posted December 11, 2006 10:47 AM            

American intelligence agencies were bugging Princess Diana's telephone over her relationship with a US billionaire, the Evening Standard has learned.

She was even forced to abandon a planned holiday with her sons in the US with tycoon Teddy Forstmann on advice from secret services, who passed on their concerns to their British counterparts.

Both US and British intelligence then forced Diana to change her plans to stay with Mr Forstmann in the summer of 1997, saying it was too "dangerous" to take her sons there.

Instead the princess took the fateful decision to take a summer break with Harrods owner Mohamed Fayed. This ultimately led to her going to Paris with his son Dodi, where they died in a car crash.

The revelation from independent inquiries by the Evening Standard comes as it emerged that Princess Diana's phone was bugged by US intelligence agencies on the night she died without the permission of the British secret intelligence services.

Authoritative leaks say the extraordinary revelations will be published this week by Lord Stevens and is bound to raise fresh questions about conspiracy theories.

The US secret service was monitoring Diana's friendship with the controversial financier Mr Forstmann for some weeks.

Mohamed Fayed has always insisted the princess and Dodi Fayed were murdered in a plot involving MI6 agents and US intelligence.

The Standard has learned that Diana had agreed to a week's holiday with princes William and Harry in the US.

She had accepted an invitation from her one-time American boyfriend Mr Forstmann to stay with him at his house in the Hamptons.

But as she was travelling with the princes, she needed the trip to be cleared by the British security services. They surprisingly vetoed Diana's plans because of concerns about the security surrounding the billionaire's homes or perhaps a possible threat from elsewhere.

The decision by the security services ultimately led to Diana striking up her friendship with Dodi and returning to the south of France to holiday with him.

This led to her being in Paris on 31 August, the day of the crash.

The Evening Standard also understands that US secret services have a number of secret files on Diana and her closest associates that are held by the national security agency. The files, which include reports from foreign intelligence - thought to include MI5 and MI6 - come under both top secret and secret categories.The reports cannot be released because of "exceptionally grave damage to the national security". The documents on the princess seem to have arisen because of the company she kept rather than through any attempt to target her.

Diana enjoyed an intimate friendship with Mr Forstmann after her relationship with Prince Charles had broken down.

posted December 11, 2006 01:19 PM            

It's only weepable if Bush did it.

Forgotten is the fact Commander Corruption not only continued the eavesdropping program known as CARNIVORE but actually updated the computer systems to make the CARNIVORE eavesdropping program more efficient and enable the monitoring of every phone call in the US by the NSA. Not only phone calls but email and bank transactions, even transactions at remote locations.

posted December 11, 2006 01:52 PM            

Of course, the rules governing financial services companies saving their financial documents were already in existence.

The new rule seems to cover correspondence and documents produced after a federal civil lawsuit is filed or when such a lawsuit is imminent.

posted December 15, 2006 12:01 AM            

The report also said Diana was not pregnant, that she was not engaged to marry Dodi Fayed, and that their chauffeur was drunk and driving at more than 60 mph - twice the speed limit - when their car crashed while being chased by photographers.

The inquiry, which largely confirmed previous findings by French investigators, also said there was no reason to suspect the involvement of the royal family in the death of Prince Charles' former wife.

"Our conclusion is that, on all the evidence available at this time, there was no conspiracy to murder any of the occupants of the car. This was a tragic accident," said Lord John Stevens, former chief of the Metropolitan Police, who led the investigation of the deaths of Diana, 36, and Fayed, 42.

"There was no conspiracy, and no cover-up," Stevens added.

The couple was killed along with chauffeur Henri Paul when their Mercedes crashed in the Pont d'Alma tunnel in Paris on Aug. 31, 1997, while being chased by media photographers. Bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones was seriously injured.

Paul was drunk, with a blood-alcohol level twice the British legal limit, and driving at twice the local speed limit before the crash, Stevens said.

"We can say with certainty that the car hit the curb just before the 13th pillar of the central reservation in the Alma underpass, at a speed of 61 to 63 miles per hour," Stevens said. "Nothing in the very rapid sequence of events we have reconstructed supports the allegation of conspiracy to murder."

Fayed's father, Mohammed al Fayed, has alleged that the couple was killed as a result of a plot by the establishment, including British intelligence agencies and Prince Philip, her former father-in-law.

In an interview with British Broadcasting Corp. radio Thursday before the findings were released, al Fayed rejected the report's conclusions, which newspapers had predicted.

"I am the father who lost his son. I am the one who knows everything," said al Fayed, owner of Harrods department store.

Stevens said that photographers had prompted Diana and Fayed to change travel plans before their death. Contradicting long-standing rumors, family and friends denied in interviews that Diana was about to marry Fayed, and Diana was not pregnant, Stevens said.

"From the evidence of her close friends and associates, she was not engaged and not about to get engaged," Stevens said.

Stevens said he had interviewed Prince Charles and had communicated with Philip and her eldest son, Prince William.

"I have seen nothing that would justify further inquiries with any member of the royal family," he said.

He said William had said that there had been no indication that Diana was about to get married again.

Diana's sons endorsed the findings. Princes William and Harry "trust that these conclusive findings will end the speculation surrounding the death of their mother Diana, Princess of Wales," according to a statement from Clarence House, their father's office.

Earl Spencer, Diana's brother, and her sisters Lady Sarah McCorquodale and Lady Jane Fellowes, also supported Stevens' findings.

"We have been briefed on the conclusions of the inquiry and agree with them entirely, and look forward to reading the full report in detail," their statement said.

Rumors and conspiracy theories continue to swirl around Diana's death, despite a French judge's 1999 ruling that the crash was an accident.

A poll commissioned by the BBC, released earlier this month, found that 31 percent of the sample believed the deaths were not an accident, while 43 percent believed they were. The poll of 1,000 adults had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

The British inquiry, which involved 15 police personnel and is estimated to have cost millions of dollars, used cutting-edge computer technology to reconstruct the crash scene in three dimensions, and examined the wrecked Mercedes in painstaking detail. Stevens looked at hundreds of witness statements and traveled to Paris to see the site of the crash.

Stevens also said U.S. officials had assured him that secretly recorded conversations in their possession shed no new light on her death.

The U.S. National Security Agency said Tuesday it had never targeted Diana's communications, but acknowledged it had 39 classified documents containing references to the princess.

The investigation also found no evidence that the British Secret Intelligence Service was conducting surveillance on the princess, the report said.

The publication of Stevens' report will allow an inquest into Diana's death finally to get under way.

The inquest, convened and then swiftly adjourned in 2004, is due to formally resume next year under a retired senior judge, Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss. Preliminary hearings will be held Jan. 8-9 at the Royal Courts of Justice.

"I have no doubt that speculation as to what happened that night will continue and that there are some matters, as in many other investigations, about which we may never find a definitive answer," Stevens said.

"Three people tragically lost their lives in the accident and one was seriously injured. Many more have suffered from the intense scrutiny, speculation and misinformed judgments in the years that have followed," he added.