Coroner: Summing Up: 31 Mar 08: 10.15:
“There is no evidence that the Secret Intelligence Service or any other Government agency organised it.”
Was MI6 involved in the assassinations of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed?
Quite different to the other four volumes in this series so far, most (but not all) of the evidence in this chapter has been circumstantial – not conclusive or specific documentary or witness evidence1430.
There is a very good reason for that. It lies in the early evidence that showed the central culture of MI6 is based on secrecy and deceit. We have read the witness evidence of many people, but we have also seen that a lot of it is unreliable – primarily because MI6 officers and their agents have a closer allegiance to their perception of the national interest than to the truth, even when speaking under oath in a UK courtroom.
The essence of the problem is that it is possible Princess Diana was perceived by the Establishment to be a threat to the UK national security – this has been covered in the Motives and Surveillance sections of Part 2.
If Diana was deemed a threat to national security that could be seen to provide an MI6 officer or agent with the moral “right” to lie to the inquest, if necessary, to protect the national interest.
We have already seen in earlier volumes, both French and British witnesses appearing to have been provided a “green light” to say whatever they deemed suitable. In other words, many of the witnesses seem to have been promised that they will never be held accountable for anything they have said at the Diana inquest, irregardless of the level of truth or lies they have spoken.
I believe the MI6 witnesses shared that green light and when you add their loyalty to the national interest1431, we end up with a situation where the general MI6 evidence appears to be unreliable.
These issues muddy the waters and make the search for truth extremely difficult.
The question is: Is there enough evidence in these pages for a person to be confident of MI6 involvement in the assassinations of Diana and Dodi?
In summary, the evidence is:
The key evidence basically revolves around five major areas – the culture of MI6; its huge record of involvement in assassination plots; the movement of senior MI6 personnel into the Paris embassy in the latter part of August 1997 and the cover up of those movements; the universal – but not credible – Paris MI6 testimony that no one was on duty on the weekend of the crash; the role of Rosa Monckton.
There was a huge effort at the Diana inquest to focus the MI6-related evidence on the varying accounts of the Slobodan Milosevic assassination plot – this moved the focus away from where it should have been: Was MI6 involved in the assassination of Princess Diana?
So the jury heard volumes of conflicting evidence on events in the Balkans in the early 1990s, when they should have been hearing about events that took place in London and Paris in 1997.
This shifting of the focus appeared to have two possible aims: a) to divert the jury’s attention away from evidence pointing to MI6 involvement in the Paris crash; b) an attempt to undermine ex-MI6 officer, Richard Tomlinson’s evidence, and destroy his credibility.
At the inquest Richard Tomlinson came across as a lone voice, with all other MI6 witnesses arrayed against him and effectively undermining his account of MI6-related evidence. In reality there was a substantial amount of other evidence – not heard by the jury – shown as “Jury Didn’t Hear” in this book, that supports Tomlinson’s accounts.
When the MI6-related evidence was subjected to scrutiny – as occurred earlier in this book – it is Tomlinson’s alone that stacks up. All other MI6 witnesses appear to have at times lied under oath.
Richard Dearlove – the most senior MI6 officer heard1433 – seemed to particularly seek to undermine Tomlinson’s evidence:
Any investigation into the activities of MI6 – or probably any intelligence agency – is fraught with difficulty because of the pervasive culture of secrecy and deceit.1447 With that in mind, I suggest that the evidence uncovered in this chapter is significant – and that it points to MI6 involvement in the assassinations of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed.
The evidence also brings out – and I believe this is common sense – that MI6 would not have been able to bring about this orchestrated crash in Paris without a great deal of help from the local French intelligence agencies, DGSE and DST.1448
Other evidence points to the involvement of the CIA – their incredible record in high-level assassinations; their long-time close cooperation and conduct of joint MI6 operations; the sudden change of mind regarding signing the anti-landmine treaty by President Bill Clinton; the CIA’s extensive resources.
The earlier British Intelligence Assassination table showed that in the known cases of MI6 involvement in assassination plots there is a very low success rate. Of course, we don’t know what the success rate is in the operations that have remained secret, but this evidence gives additional support for the argument that the CIA was involved in the Diana-Dodi assassination.
Part 2 indicated that Diana’s campaign against landmines would have been a significant motive – but not alone1449 – for her assassination. It is logical that once Diana had achieved success on the landmine front, she may have been expected to move on to other weapons, e.g. cluster bombs. There is no question that both the USA and France have a very strong commitment to the worldwide arms industry and their operations could have been severely impacted, had Princess Diana been allowed to continue living.
I believe that the evidence we have seen in this chapter, although mostly circumstantial, is enough to indicate the involvement of MI6 in the orchestration of the Paris crash and the subsequent deaths of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed. I suggest that the evidence – seen in the light of landlines as a motive1450 – also points to the assassination of Princess Diana being a joint effort from the intelligence agencies of three major powers: UK, France and USA.
When this is put together with the extensive evidence in the earlier volumes, one can begin to formulate a view on how such a massive complex undertaking could have been pulled together. The evidence indicates a huge operation conducted by MI6, but in conjunction with the CIA, DST and DGSE, and enlisting the services of quite a few agents on the ground – some identifiable and some not.
Intelligence agents who provided their services on the weekend of 30-31 August 1997 included Henri Paul, Claude Roulet, the several unidentified motorbike riders that pursued the Mercedes S280, Jean-Marc Martino, Arnaud Derossi, Dominique Lecomte, Gilbert Pépin and Jean Monceau.
The assassination of Princess Diana took place under the watch of David Spedding1451 – as head of MI6 – and Richard Dearlove – as Director of Operations. By virtue of their positions, both these men are implicated in the events.
As a part of the police investigations the phone records of all of the agents listed above and Spedding, Dearlove, Richard Spearman, Sherard Cowper-Coles and Valerie Caton should have been subjected to scrutiny. As it turned out, only the phone records of Henri Paul were obtained1452 – and that by the French police, not the British.
The question now is: Was MI6 – in concert with the other agencies – authorised to assassinate Princess Diana?
The known evidence in high-level assassination plots – particularly in the Gaddafi plot, where there is a lot of information available1453 – points to MI6 not acting independently of the British government of the day. In the Gaddafi case, it appears an attempt was made to pin the assassination plot on MI6 alone, but when the evidence is closely analysed it is revealed that MI6 was acting with government authorisation.
Can the same be said about the Diana assassination that took place the following year? Was it authorised or was it ordered?
If someone gave the order for Diana to be killed, who was it? Was it the British government? Was it the royal family?
These questions should be answered in the remainder of this volume.