's just so desperate. Always being innuendo, the fact that I'm going to do something dramatic because I can't stand the confines of this marriage [...] He makes my life real torture, I've decided."
The conversation covered topics as diverse as the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
soap opera
Soap opera
A soap opera, sometimes called "soap" for short, is an ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on radio or as television programming. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble,...
EastEnders
EastEnders
EastEnders is a British television soap opera, first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC One on 19 February 1985 and continuing to today. EastEnders storylines examine the domestic and professional lives of the people who live and work in the fictional London Borough of Walford in the East End...
, and the strange looks that Diana received from the Queen Mother
Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon
Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon was the queen consort of King George VI from 1936 until her husband's death in 1952, after which she was known as Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, to avoid confusion with her daughter, Queen Elizabeth II...
: "It's not hatred, it's sort of pity and interest mixed in one [...] every time I look up, she's looking at me, and then looks away and smiles." Additionally, in view of a fascination with clairvoyance
Clairvoyance
The term clairvoyance is used to refer to the ability to gain information about an object, person, location or physical event through means other than the known human senses, a form of extra-sensory perception...
that was later to become well-known, Diana was also heard explaining how she had startled the Bishop of Norwich
Bishop of Norwich
The Bishop of Norwich is the Ordinary of the Church of England Diocese of Norwich in the Province of Canterbury.The diocese covers most of the County of Norfolk and part of Suffolk. The see is in the City of Norwich where the seat is located at the Cathedral Church of the Holy and Undivided...
by claiming to be "aware that people I have loved and [who] have died [...] are now in the spirit world, looking after me."
Diana expressed worries about whether a recent meeting with Gilbey would be discovered. She also discussed a fear of becoming pregnant, and Gilbey referred to her as "Darling" 14 times, and as "Squidgy" (or "Squidge") 53 times.
Second eavesdropper: Jane Norgrove
On 5 September 1992, The Sun announced that the same call had also been recorded by another Oxfordshire eavesdropper, 25-year-old Jane Norgrove, who claimed she had recorded the call on New Year's Eve 1989, but "didn't even listen to it. I just put the tape in a drawer. I didn't play it until weeks later, and then I suddenly realised who was speaking on the tape."In January 1991, after sitting on the tape for a year, Norgrove approached The Sun. The paper made a copy of her recording, and offered her £200 for her time: Norgrove refused the money, claiming that she "got scared and didn't want to know about it any more." Norgrove claimed: "I wanted to speak out now to clear up all this nonsense about a conspiracy [...] I'm not part of a Palace plot to smear the Princess of Wales." The Sun had initially published the opinions of "a senior courtier
Courtier
A courtier is a person who is often in attendance at the court of a king or other royal personage. Historically the court was the centre of government as well as the residence of the monarch, and social and political life were often completely mixed together...
[who] claims the tape is part of a plot to blacken Diana's name" and the verdicts of other anonymous Palace staffers, who said that the tape was "a sophisticated attempt to get even by friends loyal to Prince Charles after Diana's co-operation with the book Diana: Her True Story, by Andrew Morton."
Such speculation had not been confined to tabloid newspapers
Tabloid journalism
Tabloid journalism tends to emphasize topics such as sensational crime stories, astrology, gossip columns about the personal lives of celebrities and sports stars, and junk food news...
: William Parsons, of anti-surveillance
Surveillance
Surveillance is the monitoring of the behavior, activities, or other changing information, usually of people. It is sometimes done in a surreptitious manner...
consultants Systems Elite, remarked that the technical and atmospheric requirements for such a recording to be possible (both halves of a cellular telephone
Mobile phone
A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...
call, with equal clarity, when the callers were over 100 miles apart, in different network cells), were so improbable as to arouse suspicion: "My money would not be on somebody accidentally picking it up [...] There is more to this than meets the eye."
Jane Norgrove was adamant: "It was just me, recording a telephone conversation in my bedroom. Nothing more and nothing less than that."
Context and reaction
At the time of publication, the Prince and Princess of Wales, engaged in acrimonious pre-divorce proceedings, were involved in a protracted battle for public sympathy which became known as the "War of the Waleses". The DukeDuke of York
The Duke of York is a title of nobility in the British peerage. Since the 15th century, it has, when granted, usually been given to the second son of the British monarch. The title has been created a remarkable eleven times, eight as "Duke of York" and three as the double-barreled "Duke of York and...
and Duchess of York
Sarah, Duchess of York
Sarah, Duchess of York is a British charity patron, spokesperson, writer, film producer, television personality and former member of the British Royal Family. She is the former wife of Prince Andrew, Duke of York, whom she married from 1986 to 1996...
had separated months before, and now all eyes were on the next King
Monarch
A monarch is the person who heads a monarchy. This is a form of government in which a state or polity is ruled or controlled by an individual who typically inherits the throne by birth and occasionally rules for life or until abdication...
and Queen
Queen consort
A queen consort is the wife of a reigning king. A queen consort usually shares her husband's rank and holds the feminine equivalent of the king's monarchical titles. Historically, queens consort do not share the king regnant's political and military powers. Most queens in history were queens consort...
, whose marriage had been the subject of rumour for years.
Speculation in the media—and in court circles—reached fever pitch. In his memoirs, Diana's private secretary Patrick Jephson recounts a fraught game of media one-upmanship
One-upmanship
One-upmanship is the art or practice of successively outdoing a competitor.The term originated as the title of a book by Stephen Potter, published in 1952 as a follow-up to The Theory and Practice of Gamesmanship and Lifemanship titles in his series of tongue-in-cheek self-help books, and film ...
by the feuding couple: secret briefings to friendly journalists, open collaboration with TV documentaries, and separate appearances at different public events on the same day were just some of the many strategies with which Charles and Diana attempted to force each other out of the limelight. Jephson recalls that the atmosphere at Kensington Palace
Kensington Palace
Kensington Palace is a royal residence set in Kensington Gardens in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London, England. It has been a residence of the British Royal Family since the 17th century and is the official London residence of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, the Duke and...
at the time was "like a slowly-spreading pool of blood leaking from under a locked door."
Throughout 1991 and into 1992, Diana had been involved in secret co-operation with a previously little-known court correspondent called Andrew Morton
Andrew Morton (writer)
Andrew David Morton is a former British Fleet Street journalist, a notable writer and biographer.Before moving into a career in journalism, he attended grammar school, then studied history at the University of Sussex....
. The result of this liaison was the book Diana: Her True Story, which—although obviously biased because of the close involvement of the Princess—revealed in graphic detail the previously hidden disaster that the Waleses' marriage had become. Diana's bulimia, suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
attempts and self-mutilation were spelt out unambiguously, as were Charles's relationship with Camilla Parker-Bowles, and the intrigues of Palace officials in attempting to contain the disintegrating Royal marriage.
Analysis of the tape
In 1993, The Sunday TimesThe Sunday Times (UK)
The Sunday Times is a Sunday broadsheet newspaper, distributed in the United Kingdom. The Sunday Times is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News International, which is in turn owned by News Corporation. Times Newspapers also owns The Times, but the two papers were founded...
published the findings of an analysis of the "Squidgygate" tape, commissioned from Corby
Corby
Corby Town is a town and borough located in the county of Northamptonshire. Corby Town is 23 miles north-east of the county town, Northampton. The borough had a population of 53,174 at the 2001 Census; the town on its own accounted for 49,222 of this figure...
-based surveillance
Surveillance
Surveillance is the monitoring of the behavior, activities, or other changing information, usually of people. It is sometimes done in a surreptitious manner...
specialists Audiotel International.
Audiotel concluded that the presence of data bursts on the tape was suspicious. Data bursts ("pips" at intervals of approximately 10 seconds, containing information for billing purposes) would normally be filtered out at the exchange before Cellnet transmission. That these "pips" were present at all was therefore anomalous, but they were also too fast, too loud, and exhibited a "low-frequency [audio] 'shadow'," implying "some kind of doctoring of the tape," said Audiotel's managing director, Andrew Martin, in his firm's report. "The balance of probability suggests something irregular about the recording which may indicate a rebroadcasting of the conversation some time after the conversation took place."
Within a week of the Timess announcement, a further independent analysis was carried out for the same newspaper by John Nelson of Crew Green Consulting Ltd, with assistance from Martin Colloms, audio analyst for Sony International. Their analysis demonstrated convincingly that the conversation could not have been recorded by a scanning receiver in the manner claimed by Mr Reenan. Amongst several relevant factors, there was a 50 hertz
Hertz
The hertz is the SI unit of frequency defined as the number of cycles per second of a periodic phenomenon. One of its most common uses is the description of the sine wave, particularly those used in radio and audio applications....
hum in the background of the "Squidgygate" conversation together with components in the recorded speech with frequencies in excess of 4 kHz. Neither could have passed through the filters of Mr Reenan's Icom receiver or indeed have been transmitted by the cellular telephone system. The 50 Hz hum was consistent with the effect of attempting to record a telephone conversation via a direct
Telephone tapping
Telephone tapping is the monitoring of telephone and Internet conversations by a third party, often by covert means. The wire tap received its name because, historically, the monitoring connection was an actual electrical tap on the telephone line...
tap on a landline
Landline
A landline was originally an overland telegraph wire, as opposed to an undersea cable. Currently, landline refers to a telephone line which travels through a solid medium, either metal wire or optical fibre, as distinguished from a mobile cellular line, where transmission is via radio waves...
.
Since Gilbey was known to have been speaking from a mobile phone, inside a parked car, this left Diana's telephone line at Sandringham
Sandringham House
Sandringham House is a country house on of land near the village of Sandringham in Norfolk, England. The house is privately owned by the British Royal Family and is located on the royal Sandringham Estate, which lies within the Norfolk Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.-History and current...
as the source of the recording. Nelson's analysis, written after a visit to Mr Reenan and an examination of his unsophisticated receiving system (which consisted essentially of an Icom wideband scanning receiver and a conventional television antenna), showed that the recording was most likely to have been made as a result of a local tapping of the telephone line somewhere between the female party's telephone itself, and the local exchange. Furthermore, narrow-band spectrum analysis
Spectrum analysis
Spectrum, also known as emission spectrochemical analysis, is the original scientific method of charting and analyzing the chemical properties of matter and gases by looking at the bands in their optical spectrum...
showed this 50 Hz "hum" to consist of two separate but superimposed components, possibly indicating a remixing of the tape after the initial recording. The spectral frequency content of the tape was demonstrably inconsistent with its supposed origin as an off-air recording of an analogue cellular telephone channel but quite feasible if the recording had been made via a local-end direct tap.
As well as the strong technical case he made against the recording, Nelson established two other salient points. The first was that Gilbey's mobile telephone was registered to the Cellnet network. Secondly, the Cellnet base-station transmitter site in Abingdon Town, the data channel of which was the only one receivable on Reenan's receiving system at the time of his visit, was not in service at the date of the alleged telephone conversation; it was first commissioned on 3 March 1990. It was therefore not possible that the purported recording could have been made off-air by Reenan or Norgrove in December 1989 or January 1990 (see below).
With regard to the data-bursts that had aroused the suspicion of Audiotel International, Colloms and Nelson stated: "We are forced to conclude that these data-bursts are not genuine, but were added later to the tape. They originated with a locally-made recording, and show that an attempt has been made to disguise a local tap by making it appear that it was recorded over cellular radio."
Telecommunications company Cellnet admitted that it had automatically conducted its own internal investigation after publication of the "Squidgygate" transcript, because Gilbey had been speaking on a Cellnet phone. "It is a very sensitive issue if a cellular network has been bugged," said Cellnet spokesman William Ostrom: "We wished to satisfy ourselves exactly what happened." Cellnet's inquiry, claimed Ostrom, had "replicated" the findings of Colloms and Nelson: Cellnet announced that it was "completely satisfied that we can dismiss this as an example of our network being eavesdropped."
In other words, three independent expert analyses of the "Squidgygate" tapes showed beyond any doubt that the recorded conversation had been the result of a direct tap on Diana's landline. Since Sandringham, like all the Royal Palaces, has its own exchange, the person who installed the tap must have had access to the premises. The person or persons responsible had then edited and remixed the fruits of their eavesdropping, doctored it to look like a live transmission by adding data bursts, and had then rebroadcast it, four days after the recording, in the vicinity of a locally-known snooper's 20ft aerial. Unfortunately the perpetrator did not realise that Reenan's receiving installation was much less impressive than it looked to a layman and the media.
The timing discrepancy
After the publication of the Squidgygate story, Cyril Reenan told a reporter from The Oxford MailThe Oxford Times
The Oxford Times is a weekly newspaper, published each Thursday in Oxford, England. It is published from a large production facility at Osney Mead, west Oxford, and is owned by Newsquest, the UK subsidiary of US-based Gannett Company....
: "It has been the biggest mistake of my life. To all those who have felt upset and disturbed by my stupid actions, may I say I am so sorry." The Sun, he said, had attempted to get him to give them the tape for nothing, and had told him he could be prosecuted for the recording: "I thought 'blimey, I've dropped myself right in it'. I was in a bit of a panic then."
Obviously Reenan held firm and finally received his money—although The Sun seems to have got the upper hand by using a classic tabloid "cloak-and-dagger" tactic to ensure that their unwitting subject was not initially available for further comment after the story broke: "For four days we were walking around in the dark because the Sun advised us to draw our curtains and not to touch our mail or newspapers." Jane Norgrove was also reported by the Mail to be "in hiding."
From references made in the taped conversation, it was clearly evident that Diana and Gilbey were talking on New Year's Eve, 1989, the time at which The Sun claimed both Reenan and Norgrove had recorded it. However, Reenan informed the Mail that he had recorded the tape on 4 January 1990. This was reported without comment by The Mail, directly contradicting the by-now nationally-known version of events.
The next day, an energised Reenan made more surprising admissions, telling The Oxford Mail that certain parts of the "Squidgygate" conversation had been left out by The Sun. The Sun confirmed this to The Mail, saying that they had not made public certain sections of the recording, "for fear of damaging Diana irreparably." "All the reporters in London seem to know what's on that tape," complained Reenan, "and they've all been to me to confirm it. Both my wife and I have said we can't remember, but we know what was in there." Reenan hinted darkly that there was "a lot about that tape" that had never been made public: "And I'm damn glad that it wasn't."
The Mail also issued a correction: the previous day, Reenan had claimed that he had been paid £1,000 by The Sun. He now admitted it was £6,000, and he would be giving it to charity. The glaring anomaly of the date of the recording, 4 January 1990, was conspicuously not corrected.
The national media, however, were racing ahead with their coverage of the developing royal split, and had already dropped Reenan. The Oxford Mails article alleging press harassment, censored recordings, and a revised date, were ignored. The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
quoted a Sun spokesman as saying that: "Our interest in the royal story has moved on from Mr. Reenan."
Months after the story had broken, Reenan spoke to non-Sun reporters, expressing his anger over his treatment by The Sun: "When I read the transcript of the conversation between the princess and the man, there were large chunks which I knew had not come from my tape." The Sun, it seemed, had produced a hybrid of Reenan's tape and Norgrove's, Reenan's tape having run out before the end of the conversation. As for the date of the recording: "I did not understand it. I know when I heard that call, and it was 4th January. I was not even at home on New Year's Eve."
Apparent third and fourth copies of the tape
The Sun had originally been prompted to run the story by The National EnquirerThe National Enquirer
The National Enquirer is an American supermarket tabloid now published by American Media Inc . Founded in 1926, the tabloid has gone through a variety of changes over the years....
in America, which had already published excerpts from the "Squidgygate" conversation on 20 August 1992. The Sun knew it could be about to lose a major scoop
Scoop (term)
Scoop is an informal term used in journalism. The word connotes originality, importance, surprise or excitement, secrecy and exclusivity.Stories likely considered to be scoops are important news, likely to interest or concern many people. A scoop is typically a new story, or a new aspect to an...
, and judged that the collapse of the Waleses' marriage was already common knowledge, and so published the "Squidgygate" transcripts on 24 August. At this time, the original recordings by Reenan and Norgrove were still in a safe vault as property of Rupert Murdoch
Rupert Murdoch
Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KSG is an Australian-American business magnate. He is the founder and Chairman and CEO of , the world's second-largest media conglomerate....
's News International corporation
News International
News International Ltd is the United Kingdom newspaper publishing division of News Corporation. Until June 2002, it was called News International plc....
.
Jane Norgrove, in her efforts to dispel "all this nonsense about a conspiracy," simply raised new concerns when she claimed that she had wiped her tape after giving a copy to The Sun: "I want to make clear that the Enquirers tape was nothing to do with me [...] I thought I'd better speak to the Sun again, in case people thought it was me."
Who, then, sent the Enquirer a third copy of the conversation remains unknown. Furthermore, a fourth tape was sent anonymously to Richard Kay of the Daily Mail
Daily Mail
The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982...
, in a plain brown envelope with a central London postmark
Postmark
thumb|USS TexasA postmark is a postal marking made on a letter, package, postcard or the like indicating the date and time that the item was delivered into the care of the postal service...
, during the same period.
Leaks, taps and burglary
On Monday 31 August 1992, the Daily Mirror had published a letter, purportedly from one Palace advisor to another (both names were withheld). It had originally been sent anonymously to the New York PostNew York Post
The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...
. The letter, on Buckingham Palace
Buckingham Palace
Buckingham Palace, in London, is the principal residence and office of the British monarch. Located in the City of Westminster, the palace is a setting for state occasions and royal hospitality...
notepaper, suggested countering Morton's book by leaking material, damaging to the Princess of Wales, to another Royal biographer, Lady Colin Campbell
Lady Colin Campbell
Lady Colin Campbell, , is a British writer, biographer, autobiographer, novelist, television and radio personality, known for her biography of Diana, Princess of Wales, The Real Diana, as well as other books on the Royal Family and the international elite.Campbell was born in Jamaica, the child of...
. It also mentioned that Andrew Morton's telephone was bugged (after publishing leaked details of the separation of the Duke and Duchess of York in March 1992, Morton had been warned to "watch your phones." Ten days later his office was burgled.). Buckingham Palace denounced the letter as a fake.
Earlier claims of Diana being bugged
Early in 1992, if Diana herself is to be believed, several senior members of the Queen's household staff had met with Diana and told her of the existence of tape-recordings of her conversations at Kensington Palace. It was said to her that these tapes contained "damning evidence" of the princess's relationship with the media. She was told that the Prime MinisterPrime Minister of the United Kingdom
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the Head of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister and Cabinet are collectively accountable for their policies and actions to the Sovereign, to Parliament, to their political party and...
(then John Major
John Major
Sir John Major, is a British Conservative politician, who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1990–1997...
MP
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
) had been informed, and that she would be given her own copy of the tapes in due course. A sympathetic courtier confirmed to Diana that the tapes did indeed exist. But the day after the meeting, Diana was told that the tapes could not be used against her. She was advised that she should forget about them.
Diana's careful efforts to make sure that Morton's revelations were not traceable directly to her—which included using a friend, James Coldhurst, to run Dictaphone
Dictaphone
Dictaphone was an American company, a producer of dictation machines—sound recording devices most commonly used to record speech for later playback or to be typed into print. The name "Dictaphone" is a trademark, but in some places it has also become a common way to refer to all such devices, and...
recordings to Morton—had paid off. Even Jephson was unaware of her actions till much later, stoutly defending her against whisperers: even though, as he adds, many in Palace circles went "half-mad" trying to prove her involvement.
Andrew Morton's own speculation on the alleged tape-recordings of Diana's "damning" calls was added to the 1993 reprint of Diana: Her True Story: "Was Diana's telephone really bugged—and if so by whom—or was it an elaborate bluff aimed at extracting a confession from the Princess about her rumoured complicity in the preparation of my book?"
Jephson himself recalled that he had heard "a vague rumour about some tapes" before, but had "dismissed it as just another among so many ghastly whisperings, gobbets of disinformation and black propaganda that were by then my daily diet. This time, however, the rumours were true and 'Squidgygate' burst upon us."
Government reaction
Suspicion about responsibility for the "Squidgygate" leak (perhaps naturally) focused on the United Kingdom's security service, MI5MI5
The Security Service, commonly known as MI5 , is the United Kingdom's internal counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its core intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service focused on foreign threats, Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence...
. Home Secretary
Home Secretary
The Secretary of State for the Home Department, commonly known as the Home Secretary, is the minister in charge of the Home Office of the United Kingdom, and one of the country's four Great Offices of State...
Kenneth Clarke
Kenneth Clarke
Kenneth Harry "Ken" Clarke, QC, MP is a British Conservative politician, currently Member of Parliament for Rushcliffe, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice. He was first elected to Parliament in 1970; and appointed a minister in Edward Heath's government, in 1972, and is one of...
said: "The security services are strictly controlled in their telephone tapping, and I know of no evidence whatever to indicate that they were involved." Such suggestions, he added, were "wild" and "extremely silly." This was a rather surprising statement, since the incident had not, as far as is known, at this stage been investigated in any official capacity.
On the same day as these remarks, members of the Commons
British House of Commons
The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which also comprises the Sovereign and the House of Lords . Both Commons and Lords meet in the Palace of Westminster. The Commons is a democratically elected body, consisting of 650 members , who are known as Members...
all-party Home Affairs Select Committee
Home Affairs Select Committee
The Home Affairs Select Committee is a Committee of the House of Commons in the Parliament of the United Kingdom.-Remit:The Home Affairs Committee is one of the House of Commons Select Committees related to government departments: its terms of reference are to examine "the expenditure,...
had their first meeting with Dame
Dame (title)
The title of Dame is the female equivalent of the honour of knighthood in the British honours system . It is also the equivalent form address to 'Sir' for a knight...
Stella Rimington
Stella Rimington
Dame Stella Rimington, DCB is a British author, who was the Director General of MI5 from 1992 to 1996. She was the first female DG of MI5, and the first DG whose name was publicised on appointment...
, director general of MI5. Committee member John Greenway
John Greenway
John Robert Greenway is a former British politician who sat as the Conservative Member of Parliament for Ryedale from 1987 until the constituency's abolition in 2010.-Early life:...
MP (Conservative
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
) remarked that the recent "Camillagate" leak "strengthens the case for a parliamentary committee to have responsibility to oversee or scrutinise the work of the security services [...] I suspect that colleagues will want to ask how true the allegations [of MI5 complicity in the 'Camillagate' leak] are, and I suspect that she [Rimington] will refuse to tell us." No record exists of matters discussed at the meeting.
Context: other examples of high level UK bugging
High-level eavesdropping in British politics is not unprecedented.The first major "Establishment" figure to question the official line on "Squidgygate" was Lord Rees-Mogg, the arch-conservative chairman of the Broadcasting Standards Authority
Broadcasting Standards Authority
The Broadcasting Standards Authority is a New Zealand Crown Entity created by the Broadcasting Act 1989 to develop and uphold standards of broadcasting for radio, free-to-air and pay television.The main functions of the BSA are:...
. He had proved an early proponent of the "rogue spies" school of thought in January 1993, when he used his Times column to accuse elements within the British security services
MI5
The Security Service, commonly known as MI5 , is the United Kingdom's internal counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its core intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service focused on foreign threats, Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence...
of engineering the leaks. "All those tapes were made within a month," he wrote. "The most likely explanation is that MI5 did it to protect the Royal Family
British Royal Family
The British Royal Family is the group of close relatives of the monarch of the United Kingdom. The term is also commonly applied to the same group of people as the relations of the monarch in her or his role as sovereign of any of the other Commonwealth realms, thus sometimes at variance with...
at a time of danger from the IRA
Provisional Irish Republican Army
The Provisional Irish Republican Army is an Irish republican paramilitary organisation whose aim was to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and bring about a socialist republic within a united Ireland by force of arms and political persuasion...
. I don't think there was any sense of wrong-doing, but once they were made there was the danger of a leak."
Examples of such eavesdropping and leaking follow.
A former Canadian Security Intelligence Service
Canadian Security Intelligence Service
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service is Canada's national intelligence service. It is responsible for collecting, analyzing, reporting and disseminating intelligence on threats to Canada's national security, and conducting operations, covert and overt, within Canada and abroad.Its...
officer, Mike Frost, has told how Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
's listening capabilities had been utilised by Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...
, when Prime Minister, to spy on two unnamed cabinet colleagues. "She wanted to find out not what they were saying, but what they were thinking," he said. Government Communications Headquarters
Government Communications Headquarters
The Government Communications Headquarters is a British intelligence agency responsible for providing signals intelligence and information assurance to the UK government and armed forces...
(GCHQ), the government's listening post in Cheltenham
Cheltenham
Cheltenham , also known as Cheltenham Spa, is a large spa town and borough in Gloucestershire, on the edge of the Cotswolds in the South-West region of England. It is the home of the flagship race of British steeplechase horse racing, the Gold Cup, the main event of the Cheltenham Festival held...
, Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn, and the entire Forest of Dean....
, was to have been used to carry out this surveillance, but they approached the Canadian intelligence services, because the operation was too politically sensitive. The spying was organised from the offices of Macdonald House
MacDonald House
The MacDonald House is a historic building in Singapore, and is located at Orchard Road in the Museum Planning Area, within the Central Area, Singapore's central business district...
in Grosvenor Square
Grosvenor Square
Grosvenor Square is a large garden square in the exclusive Mayfair district of London, England. It is the centrepiece of the Mayfair property of the Duke of Westminster, and takes its name from their surname, "Grosvenor".-History:...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, the home of the Canadian High Commissioner. The Canadian officer who led the spying operation personally drove to GCHQ to deliver the fruits of the snooping: tape-recordings of the ministers' communications over a three-week period. Frost did not know, or perhaps simply did not say, what use was made of these tapes.
During the "Spycatcher
Spycatcher
Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer , is a book written by Peter Wright, former MI5 officer and Assistant Director, and co-author Paul Greengrass. It was published first in Australia...
" controversy of 1987, the British Conservative government sought to suppress the Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n publication of the memoirs of Peter Wright
Peter Wright
Peter Maurice Wright was an English scientist and former MI5 counterintelligence officer, noted for writing the controversial book Spycatcher, which became an international bestseller with sales of over two million copies...
(a former deputy director of MI5). Labour Party
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
leader Neil Kinnock
Neil Kinnock
Neil Gordon Kinnock, Baron Kinnock is a Welsh politician belonging to the Labour Party. He served as a Member of Parliament from 1970 until 1995 and as Labour Leader and Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition from 1983 until 1992 - his leadership of the party during nearly nine years making him...
suddenly found himself accused by the Conservative Party of talking to Wright's lawyers. Kinnock had indeed done so, via international telephone, but with a general election looming, Kinnock apparently did not want to be seen as some kind of "security risk", and so he declined to ask publicly how the Conservative Party had come to know the contents of his private phone calls.
"Camillagate"
A few days before Clarke's remarks, the Daily Mirror had run with "Camillagate", an eight-minute tape of Prince Charles exchanging sexually explicit pleasantries with his mistress, Camilla Parker-Bowles. Richard Stott, editor of the Mirror, claimed that the tape had been recorded by "a very ordinary member of the public", although the paper was not allowed to keep or to make a copy of the tape. But The Sunday Times reported that an anonymous freelance journalist from ManchesterManchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
was known to be attempting to sell a complete copy of the original tape, asking price £50,000. The re-ignition of the controversy over "Squidgygate" had been instantaneous: the date of the "Camillagate" recording was known to be 18 December 1989—just weeks before the "Squidygate" tape had been recorded.
Political fallout
Before any investigation into "Squidgygate" or "Camillagate" had begun, Home SecretaryHome Secretary
The Secretary of State for the Home Department, commonly known as the Home Secretary, is the minister in charge of the Home Office of the United Kingdom, and one of the country's four Great Offices of State...
Kenneth Clarke
Kenneth Clarke
Kenneth Harry "Ken" Clarke, QC, MP is a British Conservative politician, currently Member of Parliament for Rushcliffe, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice. He was first elected to Parliament in 1970; and appointed a minister in Edward Heath's government, in 1972, and is one of...
told the House of Commons: "There is nothing to investigate. [...] I am absolutely certain that the allegation that this is anything to do with the security services or GCHQ [...] is being put out by newspapers, who I think feel rather guilty that they are using plainly tapped telephone calls."
The Labour Party, then in Opposition
Opposition (parliamentary)
Parliamentary opposition is a form of political opposition to a designated government, particularly in a Westminster-based parliamentary system. Note that this article uses the term government as it is used in Parliamentary systems, i.e. meaning the administration or the cabinet rather than the state...
, accused Kenneth Clarke of irresponsibility, issuing a statement: "He has to show that he is taking these allegations seriously, otherwise he will be perceived as being unable to control an organisation for which he is responsible."
Official position
John MajorJohn Major
Sir John Major, is a British Conservative politician, who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1990–1997...
's government eventually published two reports, both of which cleared MI5 and MI6
Secret Intelligence Service
The Secret Intelligence Service is responsible for supplying the British Government with foreign intelligence. Alongside the internal Security Service , the Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence Intelligence , it operates under the formal direction of the Joint Intelligence...
of involvement in the "Royalgates" tapes. One of these was the annual report of the Interceptions Commissioner, Lord Bingham of Cornhill, who oversaw the intelligence-gathering practices of the security services. Excerpt follows: "[Lord Bingham] was impressed by the scrupulous adherence to the statutory provisions [against misconduct] of those involved in the [intelligence-gathering] procedures." In a clear reference to the "Squidgygate" affair, he commented on "the stories which occasionally circulated in the press with regard to the interceptions by MI5, MI6 and GCHQ," stating that such stories were, in his experience, "without exception false, and gave an entirely misleading impression to the public both of the extent of official interception and of the targets against which interception is directed."
Conservative MP Richard Shepherd
Richard Shepherd
Richard Charles Scrimgeour Shepherd is a Conservative politician in the United Kingdom. He is currently a Member of Parliament, having represented the constituency of Aldridge-Brownhills since 1979....
called the official reports: "two old buffers saying that in their opinion the security services act with integrity." The National Heritage Secretary Peter Brook
Peter Brook
Peter Stephen Paul Brook CH, CBE is an English theatre and film director and innovator, who has been based in France since the early 1970s.-Life:...
gave MPs "a categorical assurance that the heads of the agencies concerned have said there is no truth in the rumours."
Chance interceptions?
The circumstances surrounding the recording of the Royal tapes are still poorly understood, despite the "Squidgygate" and "Camillagate" tapes both having been analysed by experts.The "Camillagate" tape showed no signs of suspicious treatment, and appeared to be just what it was claimed to have been: a recording, "from air", of Charles and Camilla talking privately on 18 December 1989.
Chance interception of high-level communication is not unknown: during the 1982 Falklands conflict
Falklands War
The Falklands War , also called the Falklands Conflict or Falklands Crisis, was fought in 1982 between Argentina and the United Kingdom over the disputed Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands...
, a radio ham in London had intercepted and taped a conversation between the then-Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...
's press secretary Sir Bernard Ingham
Bernard Ingham
Sir Bernard Ingham is a journalist and former civil servant who is best known as Margaret Thatcher's Chief Press Secretary while she was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Today Ingham lectures in Public Relations at Middlesex University in London...
and the Assistant Director-General of the BBC, in which the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
was pressurised into sharing war footage with commercial rivals ITN.
The "Squidgygate" tape showed clear signs of having been doctored and rebroadcast on 4 January 1990; four days after its initial interception on New Year's Eve, 1989. However, there is overwhelming evidence to suggest that it could not have been recorded off-air in the manner claimed by Reenan and Norgrove.
Culprits' identities are an official secret
The QueenElizabeth II of the United Kingdom
Elizabeth II is the constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize,...
was so disturbed by the "Squidygate" episode that she requested that MI5 conduct an investigation to discover the culprit or culprits. Since the motive could not have been financial, said the investigators—the only winners were the radio hams and the press—it must have been political. Home Secretary Kenneth Clarke admitted he was the one who blocked a full scale inquiry into the tapes because of his fear that it would be uncovered that the tapes did in fact come from the Secret Service
In 2002, Diana's former Personal Protection Officer
Personal Protection Officer
Personal Protection Officers are officers of the London Metropolitan Police Royalty and Diplomatic Protection Department who are assigned for the personal protection of members of the Royal Family. The senior officer is the Queen's Police Officer...
, Inspector Ken Wharfe revealed that the investigation had "identified all those involved, but for legal reasons I cannot expand further, and nor is it necessary to do so." Wharfe added, however, that: "It does [...] lend credence to the Princess's belief, so often dismissed by her detractors, that the Establishment was out to destroy her." This directly contradicts the statements of Home Secretary Kenneth Clarke, and conflicts with the statements of Lord Bingham of Cornhill—a Privy Councillor since 1986—whose report claims that the interception services behaved properly. Wharfe later admitted this was just speculation on his part but that he did believe the royal family was being bugged by the GCHQ in order to protect them from the IRA. The GCHQ denied this allegation.
Diana's reactions
The Princess herself was distraught by the "Squidgygate" episode. By 1995, claims her private secretary Patrick Jephson, Diana's "paranoia" had "reached new heights. She saw plots everywhere, [and] was obsessed with the thought that she was being bugged." On one occasion, Jephson expressed his "polite mystification"—although he notes that "exasperation would have been nearer the mark"—that "none of these hidden microphones had actually been discovered."Diana pulled up a carpet in an upstairs room at Kensington Palace, to show Jephson what she believed was evidence of bugging: fresh sawdust and disturbed planks: "She pointed silently at the sawdust, and nodded significantly." Jephson tried to reassure her that this was simply the result of the rewiring of all the Royal palaces, following the 1992 fire at Windsor Castle
Windsor Castle
Windsor Castle is a medieval castle and royal residence in Windsor in the English county of Berkshire, notable for its long association with the British royal family and its architecture. The original castle was built after the Norman invasion by William the Conqueror. Since the time of Henry I it...
, but Diana, after gesturing for him to remain silent, was evidently unconvinced.
Squidgygate II?
On 31 August 1997, the day Diana died, most of the British press was caught in the spotlight. A number of early editions of that Sunday's papers were already in circulation, and these carried stories that were simply jokes about the Princess's persistent "dumb blonde" image. A piece of "psychological profiling" about the Princess's ever-present role in public life, for The Sunday Times, featured a large picture of Diana, and began with the words "There is something missing from all our lives today."The tabloid Sunday Mirror
Sunday Mirror
The Sunday Mirror is the Sunday sister paper of the Daily Mirror. It began life in 1915 as the Sunday Pictorial and was renamed the Sunday Mirror in 1963. Trinity Mirror also owns The People...
carried the story of how Palace courtiers were ready to press the Queen to let the Royal Warrant
Royal Warrant
Royal warrants of appointment have been issued for centuries to those who supply goods or services to a royal court or certain royal personages. The warrant enables the supplier to advertise the fact that they supply to the royal family, so lending prestige to the supplier...
s for Harrods
Harrods
Harrods is an upmarket department store located in Brompton Road in Brompton, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London. The Harrods brand also applies to other enterprises undertaken by the Harrods group of companies including Harrods Bank, Harrods Estates, Harrods Aviation and Air...
lapse: "It would be a huge blow to the ego of store owner Mohamed al-Fayed
Mohamed Al-Fayed
Mohamed Abdel Moneim Al-Fayed is an Egyptian businessman and billionaire. Amongst his business interests are ownership of the English Premiership football team Fulham Football Club, Hôtel Ritz Paris and formerly Harrods Department Store, Knightsbridge...
—and would infuriate Diana [...] but the Royal Family are furious about the frolics of Di, 36, and Dodi Fayed, 41, which they believe have further undermined the Monarchy... Prince Philip
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh is the husband of Elizabeth II. He is the United Kingdom's longest-serving consort and the oldest serving spouse of a reigning British monarch....
, in particular has made no secret as to how he feels about his [former] daughter-in-law's latest man, referring to Dodi as an 'oily bed-hopper'."
After noting that MI6 had prepared a report on the Fayeds, which would be presented at an early September meeting of the Royal policy think-tank, The Way Ahead Group, the paper quoted a friend of the Royals as saying: "Prince Philip has let rip several times recently about the Fayeds: at a dinner party, during a country shoot, and while on a visit to close friends in Germany. 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. Options must include exile, although that would be very difficult, as—when all is said and done—she is the mother of the future King of England [sic]."
Mirror columnist Chris Hutchins could not have been aware that events later that night would mean his words would be read in a very different light. He had written in the paper's "Confidential" feature:
- "Just when Diana began to believe that her current romance with likeable playboy Dodi Fayed had wiped out her past liaisons, a new tape recording is doing the rounds of Belgravia dinner parties. And this one is hot, hot, hot! Labelled 'Squidgygate II,' the tape is of a completely different conversation the princess had with her sometime beau James Gilbey.
- "'It's absolutely outrageous,' says a woman friend who heard the tape last week, but was too polite to ask her hostess if she could make a copy for 'Confidential'. 'It's full of sexual innuendo, and far more explicit than the one we all heard before'."
Hutchins concluded: "I must remember to take it up with Diana next time we find ourselves on adjacent running machines at our West London gym."
The second "Squidgygate" tape disappeared from the media without trace, before it had even had a chance to appear, with no further information on its contents, origins, or on its sudden surfacing in private hands after a gap of some seven years.
Surveillance of Diana after Squidgygate
On 30 November 1998, APB News Online published the results of a U.S.United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Freedom of Information Act
Freedom of Information Act (United States)
The Freedom of Information Act is a federal freedom of information law that allows for the full or partial disclosure of previously unreleased information and documents controlled by the United States government. The Act defines agency records subject to disclosure, outlines mandatory disclosure...
request. The news agency's request for documents on Diana, held by America's National Security Agency
National Security Agency
The National Security Agency/Central Security Service is a cryptologic intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the collection and analysis of foreign communications and foreign signals intelligence, as well as protecting U.S...
, had been rejected, but the rejection notice itself revealed that a total of 1,056 pages of documents is held by the National Security Agency
National Security Agency
The National Security Agency/Central Security Service is a cryptologic intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the collection and analysis of foreign communications and foreign signals intelligence, as well as protecting U.S...
(NSA), Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
(CIA), State Department
United States Department of State
The United States Department of State , is the United States federal executive department responsible for international relations of the United States, equivalent to the foreign ministries of other countries...
, and the Defense Intelligence Agency
Defense Intelligence Agency
The Defense Intelligence Agency is a member of the Intelligence Community of the United States, and is the central producer and manager of military intelligence for the United States Department of Defense, employing over 16,500 U.S. military and civilian employees worldwide...
(DIA). APB quoted John Pike, an intelligence expert from the Federation of American Scientists
Federation of American Scientists
The Federation of American Scientists is a nonpartisan, 501 organization intent on using science and scientific analysis to attempt make the world more secure. FAS was founded in 1945 by scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project to develop the first atomic bombs...
, as saying that the NSA was "insatiably curious, and monitors everyone of interest outside the US."
A spokesman for the NSA, which holds 124 pages from "39 NSA-originated and NSA-controlled documents", declined to answer further questions about the documents, as did a spokeswoman for the CIA, which has at least two documents.
When asked why the Defense Intelligence Agency might be holding documents on Diana, Lieutenant-Colonel James MacNeil said he had "no idea why. All of our stuff is on military [matters]. Obviously she wasn't in the military."
After a Freedom of Information Act request filed by The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
newspaper in 1999, the NSA told the paper that it was—and is still—holding reports under both "secret" and "top secret" classifications, and that: "these documents cannot be declassified because their disclosure could reasonably be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security." The agency said it also needed to protect its sources: "The reports contain only references to Diana, Princess of Wales, acquired incidentally from intelligence gathering. It is neither NSA policy or practice to target British subjects in conducting our foreign intelligence mission. However, other countries could communicate about these subjects; therefore, this agency could acquire intelligence concerning British subjects."
U.S. journalist Gerald Posner
Gerald Posner
Gerald Posner is an investigative journalist and author of several books, including Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK which explores the John F...
was played innocuous extracts from the NSA tapes of Diana's conversations in early 1999.
Diana, and other international figures including Pope John Paul II
Pope John Paul II
Blessed Pope John Paul II , born Karol Józef Wojtyła , reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church and Sovereign of Vatican City from 16 October 1978 until his death on 2 April 2005, at of age. His was the second-longest documented pontificate, which lasted ; only Pope Pius IX ...
and Mother Theresa of Calcutta
Mother Teresa
Mother Teresa , born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu , was a Roman Catholic nun of Albanian ethnicity and Indian citizenship, who founded the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta, India, in 1950...
, were all listened in on by the Echelon monitoring system, a world-wide monitoring network capable of processing millions of messages every hour. "'Anybody who is politically active,' said Madsen, 'will eventually end up on the NSA's radar screen.'"
In December 1998, the French magistrate who investigated Diana's death, Hervé Stephan, wrote to the American secret services to request the 1,056-page dossier of transcripted calls. This request was refused a month or so later.
August 2006 developments
Although many theories still exist as to who was behind the various "Squidgygate" tapes, events in August, 2006, highlighted that there are continued attempts to intercept high level communications in the UK. On 10 August 2006, two men were charged with intercepting phone messages after an investigation was sparked by complaints from Royal Family staff members. News of the WorldNews of the World
The News of the World was a national red top newspaper published in the United Kingdom from 1843 to 2011. It was at one time the biggest selling English language newspaper in the world, and at closure still had one of the highest English language circulations...
royal editors, Clive Goodman
Clive Goodman
Clive Goodman is a former royal editor and reporter for the News of the World. He was arrested in August 2006 and jailed in January 2007 for intercepting mobile phone messages involving members of the Royal Household.Goodman initially worked as a journalist on Nigel Dempster's gossip column in the...
and Glenn Mulcaire
Glenn Mulcaire
Glenn Mulcaire, born September 8, 1970, is a former professional footballer, latterly a private investigator. He has been closely associated with the News International phone hacking scandal. In January 2007 he was found guilty of illegally intercepting phone messages from Clarence House and...
, were charged with having accessed voicemail messages on eight occasions between January and August, 2006, and conspiring to intercept communications.
- See also: News of the World phone hacking affairNews of the World phone hacking affairThe News International phone-hacking scandal is an ongoing controversy involving mainly the News of the World but also other British tabloid newspapers published by News International, a subsidiary of News Corporation. Employees of the newspaper were accused of engaging in phone hacking, police...
Complaints by staff at Clarence House
Clarence House
Clarence House is a royal home in London, situated on The Mall, in the City of Westminster. It is attached to St. James's Palace and shares the palace's garden. For nearly 50 years, from 1953 to 2002, it was home to Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, but is since then the official residence of The...
, the official residence to the Prince of Wales, prompted the investigation that led to the arrests.